The Newnan Cotton Mill was established in 1888 with the shift of northern textile mills to the South in the 1880's. The reason for the migration of northern textile mills to the south was strictly for the reduced price of transportation of cotton and the cheap labor available after the Civil War. Like many large mills during the Industrial Revolution, the Newnan Cotton Mill was surrounded by a mill town or factory homes. These homes were one story with limited space within and around the house. These home are still used in Newnan today, but are poorly maintained and rented out to economically disadvantaged. This cotton mill by 1920 employed over 900 workers most of which were female.

Conditions within these mills were abhorrent. The wages provided to the workers barely covered the essentials of life for one person, but most of the employees needed the income to provide for their family. Children were also employed in these factories being paid less than other employees and required to crawl under deadly machinery to clear jams and clean the floor of cotton fibers. Years after working in these mills, the employees would suffer from illnesses similar to mesothelioma caused by inhaling cotton fibers. A town of so many underpaid workers still managed to be documented as one of the wealthiest towns in America. The income inequality in the town of plantation owners, factory owners, ex-slaves, and mill workers was horrendous which illustrates the similarities to Charles Dickens’ factory towns described in David Copperfield.

Just like David Copperfield, children were employed in the factory and mills and paid barely enough to survive. In David Copperfield, David is forced to work in Mr. Murdstone’s factory and lives week to week on the wage he is provided. Sadly, this is not a fiction, but an unfortunate reality of factory work in the 19^th century. Also described by Dickens is the poor living conditions of the working class in London. One of these areas is described as being “as oppressive, sad, and solitary by night, as any about London.” (Dickens 685) It was not unique to any geographical location in the 1800’s to have factory houses that were dilapidated and seen as symbols of oppression and poverty.

The similarities between the mill towns in Newnan and Dickens’ London are abject poverty, hopelessness, sadness, and the some of the darker representation of capitalism. Were they differ is obviously location, but also the way in which the inhabitants and workers were treated. By the mid 1800’s, when Dickens was writing David Copperfield, the Industrial Revolution had been going on for close to 100 years. In Newnan in the 1880’s, the Industrial Revolution had only been occurring in the South for a few decades. This meant that many of the safety nets that had been established to help workers in England, as unhelpful as they were, did not exist for the Newnan workers. Similarly, the political opposition to industrialization in England via the leftist parties did not appear in the United States until after 1900. This added to the lack of representation that the southern working class received in their communities. By comparing these two industrial areas, it can broaden our understanding how wide spread the distasteful symptoms of capitalism spread. It was not merely poor policy that created this widespread poverty, but the system itself. The other benefit from comparing these locations is relatability. Many readers may feel distant from the dark industrial society portrayed in many of Dickens’ writings, but making the connection that they too existed in many of our home towns can bring us deeper into the novel.

Works Cited

Dickens, Charles. "David Copperfield". Penguin, 2008.

“Newnan.” West Georgia Textile Heritage Trail, westgatextiletrail.com/newnan/.

Norman Ware. The Industrial Worker 1840-1860. Hart, Schaffner and Marx, 1924.