A provocative & evocative image from
Jenne at The Unicorn Challenge;
our mission, if we choose to accept it,
is to write our reaction to this prompt.
Here is mine.
Carry myself with pride, as my mama taught me. My name is Elizabeth but everyone calls me Betsy. I am sixteen, pretty and full of life. This is day one of my first paying job – working in the cotton mills. I’m lucky and so grateful.
Mama is home caring for my seven little siblings. Daddy left one day and never came back.
In my lunch sack is bread, an orange and a chunk of cheese; a plain lunch but it keeps me going. During my break I’ll sit by the banks of the river and splash my scorched face. Life is good.
Carry myself with stooped shoulders. I’ve been in the mill for eight months. It’s hotter inside than the blazing Georgia sun. Humid, too, to keep the thread from breaking. Boiled potatoes and river water for lunch. I’m sixteen. Maybe I’ll meet a husband here.
Carry myself on leaden feet. I work six days a week, twelve hours a day. I earn $1.00 each week. The air is thick with cotton dust. Nobody talks anymore; we keep our mouths covered but that doesn’t stop the coughing. I have no time or energy for anything else. I’m sixteen and feel like I’m sixty.
Carry myself with doom. I’m coughing up blood and see nothing in my future except dying in the mill. I think I’ll just walk into the river and never come out.
Carry my dead body to the graveyard. I was only sixteen and my name was Betsy.
NAR © 2023
250 Words
“Isn’t It A Pity (George Harrison)
The Elephant's Trunk 
So sad, but so well written.
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Thank you, Dawn, for your very lovely compliment!
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So young, but so mature! Disparity is the name of society. Well portrayed, Nancy!
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Oh so sad. The rapid deterioration in her hopes and health, and to die so young. Tragic. You’ve structured this perfectly to show that decline. The repetition of the opening statement as she lives through her final year of life is like a drumbeat. Powerful.
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Thank you so much, Margaret.
Every once in a while you’ll get a MC
who lingers on in your brain; that’s Betsy.
A bud plucked before a chance to blossom.
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“Short pay! All out!”1
Perfect structure to the narrative and killer impact at the end.
1)The rallying cry of the ‘Bread and Roses’ strike.*
* high compliment, as your story took me right to the birth of the Workers Rights movement in the early 21th C.
(Spent time researching it for a WIP)
The quote often attributed to one, Annie Lopizzo, the sole fatality on the first day of the strike in Lawrence MA
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Great research, Clark. These historical moments stick with me.
I remember doing a paper on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire.
Unconscionable working conditions, then and now in many places.
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Such a sorrowful story. From joy to sadness in hardly any time at all.
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That’s the way it was back then and, sadly, the way it still is in many places around the world.
A bud plucked before a chance to blossom.
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Yes, very sad. But I really enjoy, George!
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I’m so glad you do!
But wait …. there’s more!
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People bypassed by life with nowhere to go . . . They are still there hiding in plain sight.
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There is something intrinsically wrong with a society that allows this to exist and grow year after year after year.
Thanks for your thoughts, Allen.
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Hits hard, even more so as it’s true.
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There’s no reason for it. None.
To paraphrase, the evil starts at the head of the snake 🐍
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Exactly
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It certainly is a pity how badly workers were treated in the past.
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Yes, and still are in so many places.
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Truth hits everyone
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That it does, Glyn.
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The power of the image matched only by the unfolding of this Anygirl’s short, leaden life, as you’ve described here! So well expressed!
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Thanks, Liz. It’s a crazy powerful image, isn’t it?
Tried my best to match it.
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A sad, sad story.
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Isn’t it, D? Can’t imagine the hardships of these poor young girls.
Appreciate your comments, my friend.
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I did a term paper in college on the Lowell (Mass.) mill girls. There’s quite a bit of information out there on them. They were amazing. They organized themselves, went on strikes, cultivated a cultural and educational atmosphere, even publishing their own journal, and were pretty remarkable. Heroes, and we hardly hear of them.
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Damn straight, my friend!
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A beautifully told story of an ill-divided world.
As Robert Burns says :
If I’m design’d yon lordling’s slave,
By Nature’s law design’d,
Why was an independant wish
E’er planted in my mind?
If not, why am I subject to
His cruelty, or scorn?
Or why has man the will and pow’r
To make his fellow mourn?
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PS Great song from Georgie
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Georgie was the only one for me.
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Thank you, CE, for your comments and
a brilliant verse by Rabbie Burns as well.
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A very heartbreaking story
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Even more so because it’s true.
The stories of young girls like Betsy are ones I’ll not soon forget.
Thanks for your comments today, Sadje.
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I know these things were common in those days.
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Oh! This is so sad life was so hard then , we had the same too over here too the child often were so young. Children as young as five and six years old worked for twelve to sixteen hours a day, six days a week without recess for meals in hot, stuffy, poorly lit, overcrowded factories to earn as little as four shillings per week. Plus there were horrendous injuries caused by the machines.
You paint a truly sad picture….even worse an accurate one. 💜
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Thank you, Willow.
For me this follows Thanksgiving very nicely; to think these conditions still exist, some even worse, is heartbreaking. The gap between the haves and the have nots is inconceivable (and terribly wrong). I’ve written about Betsy before; these are the sort of memories that down fade away easily.
Thanks for your comments today.
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We’ve not really gone very far have we we like to kid ourselves that we have but we only have to look around the world to see the truth. …oops we are getting heavy!! 💜💜💜
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It’s a heavy topic!
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Indeed
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Powerful story, Nancy, that packs a progressive emotional punch.
And sadly a story that still lives on for children in many countries.
Great take on the prompt picture.
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Thanks, Jenne. These true stories of the mill-working girls rips my heart out and it’s incredible to believe these conditions …. and worse …. still exist. I cried when I first read about Betsy; those memories came back to me instantly when I saw the photo. Truly heartbreaking. I knew I had to write about her.
I appreciate your comments today.
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And the way you tell the story reflects your emotion.
It’s an excellent story that needs a bigger audience than the challenge.
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Excellent. Good morning, sis.
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I’ll gladly take that comment!
Good morning, sis.
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