Life in the Iron Mills

Rebecca Harding Davis wrote Life in the Iron Mills and other short stories to represent the events going on around her during the era of the American Civil War. The short story was published by The Atlantic Monthly.[8] Davis was paid well for her story and continued to publish short stories for The Atlantic Monthly.[8] Life in the Iron Mills received much attention during her lifetime; she was also recognized by several literary figures[8] including as Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Amos Bronson Alcott, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Henry Ward Beecher, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hawthorne encouraged Davis to continue to write, but she was forgotten by the literary world by the time of her death.[8]

Davis attended college at the Washington Female Seminary and studied the Bible intensively. It is here Davis would encounter influential scholars and political thinkers, and explore ideas and produce thoughts of her own regarding such social and religious issues. According to some scholars, Davis' work was heavily influenced by the "ethical teachings of Christianity."[8] This is evident in Life in the Iron Mills, where Davis explores the greediness that derives from the Industrial Revolution.

According to Gregory Hadley, Davis's writings were partly shaped by the renewed interest of Christianity called the Second Great Awakening, which emphasizes on Personal Faith that was defined on repentance, believed Christ as the Savior, and live according to the Bible and Social Action. Social reform had heavily influenced the women who were on this "moral crusade." Protestants denominations had an remarkable growth spurt, and by the 1850s millions of Americans had converted to Christianity. Though many reviews failed to recognize Davis' Christian faith was an important factor in her writings. Davis' writings had focused on problems that Christians of her time were concerned with; slavery, work exploitation, equal education, and justice for women.[8]

The story takes place in the 1830s, a time when the Industrial Revolution was well underway. Until the 1840s well-to-do entrepreneurs established new mills and factories through their own finances because banks usually did not invest in industry or make loans to manufacturers. Industry thrived until the panic of 1837, originating in Britain, which affected investments in the United States, resulting in the bankruptcies of both British and American manufacturers and extensive unemployment. The American economy fell into a depression from which it did not emerge until 1843. By the 1850s, iron manufacturing was doing especially well, and by 1860 it was the nation's leading industry. Cotton production was another major industry. Investors profited significantly at the expense of workers.

Industry depended greatly on immigrant laborers. Approximately four million Irish, German, and British immigrants moved to the United States between 1820 and 1860. Most of them were unskilled peasants, laborers, and farmers who found employment in factories, on construction sites, at warehouses and docks, and in private homes. The living conditions depicted in Life in the Iron Mills for many immigrants were poor, indeed not much better than what they had experienced in Europe. Lacking enough money to buy food, many suffered from malnutrition and from diseases like cholera, smallpox, and tuberculosis ("consumption"), with which the main character, Hugh Wolfe, is afflicted.

In the era of the feminist movement, the short story resurfaced through the help of the feminist writer Tillie Olsen. As an adviser for the Feminist Press in the 1970s, she came across Life in the Iron Mills and suggested it for republication. Olsen helped the short story gain critical reception once again as Davis intended in the 19th century.[9]

Housing in a mills factory in Alabama as photographed by Hine, Lewis Wickes in 1910.

Life in the Iron Mills begins with an omniscient narrator who looks out a window and sees smog and iron workers. The gender of the narrator is never known, but it is evident that the narrator is a middle class observer. As the narrator looks out the windowpane, an old story comes to mind; a story of the house that the narrator is living in. The narrator cautions the reader to have an objective mind, and to not be quick to judge the character in the story he/she is about to tell the reader. The narrator begins to introduce Deborah, Wolfe's cousin. She is described as a meek woman who works hard, and has a hump in her back. Deborah finds out from Janey, that Hugh did not take lunch to work, and she decides to walk many miles in the rain to take a lunch for Wolfe. As she walks up to the mills, Deborah begins to describe it as if it were hell, but she keeps going for Wolfe. When she arrives Wolfe is talking among friends and he recognizes her. The narrator explains his affection for her, but also describes his affection as loveless and sympathetic. Hugh finds no time to eat his dinner and goes back to do a day of labor in the mills. Deborah, who is exhausted, stays with Hugh and rests until his shift is over. In the meantime, the narrator further explains that Wolfe does not belong in the environment of the iron mill workers. He is known as "Molly Wolfe" by other workers because of his manner and background in education.[10]

When Wolfe is working he spots men that do not look like workers. He sees Clarke, the son of Kirby, Doctor May who is a physician, and another two men that he does not recognize. These men stop by to look at the working men, and as they are talking and observing, they spot a weird object that has the shape of a human. As they get closer, they see that it is an odd shaped statue built with korl. They begin to analyze it and wonder who created such a statue, one of the workers points at Wolfe and the men go to him. They ask him why he built such a statue and what it represents. All Hugh says is that "She be hungry". The men begin to talk about the injustice of labor force, and one goes as far as to say that Hugh can get out of the meager job he is in, but that he unfortunately cannot help. The men leave, but not before Deborah steals one of their wallets, which has a check for a substantial amount inside. They go back home and Wolfe feels like he is a failure and feels anger towards his economic situation.[10]

Once home, Deborah confesses to stealing from Mitchell, and shamefully gives the money to Wolfe to do with it what he pleases. Wolfe decides to keep the money believing he is deserving of it because after all they are all deserving in God's eyes. The narrator transitions to a different scene with Dr. May reading the newspaper and seeing that Wolfe was put in jail for stealing from Mitchell. The story goes back to Hugh and he is in prison with Deborah. The narrator explains how terrible their situation is, and goes on to give detail of Wolfe's mental disintegration. Hugh ends up losing his mind and killing himself in prison. The story ends with a Quaker woman who comes to bless and help with the body of Hugh. She talks to Deborah and promises her that she will give Hugh a proper burial, and come back for her when she is released from jail.[10]

• Hugh Wolfe is a Welsh puddler, who was born into poverty, is a laborer who turns pig iron into wrought iron by puddling. Despite the demanding hours at the mill, Hugh has a special talent; artistic talent to sculpt out of korl, "a light, porous substance, of a delicate, waxen, flesh-colored tinge", a leftover refuse from the smelting process. Many of the workers make fun of Hugh for his interest in sculpting and his relationship with Deborah. Hugh yearns for beauty and purity. He has a good heart and cares for Deborah, even though she influences him into taking the stolen money.
• Deborah Wolfe, is Hugh's cousin, a hunch back who loves Hugh, and often takes dinner to Hugh, even if it means her missing dinner. She works at the spools and inadvertently plays a key role in Hugh's downward spiral in the narrative.
• Janey, is a child who sleeps over at Hugh and Deb's occasionally when her father is drunk. She is clearly beautiful, which makes Deb jealous.
• Mr. Clarke, an overseer at the iron mill where Hugh works.
• Young Kirby, son of the mill's co-owner. He feels no obligation toward the workers except "a narrow limit,--the pay-hour on Saturday night."
• Doctor May. He is one of the town's physicians. He feels compassion toward the workers, but the overwhelming task of improving the thousands of workers (1200 at this mill alone) prevents him from helping Hugh, even when Hugh asks for it explicitly. Instead, he gives Hugh some empty words of encouragement.
• Mitchell. Kirby's brother-in-law (and son-in-law of the mill owner), a man broadly educated in the classical sense who was "spending a couple of months in the boarders of a Slave State, to study the institutions of the South" (Davis, 17).
• A reporter (who accompanies Clarke, Young Kirby, Doctor May and Mitchell on a tour of the mill).
• A Quaker woman. She aids Deborah during and after prison, and provides a grave for Hugh. She provides the only sincere assistance to the poor in the story.
• The narrator who recounts the story is an unknown person of some higher class. "Many scholars assume the narrative voice is female."[11] She or he possesses the korl woman statue as the only remaining evidence of Hugh's existence.
• The Korl Woman. A sculpture that was created by Hugh, which showcases Hugh's artistic talent. She is made out of korl. The Korl woman represents industrialism's effect on the working class.

Life in the Iron Mills must be considered a central text in the origins of American realism, American proletarian literature, and American feminism, according to Jean Pfaelzer. The story was revolutionary in its compelling portrait of the working class's powerlessness to break the oppressive chains of industrial capitalism.[12] Author of The Utopian Novel in America, 1886-1896 (1984) and many articles on Davis, Pfaelzer edits the volume's literary selections and supplies the substantial critical introduction, which maintains that Davis inherited the sentimental literary tradition but nonetheless wrote "common stories" that "exposed the tension between sentimentalism, a genre predicated on the repression of the self, and realism, a genre predicated on the search for individual identity."[13] Davis's realistic depiction of the gritty, hellish mills and the impoverished workers' lives is far removed from the material advantages of the upper classes often portrayed in domestic fiction. She also uses the vernacular and dialect skillfully to depict realistically her uneducated immigrant characters and to emphasize their lower-class status. Davis counteracts positive images of healthy, wholesome mill girls and mills as ideal places of work. Life in the Iron Mills challenges the optimism of transcendentalism by showing how industrialism fueled by greedy capitalists destroys the natural environment and the human spirit.[14]

In the late 1800s Life in the Iron Mills received national criticism when published in The Atlantic Monthly. Many readers of the Monthly believed that the author of the story was a man because of Davis's strong language and use of realism. Davis also published her early works anonymously, but as she gained fame from The Atlantic Monthly she began to sign her name to her work.[20] Life in the Iron Mills took readers away from abolitionist and Civil War conflicts, and reminded them of the community of iron workers going through injustice as well.[21] Davis also had strong literary supporters such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and many others.[22]

Rebecca Harding Davis disappeared from the literary world after ending her publications in The Atlantic Monthly. Life in the Iron Mills regained critical reception with the help of Tillie Olsen. In the 1970s many feminist supporters wrote about the power of Rebecca Harding Davis's short story. Norma Rosen, the author of "Joy to Revine" explains her first experience when reading Life in the Iron Mills: "With this book, Life in the Iron Mills in my hand, I feel I am standing in corridor of echoes".[23] Another critic, Federick Whittacker, describes Rebecca Harding Davis as a writer who takes part in the concept "Knight of labor", which too Whittacker represents writers who create literary fiction concerning the iron mill labor force in the 1800s. Life in the Iron Mills, was considered by most critics during the 1970s and 1980s, as one of the first works representing the iron mill labor force through realism.[21]

Life in the Iron mills still inspires literary criticism. Davis's short story has its own Bedford Cultural Edition, which introduces Life in the Iron Mills literary importance during the 19th century. The Bedford edition also explores the relation of Davis to the short story, and how her background influences the narrative.[24] Many critics explore the different themes that can be interpreted in the short story and its relation to the authors environment and historical context. Sheila Hassle Hughes exemplifies the conflicts that arise among critics about the themes Life in the Iron Mills represents:[25]

Scholars have generally found it difficult to reconcile Davis's radical form with the religious, specifically Christian, features of her tale. Two critics who have attempted to address this tension come to quite different conclusions. Sharon Harris reads the work as a critique of "passive Christianity", but her study of irony fails to address adequately the remaining constructive or stubbornly spiritual elements of Life in the Iron Mills. William H. Shurr, on the other hand, reads the story as a conversion narrative. While his approach highlights more of the ambiguities in Davis's religious rhetoric, it depends upon a dichotomy between the political and the spiritual which does not do full justice to Davis's text either. Harris's reading emphasizes the text's religious elements as an aspect of form that the political content ironically undoes, whereas Shurr tends to undermine the social aspects of the tale through his religious form criticism.

— Sheila Hassell Hughes, A Liberationist Reading of Class and Gender in Life in the Iron Mills

Rebecca Harding Davis's Life in the Iron Mills, was recognized as a significant short story by writers such as Emily Dickinson, Louisa May Alcott, and Nathaniel Hawthorne among many others. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward was also inspired to write the short story "The Tenth of January", which dealt with a mill that collapsed in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1868, after reading the story. Tillie Olsen's work on Life in the Iron Mills in her book Silences also brought new attention to the work; it is now also recognized as the starting point for the use of realism in literature representing the labor force. [26]

• Life in the Iron Mills in The Atlantic, Volume 7, Issue 42 (April 1861). Page 430
• Life in the Iron Mills at Project Gutenberg
• Life in the Iron Mills public domain audiobook at LibriVox
• Life in the Iron Mills from The Feminist Press