The speeders stand at one end of a long row of 160 bobbins and watch for a break in the parallel lines of 160 threads, and twist the two ends together when this occurs.  The greater number of the speeders used to earn $6 a week.  But two or three women, on piece-work, earned about $9 and did nearly twice as much as the other workers.  The speeders had helpers who used to assist them to thread the back of the machine and to remove and place the bobbins in front.  The change or “doff” occupied about 20 minutes.  It generally occurred five times in the day of the better worker and thus consumed an hour and forty minutes of her working time.  The hours in the cotton mill are ten and a half a day with five and a half on Saturday,—­58 hours a week.

In order to ascertain the proper task for the speeders, a time-study was made of the work of one of the abler workers, who may be called Mrs. MacDermott, a strong and skilful Scotch woman, who had been employed at speeding in the mill for 14 years.  Mrs. MacDermott was employed to teach the other speeders how to accomplish the same amount in the same time.  The girls now thread the back of the machines with her help.  Mrs. MacDermott, the speeder tender herself, and the doff boys, all working together, remove the bobbins and fill the frame, thus accomplishing the change in 7 minutes instead of 20 minutes.  The girls are paid, while learning better methods from Mrs. MacDermott, at their old rate of a dollar a day.  If they accomplish the task allotted, they receive a dollar a week more flat-rate, a bonus equivalent to a few cents a pound on each pound received by the management; and this brings the wage to $1.65 a day, or between $8 and $10 a week.  The work tires the girls no more than it did before.  They receive about thirty per cent more wages, and the management receives from the speeders nearly twice as great an output as before.  Mrs. MacDermott’s wage as a teacher has been raised to $12.

From the speeders, the doff boys send the roving—­called fine roving in the mill, because the other rovings in preceding operations are coarser—­upstairs in the older building to the spinners.  Spinning is a more difficult task than speeding.  Two rovings are here twisted together by the machines.  The spinners have 104 bobbins on one side of a frame, and watch for breakage, and change the bobbins on three frames, or six “sides.”  Spinners formerly worked at piece-work rates and by watching eight sides, and frequently doing the work very imperfectly, would earn about $9.  After a time-study was taken, the task was set at six sides, and doffs as called for by a schedule.  With the bonus the girls’ weekly wage comes to about $10.  In the spinning department there is a school for spinners.  The heads receive a dollar for every graduate who learns to achieve the task and bonus.