Spools, ca. 1900. Maine State Museum.
Spools, ca. 1900. Maine State Museum.
Thousands of small children worked in spinning rooms in textile mills as “doffers” replacing full spools of thread with empty ones. Spools set close together required swift and nimble fingers to replace them as the others continued to spin. A large spinning room might have more than 50,000 spools turning simultaneously. In the early and middle 1800s, boys or girls as young as seven might be responsible for over a hundred spools at a time.