Hard Times at the Mill

Have you seen the latest Volvo advert? Parents are struggling with their young kids, but it’s okay, because Volvo has their backs.

There’s a catchy folk song playing in the background; it starts, “Every morning at half past four…” and therein lies the problem. It’s normalising struggle. Yes you have to get up at a ridiculous hour to get everything done, but it’s okay, because everyone has to, and Volvo has compensated for your extreme exhaustion with a new safety feature.

Let me tell you a little more about that song. It’s called ‘Hard Times in the Cotton Mill (Cotton Mill Blues)’ and it’s by Pete Seeger. It featured on his 1956 album American Industrial Ballads.  It’s catchy, and horrifyingly, lots of people are going to identify with that first line.

Now Pete Seeger was an activist, and many of his songs were protest songs. He was in support of international disarmament, civil rights, workers’ rights and environmental causes.

This is the bit of the song we get in the advert:

Every morning at half-past four,
You hear the cooks hop on the floor.
It’s hard times in the mill, my love,
Hard times in the mill.

You get the idea, life’s tough.

In America, the golden age of the cotton mill begins in 1865 until suffering decline with the Great Depression. There was something of a revival afterwards, but modern practices and technology after 1950 means employment in the industry is not what it was.

So when Seeger was writing about how tough life was for the workers, he was harking back to a bygone age. I would suggest that, as an activist and a writer of protest songs he is not writing about the hard life in the cotton mills out of nostalgia. I read a criticism in there, that after a number of generations of working in awful conditions, things haven’t changed, and it’s directly comparable to the time in which Seeger wrote the song.

Roll on another 64 years, and we can still identify with the hard times at the mill. This is not a good thing.  

If we were to continue to listen to the song, we come to see just how hard these times in the mill are:

Every morning just at five,
You gotta get up, dead or alive.
It’s hard times in the mill, my love,
Hard times in the mill.

Can you identify with that idea of having to get up despite every part of you aching with tiredness?

Every morning at six o’clock,
Two cold biscuits, hard as a rock.
It’s hard times in the mill, my love,
Hard times in the mill.

Oh look, despite working hard, the only food available is unpleasant and lacks nutrition.

Every morning at half-past nine,
The bosses are cussin’ and the spinners are cryin’.
It’s hard times in the mill, my love,
Hard times in the mill.

Those in charge are demanding more from exhausted workers who are in a bedraggled emotional state.

They docked me a nickel; they docked me a dime;
They sent me to the office to get my time.
It’s hard times in the mill, my love,
Hard times in the mill.

And if you don’t follow the rules, if you don’t conform, the punishment is financial, so you cannot afford to try to do anything different.

Cotton mill boys don’t make enough
To buy them tobacco and a box of snuff.
It’s hard times in the mill, my love,
Hard times in the mill.

And the pay is only just enough to survive on. There’s little money for luxuries.

Every night when I get home,
A piece of corn bread and an old jawbone.
It’s hard times in the mill, my love,
Hard times in the mill.

And what you can afford for sustenance is poor quality and barely edible.

Ain’t it enough to break your heart?
Hafta work all day and at night it’s dark.
It’s hard times in the mill, my love,
Hard times in the mill.

The second line here again focusses on the ridiculous hours that you have to work giving you no time to do anything else (including find a way out).

Now the first line of the final verse – Ain’t it enough to break your heart? – shows quite clearly that Seeger doesn’t think these working conditions or the pay are in any way an adequate way of life.

He thought that 64 years ago. Looking at the lines in the song, there’s plenty I can relate to, and I’m certain others can to.

The hard times in the mill are not something to be celebrated, and therefore Volvo’s use of this song is preposterous. It’s basically mocking people who work hard every day.

It doesn’t have to be like this.

Fight for social change.