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Without exposure to fresh air, children were susceptible to a multitude of health problems. You know, like cancer. Scavengers were not allowed to sit, rest or take a break while the mills ran. And the mills ran all day. And on Sundays? Those were usually spent cleaning the giant death wheels that terrified them so much.



An artist's rendering of the noble sacrifices made to clean up lint.

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What could make this worse? Worse than forcing an orphan to work in a noisy, unventilated factory, crawling under spinning manglers to pick up tiny bits of trash? Oh yeah, scalping.

While crawling under all those spinning wheels, if a child's hair got too close to the machinery their hair got sucked in, separating their skull cap rather efficiently from their head. If the child wasn't lucky enough to die, at least when it came time to play Cowboys and Indians they were way ahead of the game.

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