Cotton Factory Shorts

Ethel Carnie Holdsworth contributed these short pieces to The Cotton Factory Times, a weekly newspaper published from Ashton-under-Lyne, outside Manchester. Anecdotal vignettes, reflecting the social structure of mill workers' lives, they date from 1906, when she was still working as a mill girl, until after World War I. They are written in local dialect, adding depth to their illustration of the difficulties of mill-workers and their families, rather than attempting to impose an alien literary style.