Jack Delano: Hard Times in the Mill (A Death in Georgia)

.

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

Every morning just at six,
Don't that old bell make you sick?
It's hard times in the mill, my love,
Hard times in the mill...

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

Hard Times in the Mill: song from South Carolina knitting mills, c. 1890, from American Industrial Ballads (Folkways Records, New York, 1956)

A sawmill in Heard County, Georgia: photo by Jack Delano, April 1941
Funeral of a nineteen year old Negro sawmill worker, Heard County, Georgia: photos by Jack Delano, April 1941
Negro sawmill workers getting some lunch in the back of a grocery store, Franklin, Heard County, Georgia: photo by Jack Delano, April 1941

Photos from Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress