A Meticulously Researched and Somewhat Accurate History of the Town of Lint
1. One hundred and thirty five years ago, lint was a scarce and very valuable commodity. Traded in ounces, the supply was never able to keep up with the demand. There were many household uses for this prized material as well as a strong industrial and military demand. It was the Lint family that first recognized this economic opportunity and decided to build a mill dedicated entirely to the production of a new fine quality lint. A town was built around the mill to house the workforce and provide everything they would need, including a general store and a school for the workers' children, as well as a public library. The Lint family trademarked and heavily marketed their product. This is why even now, more than a century later, we still call this product lint. It was rumored, and years later proven, that the Lint family was supplying its products to the military forces on both sides of the conflicts during WWI, WWII and the mostly Forgotten War in Korea and making an enormous profit. The rise and fall of the Lint Family Factory, a dynasty of four generations.............................................................
2. After the mill was constructed, the Town Council of Lint approved the financing and building of a dam and hydroelectric plant to power the mill as well as the town. With Mr. Lint as chairman of the council, the resolution was passed unanimously and without time for public comment. In the end, the burden of financing and maintaining this project fell to the town, leaving it with an ever increasing amount of debt over the years owed to the Southern Bank of Lint which had provided the capital to begin the project. The bank was owned and operated exclusively by the Lint family.
3. The best quality fabrics from mills throughout the south were shipped here by rail to be refined into the highest grade lint. With a 98.9% tax break at the state and federal level, as well as the subsidies provided to the mill by the state and a very low labor cost, this business model was rather profitable for the Lint Family for many years.
4. Upon receiving shipments, the workers then loaded the fabric cartridges into these machines to be ground into a fine lint dust. There were hundreds of banks of these machines on each level of the mill, and production was kept at a twenty four hours a day, seven days a week pace in order to keep up with the market demand. It was decided that children could perform this simple task of loading the cartridges more quickly and efficiently than adults, as their hands were smaller and more nimble therefore able to reach into tight spaces. The duty of cartridge loader was a hazardous job, and many of the workers were badly mangled after being pulled into the machinery.
5. After processing, the lint was then loaded into these carts to be hand sorted by color, quality, grade, and texture. Even today, many of these carts remain here in the mill, filled with orders for lint that were taken but never shipped. Production had ceased rather abruptly and without notice to customers. Currently the Lint Litigation Lawsuit is being handled by the attorneys at the Legal Office of Howee, Cheetam & Moore. Negotiations are continuing.
6. In fact there was so much lint just left behind from the production processes that it still heavily coats most of the surfaces of all the levels of the mill including the basement. Here the grinding machines have all been removed and shipped over seas but much of the lint still remains creating an extreme tripping hazard to anyone entering the building. This was an unforeseen environmental contamination legacy inherited by the town which required federal funding to address. This also delayed the renovation project of the mill structure leading to some considerably high cost over runs. Renovation is being handled by the Lint INC Renovation Group and a finish date has yet to be announced.
7. The workers at the Lint Mill were issued specialized equipment with which to collect and sort the raw lint as it came off the production lines and into the sorting rooms. The employees concerns over working conditions and safety issues were generally ignored by the management chain of command. Their requests for respirators, dust masks and other personal protection equipment were often denied and any workers who made an issue of this were routinely "Released From Employment Pending Investigation of Job Status". Years later an OSHA report calculated that on the average for every day an employee had spent working at the Lint Mill there were at least two days taken off the end of their lives. They worked hard and often died prematurely from various lung diseases. This was determined to be an unavoidable and therefore acceptable loss.
8. It was in this safe inside a secure vault that the highest grade and purest samples of lint were kept. The mill management maintained these samples as the standard of comparison to the actual production output in order to keep the quality of the lint manufacturing at its highest possible level. They did whatever was necessary to maintain the production levels and protect their trade secrets.
9. And there were many trade secrets involved in the high quality lint production industry that needed to be closely guarded from vicious competitors.
10. The Lint family spared no expense to keep their monopoly hold on the lint market and so they invested heavily in the latest security technology of their era; the stainless steel deadbolt time lock York Safe.
11. Eventually time runs out on everyone, even the most powerful......
12. After many years of escalating tensions between Workers and Management a flash point was finally reached when a seven year old girl caught her sleeve while loading fabric cartridges into the grinding machinery and was badly mangled along with her five year old brother who had tried in vain to come to her rescue. They both died three days later. This was the rallying point that catalyzed all of the workers frustrations into a clear issue that the entire workforce unified behind. Unanimously the workers voted to go out on strike over safety issues and general working conditions. A workers tent city sprang up almost overnight to support the picket line that was formed and workers marched around the plant both day and night in protest eventually cracking the very foundations of the mill itself. This lasted more than two weeks before management started to recruit replacement workers in the major cities and ship them out in boxcars to the mill trying to break the strike. This strategy failed miserably when the workers placed their own most active and vocal members into the boxcars with the management scabs. By the time the train arrived at the mill the new recruits simply joined the workers on the picket lines. Infuriated by this tactic management began placing enforcers into the boxcars and when anyone was caught speaking out about working conditions at the mill they were made an example of and viciously beaten in front of everyone than thrown onto the tracks between the moving boxcars. This practice was affectionately called "Greasing the Rails".
13. After four weeks of worker protest and no production from the Lint Mill the State governor Elias M. Ammons was persuaded by Mr. Lint to declare a state of emergency. The governor than called out the National Guard led by Guard Adjutant-General John Chase as well as the Lint Mill Security Forces to address the situation. The troops came into the mill town of Lint on the same rail lines that had transported the replacement workers to the mill and upon arriving they immediately opened fire into the workers tent encampment with 50cal machine guns mounted on the rail cars. The Lint Mill Security Forces used an armored car named "The Death Special" built from the chassis of a large touring sedan to focus sniper fire on the tent encampment both night and day. Soon more than twenty four workers were dead including the Ludlow family and eleven of the children that they were sheltering. News of the Ludlow Massacre spread quickly and workers across the region joined the strike. In the end more than two hundred people were killed in the struggle. Afterward the Lint Mill Security Forces laid the bodies out along the rail line for three days for all to view. After intense negotiations the company agreed to a 2% pay raise for all employees including the management as well as a promise to address the workers concerns over job safety issues. The workers broke rank and returned to their jobs with a faith in a better tomorrow. Unfortunately the agreements to recognize and resolve the job safety issues were never fully honored by the company and thereafter the workers often felt a deep sense of betrayal and mistrust of the management. After these events the Management and Labor relationship was never the same, always contentious, hostile and full of hollow promises.
14. Eventually the mill management chain of command became rather unnerved over the prospect of a workforce that could self organize and apply pressure to the company in order to resolve issues. Management needed a far more docile workforce and the mill itself was old, crumbling, contaminated and very expensive to maintain. The tipping point came on May 1st 1979 when a worker named Norma Rae Baker, fed up with management harassment stood atop her work station with a sign reading "Union". The workers came together to support her but by now it was too late to save anything. With the New Free Trade Agreements recently authorized by Congress the Lint family decided to immediately start laying off its workers as well as management personnel and began the rapid process of boxing and shipping the lint grinding machinery overseas in order to exploit a much more affordable labor force. Now all profit that was made overseas was totally nontaxable unless it was transferred back into the United States. Third World host countries were more than generous when providing subsidies and incentives to corporations bringing in much needed jobs and there were none of those problematic Environmental Regulations or Child Labor Laws to comply with. It was found that prisoners would work much harder with a gun at their back and only required a single bowl of rice per day. They would work as slaves for the soldiers/management until they starved and than their heads were skewered on stakes. This practice was found to increase the worker productivity by 87.3%. The host countries declared a national holiday in honor of the Lint Manufacturing Corporation.
15. When apocalypse finally came for the town of Lint it happened far more quickly, far more painfully, and lasted far longer than anyone had ever expected.
16. The twin engines that once drove the American economic powerhouse; Management capital and Workforce labor now sit idle and rusting in neglect, mired in bitter conflict. In Dubious Battle mostly hidden from public view the same story plays out again and again, crippling a nation and condemning us all to choke on The Grapes Of Wrath.
G
17. With the towns main source of employment gone and all the workers evicted from their mill owned housing projects the business community of the town of Lint quickly found that they had no more customers to serve. One family owned business after another was forced to close leaving the once thriving Main Street and its surrounding business districts vacant and dead. With no more children left even the public library and school were closed. The Town Council reviewed many economic proposals and revitalization projects to reestablish its much needed tax base and eventually approved the construction of a state prison near the town center. This was only marginaly successful as it provided only a very few low paying jobs for the remaining residents. There is currently a proposal on the table by the Lint Aeronautics Defense Corporation to construct a drone manufacturing facility on the site of the old Lint Mill property thereby providing five hundred new jobs, no news yet on any agreement. Don't bother looking for this town, you probably won't find it. Most recently the Town Council voted to officially change the name of the town of Lint in hopes of severing any and all negative connotations to the history of the Lint Mill. This was as futile as trying to outrun you're own shadow.
18. To this very day, the town with its economic base mostly destroyed and the vast majority of its businesses and residents having fled for better job opportunities elsewhere, remains a virtual ghost town. Empty stores, empty streets, empty town. One of the very few people that we encountered here besides the meth addled scrappers at the mill was this homeless hobo squatting to poop in a puddle. A sad but fitting end to the story of the Town of Lint.
And the off topic bonus picture is................................
Even the Sad Ones Hold Hope for Christmas Cheer
Enjoys all...
~the Once-ler
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