the most they ever had

(The title is rendered in all lower case, as it is on the cover of the book.)

Rick Bragg

“…although he paid these poor mountain people next to nothing, it was the most they ever 

had.”  - Chapter 3

In his stories of the textile mill at Jackson, Alabama, Rick Brag tells of his own brother who survived unscathed by the machines to which workers lost limbs and even lives. The brother lived daily with the threat of brown lung, a respiratory disease which flourished in the cotton dust and the associated bacteria which filled their lungs daily. Despite those threats with which he lived, the brother feared more than anything, the shutdown, the silence of the mill. Near the end of the book, Bragg turns a phrase, saying that the people had lived within the roar and feared the silence.

One could regard this book a collection of linked short stories. A teenage worker became a hero when he jumped down an elevator shaft to escape the wrath of those on whom he played as prank. A man who worked with chemicals in the machine shop retired unscathed, only to learn the chemicals had taken their toll. Young boys gathered up coal dropped by the trains along the railroad tracks to warm their families, or surprised relatives in the outhouse with a firecracker tossed from behind the wall. A man gained local fame as he played on the company baseball team.

A mill supervisor made money even in the great depression and bought up property. He owned the pharmacy, the grocery store, and many of the mill workers homes. He would not hesitate to put them out of their homes if they made trouble, but gave away shoes and hams at Christmas. He regarded himself as a philanthropist

This book about the mill and those who worked in it is a paradox. The stories make sense in a counterintuitive manner. Bragg shows his skill as a master storyteller.