A bobbin boy was a boy who worked in a textile mill in the 18th and early 19th centuries. He would bring bobbin

Bobbin

A bobbin is a spindle or cylinder, with or without flanges, on which wire, yarn, thread or film is wound. Bobbins are typically found in sewing machines, cameras, and within electronic equipment....

s to the women at the looms when they called for them, and collected the full bobbins of spun cotton

Cotton

Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective capsule, around the seeds of cotton plants of the genus Gossypium. The fiber is almost pure cellulose. The botanical purpose of cotton fiber is to aid in seed dispersal....

 or wool

Wool

Wool is the textile fiber obtained from sheep and certain other animals, including cashmere from goats, mohair from goats, qiviut from muskoxen, vicuña, alpaca, camel from animals in the camel family, and angora from rabbits....

 thread. They also would be expected to fix minor problems with the machines. Average pay

Salary

A salary is a form of periodic payment from an employer to an employee, which may be specified in an employment contract. It is contrasted with piece wages, where each job, hour or other unit is paid separately, rather than on a periodic basis....

 was about $1.00 a week, with days often beginning at 5:30 am and ending around 7:30 pm six days a week. One example of rising from this job to great heights in America was young Andrew Carnegie, who at age 12 worked as a bobbin boy in 1848.

Notable bobbin boys

The following persons once worked as a bobbin boy:

• Andrew Carnegie
  Andrew Carnegie
  Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish-American industrialist, businessman, and entrepreneur who led the enormous expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century...
  
  , the great steel tycoon
• Nathaniel Prentice Banks
  Nathaniel Prentice Banks
  Nathaniel Prentice Banks was an American politician and soldier, served as the 24th Governor of Massachusetts, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and as a Union general during the American Civil War....
  
  , Governor of Massachusetts
  Governor of Massachusetts
  The Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is the executive magistrate of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, United States. The current governor is Democrat Deval Patrick.-Constitutional role:...
  
   and Union
  Union (American Civil War)
  During the American Civil War, the Union was a name used to refer to the federal government of the United States, which was supported by the twenty free states and five border slave states. It was opposed by 11 southern slave states that had declared a secession to join together to form the...
  
   general
• Robert Frost
  Robert Frost
  Robert Lee Frost was an American poet. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and...
  
  , Poet