Categories
1870s Short Story

The Mice in the Mill

Mrs. A. W. Curtis with annotations by Josh Benjamin

The Mice in the Mill

By Mrs. A. W. Curtis
Annotations by josh benjamin
Francis Hopkinson Smith. Old Grist Mill. Brush and watercolor, gouache, graphite on paper, 1871, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, NY.

Two little mice once lived in a great mill. They made a cunning nest behind some bags of corn, and whenever they were hungry, all they had to do was to nibble a hole into a bag, and then their dinner was all ready for them to eat.

But they had their troubles, like everybody else, for there was a great terrible cat, ready to pounce upon them if they went out to call on a neighbor, or to see a little of the world. But they were wise little mice, and took good care to keep out of the cat’s way. One delightful day four teenty tooty baby mice came into the nest, the pinkest, softest, cunningest little mice in the world, so the old mice thought, and they cuddled them up to keep them warm, and Mamma Mouse nursed them, and kept all their faces clean, and their little tails straight. How they did eat, and how they did grow!

After a while they got their eyes open, and found out what their feet were made for, and went tumbling over each other in the next, and finally began to creep out. Then the old mice began to tremble in their shoes. They would set their four children all up in a row, and tell them the most frightful stories about that terrible cat, and what would befall them if they so much as whisked a tail outside the great bags of corn.

Of course the four little mice said they never, never would, as long as they lived. But one dreadful day they were left all alone to keep house while the old mice went on a visit. They played among the bags for awhile, then one of them said, “Oh! what a poky, dismal place this is! The sun is shining as bright as gold beyond these bags, and I smell something very nice to eat. I’m going to peep out and see if the old cat is around.”

“Oh! what a naughty, naughty boy you are,” shrieked the rest. But he didn’t care for that, so crept slowly along until he could get a fine view of the place, then back he ran, his eyes dancing with delight.

“Oh, it’s perfectly splendid out there, so warm and bright, and the most delicious flour scattered over the floor, and there isn’t a sign of a cat to be seen. I don’t believe there is one. I guess that is a made-up story to keep us all in this dismal hole. It is quite time we should see a little of the world for ourselves, and I’m going. Who wants to go with me?”

Image by Michael Bußmann from Pixabay

Alas and alas! the foolish little mice all followed him, and they found it was indeed very warm and bright in the sunshine, and there was plenty of nice flour to eat.

So they forgot their fears, forgot all the warnings they had received, and started to run across to the great open door, when there was a sudden dash of some great frightful creature among them, and two were instantly killed.

The other two got safely back to the nest, where they found the old mice, and told them the dreadful story. They all sat down and cried, wiping away their tears with their tails. Finally, Mamma Mouse said, “You poor foolish things! You could not believe what we said, but must see for yourselves.”

“But we never, never, never will again as long as we live,” said the little mice, but their Mamma said “Humph!”

Curtis, A.W. “The Mice in the mill.” The Christian Union 7, No. 1 (January 1873): 17.
Contexts

An article in the Virginia Historical Magazine gives an overview of the development of flour milling in the American colonies, breaking it into four stages:

  • “Hand stones, saddle stones, and mortars represented the earliest stage in the progress of industrial evolution, which is usually known as the ‘Household system’ (sometimes as the ‘Homespun stage’) and which is characterized by production in the home for home use.”
  • An improved quern (the lower, stationary stone for grinding) brought the “second stage or ‘Handicraft system’ with production for barter or sale outside the home. This stage is sometimes referred to as the ‘Direct market’ stage with production of ‘bespoke’ work for sale directly to consumers, and limited generally to the local or community market.”
  • “With the grist mill came the third stage in industrial evolution, known as the ‘domestic stage’ and the ‘putting-out’ system. This stage is characterized by production or processing of grain owned by others, for a toll charge, without the producer assuming the risks of market price changes.”
  • The final, “factory stage” is “characterized by the mill owner purchasing the grain, milling the flour, selling it to a middleman (not directly to consumers) and taking the risks incident to market price changes.” [1]

Also from the same article: “Shortly before the American Revolution considerable improvements were made in America in the application of power to milling machinery and processes, thus displacing manual labor…These improvements, which had been introduced gradually during the previous decades, culminated in the inventions of Oliver Evans, of Philadelphia, who perfected devices by which grain was elevated mechanically to the top of the mill or warehouse, cleaned during gravity transmission to the hoppers, ground, conveyed by screw transmission and a second series of elevators to the top of the building again, cooled, bolted, and barreled during its second descent, without the intervention of any manual operation.

The year of this story, 1873, would see the U.S. register 249,997,100 bushels of wheat produced, along with 1,476,594 bushels imported. Of that total, 211,882,243 bushels were designated as “retained for home consumption” (not exported). The per capita figure (remember that this only includes those counted in the census) for consumption was 5.08 bushels, which at a 72% efficiency rating for the milling process, equals about 220 pounds of flour consumed yearly. (https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/1879/compendia/1878statab.pdf)

The Christian Union, later known as The Outlook, was a weekly newspaper founded and edited by Henry Ward Beecher, a Protestant church minister and brother to Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Resources for Further Study
Contemporary Connections

The White Earth Land Recovery Project offers a different farming concept from the large-scale agriculture industry developed in the white United States in the 19th century. As an alternative to the increasingly mechanized, “factory stage” of production, the project preserves a community-based approach to farming, including the harvesting and milling of grain, particularly Manoomin (wild rice), which they prepare with the traditional Ojibwe method of wood parching.

[1] Peterson, Arthur G. “Flour and Grist Milling in Virginia: A Brief History.” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 43, no. 2 (1935): 97-108.

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