The Morning Bell

Labor outside the home was on the increase after the Civil War and signified the growing industrialization of the country. This engraving of mill workers is closely related to an earlier Homer oil painting originally titled The Old Mill. The engraving differs from the painting largely because it includes a wider variety of workers—a mix of men, women, and children—who add a greater narrative interest to match the poem it accompanied. Absent from the painting are the two female figures in the right foreground, whose marked differences in age suggest life’s long toil, which is a theme sounded in the accompanying poem.