The lives of abject poverty and continual struggle created a distinct way of life for the working poor, a characteristic of which was the importance of extending help and aid to their fellow working poor. The value of giving aid and assistance to fellow working poor resounds across the lives of both the mill workers and Charlie Bundrum. For Charlie, it took the form of taking in and taking care of strays. The first case was Hootie, who Charlie semi-adopted after Hootie was attacked in his home on the river. For many years, “Hootie was still with them, still under Ava’ disapproving gaze and Charlie’s protection,” a fact that highlights the importance of and willingness to care for others of the working poor class. The same value of caring for …show more content…
The working poor struggled against poverty for most of their lives and were almost never able to escape its grasp, a struggle especially notable in the lives of the Bundrum family. As Rick Bragg puts it about Ava’s situation, “…her husband was not going to life her out of it and in fact had never promised that he would.” Ava and Charlie lived a life of constant labor in order to avoid poverty and still were often forced to eat after their children to ensure there was enough. The working poor also received little aid despite their plight. According to Bragg, it often seemed that wealthy Southerners “seemed to take sadistic pleasure in driving poor Southerners, a class they had long disdained, to even greater pain,” a statement highlights the unwillingness of many Southern leaders, like Georgia governor Eugene Talmudge, to take any effort to alleviate the poverty faced by the working poor. For many, moving to mill villages was the only way to slightly improve life in the face of continual poverty. For the Bundrum, the time Charlie worked for the steel mill was one of prosperity, where the family had all that they needed. Bertha Black acknowledges the improvement also, stating, “So yes, when we came to the mill life was easier.” This shows that the working poor did have some success in improving their lives, but that success was often tied to how long they could hold a job in the mill or if they even had access to them. However, in the long run, life in the mill village or life in the woods was marked by conditions of abject and inescapable poverty and it was difficult, if not impossible, to greatly improve one’s real quality of