The Bishop of Cottontown

American novel published in 1906, set in northern Alabama from 1874 onward. A cotton mill that moved from New England has given rise to Cottontown, a mill village where children work from morning to night. Hillard Watts, a former plantation overseer turned preacher, whom his small congregation calls “the Bishop”, watches over these families, while Richard Travis, the mill’s treasurer, and his recruiter Jud Carpenter keep searching for new workers. Blending humor, faith and melodrama, it is a plea against child labor, written with the racial prejudices of its time.