11x14 print of two Lowell Mill workers in the early 1800s threading a shuttle with their mouths.

Edition of 12, 2 layer Linoprint on Rosapina Fabriano paper

Shuttles at textile mills in New England were most easily threaded by bringing the mouth to the shuttle and sucking in, sharing illnesses between workers and inhaling cotton dust directly. This practice was not effectively stopped until the invention of a self-threading shuttle in 1915, nearly a century after the first of the infamous Lowell, Massachusetts textile mills opened in 1823.

Massachusetts did pass a law making the “Kiss of Death” illegal in 1911 to prevent tuberculosis spreading among workers. Most workers did not follow this rule, however, because of the time pressures they were under.