Rick Bragg 
Most They Ever Had [EPUB ebook] 

The story of the mill people of Jacksonville, Alabama. The mill was here before the automobile, before the flying machine, and they served it even as it filled their lungs with lint and shortened their lives. In return, it let them live in stiff-necked dignity in the hills of their fathers. So, when death did come, no one had to ship their bodies home on a train. This is a mill story; not of bricks, steel, and cotton, but of the people who suffered it to live.