The Roswell Manufacturing Company

Lyrics

[Intro]
The year is 1839.
The survey notes are drawn in a firm hand.

[Verse 1]
A man from Windsor, Connecticut.
Roswell King.
He walks the banks of Vickery Creek.
He doesn't see the pines, the mud, the humid Georgia air.
He sees the drop.
Thirty feet of falling water.
He hears the potential.
A rhythmic clatter not yet born.
A town waiting for a name.
His name.

[Chorus]
The Roswell Manufacturing Company.
Brick laid on Georgia clay.
The great wheel turns in the morning mist.
The looms answer, a thousand shuttles flying.
This is the engine.
The creek, harnessed.
The future, spooled on a bobbin.

[Verse 2]
A New England plan, transplanted south.
The worker housing rises in neat rows.
The company store, the bell tower.
A system, complete unto itself.
The ledgers track the yards of cotton cloth.
The output, precise and accounted for.
The names of the hands that guide the thread...
...are not in the record.
Only the count.

[Chorus]
The Roswell Manufacturing Company.
Brick laid on Georgia clay.
The great wheel turns in the midday heat.
The looms answer, athousand shuttles flying.
This is the engine.
The creek, harnessed.
The future, spooled on a bobbin.

[Bridge]
The air inside is thick with it.
Cotton dust, fine as pollen.
The sharp scent of machine oil on hot iron.
The damp chill rising from the stone floor.
The creek is no longer a creek.
It is a gear.
A tooth in the clockwork of commerce.
Turning, always turning.

[Outro]
The wheel slows.
The shuttles quiet.
The dust settles.
The brick remains.
The water still falls.