Imagine yourself as a girl in the early 1800s. You would have household chores to do, and you might also work for the lady down the road, helping with the children, doing laundry or other household chores. Occupations for women were much more limited than today. In certain months of the year, you would be allowed to teach. Educational opportunities for women were very limited.
Then along comes the chance to travel to another state or country to earn your own money and have enough left over to send home to help your brother get an education, or to help your aging parents on the farm in Quebec who are struggling to make ends meet.
Once you’ve gathered your clothes, whatever will fit into a bandbox and into the stagecoach, you’re on your way to Lowell or Manchester where you begin work in the mills, a dangerous place to be. In places like the Slater Mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, the mill’s windows are sealed to keep humidity high so the threads being spun won’t break. As a result, workers, including children, come down with pulmonary diseases like chronic bronchitis, tuberculosis and cancer.
The working conditions are abusive including long hours, short breaks, and food as doled out by the mistress of the house in which you find lodging.
Later on, when the flying shuttle was created, it prevented the need to pass the weft threads back and forth, by hand. However, the mechanized shuttle could get going at such an unregulated speed, it could break loose, flying into someone’s head or eye. Fingers and hands often got caught in machinery. Children were used to re-tie broken threads because they could run quickly to the thread, do the work, and retreat quickly to get out of the way. Long hair of girls and women, if not tied back, also caused accidents, some of them fatal.
As is often the case, throughout history, the rich get rich by exploiting the poor and needy. It was not until the mill workers began speaking out for themselves that situations began to change. At the same time, new regulations like shorter work days and more pay cut into profits; and union activities such as picketing and strikes, in the long run, seem to have helped to shut down many of the mills that were prosperous in the 19th century.
Change is afoot, even today, regarding mills and the preservation of them and their history. The American Textile History Museum has sold mill equipment, formerly used in New England, pieces of New England history, to a repository in the South.
The Cranston Printworks, a long term producer of print textiles, in Webster, Massachusetts is now having their printed cottons produced overseas, joining a number of other companies who have done the same. This is one of the reasons that consumers must buy desired fabric, when it is first seen in a shop or online. Overall “runs” of any given printed cloth is very limited.
People in the quilt industry, from designers to editors, to quilt shop owners who prepare kits, as mentioned in publications, must wait months and months for some of these new overseas shipments of fabrics.
I totally agree with Sandra LeBeau, the speaker whom I mentioned in my last blog. She divides Mill time into three sections: pre-Industrial, Industrial, and post-Industrial. Considering all the outsourcing of manufactured goods, the United States fits best into the last category.
Cotton has been a mainstay of textile making for centuries. I am reading a book titled, Big Cotton: How A Humble Fiber Created Fortunes, Wrecked Civilizations, and Put America on the Map. Please see the link below. I have been intrigued in reading about the theft of inventions and patented items related to textile equipment.
Patricia Cummings
Quilter’s Muse Publications
