Specialization 3: South Vs. North

 

The Waltham Mills of Waltham, Massachusetts about 1815

About 1813 Francis Cabot Lowell, Patrick Tracy Jackson & Nathan Appleton purchased a paper mill and began cotton mill operations, introducing new ideas like hiring untrained women as workers, housing their workers and as Amy Green writes in Waltham’s Manufacturing Revolution: 

The Waltham Mill "has long been said to be the world’s first factory to carry out all the steps in cotton production under one roof, a production plan known as the the Lowell system.  https://www.charlesrivermuseum.org/fcl-bmc

This commonly held assumption is an over-generalization---drawing incorrect conclusions from limited information.

 "All the steps" in producing printed cotton cloth are numerous:

 Cotton boll to yard of printed, finished fabric:

• Ginning: Cleaning and carding bolls
• Combing: Creating parallel cotton fibers
• Spinning: Twisting fibers into cord or ply yarns
• Bleaching: Whitening the cloth by sun or chemicals
• Dyeing: Coloring yarns or dyeing as cloth after weaving
• Weaving: Yarn into cloth
• Decorating: Applying pattern to finished cloth ---printing or differential dyeing
• Finishing: Changing surface with mercerization and other treatments

It seems the Waltham mill's actual innovations were combining spinning and weaving in a commercial building using machines. Earlier patterns of production included commercial spinning on Arkwright's water frame machine, which converted cotton into twisted yarns, and then outsourcing the yarn to home weavers, many of whom were independent business people who sold or traded their home-produced yardage. In contrast to the "Lowell System" the old hand-weaver partnership was called "The Putting-Out System."

Bobbin Girl by Winslow Homer about 1860

She's working in the Spinning Room twisting cotton into yarn.

 The idea of turning a skilled trade into a series of simple tasks 

at a machine was one of Waltham's major innovations. 

Hiring women to do the tasks was another.

The new combination factory then caried out these steps:

• Spinning: Twisting fibers into cord or ply yarns
• Dyeing: Coloring yarns or dyeing as cloth after weaving (perhaps???)
• Weaving: Yarn into cloth on power looms in a large factory---no more Putting Out, a big step in the industrial revolution

The accuracy of these popular tales of the industrial revolution seem to be the product of writers with little knowledge of cotton production (a group that includes me but I do understand the basics.) As with so much history the unified production theory in cotton processing has become a given fact despite the inherent overgeneralization.

Shall we assume that the idea of specialization was old-fahioned after 1820 or so and conclude that later mills that wove cloth also decorated the surface, etc?

Not so fast......

The Rhode Island Historical Society owns an 1832 swatch book of samples from an American calico printer. Samuel Dunster was an itinerant mechanic thought to be among the first Americans to learn the art of printing on cotton, working as early as 1826 at the Cocheco Manufacturing Company in Dover, New Hampshire.

Moses & Caesar Cone's White Oak Mill specialized in jeans cloth.

Specialization is efficient as we can see by examining the history of a later mill in Alamance County, North Carolina that continued to concentrate on just a few steps in cotton production. Edwin Holt and brother-in-law William Carrigan established a factory dedicated to spinning the local cotton into yarn in the late 1830s. The Centennial History of Alamance County tells us the Holt Mills's “first product was not the finished cotton fabrics of later times, but five-pound bundles of 'bunch yarn,' which were sold to peddlers for resale throughout the country side, or were hauled to various towns for sale as hand-knitting yarns or weaving yarns for hand looms."

By 1849 mill operations had expanded. Traveler George Beecher left a description of the Holt-Carrigan factory:

“...In the midst of a cotton-growing country, and upon a never-failing stream....[a mill] a source of great profit to the owners. The machinery is chiefly employed in the manufacture of cotton yarn. Thirteen hundred and fifty spindles were in operation. Twelve looms were employed in the manufacture of coarse cotton goods . . .."

University of Massachusetts, Lowell Collection

Weaving cotton domestic cloth on a power loom

Beecher's description indicates they'd widened production beyond spinning into weaving cotton yardage---coarse cotton yardage.

The caption tell us "The first Colored Cotton Fabric manufactured

in the South was woven in this Mill." This "first" fact may indeed be accurate.

At the end of the 1850s Edwin set up son Thomas Holt (1831 –1896) in a mill specializing in weaving dyed yarns into “Alamance Plaids.” Thomas was lucky enough to find a French dyer passing through  who offered to teach him the basics of dyeing yarns (not printing pattern) and he and his enslaved assistants Caswell Holt and Sam Holt set up a dye house. When he realized he needed to know more Thomas hired a Philadelphia dyer to come and teach them dyeing with indigo, a challenging coloring agent.

From Lynn Lancaster Gorges

A finer "Alamance Plaid" woven with indigo-dyed yarns

 attributed to the Holt Mill, 1853

Early 20th century

Home sewing scraps and factory cutaways created an abundant

supply of woven patterns as in this North Carolina crazy quilt.

Lynn Gorges has photographed many Alamance plaids. These flannelled (combed)

plaids she attributes to 1890 or so into the mid-20th-century.

Woven pattern was the limit of the Holt decorative techniques. 

Printing figures on backgrounds to make what were 

called chintzes and calicoes was beyond their interests & knowledge. 

Below, types of indigo printing, among the most complex of coloring technology

Small figured prints are relatively simple to produce but take skill.

Larger prints like the Blue Resist above and the Toile look below...

Much more skill.

The post-war South left printing cotton to the North and to foreign specialists.

Their plaids and stripes sold well and

neatly dressed the South.

America E. Bailey Rickett

And created a style of quilt that endured into the 20th century.

This four patch from the West Virginia project is attributed to 

Mrs. Albert Phillips of Pitt County, North Carolina after the Civil War.

https://quiltindex.org//view/?type=fullrec&kid=26-22-4234

Southern factories show little evidence of crossover into printing figures on cotton in the post-war years. One problem was a lack of skilled printers. Although Southerners advertised hoping to attract these specialists few "calico printers" wanted to relocate from Europe or New England to a devastated, war-torn area.

Production of figured fabrics was an engineering feat no matter what the coloring agent. Get an idea of the complexity of printing pattern on Turkey red from this post:
https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2017/12/cochranes-turkey-red.html

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