History - the early cotton and denim industry in the USA

[Paul T]

After a journey through the Carolinas recently, when I spotted several mills standing empty, and visited the Cone White Oak plant, I've been getting even more fascinated with the early history of the cotton industry in the USA. I'm going to add more odd links on this thread later.

Looking around for some other information, I came across a contemporary book, scanned by the University of California, which discusses the indistry in 1905. This was a crucial time, when Draper were launching new, improved looms, child labor was being phased out (but is addressed here), there was still debate on mule vs ring spinning, and southern mills, like Cone or Edwin, were starting to challenge established centers like the Amoskeag PLant in Manchester, New Hamphisre.

http://www.archive.org/stream/cottonspinningma00uttlrich

[ringring]

I'm also interested in the history of US cotton mills, powered by the swift moving waters of New England and immigrant labour from Ireland, Portugal, Italy & Poland etc.

And it's influence on blues & folk music - something, no doubt you know a great deal about.

Have you seen the cotton mill museum at Lowell, Massachusetts?

[partytaco]

Millyard Museum at the old Amoskeag Mill worth the trip? I was in Manchester a few weeks back but didn't have time to stop at the Museum.

Lowell is a fucked up depressed little town. Spent a few days there about 10 years ago. Dude walking right down the middle of the street (Dutton) at 2am shirtless with a gigantic (maybe 6-8') snake around his neck, followed that up with some toothless middle aged guy in a sooty coverall suit coming out of an alley asking how much for a little time with my girlfriend.

While in Lowell travel 20 miles east to Danvers to check out the abandoned Danvers State Hospital. Inspiration for Lovecraft's Arkham Sanitarium. One of creepiest places I have ever seen.

Might be demolished now.

[ringring]

A suitable post about 'dark, satanic mills' to coinside with your 666th post

[Paul T]

LOL, great to see you ringring.

No, haven't made my way to Lowell yet. I hope I shall, likewise Manchester.

For those into such things, here's a set of photos of Amoskeag, New Hampshire, the biggest early Mill in the North:

http://www.conservationtech.com/x-MILLTOWNS/RL-Photographs-4x5/Amoskeag-4x5s.htm

I was told by someone at Cone that Amoskeag had a factory song. Will have to look for it.

And aother one from my bookmarks, a site with reminiscences from Erwin Mills. This was where Sanforized denim was first manufactured, made for Bluebell; they also supplied huge amounts of material to the US forces. They were closed after being bought by Swift, and then Burlington, I believe.

http://www.owdna.org/mill.htm

So far I've never really linked cotton mills with black music, because it's an era most people don't want to revisit; if you traveled around Mississippi with a guitar in the 20s you were likely to get locked up for vagrancy, for fear you'd distract the sharecroppers from their work.

I found the mountain and oldtime music scene of Virginia/NOrth Carolina amazing. Haven't worked out a clothing connection there yet, though...

[ringring]

There was a program about the link between cotton mills and folk music, and it's movement from black sharecroppers to Irish mill workers on BBC4 recently. Maybe still on iPlayer.

Great to 'see' you too. Keeping the British end up

[Paul T]

There was a program about the link between cotton mills and folk music, and it's movement from black sharecroppers to Irish mill workers on BBC4 recently.

Ringring, you're better informed on Brit programs than I am! (WHy am i not surprised?). Can't find it on iPlayer, more's the pity.

But you've reminded me about an interview I did around a dozen years ago with Eugene Powell. He was born in 1906 and made his name in Memphis in the 30s. And he told me about the first time he heard of Boll Weevils:

"they had an old piece long time ago when I was a boy about Boll Weevils. Used to be years ago my momma used to raise cotton in the South. But they got to the place way out in the hills, where they was farming down there in Jackson, and it got to where they couldn't raise nothing - cause of them things they called the Boll Weevil. The Weevils got so thick, they eat up the crops. Wel then they had to quit growing cotton, and they changed from that to raising fruits... And that old Boll Weevil it come out and it was a hit. I can remember the old folk singing it. I heard that from an old blind man used to come to our house. "

Blind Willie McTell version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdDZJ0YueQ4

Boll Weevil in Blackpool:

[ringring]

There you go, a link between music and clothing

Interesting you mention the Boll Weevil, infamous of course, for nearly wiping out Sea Island cotton on the east coast.

The weevil migrated from South America, mirroring, in part, the movement of the Sea Island species, through South America - Argentina, to the West Indies (via the Spanish) and onto South Carolina.

[ringring]

PS try searching for Folk America on iPlayer. I think that may have been the one.

[fre-co]

That program must have been part of the 'Folk America' Season. There have been a few great programs, one I watched on Friday night called desperate man blues which is unfortunately not available on iplayer. Maybe the one ringring was talking about is the 'birth of a nation' series?

[ringring]

Folk America Birth of a Nation could have been it. I'm not certain because I didn't catch the beginning.

[fre-co]

I'm watching it now.....

I like BBC4s output these days. If 'desperate man blues' is ever repeated, I highly recommend it, if you have any interest in records.

[raWorkshop]

PaulT, a record label I interned at in London is putting out a documentary and book/cd set about the anthology of American music. It digs right in to the South, the Delta, cotton etc. Everyone will dig on both I feel, the work they've done remastering some of the songs is just incredible.

[ringring]

Paul,

You may be interested in the story of Mount Vernon's mill. They have a splendid account of it on their site -

http://www.mvmdenim.com/history/index.html

From the Cherokee Land Lotteries in the early 19th Century to speculation as to why General Sherman spared the mill from being destroyed in the Civil War - and the mill getting burnt to the ground anyway - to denim manufacturing in the 1970s and the replacement of shuttle looms by projectile looms in the 80s.

Your topic would make a good book

[partytaco]

more about the dyeing end of the buisness.....

always a favorite of mine and much revered by textile collectors and denim heads alike....

J.L. Stifel

http://www.fabrics.net/joan1003.asp

a Reunion brand work shirt with J.L. Stifel fabric recently went for $7100 on Ebay.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Vintage-Stifel-Fabric-Reunion-Train-Engineer-work-shirt_W0QQitemZ280303993520QQihZ018QQcategoryZ52383QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

It's not mentioned on their page but from what I understand the Fine Arts Center donated by the Stifel family houses a impressive collection of their indigo calico print textiles.

[Paul T]

Cool. Interesting eBay auction too, thought I wonder if the buyer will follow through. He's either a timewaster or has a lot of money.

In the first book detailed, there's a good deal of information about the Draper, or Draper-Northrop loom. These became very popular in the south, while mills in the North found it too expensive to replace all their existing looms so, as I understnad it, they contributed to a general move south in denim production. Cone had Whitin looms at first, and moved to Drapers in the 1920s. There's apparently a famous 1904 Draper catalogue all textile nerds covet. (DO you have one, ringring? Can you find me one?).

Draper was apprently based in Hopedale, a town which was first settled in 1842 as a Utopian socialist commune!

Anyway, here's an interesting piece with info from the obituary of James Northrop, who invented the Draper automatic loom - then retired to Santa Ana at the age of 42:

http://www.geocities.com/daninhopedale/drapernorthroploom.html

And some Draper looms in use at Naumkeag, Salem and Interlaken Mills, Rhode Island, circa 1917:

http://www.geocities.com/daninhopedale/draperloomsinmills.html

Illustration from 1904 Draper catalog, downloadable from:

http://www.cs.arizona.edu/patterns/weaving/topic_loom.html

[ringring]

Partytaco - great link to another great story.

Paul - You're Superfuture's first Loomnerd

I don't have a copy of the 1904 Draper catalogue LOL.

You are tickling the lovehandles of another fascinating subject, the late-Georgian/Victorian utopian mill towns.

Hopedale followed Lowell - whose 'utopian' mill town had the pragmatic result in attracting young women workers from the surrounding area.

Which was preceeded by Robert Owen's New Lanark Mill - which introduced labour laws that we would recognise as modern today.

Then there's Titus Salt's (best name ever?) Saltaire, which is now a lovely place to get a cup of tea (and a dose of Hockney), in God's Own Country. Amazing place.

[Paul T]

AH, it's at starting to make sense now... I should've known it would come back to Yorkshire, that's obviously why they taught us about the spinning jenny at school. If only someone like you had been teaching it, ringring!

Edit: by the way I'm now aglow with pride at being a loomnerd...

[ringring]

You're the teacher sir

I am interested in the historical threads that draw many events together that have shaped the way we view our world today.

From the cradle of capitalism (the industrial revolution, new industrial towns, global trade) blossomed a few seeds of socialism.

You have the French Revolution in 1789, and just a couple of decades after, Robert Owens fathered the Co-Operative model in the Lanark Mill.

A couple of decades after that, Marx & Engels publish their Communist Manifesto on the eve of revolution.

These are events, hundreds of years old, that still reverberate today.

[rnrswitch]

I love this conversation...

I have always wanted to visit the old manufacturing centers of the States. Lowell has always been at the top of the list.

I think it is interesting to see what has happened of these old cities, where so much of America's wealth was built and then sometime down the line we turned our backs on these communites.

I also like that for much of the great old blues legends, Lighnin hopkins, Son House, Robert Johnson and even Chuck Berry, the blues was a way of getting away from the cotton fields.

For son house it seemed it was also a good way of getting away from preachin too.

[DeltaZ113]

Paul, do you know where these looms ended up? Seeing some of the pictures on that website of the hundred Draper looms is making me wonder where they all went... Were they retrofitted to become 60" looms? Are they In a junkyard somewhere? Were they cannibalized for parts?

The history of textiles is a really interesting field

[Paul T]

There's an intriguing radio program with lost of relevance to the denim industry broadcast today, and available on the BBC website, about Harris Tweed.

I love Harris Tweed; I would love Paul Smith or other good, modern designer who can reinterpret a classic to use Harris Tweed for his coats. But the industry has been going through turmoil. I heard up in Scotland that the new owner of Harris Tweed's biggest mill is basically screwing the brand; but funnily enough some of the people at Cone were abreast of what is happening and thought he was doing a decent job.

it was quite amazing, up on the Isle of Skye, to look at these primitive looms, and see how they dyed the wool with lichens. it seems to me that there should be a younger market for this wonderful fabric, especially in places like Japan. However, the guy who owns the company seems to want to sell jackets to brigadiers. I don't think there are many brigadiers left. But I hope it works out.

I would love to know if anyone else has information on what's happening. In the meantime you can find the documentary here, it's called THe Battle of the Tweed.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/progs/listenagain.shtml

[Shorty Long]

Pretty fascinating...Paul, are you working on a new book???

[Paul T]

Not a denim or textile-related one... this is me avoiding work.

I will be putting a Denim section with the 501 guide and an FAQ on my website, and hopefully a section on Cone, in a week or two.

[fre-co]

Apparently the owner of the Harris tweed company will not let the crofters weave any of the more unusual tweeds any more. The number of different tweeds has been cut right down. There was a segment about Harris tweed in the BBC4 documentary on Savile Row that was on last year.

Several Japanese stores (Beams, United Arrows, Ships) have all done coats in Harris tweed over recent years. Norton and Sons, Savile Row, the tailor taken over by the young guy has become a bit of a champion for it.

I want to go up to Harris/Skye this year since I cant afford foreign travel anymore.....

[Paul T]

Apparently the owner of the Harris tweed company will not let the crofters weave any of the more unusual tweeds any more. The number of different tweeds has been cut right down.

Exactly, I think there are four, and they aren't particularly exciting ones. There is some talk of getting another mill running so they can still sell different tweeds, I guess under another brand.

I want to go up to Harris/Skye this year since I cant afford foreign travel anymore.....

Take the sleeper from Euston to Fort WIlliam, it's an absolutely amazing journey (and cheap!) If you go to Flora McDOnald's graveyard there's a lovely exhibit on weaving, with the lichens they use etc (of course I bet there's even more on Lewis or Harris)

[fre-co]

wow that is pretty spectacular!

I've always rather liked the look of Haggarts tweeds, which are to my understanding shetland wool.

[Paul T]

I'll check them out.

I just checked, and apparently they are already getting that other mill running and selling fabric under the name Harris Tweed Hebredes.

http://www.harristweedhebrides.com/range.php

The chap who bought the original mill is called Brian Haggas - he's the one the Beeb portrayed as sorting the industry out in the short segment I heard, but from what I was told in Scotland he's an idiot. Brigadiers...

[fre-co]

Yeah if you see the savile row documentary, the crofter talking on that doesn't seem too impressed with him...

I hope we start seeing Harris Tweed popping up more often now then. My dad swears by it and I've been desperate for an excuse to get a tweed suit!

[ringring]

There's an intriguing radio program with lost of relevance to the denim industry broadcast today, and available on the BBC website, about Harris Tweed.

An interesting link between Tweed and denim is of course in the name. The name Tweed is widely believed to have come from the misreading of a fabric invoice around 1840 on which was written the word Tweel (twill).

Twill is said to have come from the french word Touaille, although I do wonder if Toile would be more appropriate. Denim is a twill weave, and also a derivative from french - Serge De Nimes.

Gene/Jean Fustian was the hard wearing, indigo dyed, twill cloth woven in Genoa, which was imported to England as early as 16th century giving rise to the name, blue jeans.

More wittering about that here : http://www.superfuture.com/supertalk/showthread.php?p=264210#post264210

It's years since I've been to Skye, but I'd thoroughly recommend a road trip by car, and to catch as much of West Scotland as possible.