History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. III, Part 96

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed
Publication date: 1890
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & co
Number of Pages: 1278

USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. III > Part 96

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As the huge baskets are brought in, filled with parcels from the families, by the collecting wagons, each piece is marked, recorded, sorted, and put into the rotary washers for their first washing. These are, some of them, of wood ; some, since copper has fallen from its high price, are wholly of metal, a composite metal, which has strength and endurance and does not ordinarily discolor delicate clothing. About an hour spent in turning and reversing in strong solu- tions of soap and the following baths of clear water. withont wearing by rubbing, is generally sufficient to remove all dirt and leave the clothing white and clean. The clothes, carefully packed in the centrifu- gal wringer, soon have every drop of water whirled out of them. This machine hums like a top, and by its rising key indicates a very great velocity, it is said 1400 or 2000 revolutions each minute. The clothes are then passed through the starchers, to the dry room, where the last trace of dampness is re- moved, then to the ironers and the polishers. We have not space to describe all the processes upon the

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HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

perfection of which the excellence of the work done depends.

Of course where there are many collars, or cuffs, or shirts, or articles of any one kind to be done, machines, as here, just fitted to a bosom, a cuff, or a collar may be provided for that particular use which will operate almost automatically. By specialization of work, a greater degree of skill is reached.

.1 woman in any kitchen or laundry, however, might have a self-heating iron, or, inother words, a smoothing or polishing iron with a supply of gas and air to burn inside of it, so as to maintain the uniform temperature required for such purposes.

A forty horse-power boiler supplies the steam for heating and drying purposes, also to the small steam engine of twelve horse power which drives all the machinery with precision and order. The visitor comes away with the feeling that at the present time there is a great advance upon the days of our fathers, and that woman has indeed been re- lieved of much of the mere drudgery of labor.

The number of persons employed here is between forty and fifty,-eight or ten men, the rest women.

Shirt Factories. - The shirt indastry of America was founded in 1832 in New York.

" It was in the Presidency of Andrew Jackson, in 1832, when people were talking of nullification, about disposing of the surplus in the national treasury, about the Abolitionists of Boston, about the right of petition which John Quincy Adams was making a brave fight for, when Boston was a week's journey away from New York, when there was ax yet no West, and Cincinnati was a frontier village, St. Louis a trading-post, Chicago a wilderness, no railroads, no telegraphs, no newspapers that printed news, no great factories, no sewing-machines, no machinery for mak- ing shoes, hats, clothing, furniture ; only rude iron- working tools, rude printing-presses, imperfect steam- engines. There were great planters then, great mer- chants, but no great manufacturers. What men made, they made with their hands." What a change with- in sixty years in manufactures 1 What a change in the condition of the common people, especially of women !

It must have been in the thirties that the first shirt factory was started in Watertown, and that by a wo- man, not long after the one in New York City, and probably without knowledge of that. Mrs. Silas M. Bates (her name was Mrs. Potter then) began, in a house, on Main Street, that was removed to make place for the present l'ublic Library building, with the help of girls whom she hired for the purpose, the manufacture of shirts for sale by the dozen. She af- terward occupied a house on the opposite side of Main Street, farther from the square, and finally, be- tween 1810 and 1845, put up the building now occu- pied hy d. G. Barker as a shirt factory, on Spring Street, nearly opposite Fayette Street. It is said that she had a place for the sale of these shirts in Bos-

ton. Possibly this was so, although it has been said that Mr. Hathaway's store on Milk Street was the first wholesale shirt house in Boston. -

Mr. Blackwell followed her and carried on business here for several years. He had already begun in an- other building near the railway.

Mr. Barker, who followed him in this building, has been in the business about thirty years, and at the present time employs one man and about fifteen wo- men at his works, and as many more outside who do their work at home and bring it to him when fin- ished.

Mr. Barker makes all kinds of shirts, mostly of the better grades, for some of the best firms in Boston.

" Boston was early the seat of shirt manufacturing for the trade, C. F. Hathaway having established himself in that city, with a factory at Watertown, Mass., in 1848. He built up a considerable business, manufacturing mainly for jobbers, and the ' Hath- away shirt' became widely known throughout New England, with a well-deserved reputation for careful, honest workmanship, good material, and full size." This is from a leading journal which treats of the his- tory of this manufacture.

The Metropolitan Shirt Factory is the principal shirt-factory in town. It was bought of Mr. Hatha- way some twenty-five years ago and is situated on Spring Street, near the corner of Palfrey Street. With some change of name and in the style of the firm, it is essentially the same, except that it is increased in extent. It is run by Simons, Hatch & Whitten, manufacturers and wholesale dealers in men's furnish- ing goods, whose place of business is on Winthrop Square and Otis Street, Boston.

This firm have several factories for different kinds of work in different places ; at this they manufacture all their " fine grades of white, dress, fancy, and night shirts."

The capacity of these works is about one hundred dozens per week, with an immediate prospect of en- largement. Two men and about fifty women are em- ployed. G. F. Faxon, the superintendent, has been engaged in this work and in this place about thirty years. The power is supplied by an engine in the adjoining laundry, which drives the fifty sewing-ma- chines at a high rate of speed, and the two button- luole machines, one of which is capable of making 1600 button-holes each day.

The cutting-room is 160 feet long. This room has the longest cutting-board in use. It is 120 feet long, is capable of accommodating a full 40-yard web of cloth. Indeed, forty-eight to sixty webs of cloth laid one over the other exactly are stretched out on this cutting-table. The patterns for all the different pieces which go to make up the finished garment are laid upon the outstretched webs, according to the judgment and skill of the cutter, so arranged as to waste no possible portion of the goods, and yet give each part its exact and proper form. These patterns

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WATERTOWN.

are made of light wood, or of thick paste-hoard bound with brass, along the edges of which a sharp knife in the deft hands of the cutter strikes down through all the thicknesses at once.

The goods when received are piled on counters or shelves by the side of the table, from the huge cases which we may see at the end. They are of different materials, cach with its great variety of designs and each of different combinations of colors. Some are for negligee shirts, for seaside or country-lawns, and beautiful enough for the most fastidious in taste.

In the sewing-room the thirty or more nimble and skillful pairs of hands pass the pieces which have been put together, as they alone know how to do it, under the sewing-machines, where the seams are fin- ished faster than could have been imagined possible a few years ago. The button-holes even are made and finished by improved machines ready for use. See this woman place the band under the machine; the stitching proceeds down one side, turns automatically, returns down the other side, is barred, the hole cut, and is ready for use in much less time than it takes to say it. These shirts have their handkerchief pock- ets and their watch-pockets, the latter with a barred opening for the watch-chain.

These soft, zephyr-like fabrics surely require no starch. In this next room they are smoothed out, examined, folded ready for the neat boxes in which they are packed, and marked according to style and size, ready for the trade, or are put up with exact ref- erence to orders from various parties all over the country, each with its appropriate numbers and marks. Each dealer has his own name and address woven in colored letters, with a neat design, placed upon each garment which he orders. Thus it would seem from the garments themselves, when finished in this one factory, that they had been made in a hun- dred different factories, all the way from Maine to California, from Minnesota to Florida, while the deal- ers know for all the glory they get for this superior manufacture they are indebted to the one firm, Simons, Hatch & Whitten.

One naturally inquires what is the condition of these shirt-makers? Are they like the poor women for whom Hood has enlisted the sympathy of the tender-hearted ? Are they

" With fingers weary and worn, With eyelide heavy and red Compelled to sit in unwomanly rage, Plying the needle and thread ? "

For my readers surely wish to know whether indeed they cry with mute lips and pleading eyes,

" O men, with sisters dear ! O men, with mothere and wiveel It is not linen you're wearing out, But human creatures' lives."

made by this factory. Seams are sewed up almost quicker than you can wink. The animation of the sewers' faces, and the beauty of the materials with their graceful figures and harmonious blending of shades, the cheerful hum of the sewing-machines, combine to make a sight which it is pleasant to re- member. And long before dark the scene changes ; the women are released with full freedom

" To breathe the breath Of the cowslip and primrose sweet,

With the sky above their heads, And the grass beneath their feet."

Formerly three dollars a week was considered good wages for a smart girl. Now few, even with their nine hours a day, earn less than six to ten dollars a week.

To quote again from a prominent publication on this subject :

"The growth of the factory system, with its accompanying economies, has vastly improved the condition of women employed in shirt-making, shortening their hours, lightening their work and in- creasing their wages. Before the introduction of the sewing-machine, but few women were employed in factories. The industry was almost exclusively a domestic one, and, like all domestic industries, the wages paid were not sufficient for subsistence."

"Where by hand a woman would do hut one shirt in a day, the usual product now is about a dozen shirts to each machine, and the average earnings of machine operatives, good, bad and indifferent, in large country factories, are six to ten dollars per week." "Steady, industrious girls, working full time, will earn more than this." "So the cost of shirts has been reduced somewhat more than one- half, while the average earnings of the workers have been increased about three-fold." This applies to the work done in the factory. Finishing done in the homes still brings the smaller returns. Women will work cheaper in their homes, in the leisure they can get from necessary duties, and with the help of children.

We wish we had the space to inquire, in this connection, a little more fully into the condition of the women employed in factories. " It is said that in large cotton manufacturing towns, where female help is much employed, the condition of the latter is noticeably deteriorating, in social status, morals and wages."

This is said not to be the case in shirt factories. Weknow it is not the case in our shirt factories. It certainly is not necessarily so. It was not so in the days of the Lowell Offering, when factory girls edited and published that paper. It need not be so now, with the store of good books which our Public Library offers free to all who ask for them, with our free evening schools, with the hours of leisure after and before regular work, when the fields can be seen

Not a bit of it. The steam-engine drives the nee- dles. The introduction of steam-driven sewing-ma- chines into Massachusetts in the manufactureof shirts, we are informed by the superintendent, was first | in pleasant weather, when good reading can fill the

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HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

hours of storms, and good society in our churches is always open. A hasty run through our shirt factories shows that a still better condition of intelligence, morals and society is possible among wage-earning women, if they themselves will strive more in that direction.

Warren Soap Manufactory .- We have spoken of the shirt factories and the laundries and the machine- shops where the new laundry machinery is made. But these would make poor work of it without soap and starch.

"Soap is a chemical compound of vegetable or ani- mal fatty substances with soda or potash, employed, on account of its properties of loosening and dissolving greasy and other matters, as a detergent or cleansing article for the toilet, for washing clothes, and similar purposes."

"Soap is mentioned in the Old Testament, in Jer. ii : 22 and Mal. iii: 2; but the Hebrew words thus trans- lated mean the lye salt potash, commonly made from the ashes of plants, and the salt soda, better known as a mineral product."-Appleton's Cyclopedia. "Soap, both as a medicinal and as a cleansing agent was known to Pliny, who speaks of two kinds-hard and soft-as used by the Germans. There is reason to believe that soap came to the Romans from Ger- many." Encyclopedia Britannica.

Natural alkaline waters are found and used, clays are sometimes used as absorbents of grease, by follers, in cleansing cloths. Ammoniacal waters are some- times used for the same purpose. Now these three alkalies,-potash, soda, and ammonia-softened by the introduction of various fatty substances, are the active factors in all soaps.

Watertown early sought to provide itself, and a part of the rest of the world, with so necessary an article.

At present the Warren Soap Manufacturing Com- pany is an incorporated company, incorporated this present year of 1890. The stock is not quoted on the market; it is, in fact, owned entirely by three men : Mr. Albert C. Warren, of Auburndale, a son of the former owner of the works; Mr. George L. Stevens, of Boston; and Mr. Alfred H. A. Groeschner, of this town. Twelve men are employed at the works, four salesmen are employed, who travel through the country, and Crichett's teams visit the works almost every day, according to their needs.

Soap may be made in the laboratory in great variety, from hundreds, yea thousands of animal and vegetable oils, combined with either of the three alkalies. Some of these products are fragrant and delightful to every sense. In the manufacture of textile fabrics in large minutities, where oil is used freely to assist in the process of manufacture, as well as to reduce the friction of machinery, large quantities of soap must be used to cleanse the fabrics before they are fit for the dyer or for the market. The Warren soaps are known over the country in large cotton and woolen manu-

factories of hosiery and other fabrics, as well as in public and family laundries.

As we approach the works we are struck by the appearance of long lines of barrels and casks and hogsheads running across a large yard, and piled under a row of sheds. These are marked Warren Standard Soaps. They are scouring soaps, fulling soaps, finishing soaps, etc., put into casks for ease of handling, and are ready to be shipped to the factories from Maine to Texas as they are ordered. The last half year over two million pounds have been manu- factured and shipped, nearly as much as the entire previous year.

Entering the large buildinng beyond, we come first to the office, now refitted for their rapidly increasing business.

The next room is the laboratory, where samples of every barrel of alkali, of tallow, and of oils are accur- ately tested, as every cask of soap is tested before it leaves the factory. All substances used in making soap are tried by delicate chemical tests, so that just what goes into a batch of fifty tons of soap is thor- oughly known, and is recorded for future reference

The next room is the shipping-room, with its appli- ances for weighing, marking and recording the de- scription of all packages sent away.

We can look, in the next room which is the boil- ing-room, at the huge kettles that hold one hundred and fifty barrels of seething, foaming, steaming liqnid. Two of these largest kettles have been put in during the past year. " You can call spirits from the vasty deep, but will they come when you call them." The three witches may, with uncanny gesture, walk about these pots, and may cast in their horrid contributions from the four quarters of the globe, and produce a compound that would defy the evil one himself to know or to baffle, but the resident member of this company will prove every inch of this mass when cold, and tell you just what are its powers and how far it can go to the service of man. Il' unsatisfactory, he will order it back again to stew and stew, and boil and boil, with the addition of many a compound, till it is more ready for the service of man. You and I do not expect to learn the secrets of his art, which it would be worth a fortune to know ; we must be satis- fied to see and use the results of the knowledge and skill acquired by a score or more of years spent in closest application to secure the results.

The building belongs to the Gas Company. The alkalies are imported. The carbonates and caustic potash come from Germany, caustic soda and its car- bonates from England. The freight from Liverpool to East Boston is less than from East Boston to the Watertown works. This building was once used as a hat factory, afterwards as a soap factory by Mr. Robbins, then for wool pulling, then for the manu- facture of Johnson pumps, then for making wire fencing. It was first used by Mr. H. M. Warren, who employed Mr. Groeschner, in the manufacture of

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magnesium for artificial light in stereopticon exhibi- tions. This agent is available now, is more easily managed than the calcium light, more convenient than electricity on account of its portability. There is, however, a disagreeable product of smoke of mag- nesia in fine powder,-which can be taken care of. But the quantity of the article required is not suffi- cicut to make its manufacture remunerative.

In 1868, Mr. Warren began to make family soaps. After three or five years the bulk of the business came to be the production, in constantly increasing quantities, of textile soaps. We said that more than forty different kinds of soaps are made here. These vary, as one would suppose, with the materials used. Just what these are we do not expect to learn.

While these soaps are known to the trade as uni- form in character, scientific accuracy requires us to say that each hatch of soap requires constant watch- fulness : for different materials, or materials supposed to be the same, but really of different qualities, vary and require nice balancing, one with another, to give uniform and constant results. No cask is allowed to leave the factory without being first tried by careful tests. Resins are not used to increase the weight of their soaps.

The sale of soaps to large manufactories requires skilled experts, who, on occasion, can go into the works themselves and prove the quality of the soap offered by showing what work it is capable of doing. This may be vitiated by unskillful treatment. Thus an industry is gradually built up as confidence grows in the constant and uniform character of its products.

It was in 1880, at the death of Herbert M. Warren, the first proprietor, that the present company was really formed. Of this firm, incorporated not till 1890, as we have said, Mr. Groeschner-long a resident of Watertown-has been the superinten- dent and chemist at the works from the inception of the business. Mr. Warren acts as treasurer for the company, and Mr. Stevens acts as business manager, taking charge of the sales, each doing his part with harmony, energy, success.

Starch Factories .- On the same street, Water Street, along the south bank of the river, is what has been known for many years as the Starch Factory. Indeed, this roadway was long since known as Starch Factory Lane. There was formerly a distillery here. When the present proprietors began, only one building was oc- cupied. This, some fifteen or twenty years ago, was burned. Now Messrs. H. Barker & Co. occupy five buildings, which they have successfully erected as the demands of the business have increased. They now employ sixteen men here and ten at a building about a half-mile up the river. This starch is made from wheat flour, is shipped to New York and other places by the ton, packed both in barrels and in boxes. It is used wherever the best starch is required.

Another starch factory, on the north bank of the river, on Pleasant Street, near Bemis, is manufacturing

large quanties of wheat starch. These works, carried on by the Crystal Springs Manufacturing Co., em- ploying ten or twelve men, under the immediate charge of Charles R. Fletcher, are trying a new pro- cess, nowhere else employed, by which the gluten, separated from the starch, is saved and made a valu- able health food product, called Poluboskos, much nourishing. This is characterized by its easy digest- ihility, and is therefore suitable for weak stomachs. Dyspepsia, the curse of our driving, nervous civiliza- tion, it is hoped, will find here a foe.

The principal building is fifty feet wide and one hundred and fifty feet long. The capacity of the works is about five hundred barrels of flour each week. The Boston office is at 86 State Street, under the management of F. H. Odiorne, president, and Wm. B. Buckminster, general manager. The new process employed in the works is patented by Herman Barker, who is one of the board of directors of the company.

The starch and the soap made in town would be adequate for the laundries now existing here, were they to be multiplied a hundred-fold.

The Mill and the Dam .- Governor Cradock, the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Company, who was a wealthy London merchant, who never came to New England, yet owned two of the vessels of Gov- ernor Winthrop's fleet, the " Ambrose" and the " Jewel," had sent out in 1628, two years before Sir Richard Saltonstall came to the Charles River, a cer- tain Thomas Graves, who, judging from the words of the contract made with him, was a skillful engineer. "This 10th of March, I, Thomas Graves, of Graves- end, in the county of Kent, gent., and by my profes- sion skilful and experienced in the discovery and finding out of mines, as also of lead, copper, mineral salt and alum, in fortifications of all sorts, according to the nature of the place, in surveying of buildings and of lands and in measuring of lands, in describing country by map, in leading of water [courses] to proper uses for mills and other uses in manufacturing, etc., have agreed," etc., etc. This Graves was to serve the company and Governor Cradock and to be at the expense of both-each one-half; he was to be retained three years if they wished. There is men- tion of a Thomas Graves admitted freeman twelve years after. It is to be presumed that he remained and made himself useful both to the Massachusetts Company and to Governor Cradock. For this Thomas Graves, admitted freeman, was probably either the engineer himself or his son, then of age.

On the 17th of March, 1628, a warrant was made to pay for iron and steel, also to pay for buhrs to make mill-stones :

£ s. d.

110 at 2s. apiece, bought of Edward Cassou, of London, mer-

chant tailor . 11 0 0

14c. of plaster-of-Paris @ 18d. per c. 110

Porterage, weighing the plaster and casting out of the buhrs,

12d. and 23d. 3 0

£12 4 0

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HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

This shows that before starting the colonists for the new country, that some one of the company, presuma- bly the Governor, the wealthy merchant in London, bought in London (it seems of a merchant tailor) some of the materials necessary for first-class mill-stones.

There is no record of the building of a dam in Wa- tertown or of the building of the mill. The fact is stated that Edward How and Matthew Cradock, the former Governor, the wealthy London merchant, sold, the latter by his agent, each one-half of the mill at Watertown to Thomas Mayhew, in Angust, 1635.

Perhaps Matthew Cradock's agent, Thomas Graves, the skillful civil engineer hy his own profession and by the company's allowance, built the mill and the dam for the same, in the rapids at the head of tide- water, at the expense of his employer, Cradock, and of Mr. Edward How who probably took care of and run it until they sold it to Mayhew.

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History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. III, Part 96

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed Publication date: 1890 Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & co Number of Pages: 1278

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed
Publication date: 1890
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & co
Number of Pages: 1278