USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Municipal history of Essex County in Massachusetts, Volume II > Part 10
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might get by the line of soldiers. Later a portion of the militia did police duty in the foreign quarters and business section of the city. Col. E. LeRoy Sweetser was ordered to take command of the troops in Lawrence. Police from other cities and towns were also brought in to reinforce the local police.
So matters went on day after day and week after week, until the clash between strikers and the authorities occurred, February 26. Before sunrise that morning there was a sharp encounter at the lower end of Common street between the police and the men supposed to be strikers. There were about thirty shots exchanged. One man, an Italian, was wounded in his shoulder. During this strike a well- organized relief station was maintained by the American Federation of Labor, where food, fuel and clothing were distributed to the needy.
The conduct of the I. W. W. organization several months later in getting up a parade and carrying banners such as "No God; No Master," was the death blow to that society in Lawrence. Public opinion rose higher and higher against such things, and more than five thousand names were added to a society of loyal men and women who, in October that year, observed Flag Day. In the parade were seen thirty thousand men, women and children, marching beneath the folds of the Star Spangled Banner. Sixty thousand people with loyal hearts were present on that Flag Day occasion. This ended the influance of the Industrial Workers of the World, so far as this city was concerned. Pages more might be published on this great strike of 1912, suffice it to say that it was not long before the people of the country generally felt that all was done that could be done to shorten the duration of this terrible labor trouble in one of the fairest cities of the Republic.
There is no pretension that the subjoined exposition of the industrial development of Lawrence from humble beginnings to present magnitude is exhaustive as to details. It is yet sufficiently comprehensive, how- ever, to emphasize a growth that reads almost like a romance. Of the so-called "boom" quality with which the settlement and growth of sundry American communities is associated, there is little or none in the story of Lawrence's industrial evolution. If there have been no signal periods when with diminished business the prestige of a milling centre seemed likely to pass away, so there have been no stages where the expansion took on a feverish character. The chronicler can not fail to be impressed with a development consistent with the building of a sure foundation and a conduct of affairs conforming to principles that spell permanency and progress. As will be seen by some of the statements that follow, certain facts justify a disregard of the discreetness of that rule which counsels general avoidance of the use of the superlative. No risks thus inhere in this quarter; for the dominance thus emphasized here and there is so unquestioned as to compel immediate recognition. Facts and figures have all been obtained at first hand; they are therefore removed from any requirement as to qualification. The review of the milling in- dustries, no precedence being implied, is prefaced with the story of the Pacific Mills, succeeded by that of the American Woolen Company, both giant corporations; then follow the recitals, brief though they may be, that carry with them those adequate details to which the general reader is entitled.
As to the Pacific Mills, when a few far-sighted Lowell and
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Boston business men, prominent among whom were the Lawrence brothers, from whom our city takes its name, journeyed by train to North Andover and thence by carriage to the site of the rapids in the Merrimack river at Bodwell's Falls, where Daniel Saunders had foreseen the possibilities of developing a fine water power and had acquired the ownership of land on both sides of the river, they had a vision of a great manufacturing city whose thousands of whirring spindles would be driven by the power of the water which the dam they proposed to build would turn into canals, whose banks would be lined with splendid mills. Now, seventy-five years afterward, we see their vision realized, as we gaze upon the great structures which house the machinery that turns out the millions of yards each year of cotton, worsted and woolen clothes which have made Lawrence the greatest producer in the United States of worsteds, and well to the front in cotton cloths also.
The story of the formation in 1845 of the Essex Company to develop 10,000 horse-power of water by building the great dam over which there is a clear fall of water in a sheet more than nine hundred feet broad and thirty-two feet high, is told elsewhere in this volume; but we can pause to visualize what a tremendous undertaking it must have seemed in those early days, and with what energy and enthusiasm they set about build- ing this dam, the first stone of which was laid September 19, 1845, and the last one just three years to a day later, September 19, 1848; and to dig along the north bank of the river a canal over a mile long, one hun- dred feet wide at the head and tapering to a width of sixty feet at its outlet; and along the south bank to start a similar but somewhat smaller canal. During this same time great mill buildings were being erected along the North canal. The "New City," as it was then called, became a veritable hive of busy workers, and has so continued ever since.
The first mill site nearest the Canal entrance was that afterward ac- quired by the Pacific Mills, but theirs were not the first mills built; the next in line, the Atlantic Cotton Mills, and the Bay State Mills (now the location of the Washington Mills of the American Woolen Company) were both under way in 1846. The Atlantic Mills, after prosperous years and years of depression, finally went out of business, and the prop- erty was bought at auction by the Pacific Mills in 1913; their history, therefore, becomes a part of that of the latter company. The Atlantic Cotton Mills were incorporated February 3, 1846, with an authorized capital of $1,800,000, which was reduced in 1876 to $1,000,000. This plant had 106,000 spindles, for cotton yarns, and over 3,000 looms making sheetings, shirtings and pillow-tubing cloths, and employed over 1000 operatives. The Western or No. 1 Mill was commenced June 9, 1846, and started spinning yarn May 10, 1849. The easterly, or No. 2 Mill was first operated September 4, 1849; ground for No. 3, or connecting mill, was broken February 15, 1850, and the machinery for this mill was built by the Essex Company in its machine shop, which is now the old
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stone mill of the Everett Mills. The first cotton to arrive in Lawrence was on January 12, 1849, and was used at the Atlantic Mills. Abbott Lawrence was the first president of this company, and Charles S. Stor- row was treasurer the first year. Mr. Storrow was the first mayor when Lawrence became a city. For the first ten years the agent was General Henry K. Oliver, who became mayor of Lawrence in 1859. He was originally a school teacher and a lover of music. He selected the various mill bells, so toned that they would blend harmoniously when all ringing together, and was the author of the well-known hymn, "Federal Street." During the Civil War, from 1861 to 1866, he was treasurer of the State of Massachusetts, and later on served as mayor of the city of Salem, Mas- sachusetts, for three years .. Joseph P. Battles, who succeeded him, served as agent for over twenty-five years.
The main cotton mill of the Pacific Mills was started by the Essex Company before it was known what company would operate them. Ground was broken May 24, 1852, and on June 1st the first stone was laid at the southeast corner of the main mill structure. It was originally 500 feet long and seven stories high; the easterly portion of same height and 300 feet long was built in 1860. The print works buildings along the river were built at the same time as the main mill in 1852-3.
The Pacific Mills was incorporated in 1853 to make ladies' dress goods "from wool wholly, from cotton wholly, and from wool and cot- ton combined." Abbott Lawrence was the first president of this com- pany, as he was also the first president of the Essex Company and of the Atlantic Cotton Mills. Mr. Lawrence and his elder brother Amos were among the greatest business men of New England of that period, and Abbott was prominent not only in his business relations, but in politics as well. Twice he was sent to Congress; he served as a commissioner appointed by Massachusetts to settle the boundary line between what is now the State of Maine and Canada, serving with Lord Ashburton; and in 1849 was appointed United States Minister to the Court of St. James. In 1847 he founded the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard, and in other lines of activity was always a leader. Under his guidance the Pacific Mills grew and prospered, attaining such strength that it was able to survive the panic of 1857, when so many of even the strongest mills and merchants of the time were driven to the wall. The excel- lence of style, quality and durability of the Pacific Mills' cloths won popularity and built up a reputation which has lasted through all the sub- sequent years.
The first treasurer and agent was Jeremiah S. Young, who had been active in the formation of the company. Mr. Young was lessee and man- ager of the Ballardvale Mills at Andover, where it is said the first fine flannels to be made in this country were woven. He brought with him to the new enterprise many skilled workmen, and devoted himself in- tensely to its development. The immense cost of so large an establish-
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ment and of the expensive machinery necessary for its equipment ex- hausted the capital of the company and embarrassed its progress, so that the stock, whose par value was $1000 a share, sold at one time as low as $100 and less. But Mr. Lawrence, the president, was a man of infinite resource, who could not endure the thought of any enterprise in which he was so intimately connected proving a failure. In his own name he raised the amount necessary to carry the enterprise forward, and was actively and earnestly engaged in its interest until his death in 1855. The treasurer, Mr. Young, died in 1857, and after a short interval, when the duties of treasurer were performed by Mr. George H. Kuhn, Mr. J. Wiley Edmands was chosen treasurer and manager, and for twenty-two years following the company continued to grow and prosper. Mr. Ed- mands received his early training with the firm of A. & A. Lawrence, and his thorough knowledge of mercantile affairs contributed much to the subsequent success of the mills. Associated with Mr. Edmands, William C. Chapin came in 1853 from Fall River to superintend the Print Works, and subsequently became resident agent. Mr. Chapin resigned in 1871, after having been agent eighteen years, and John Fallon, who was his successor as chemist and superintendent of the Print Works, became acting agent.
Following the death of Mr. Edmands in 1877, Mr. James L. Little became treasurer. Mr. Little was at the head of the firm of James L. Little & Co., who had been the selling agents of the Pacific Mills for over twenty years. Upon Mr. Little's retirement from active business in 1880, Mr. Henry Saltonstall was chosen treasurer. A man of untiring energy, a veritable "captain of industry," Mr. Saltonstall set at work to remodel and modernize the whole plant. During the administration of Mr. Edmands the mills had experienced a period of great prosperity and growth, and to meet the demands of the trade for Pacific goods, additions had been made to the buildings and machinery without due regard to consecutive or economical arrangement; at this time also, much of the machinery was found to be out-of-date and needing to be replaced by more modern. In 1864 the central, or as is now known, the "Lower Pacific" site, had been bought, lying between the Atlantic and the old Bay State Mills, or Washington Mills, as they afterward became, and on this site was begun the erection of mills for an extension of the worsted department. Joseph Stone came from the Manchester Mills to be super- intendent of the worsted department in 1880, succeeding Joseph Wal- worth, who became wool buyer. Samuel Barlow was promoted from the position of color master to be superintendent of the print works, and Walter E. Parker came from Woonsocket, Rhode Island, to be superin- tendent of the cotton department in 1881. In 1883 Lawrence & Co. be- came the selling agents, and all these co-operated with Mr. Saltonstall in his task of remodeling the plant and making it thoroughly modern in equipment and efficiency.
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Work was begun early in 1882, old buildings were torn down and new ones erected, and machinery changed in location throughout the plant. These changes lasted several years, the worsted manufacturing being centered at the lower mill and the cotton at the upper site. In 1886 the office building was erected; in 1887 and 1889 the upper mill weave shed, housing 2000 additional cotton looms; in 1888 and 1889 the cotton yarn min having 51,000 spindles. Large storehouses for storing cotton, wool and finished goods were also built during this period. In 1887 Joseph Stone resigned as superintendent of the worsted department, and Walter E. Parker became agent of the mills, and Samuel Barlow agent of the Print Works. Mr. Barlow died in 1892 and Mr. Parker be- came agent of the entire Lawrence plant. He has retained that position up to the present writing, the first day of April, 1921, marking forty years of continuous service with this company. The ability with which he has managed the manufacturing end of this great corporation has built up for him a reputation second to none in the textile field. In 1894 Henry Saltonstall died and was succeeded as treasurer by Mr. George S. Silsbee, who filled this position until stricken down in the midst of his usefulness, in the prime of life, in 1907. His successor was Mr. Edwin Farnham Greene, who came a a young man for so important a position, but whose recognized ability has enabled him to continue the remarkable record established by his predecessors, and maintain the high position which this company has always held in the textile industry.
In 1907 the power station was built near the head of the canal, which develops about 15,000 electrical horse power, driving a large portion of the plant in North Lawrence, the Print Works having its own electric power plant. In 1909 to 1912, the Print Works having become anti- quated, a lot of land covering eighteen acres in South Lawrence was bought, and what is now the largest print works in America was built, a plant of 48 calico printing machines, with dye works and bleachery, comprising machinery from the old Print Works, the Cocheco Print Works at Dover, New Hampshire, the Hamilton and Merrimack Print Works at Lowell, all of which concerns had been bought and merged with the Pacific. The normal weekly output of this department exceeds 5,000,- 000 yards of printed and dyed cotton cloths, bleached and shoe goods. In 1910 the old brick boarding house blocks along the north side of Canal street at the upper site were torn down, and in their place was built the No. 10 Worsted Mill, 550 feet long, 131 feet wide, and seven stories high, with a weave shed having about 1300 worsted looms on one floor. In 1909 the Pacific Mills acquired the Cocheco Manufacturing Company plant at Dover, New Hampshire, and made extensive changes in this cot- ton mill of 150,000 spindles and over 3600 looms; and in 1916 they pur- chased four mills comprising the Hampton Mills department located in the city of Columbia, South Carolina. This plant has about 200,000 cot- ton spindles and 4800 looms.
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At the present writing (1921) the plant at Lawrence comprises buildings having about 135 acres of floor space: 215,456 cotton and 92,- 464 worsted spindles, 3,833 cotton and 3,689 worsted looms. They em- ploy about 8,000 operatives, to whom they pay each week of 48 hours over $175,000 in wages. The Pacific Mills was originally capitalized for $1,000,000, increased at different periods, as the establishment grew, until today it stands at $20,000,000.
In the sixty-seven years which have elapsed since the Pacific cloths first appeared on the market, great changes have taken place in manu- facturing methods and in the personnel of the working people. Some of the original cotton mill machinery was built in this country, but much of the worsted machinery and that for the print works was imported. Among the first if not the very first worsted combs in the United States are said to have been started in the Pacific Mills. One of the earlier types of the ring spinning spindles was invented by Oliver Pearl, an official of the Atlantic Mills. The Wade bobbin holder was invented by A. M. Wade, superintendent of the Pacific Mills cotton department. The machinery in the mills has been changed time after time, as it wore out, or better types were put upon the market.
When the mills were first built, the northerly side of the North canal was lined with corporation boarding and rooming houses in which a large portion of the help lived; for if wages were low, so also was the cost of living. Women and girls paid $2.25 to $2.50 a week for their board, with another $1 a week for their rooms; men paid $3 for board and $1 for the room. The working hours were long, wages were paid once a month, and in the earlier days were computed in shillings and pence. Where now a weaver works forty-eight hours a week, tends fourteen to eighteen automatic looms, and earns well up to $25 a week on plain cotton cloths, in 1860 she worked eleven hours a day for six days, or sixty-six hours a week, tending a small number of plain looms, and earning about 74 cents a day. Many of the girls who worked in the mills in the early days were daughters of New England farmers and were of a high class. The skilled printers, engravers, and foremen of the worsted manufacturing were many of them trained in the "Old Country." A little later we find English and Irish girls predominating in the mills, to be supplanted quite largely later on by French-Canadians. The last de- cade has shown a large influx of workers from Southern Europe, from Italy and Greece, also many men from Russia and Austria, so that the names on the payrolls today read far differently from what they did in the early days.
The Pacific Mills was a pioneer in what is termed now "service work," maintaining a library and a relief fund for its operatives. In 1868 at the Paris Exposition, at which ten awards of 10,000 francs each were given to individuals or associations "who, in a series of years had accomplished the most to secure harmony between employers and their
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
ASTOR, LENOX ILDEN FOUNDATIONS
AYER MILLS, LAWRENCE, MASS.
BIRD'S-EYE VIEW MONOMAC SPINNING CO. MILLS, LAWRENCE
1.17
95 99 94
BIRD'S-EYE VIEW ACADIA MILLS, LAWRENCE
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workpeople, and most successfully advanced the material, intellectual, and moral welfare of the same," for which there were five hundred applica- tions, was successful in receiving the only award given to the United States, none being received by Great Britain. Today we see the same spirit shown, as evidenced by first aid rooms for the injured, rest rooms, group life insurance carried at the expense of the company upon the lives of all its workers, a live athletic association, including baseball and bowl- ing leagues, a mill band, etc., also a cafeteria restaurant at the Print Works. Great as has been the financial success of the corporation, it has been well earned and deserved.
Few persons in this country have any conception of the magnitude of the operations of the American Woolen Company. The company is in no sense a "trust," but rather a giant company, with mills in Massa- chusetts, Maine, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Connecticut, New York, Vermont, and Kentucky, the total number of factory plants being fifty- nine. The head office is in Boston ; its president is William M. Wood. It is believed that the information herein contained will be of interest both to the present and future generations in Essex county, from the fact that the American Woolen Mills operate in the city of Lawrence, this county, the Washington Mills, Wood Worsted Mills, Prospect Mills, Ayer Mills, and occupy the Lawrence, Merrimac and Washington No. 10 Store- houses. Recent literature furnished by this great corporation furnishes the writer of this chapter much valuable information, as will be observed by the subjoined paragraphs :
The largest of the American Woolen Mills Company's plants is the Wood Worsted Mills, the largest in the world today; it covers twenty- nine acres. Here one finds the Pacific Mills and Arlington Mills; here are large cotton and print mills-largest ever built in the world.
Of the American Woolen Company's "Washington Mills" in Law- rence, it may be said that the product is men's wear, and eight to sixty worsted yarns; the equipment consists of 101 worsted cards, 114 worsted combs, 1,572 broad looms, one narrow loom, 90,948 worsted spindles, 22 boilers, 10 water wheels, electric. They employ 6,500 persons, and dye and finish their own products.
The Wood Worsted Mills make men's worsted wear and worsted yarns. The equipment includes eighteen sets of woolen cards, 140 worsted cards, 1,500 broad looms, 141 worsted combs, 12,800 woolen `spindles, 213,928 worsted spindles.
Prospect Mills make worsted yarns. The equipment of this factory consists of 6,400 spindles, 3,000 twister spindles, two boilers, and the number of men employed is two hundred.
The Ayer Mill devotes its entire energy to the manufacture of men's wear worsteds. It has 50 worsted cards, 400 broad looms, 1 narrow loom, 60 worsted combs, 44,732 spindles, 9 boilers of 600 rated horse- power each. Of the company's storehouses in Lawrence, Lawrence
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storehouse is 160 by 170 feet, six stories and a basenient; Merrimac storehouse is 108 by 390 feet, seven stories and a basement; Washington storehouse No. 10, 154 by 165 feet, ten stories high. These buildings are all substantial red-brick structures, with every modern safeguard and convenience. There are certainly but few dry goods stores on this continent where the products of these mills cannot be found and are sold in great quantities.
The magnitude of the American Woolen Mills Company may be better understood by reading one of its recent statements, which contain facts as follows :
It owns and controls fifty mills, employs 35,000 hands, has a pay-roll of $25,000,- 000 annually, and has a total output of all classes of fabrics of 70,000,000 yards per annum. (It is interesting to consider that the seventy million yards of woolen fabrics made annually by this company would form a belt that would extend more than one and a half times around the earth at the equator; if all the pieces of woolen fabrics made in a year by this company were placed end for end, this long strip would extend about one-sixth of the mean distance from the earth to the moon .- Editor).
This company buys all of its wools and supplies of every kind direct. Its mills are fitted with the most modern and up-to-date machinery. Its designers are the most able that can be procured. The managers and superintendents are men of years of experience in the worsted and woolen manufacturing business, who know the business from beginning to end, and were chosen for their ability and knowledge.
This company employs skilled help, and makes, in a large variety of patterns, woolen and worsted cloths for men's wear, women's wear and various purposes; but whatever the goods, they are among the best of all grades, from the lowest to the highest price.
Clear-sighted management and unequaled purchasing power, experienced buy- ers, able designers, efficient equipment, expert operatives, all these unite in pro- ducing goods unexcelled on an economical basis; thus the public is able to obtain in the products of the American Woolen Company the very best goods that can be made-goods made honestly and conscientiously from the best of materials and in the most attractive and fashionable designs-at the lowest prices compatible with the quality of the goods manufactured. This company has shown by its own manu- factures that goods of as high quality and attractiveness, along its individual line, can be produced in America as anywhere in the world.
For the benefit of those interested in the magnitude of the woolen and worsted industry in America, it may be stated that statistics show us that in 1919 the U. S. wool product amounted to 300,000,000 pounds. The highest amount ever produced was in 1902, when it totalled 316,000,- 000 pounds. The number of establishments is 799; value of products annually, of recent years, is $400,000,000. The total number of em- ployes is 158,692.
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