Invisible Threads: Maine Immigrant Textile Women, 1860-1912

By

Anna Owens FahertyMay 2018

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts in History

Dual-Degree Program in History and Archives ManagementSimmons College

Boston, Massachusetts

The author grants Simmons College permission to include this thesis in its Library and to make it available to the academic community for scholarly purposes.

Submitted by:

__________________________Anna Owens Faherty

2018

Approved by:

_________________________Dr. Stephen R. BerryAssociate Professor of History

_________________________Dr. Jeannette A. BastianProfessor and Director of Archives Management program

Introduction

Textile mills have played a storied role in New England’s settlement, growth and history.

They represent the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution in the United States, and their rise

brought money, power, and population to New England mill towns. The mill workers themselves

appear in various accounts, especially the Yankee girls who comprised the original workforce.

However, while the history of the “mill girls” of the early 19th century is well-known, many

other women labored in the mills well into the 20th century and their stories are less prominent.

Among these workers were French-Canadian and Irish immigrant women, who have been

identified largely by their nationality, not by their gender or class as workers. This paper

develops a deeper understanding of immigrant mill working women in the latter half of the 19th

century in New England, and specifically in Maine. Immigrant working class life in mid-late

19th century Maine has not often been discussed in scholarship about New England mill

workers.

It is not known what role was played by immigrant women workers in the labor

movement between the 1860s-1910s . Sources written by these immigrant women themselves are

scarce. Therefore, this paper will examine the experience of immigrant textile mill workers using

sources provided by the establishment voices of government officials, mill owners, and local

newspapers. Understanding the establishment views of immigrant women and unions will help to

understand the experience of working class immigrant women, and help to demonstrate changes

brought on by Progressive Era reform.

During the Progressive Era, upper class perception of female immigrant textile mill

workers changed. Women, workers, and unions came to be viewed in a more positive light.

However, there were still gaps in the understanding of the established elite when it came to the

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experience and contributions of immigrant textile mill women. Establishment sources help show

the benefits and problems of the Progressive Era ideals of equality, upward mobility, reform, and

peace.

Historiography

Workers’ rights in the Victorian and Progressive Eras

Between the 1860s and 1910s, there was a shift in establishment attitudes toward social

reform, especially with regard to workplace safety and workers’ rights. During the late Victorian

period, many members of the upper classes believed that it was the worker’s responsibility to

manage their own health and to avoid injury on the job, regardless of the hazards presented by

the employer’s heavy machinery or unsafe buildings. Daniel Walkowitz, author of “Working

Class Women in the Gilded Age: Factory, Community and Family Life among Cohoes, New

York, Cotton Workers” states: “...the increasing competition of industrial capitalism demanded

increased production, lower costs, and greater efficiency. To secure and maintain their profits

the...manufacturers felt it necessary to reduce wages and control all aspects of mill life. Unions

stood in their way.”1 Because of this strong opposition to unions from companies and members

of the upper classes, movements to help improve the lives of the working class did not fare well

throughout the period. For example, during the 1909 New York garment workers strike, though

many prominent women of upper classes participated, strikers were still beaten, arrested, and

maligned by government officials and factory owners. Though many members of the public

sympathized with the strikers, the strike was not successful: after seven months, several

1 Daniel J. Walkowitz, “Working Class Women in the Gilded Age: Factory, Community and Family Life among Cohoes, New York, Cotton Workers,” Journal of Social History 5, no. 4 (1972): 486, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3786376.

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companies still held out against the striker’s demands and workers returned to their jobs without

the wage increases or union recognition they had hoped to gain.2

This attitude toward workers shifted slightly in the beginning of the 20th century. It

became more fashionable for members of the upper class to provide assistance to workers who

wanted to change their work conditions and better their lives. Upper-class women spearheaded

reform movements to improve the lives of young working immigrant women and to bring them

into the fold of Americanism. The dynamic between the upper- and middle-class reformers and

working class leadership is discussed in American Women in the Progressive Era, 1900-1920, by

Dorothy Schneider and Carl J. Schneider. Schneider and Schneider indicate that the focus of

reformers was to support unions and promote laws to protect workers. This support, however,

does not mean that upper- and middle-class women left behind their personal biases about

immigrant women or the working class. Reformers “...did not escape the rampant nativism of the

population...the looks, clothes, speech, heritage and way of life of the young working women

often struck them as outrageously foreign and wrong-headed. Reformers, not revolutionaries, the

middle-class women tried to teach workers their own values.”3 For their part, the working

women remained suspicious of the reformers, who they didn’t believe understood them or what

they sought in their labor action and lives. Despite their class differences, the working and upper-

class women did work together, which is a testament to their hard work and devotion to the cause

of women’s workplace rights.

Union membership began to increase around the beginning of the Progressive Era as

well, but issues arose about enrolling women. Many union men thought women’s involvement in

unions was unfeminine and communistic. Doris Weatherford discusses this position in her book,

2 Dorothy Schneider and Carl J. Schneider, American Women in the Progressive Era, 1900-1920 (New York: Anchor Books, 1994).3 Schneider and Schneider, 61.

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Foreign and Female: Immigrant Women in America. Weatherford mentions that union men

didn’t support equal pay for women, even though it would have helped them in the long run by

raising the pay rate for all workers. This wage discrimination in turn led to companies hiring

non-union women over men because they could pay the women less and they were not organized

and, so it was was believed, easier to control than their male union counterparts. This hiring

preference in favor of non-union women also served as a detriment to male workers, but as

Weatherford states: “Throughout the era men preferred to promote the myth that women could

not be unionized rather than accept them as equals.”4 Women who did form their own unions or

become union leaders often suffered discrimination from the management of their workplaces.

Many were given the least desirable jobs and others lost their jobs entirely. Weatherford also

notes that union membership records may not be the best way to judge women’s participation in

unions. This inconsistency in the records is because unions often existed only for the duration of

a strike, and regular membership levels were lower than numbers of strike participants.

Immigrant women were even more likely to be vilified for participating in labor action or

joining unions than native-born women. “The immigrant was caught in the middle on the subject

of labor disputes. If she did not strike, she was accused of lowering American wage standards. If

she did, there were others ready to accuse her of being a foreign radical, an agitating

communist.”5 Perhaps for this reason, after immigrant groups became established and accepted

as “American” they tended to remove themselves from working class conflicts so as not to seem

“foreign.” Weatherford gives the example of the Massachusetts Irish, who in the 1850s were

likely to side with workers in labor disputes, but by 1912 often supported the owners. This

4 Doris Weatherford, Foreign and Female: immigrant women in America, 1840-1930 (New York: Schocken Books, 1986): 140.5 Weatherford, 38.

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switch shows not only a fear of being accused of un-American tendencies, but also a change in

status which had elevated Irish immigrants out of the working class.

New England Textile Mills, Immigrants, and Labor Action

In order to understand the lives of textile mill immigrant women during the Progressive

Era, it is necessary to learn about the beginnings of the industry in New England. Textile mills

came to New England through the enterprise of Francis Cabot Lowell, whose dream of an idyllic

industrial community different from the oppressive slums of European factory towns began in a

town in Massachusetts that later bore his name: Lowell. Lowell’s plans for his community of

workers involved nurturing their intellects and protecting them from the evils of the city.

Considering that many of the original mill workers were rural farm girls, it was important to their

families to know that they would be safe from degradation and predators while they were away

from home. This desire to preserve morality among young women led to a practice of controlling

the lives of the workers both on and off the job. Workers lived in company boarding houses, run

by people also employed by the company. Any perceived transgressions could be reported to the

company and might lead to the dismissal of the transgressor. This moral policing is mentioned by

historian William Moran in his book The Belles of New England: The Women of the Textile Mills

and the Families Whose Wealth they Wove. “The policy of watching out for workers on and off

the job seems in retrospect to be the creation of paternalistic fussbudgets. Yet the original

motivation clearly was to make manufacturing a civilized enterprise…”6 Moran argues that while

the mill owners presented themselves as protectors of the young women who worked for them;

the true reason they were so strict was because they wanted to be able to control every aspect of

6 William Moran, The Belles of New England: The Women of the Textile Mills and the Families Whose Wealth they Wove (St. Martin's Griffin, 2002), 14.

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the workers’ lives. While early mill owners may have believed this paternalistic relationship

would benefit the workers, the arrangement gradually became more sinister.

This controlling attitude toward their workers led the mill owners to respond negatively

toward labor agitation and unionization. This need for total control on the part of mill owners is

referred to by Daniel Walkowitz in his article. In his study of the Harmony Company in Cohoes,

NY, Walkowitz learned that: “...Harmony Company controlled much more than Cohoes’ cotton

industry. In association with the wool manufacturers, company officials constituted an

interlocking directorate that held virtually every major political and financial post in the city

throughout this period.”7 Not only did the company regulate their workers during working hours;

they managed their lodgings, maintained a grocery where the workers shopped, and kept up

appearances of morality by monitoring church attendance. Because of this, Walkowitz says,

issues the workers contended during strikes were not just of wages, but also about credit at the

company store and rent in the boarding houses.

Many of the Yankee mill girls originally thought of themselves as equal partners with the

mill owners, and didn’t feel as though they were part of a separate “working class.” They

considered themselves worthy as Americans to be on the same plane as their employers.

However, as more mills were founded, competition began among mill owners for workers,

consumers, and capital. Therefore, the class divide widened; wage cuts and deteriorating health

conditions in the mills became too much for workers to bear, and they went on strike to achieve

what they felt they were owed. They soon discovered that the mill owners considered them a

separate, “lower” class, and recognized they would need to work hard to preserve their rights as a

class. Another aspect of mill work that led to the successful organization of labor stoppages and

later strikes was the close camaraderie the mill workers developed with each other. Thomas

7 Walkowitz, 467.

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Dublin, in his article “Women, Work, and Protest in the Early Lowell Mills: ‘The Oppressing

Hand of Avarice would Enslave Us,’” discusses these relationships among mill workers.

Dublin’s research makes it clear that these friendships and sense of community led to both

positive influence and negative peer pressure: “Given the all-pervasiveness of this community,

one would expect it to exert strong pressures on those who did not conform to group

standards...The community...enforced an unwritten code of moral conduct.”8 This sense of

community built by relationships created through the company helped lead to well-organized

labor action. Many immigrant communities did not have the same introduction to the mills that

the Yankee girls did, and therefore their community relationships often developed through their

church or cultural organizations.

Immigrants from Ireland began to arrive in large numbers in the 1840s, during a

devastating famine in their home country. Many of the Irish immigrants were illiterate and less-

educated than the previous mill-working Yankees, but they had the benefit of speaking English,

which others, such as the French-Canadians, did not. French-Canadian immigrants travelled to

New England mill towns as early as the 1840s, but came in larger numbers in the 1870s

following population and soil exhaustion issues in their farm towns in Quebec and New

Brunswick. Though these two groups of immigrants shared similar traits, such as their staunch

Catholicism, they were also different in many ways. One of the primary differences was that

French-Canadian workers were often perceived, by Americans and other immigrants alike, to be

seasonal or migrant workers, who could return home more easily than those from across the

Atlantic. In reality, many French-Canadian immigrants considered themselves to be Americans

and planned to stay in the United States.

8 Thomas Dublin, “Women, Work, and Protest in the Early Lowell Mills: ‘The Oppressing Hand of Avarice would Enslave Us,’” Labor History 16, no. 1 (1975): 105. https://eds-b-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.simmons.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=8&sid=d23b8ef2-ad4a-4f00-abc4-c286d4706c4d@sessionmgr4006.

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Patrick Lacroix’s article “A Church of Two Steeples: Catholicism, Labor, and Ethnicity

in Industrial New England, 1869-90,” mentions this misconception about French-Canadian mill

workers. It was believed that they were not as invested in their American identities as the Irish,

because they could easily go home if they wanted. Labor organizers believed that because of

their perceived migrant status, French Canadians didn’t care to improve their working

conditions, and therefore didn’t join unions. This idea of migrant status was refuted by the

French-Canadian communities’ incorporation of United States history into their traditions and

customs. This juxtaposition of cultures could be seen in their St. John’s Day parades which

honored George Washington, the Marquis de Lafayette, and other French, Canadian and

American heroes. Research by Bruno Ramirez in his article, “French Canadian Immigrants in

the New England Cotton Industry: A Socioeconomic Profile,” suggests that not only did French

Canadians adopt American-ness, they did not often return to Canada, which helps combat the

theory that they were migrant workers with no attachment to social or political causes in the

United States. According to Ramirez’s study of the records of the Immigration Commission of

the United States Senate in 1911, of French Canadian immigrants who had lived in the United

States for less than five years, 72% did not return to Canada at all, even to visit, during that five

year period.9 Ramirez’s study also shows that after remaining in the United States for significant

periods of time, French Canadian workers often rose to positions of management within the

mills. By the early 1900s, many French Canadians were in the middle earning bracket, beneath

Native-born workers, on a par with other older immigrant groups like the Irish, and above newer

groups such as the Portuguese.

9 Bruno Ramirez, “French Canadian Immigrants in the New England Cotton Industry: A Socioeconomic Profile,” Labour/Le Travail 11, (1983): 136, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25140204.

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Another difference between the Irish and the French-Canadian immigrants lay in their

response to labor activism from a religious perspective. Many Irish Catholics, given the history

of subjugation and oppression they endured under British rule, found it to be in line with their

religious principles to fight for their rights as workers. In fact, many Irish union organizers and

labor activists thought that the French Canadian workers weren’t concerned enough with the

class issues that plagued all workers regardless of ethnicity. French Canadians, coming from a

different historical background than the more “radical” Irish, thought it was more important not

to resist policies made by the state which they hoped would accept them and come to view them

as true “Americans.” Lacroix says: “Conscious of their subaltern status, French Canadians

asserted both their inherited cultural identity and their new, freely accepted civic identity. They

manifested in view of all their traditions and culture as well as their commitment to the Republic

and its institutions.”10 According to Lacroix, the Catholic hierarchy at the time had similar ideals:

to be accepted by the mainstream, Protestant American society as legitimately American and not

as a “foreign” institution. The Catholic church in America and its French Canadian followers

wanted to be accepted by American society, and therefore did not involve themselves as heavily

in labor organization as the Irish did.

After the native-born workers left the mills and immigrants took their place, those same

Yankees now considered mill employment as beneath them, or a step down in social status. For

immigrants, factory jobs and union memberships provided security and status financially and

socially in their communities. While native-born women were more likely to choose work

outside of factories if they could, for Irish women factory work was preferable to service

positions. Daniel Walkowitz quotes a contemporary newspaper suggesting that immigrant

10 Patrick Lacroix, “A church of two steeples: Catholicism, labor, and ethnicity in industrial New England, 1869-90,” The Catholic Historical Review 102, no. 1 (2016): 750. https://eds.b.ebscohost.com/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=4&sid=58c0e152-44b8-4d8c-aff4-444d5156924d%40sessionmgr101.

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opinions on the status afforded by mill work were such because housework positions placed Irish

and other immigrant women in positions of servitude, whereas mill work afforded them more

independence, and therefore, social standing among their peers.11

Carl Gersuny’s article “New England Mill Casualties: 1890-1910,” discusses worker’s

compensation for work-related injuries, and how immigrant workers were more likely to fall

victim to abuses from the mill owners and agents. He details the methods that mill owners and

managers would use to dissuade employees from taking legal action against them, which

included: threats of termination, paying off plaintiff attorneys, and more. Gersuny is of the

opinion that these mill owners cared more about making money than anything else, and

consequently would do anything to avoid paying their injured employees. If the injured worker

didn’t speak English as a first language, they were even less likely to be compensated for their

injuries. As Gersuny states: “When the victims were unable to speak English, care was taken to

have the signing witnessed by an interpreter friendly to management, who could be relied upon

to testify that the terms of settlement were fully explained in the native language of the injured

worker.”12 This observation suggests that workers who did not speak English were more likely

to be manipulated and defrauded by management than those who did. Gersuny’s conclusions also

help demonstrate how mill owners thought about immigrant workers, that they were not worthy

of the same respect as fellow Yankees.

This opinion was widespread, and often led to immigrants living in crowded slums away

from the Yankee neighborhoods. In some cases housing segregation was due to discriminatory

policies imposed on immigrant communities by American society. Another reason was the

tendency of immigrant communities to develop ethnic enclaves. Ethnic enclaves refer to

11 Walkowitz, 476.12 Carl Gersuny, “New England Mill Casualties: 1890-1910,” The New England Quarterly 52, no. 4 (1979): 473. http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.simmons.edu:2048/stable/365753.

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communities of immigrants living with others from their region of origin, in order to preserve

their culture in the face of Americanization and violence from native-born Americans. Many

immigrants, such as the Irish and French-Canadians of New England, chose to identify

themselves as both American and ethnic and struggled to prove themselves in the face of the

discrimination they faced from Yankees. This separation of immigrants and Yankees, however,

may have begun because in many towns immigrants were not allowed to live in certain areas.

William Moran addresses this issue in his chapter about Irish immigrants in Lowell. “There was

no housing for the Irish laborers in Lowell, and Kirk Boott did not concern himself with the

problem as long as the immigrants did not corrupt Yankee neighborhoods with their lusty

language and beery brawls.”13 Many native-born Americans considered immigrant populations to

be dirty, hypersexualized drunks who were uneducated and immoral. These ideas occasionally

led to violence between immigrants and native-born populations, which sometimes included

attempts by the native-born contingent to burn down immigrant neighborhoods and churches.

For example, Moran details a situation in Lowell, MA, in 1831 when a Yankee mob attempted to

burn down the newly built Irish Catholic church. The Yankees felt that the immigrants were

taking jobs away from their community, and that a church meant the Irish were intending to stay

in America and continue working mill jobs. Fortunately, in this case, Irish denizens of the

neighborhood fought off the attackers and saved the church.

This distrust, prejudice and segregation also contributed to the failure of worker strikes

and other labor actions in early 19th-century New England mill towns. Lack of support from the

community, combined with lack of organization among strikers doomed most efforts. As the

years went by, however, mill workers joined and created associations and unions to help

themselves and other mill workers in the region achieve fair wages and other workplace rights.

13 Moran, 76.

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This labor organization led to the more formal unions and labor politics of the early 20th century,

which helped workers legalize demands such as the eight-hour day.

Early strikes in textile mills were referred to as “turn-outs,” and sometimes resulted in

workers being dismissed for their involvement. An 1826 work stoppage at Hamilton Mill in

Lowell led to five workers being fired. According to Carl Gersuny in “ ‘A Devil in Petticoats’

and Just Cause: Patterns of Punishment in Two New England Textile Factories,” one of the

leaders of this small strike “...was singled out...a precedent for the practice of seeking out the

most conspicuous participants in wildcat strikes and other factory disturbances…”14

In some instances, workers returning to their employment after a turn-out were required to sign

agreements to renounce involvement in future strikes. An important difference between Yankee

and immigrant mill workers was that the former could return home if their employment was

terminated. Irish and French-Canadian immigrants had fewer resources to leave ill-paying jobs if

their strikes were unsuccessful.

The 1840s saw an increase in recognition of unhealthy conditions in mills among doctors

and social reformers.15 It was around this point that the labor activism among mill workers

became more politically motivated. Throughout the 1840s mill workers fought to instate the 10-

hour day, claiming, with proof, that often prisoners on work details worked fewer hours than

they did. In 1847, New Hampshire enacted the 10-hour day, but employers found loopholes in

the law by creating contracts that forced workers to take longer hours, or lose their jobs. The 10-

hour day was not adopted nationally until 1874. The recognition of issues with working

conditions and hours in mills among social reformers in this period is significant, because it

14 Carl Gersuny, “ ‘A Devil in Petticoats’ and Just Cause: Patterns of Punishment in Two New England Textile Factories,” Business History Review 50, no. 2 (1976): 137. http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.simmons.edu:2048/stable/3113445. 15 Moran, 7.

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speaks to the further development of reforms in the industry later on in the 19th and early 20th

centuries during the Progressive Era.

Maine Industry and Labor History

In Maine, the number of workers joining labor unions grew the late 19th century. This

included unions supporting farmers and other rural workers as well as urban workers in mills.

Marxian ideals influenced many of these unions and also inspired the Socialist Party of Maine,

founded in 1877. Norman Wallace Lermond, a famous Maine socialist, was a utopian thinker

who ran for president with the Socialist Party in 1900 and helped develop a socialist colony in

Washington State. Maine’s socialist experience is outlined in Charles Scontras’ book, The

Socialist Alternative: Utopian experiments and the Socialist Party of Maine, 1895-1914, which

follows Lermond’s endeavors. Scontras’ book doesn’t address immigrant mill workers and is

more focused on other participants of social and political movements rather than on immigrants

in working-class labor unions. However, his analysis of Lermond provides interesting insight

into socialist thought of the time. For example, Lermond, like many Irish Socialists who were his

contemporaries, didn’t believe that socialist teachings were against the church. In fact, Lermond

declared that capitalism was against the teachings of Jesus: “The capitalistic system, with its

consequent economic, social and political inequality, was...in contradiction to the lessons Christ

and His disciples taught by example--that the Kingdom of Heaven on earth was possible only

when people held all things in common.”16 Socialists in Ireland supported these views, and so

did many Irish Americans as well. After all, Lacroix mentions that Irish American labor activists

did not consider working class agitation to be against church teachings.

16 Charles Scontras, The Socialist Alternative: Utopian experiments and the Socialist Party of Maine, 1895-1914 (Orono, Maine : Bureau of Labor Education of the Continuing Education Division, University of Maine, 1985), 14.

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Charles Scontras’ Collective Efforts Among Maine Workers: Beginnings and

Foundations, 1820-1880 describes working conditions in Maine textile mills and strikes led by

mill workers. According to Scontras, there were several issues with the health of workers in

textile mills. Snuff was spat on the floor, opium addictions were well-documented, toilets had no

privacy, lack of ventilation led to lung diseases and damp clothing also contributed to other

illness. Mills had no fire safety precautions, and in fact, would have been extremely hazardous to

workers had there been a fire of any kind. For example, doors were often locked during working

hours, and could only be opened by an overseer. Boarding houses often had no heat, and in many

cases Maine workers were expected to rent or buy their own heat source. In mill tenements there

was serious overcrowding, lack of sanitation, and consequent spread of disease. Various local

religious and social groups attempted to help fix boarding house conditions in order to improve

their communities.

Reformers and union organizers also took issue with the lack of recourse for many sick

or injured workers, fines for “imperfect” work -- even if the machine and not the worker was to

blame, and caveats in hiring contracts that forbade union involvement. “Textile workers often

signed contracts which withheld part of their wages or prevented them from participation in

union activity. The practice of holding back by contract a percentage of an employee’s wages

was a mode of protection against strikes or insufficient notice of departure…”17 In spite of this

attempt to prevent organization against mill management, many strikes occurred throughout the

1870s, largely in response to wage reductions and lack of hours during the depression that began

in 1873. According to Scontras, “The economic dislocations engendered by the depression

arrested the embryonic national and local labor movement and caused hardship and suffering for

17 Charles A. Scontras, Collective Efforts Among Maine Workers: Beginnings and Foundations, 1820-1880 (Orono, Maine: Bureau of Labor Education, University of Maine, 1994), 261.

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many workers…”18 The depression caused a drop in union numbers, but workers continued to

strike in order to achieve living wages for their struggling families.

The mule spinners, who operated fast-paced spinning machines called “spinning mules,”

were the best organized of Maine’s textile workers. They participated in many strikes in the late

1860s and 1870s. Partly because of the mule spinners strong involvement in labor activism the

mills attempted to replace mule spinning machines with ring spinners. Mule spinning was

considered a “skilled” position, and often mule spinners were male. Ring spinners were easier to

operate, and women were more likely to be trained to use them. Mill owners tried to replace their

most actively organized workers with women, whom they supposed wouldn’t strike like the men.

This assumption was proven untrue by the involvement of women from many backgrounds in

strikes throughout the period.

Given Maine’s proximity to Canada, it is unsurprising that many French-Canadian

immigrants migrated there to find work. Many of Maine’s towns and institutions have as a

consequence been shaped by French-Canadian culture and history, as much as they have helped

to shape the lives of these immigrants. Though French-Canadian history is prevalent in Maine,

other immigrant groups also travelled there in large numbers. About immigration to New

England, Lacroix says the Irish were more populous in Massachusetts. “In Lowell, Fall River,

and other locations, the Irish population had a better and bigger footing, but the sheer volume of

immigration from Canada threatened what control the Irish had…”19 Though the French

Canadians outnumbered them in Maine, Irish immigrants helped build the canals and railroads

that supplied the area mills. Lacroix also mentions that many Irish immigrants were at the

18 Charles A. Scontras, Collective Efforts Among Maine Workers: Beginnings and Foundations, 1820-1880, 346.19 Lacroix, 750.

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forefront of the labor movement. In Maine, this was no different. For example, the Portland

Longshoremen’s Benevolent Association was largely Irish. 20

Textile mills in Maine have not received as much historical attention as those in

Massachusetts, but they also helped shape the industrial landscape of the country. Lewiston,

Maine, was one of New England’s largest cotton manufacturing centers by the 1820s. Its mill

complex was developed in the style of Lowell, Massachusetts. Bates Mill, in Lewiston, was one

of the region’s biggest mills, and operated between 1850 and 2001, much longer than many other

New England textile mills. The mill system in Lewiston controlled all aspects of cotton

manufacture, meaning that all necessary work to support the production of textiles occurred

within the same complex of mills.

A contemporary history of Lewiston, by J.G. Elder, was written for the Androscoggin

One-Price Clothing Company, Blue Store in 1891 and documented the ratio of female to male

workers in multiple Lewiston mills. This work shows a large number of female workers.

According to Elder, Bates Manufacturing Company’s workforce was 25% female in the 1860s,

and by the 1880s had jumped to 55% female. Many Lewiston companies by the 1880s had

largely female workforces, such as: Continental (75% female), Hill (71%), Avon (66%),

Lewiston (65%), Androscoggin (63%), and Cumberland (50%).21 These increases in employment

of female workers coincided with the influx of French-Canadian immigrants to Lewiston in the

1870s. According to Elder’s book, the first French Mass was held at the local Irish Catholic

church on July 2, 1870, and shortly thereafter a French church was built. The first Catholic mass

in Lewiston was held by Irish immigrants 20 years earlier in 1850.

20 Andrew Patrick, “Irish Immigrants in Nineteenth Century Maine,” Maine History Online, https://www.mainememory.net/sitebuilder/site/185/page/444/display. 21 J.G. Elder, History of Lewiston, ed. David and Elizabeth Keene Young (Lewiston: Androscoggin one-price clothing co., 1891).

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An early labor organization in Lewiston was a branch of the Knights of Labor. Although

the Knights were established nationally in 1869, the Lewiston branch wasn’t inaugurated until

the 1880s. Members of the organization were largely mule spinners and other skilled workers.

The Knights struggled to gain legitimacy among workers for two reasons: denunciation from the

Catholic church, and laws that could have imprisoned members for their involvement in unions.

According to William Carl Brucher’s 2002 honors thesis from Bates College “Manufacturing

History: The Rise and Fall of the Textile Industry in Lewiston, Maine,” the problem with the

Knights of Labor was their similarity to a secret society. Secret societies were often equated with

freemasonry, which was negatively viewed at the time. The Knights’ secrecy was undoubtedly

necessary to protect members from arrest. Still, “...Healy [bishop of Portland] followed the

actions of the church in Canada, whose inquiry into the Canadian Knights of Labor resulted in

the official condemnation of that organization by Rome.”22 Throughout the period in Lewiston,

union memberships were uncommon, due to church opposition and strong anti-union sentiment

from government officials and other prominent members of society.

Though Lewiston was the epicenter of Maine textile manufacturing, there were many

other prominent Maine textile mills, including, York Mill in Saco, Pepperell Mills in Biddeford,

Cabot Mill in Brunswick, and other mill complexes in Augusta and Waterville. The Cabot

Manufacturing Company in Brunswick, Maine, employed hundreds of French-Canadian

immigrants, both adults and children. These workers lived in a company-owned neighborhood

called “Little Canada” which was a far cry from Francis Cabot Lowell’s “ideal” mill worker

lodgings--crowded, unsanitary, and disease ridden. “Little Canada” neighborhoods spread all

22 William C. Brucher, “Manufacturing History: The Rise and Fall of the textile industry in Lewiston, Maine” (honors thesis, Bates College, 2002), 55.

17

over New England, and produced many mill workers as well as famous Franco-Americans who

excelled in other fields, most famous among them Lowell’s Jack Kerouac.

The Cabot Manufacturing Company located in Brunswick, Maine, had a series of owners

before it came under the Cabot name in the 1850s. The original mill on the site was called the

Brunswick Cotton Manufacturing Company, and produced yarn beginning in 1809. In 1812, the

mill became the Maine Cotton and Woolen Company, and began spinning, weaving, and carding

activities. The Brunswick Company followed, producing cotton, wool, iron and steel, and

providing living quarters for their workers. The Warumbo Company managed the mill until it

was sold to the Cabot Company in 1853. In 1857, former members of the Cabot Co. bought up

the stock and renamed themselves the Cabot Manufacturing Company. At the time they had

around 500 employees, mostly French-Canadian.23 Two tenement buildings were used for

employee housing. After the Civil War, the number of workers grew, and in the 1880s the Cabot

Manufacturing Company had 700 employees, many of whom lived in the company-owned

apartments and were expected to trade for goods at the company grocery store. Though

Brunswick did not have the mill complex that Lewiston did, the workers there suffered similar

injustices as those in Lewiston and Lowell, and documented strikes suggest that they attempted

to better their situation as well.

Methodology

Throughout the secondary sources on this topic many common themes emerge about

labor and women in the Progressive Era. For example, a change in the public mindset about

unions, workplace safety, women, and foreignness. Earlier in the 1800s, unions and foreignness

were considered to be negative and associated with socialism. Workplace safety and women’s

23 Frances P. Caswell, A Summary of the History of the Cabot Mill and the Local Textile Industry in the 19th Century (Brunswick, Maine: Pejepscot Historical Society, 1987).

18

rights were barely considered at all. In the 1880s-1910s, these opinions changed. This is reflected

in newspaper accounts and government reports from the period. This paper uses those newspaper

and government accounts, as well as textile company records, to examine the opinions of the

upper classes on mill working women and labor unions.

In order to process this information, this paper will be arranged chronologically, with the

first chapter discussing the “Laissez-Faire” attitudes of the 1860s-1880s, and the second chapter

describing the Progressive Era changes in the 1890s-1910s. Each chapter will be further divided

into topical sections related to the views of the establishment during those times.

Chapter 1: Laissez-Faire Attitudes--1860s-1880s

In the period between 1860-1880, mill owners and members of the upper classes thought

of workers’ rights as an unnecessary burden on their economic gain. They held a much more

“Laissez-faire” attitude, they would not inconvenience the workers if they didn’t interfere in

19

company affairs. This thought process led to lack of willingness to increase safety measures and

wages, and intense aversion to labor action of any kind. Also, while mill owners may have

believed that their workers didn’t have reason to strike and ruin the equilibrium of the company,

there were many issues within the industry at the time that led to protest from workers.

Workers’ Rights, Health and Safety

The Cabot Manufacturing Company Records, located at the Maine Historical Society in

Portland, demonstrate some of the abuses of textile companies. Within the Cabot Manufacturing

Company Records, there are log books, letters, and other papers related to business operations.

Two collections provide information about the wages of employees and lawsuits against the

company. The collection focused on the wages of employees includes administrative records

from the company detailing reasons for wage decreases. For example, in an 1867 a letter from a

Caleb Chace to Benjamin Green, mill agent and manager at Cabot, suggested that wages should

be lowered due to an issue with sales.24 Mill agents didn’t care if their employees received a

living wage, but only that the company made money. The fate of the employees did not factor

into the company’s plans to lower their wages.

The Cabot records include a series of postcards related to the company’s business with

suppliers, lawyers, and other business contacts. Some postcards that describe legal action against

the company seem to suggest, as Carl Gersuny found in his article, that the company had various

local lawyers working for them, to the detriment of aggravated workers.25 Two lawyers, listing

themselves as “attorney for the plaintiff,” wrote to Benjamin Green, alerting him of their client’s

suits and their hopes to have them dismissed. An attorney named Weston Thompson wrote at

least two of these letters to Mr. Green. In March, 1882, Thompson sent a postcard to Green,

24 Cabot Manufacturing Company Papers, 1848-1910, Series 1, Box 1. Maine Historical Society Collections.25 Carl Gersuny, “New England Mill Casualties: 1890-1910.”

20

“Being notified by your Mr. Smith that nothing is due from the Company, I shall not proceed

with the suit…” again, listing himself as the attorney of the person bringing the suit, a Mr. G. St.

Marie.26 A postcard from Sept. 1882 from Thompson asks the company to “...please disregard

suit by Frank M. Stetson…” and lists Thompson as Stetson’s lawyer.27 While these postcards do

not blatantly demonstrate that the plaintiff’s attorneys and the Cabot Company were working

together, they suggest such improprieties were taking place. The short and vague nature of the

correspondence contribute to this conclusion.

Not only did mill owners and agents actively plot against their injured workers, they also

paid no attention to the safety hazards presented by the buildings and machines that they owned.

An article discussing this lack of workplace safety was published November 20, 1869 in the

Lewiston Evening Journal. “Fire in Lewiston” details a fire that broke out during the night at the

Bates mill picker room. The fire began at 11pm, so fortunately no workers were there at the time.

The fire started from “spontaneous combustion” of cotton and machine oil.28 The article praised

the actions of the Bates company and the Lewiston-Auburn fire department in their response to

the fire. “The entire fire department of Lewiston and Auburn were very promptly on hand and

ready for action, but the perfect arrangements of the Bates Company for extinguishing fires made

their presence unnecessary.”29 While the company and the town’s fire department were prepared

to fight a fire, they clearly had no preventative measures in place to avoid fire starting on the

workroom floor in the first place. The article did not mention whether this event led to the

development of better policies to prevent future fires caused by oil leaking onto cotton. This

demonstrated the establishment’s views that it was the workers’ responsibility to care for their

26 Cabot Manufacturing Company Papers, 1848-1910, Series 3, Box 5. M.H.S. Collections. 27 Cabot Manufacturing Company Papers, 1848-1910, Series 3, Box 5. M.H.S. Collections. 28 “Fire in Lewiston,” Lewiston Evening Journal (Lewiston, ME), Nov. 20, 1869, https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=oQQVFBP0nzwC&dat=18691120&printsec=frontpage&hl=en, 1. 29 “Fire in Lewiston.”

21

workstations, rather than the owner’s responsibility to care for the building or to arrange a safer

work environment.

At the Cabot mill in Brunswick similar issues with workplace safety and sanitation, as

well as company housing, child labor, and wage decreases presented opportunities for workers to

clash with the company management. The company housing was crowded and unsanitary, and

many farm animals belonging to the lodgers lived in adjoining sheds. The buildings had no

running water, and disease spread quickly. In the Brunswick Telegraph, the local newspaper, on

August 5, 1881, the "Local Affairs" column mentions the death of a young French Canadian

woman due to typhoid. The article, "Two French Funerals," suggested that the conditions at the

Cabot tenements were the cause of her death. "Somebody tells us that we have not mentioned the

most damaging testimony about the condition of the boarding houses...The place is in a condition

to warrant prompt action on the part of the board of health.”30 The manner in which the writer

addressed disease in the company housing conveys the impression that they did not want to

alienate the mill owners by overtly declaring their housing unsanitary, but they felt obligated to

the public to tell something of the truth of the conditions there. The Brunswick Telegraph’s

views often overtly favored the mill owners and upper classes, while still maintaining a

semblance of “neutral” reporting. This bias towards the mill owners is in keeping with Daniel

Walkowitz’s assertion that the Harmony Company in Cohoes, N.Y. ran the town by controlling

its political and financial sectors.31 It is easy to see how difficult it would be to oppose these

powerful companies. The power wielded by the mill owners in Brunswick was obvious through

the examination of a particular event. In 1890, the mill desired more land to expand on, so they

30 “Two French Funerals,” Brunswick Telegraph (Brunswick, ME), August 5, 1881. Pejepscot Historical Society Collections. 31 Walkowitz.

22

asked the town to move Main Street in order for them to continue to build.32 The town of

Brunswick obliged, and moved Maine Street to accommodate the mill owner’s desires.

Another important event in the history of the Cabot Mill was the August, 1881 strike,

commonly known as the “Children’s Strike.” The strike began with child workers, boys aged 8-

14, while adults in the spinning rooms joined shortly afterwards. When the employees of the

carding room walked out with the strikers, the mill had to shut down operations for a time. The

strikers wanted better wages, especially for those who did piecework, as they received less than

workers in other area mills doing the same work. Another contentious problem was the company

grocery store. According to the Brunswick Telegraph it was simply the Adams Brothers' grocery,

and not, as many claimed, affiliated with the company. Food and other sundries, however, seem

to have been traded there with "orders," from the Cabot Company instead of cash. As with their

description of the typhoid death, the paper attempted neutrality toward the suspect dealings of

the mill owners and operators. Historians have referred to the Adams Brothers' grocery as a

"company store," but the paper avoids the question of whether it was used that way or not. The

Cabot Company hoped to avoid connection with the grocery, and the paper helped them distance

their organization by claiming that it was just a regular store. Given the Telegraph’s bias in favor

of the company, their articles claiming the grocery store was not associated with Cabot suggest

quite the opposite, that--as company detractors claimed--the Adams Brothers’ grocery was the

Cabot Company store.

Given that the Cabot Co. “Children’s Strike,” took place in the summer of 1881, very

close to Lewiston, it might be expected that the Lewiston Evening Journal had opinions about the

situation. Unfortunately, the paper did not provide much information on the Cabot strike, except

an August 12, 1881 article about how the strike recently ended. The article, a few short sentences

32 Caswell.

23

in the “local” section under Cumberland County, suggested that the strike had ended

unsuccessfully, and the operatives were returning to work. Another article on August 10, 1881,

however, mentioned a work-related accident in Biddeford, and demonstrated the establishment

view that the workers should be considered at fault when they injured themselves while on the

job. According to the reporter, French-Canadian teenager Josh Leguard fell down the elevator

shaft of the Pepperell weave room and later died of his injuries. The article placed the blame on

Leguard. “He was watching the elevator as it passed, and did not notice that the gate was open,

and went into the way head first.”33 This description completely disregarded the fact that the

elevator gate was open in the first place, which was the company’s oversight, and blamed a

curious teenager for dying instead of faulting the company for unsafe elevator procedures. Both

of these August 1881 articles are very short, and the paper’s main focus was given to a strike in

Ireland around the same time, rather than these two events which were more important to the

workers of the region. This demonstrates that the newspaper presented topics of greater interest

to the upper classes at the expense of reporting stories that would appeal to the working class.

Discrimination, Foreignness, and the Economy

Throughout the 1860s, 1870s and 1880s, the Brunswick Telegraph and the Lewiston

Evening Journal demonstrated a bias in favor of the mill owners. This favoritism is evident in

the above articles which commented on strikes, injured workers, and living conditions in the

Cabot company tenements in the 1880s. Similarly, bias against the working class and unions can

be found in an opinion piece printed in the Telegraph in November, 1865, called “The Eight

Hour Movement.” The author is anonymous, but given his lack of understanding of typical

wages, the purpose of unions, and myopic declaration that “We are all laborers--we are all

33 “Biddeford Boy Receives Fatal Injuries,” Lewiston Evening Journal (Lewiston, ME), August 10, 1881, https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=oQQVFBP0nzwC&dat=18810810&printsec=frontpage&hl=en, 2.

24

capitalists--” he is likely not of the working class.34 He believes that the balance between capital

and labor is disrupted by labor movements and workers trying to gain more rights in the

workplace. “There is no antagonism between labor and capital, though after reading reports of

some of the labor meetings in Boston, we should fancy ourselves suddenly dropped down in Red

Republican France or Germany. Capital was denounced with a gusto and vindictiveness worthy

of the worst days of the old French Republic.”35 Here the author likens labor organizers to

communists who were hoping to tear apart his beloved, capitalistic country with their foreign

ways. Another argument against unions, apart from the accusation of communism, was that they

hindered the country’s economy and were therefore anti-American. This author clearly supports

this opinion: “He is a bad man who endeavors to create antagonism between capital and labor,

especially at this time when the country is so in debt…”36 This suggests that the author believes

union organizers are not only anti-American, but that they are against the natural order of things.

His assumptions indicate that capital and labor were in harmony until labor organizations arose.

In reality, the relationship between capital and labor was only advantageous to those making the

capital, and not harmonious to those doing the labor. This is evident in the need for labor unions

in the first place. A system without unions left workers no way to improve their wages and

working conditions. Therefore, labor unions facilitated a balance of the power capitalist mill

owners had always controlled and provided workers with new agency--and it was to this agency

that this author and his contemporaries objected.

This anonymous author’s main commentary focused on the push for an eight hour

workday. He believed that not only would shortening the workday slow down the work and

34 “The Eight Hour Movement,” Brunswick Telegraph (Brunswick, ME), November 10, 1865. Pejepscot Historical Society Collections.35 “The Eight Hour Movement.” 36 Ibid.

25

business of the mill owners but also adversely affect the workers’ pay. He supports his views

with this example. “A female operative in one of the Newburyport mills recently earned $55 in

one month. Think you she wants any established day of eight hours for labor?”37 This use of a

highly paid employee to demonstrate the pay that the eight hour day would take away from

workers is disingenuous. Most mill operatives did not make as much as this woman, likely a

skilled weaver doing complex piece work. Also, there was no fixed salary for these workers, and

payment by the piece could vary widely for each operative depending on various factors. Just

because this woman made $55 dollars one month does not mean that she, or other workers,

regularly made such a sum.

This author did not take into account the possibilities of creating multiple shifts to keep

the mills running later and workers’ hours shorter, nor did he address the fact that many strikers

also hoped for an increase in wages that would offset the reduced hours. The author also

comments that the mill workers are “well paid,” and that the employers are the most

hardworking and burdened of the mill workers: “But oftentimes the employer is the hardest

worked man in the shop, and too often the poorest paid.”38 He gives no evidence of where he

obtained this information, likely he made this assumption based on his opinion that company

owners and managers worked to provide an harmonious environment in their workplaces despite

issues created by labor organization. He also quotes someone he calls “a contemporary,” who

suggests that: “‘Many owners of leading machine shops have been poor workmen, and have

risen as others may rise.’”39 Clearly this author believed that if some men have been able to

achieve the American dream of making themselves wealthy, that everyone can. Thus, workers

don’t need assistance from unions and legislation to improve their situations for they can simply

37 Ibid.38 Ibid.39 Ibid.

26

improve themselves. There were many conditions preventing such social mobility among the

immigrant working class, including lack of education, discrimination, and poverty. This author

and his “contemporary” claim that many mill owners were once poor workers. While this might

be true in some cases, it was not the normal progression to mill ownership.

During the 1870s, the Telegraph’s attitude toward labor organization didn’t change.

Their reporting on the Fall River, Massachusetts strikes of Fall 1875 indicated their opinions

during that time. The use of words like “riotous,” “scoundrels,” and “communists,” to describe

the strike leaders illustrate the paper’s anti-union bent. They were careful to suggest that the

workers themselves were not to blame for the issues at Fall River, but rather the labor organizers,

who manipulated them, were at fault. “Many of the operatives are willing to work, but a set of

uneasy scoundrels hold control, and prevent their accepting terms. The people are starving and

applying for city aid, which the Mayor says he cannot grant, but will send them to the State

Almshouse at Bridgewater. In heaven’s name are a few rascally communists to dictate terms to

the community!”40 This author placed the striking workers in a place of helplessness at the hands

of evil labor organizers who won’t let them work and allowed them to starve. In reality, many

workers chose to strike of their own accord and, when lack of food became a problem, attempted

to provide for their families as best they could during the strike. Interestingly, though many

striking workers in Fall River were themselves immigrants, this author does not use the foreign-

ness of the workers against them, nor does he suggest that the “communist” labor leaders were

tainted by the foreignness of communism.

The Lewiston Evening Journal documented the establishment’s view of striking workers

in a similar manner to the Brunswick Telegraph. Yet, an April 1, 1867 article was far less biased

in favor of the mill owners than the Brunswick Telegraph November 10, 1865 article “The Eight

40 “Fall River,” Brunswick Telegraph (Brunswick, ME), October 1, 1875. Pejepscot Historical Society Collections.

27

Hour Movement.” The Lewiston Evening Journal article, “Strike of the Mule Spinners,”

describes a strike that took place across New England for the introduction of the 10 hour day.

According to the article, spinners unions in Manchester, NH and Lawrence, MA, told the

Lewiston, ME spinners to wait to walk out until conditions were more favorable when these

other cities’ organizations would be able to provide them with funds to maintain a strike.41 The

article’s author believed that the 10 hour day should be accepted, but that strikes were not the

way to achieve it. “While we believe that ten hours per day should be adopted as the standard of

labor, yet we think that this result will be soonest reached by conference and such a course as

will not tend to embitter the feelings of all parties engaged, especially at this time when

manufacturing is in so unfavorable a condition.”42 This statement suggests that the author was

more sympathetic to the cause of the workers but still believed that striking was detrimental to

the American economy. Unlike the author of “The Eight Hour Day,” this author did not readily

equate economic issues produced by strikes with anti-American or foreign influences. While he

believed that strikes adversely affected the economy, he did not mention that they consequently

hurt the workers themselves, or that communist firebrands led them, as his contemporary at the

Telegraph did. This author subscribed to some of the stereotypes about labor organizations

largely accepted by the upper classes at the time, but did not let these opinions color his reporting

on the mule spinners strike, which does not harshly judge the strikers.

The Journal’s coverage of the 1875 Fall River, Massachusetts, strike was the most

opinionated of their pieces about labor action. A September, 27th article “The Situation at Fall

River” delineated the end of the strike and the operatives’ reactions to the company’s new

employment contract. The author expressed condescending views of the workers, suggesting that

41 “Strike of the Mule Spinners,” Lewiston Evening Journal (Lewiston, ME), Apr. 1, 1867, https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=oQQVFBP0nzwC&dat=18670401&printsec=frontpage&hl=en, 3. 42 “Strike of the Mule Spinners.”

28

their strike was similar to a restful break from work. “The help who have not been identified with

the vacation are all prepared for work.”43 He meant that the workers who did not strike in the first

place, whom he attempted to degrade by associating them with servitude, were happy to go to

work. This opinion implies that the workers unhappy with the strike’s conclusion should be

pleased with any opportunity to work at all, regardless of the poor wages and treatment they

received. He mocked the strikers who were upset with the company’s contract. “Many of the

operatives do not object to their first article of the agreement, but rebel against the second, saying

they will not sign away their birthright.”44 The article did not mention the actual articles of the

contract, but likely the second article removed agency from former strikers simply for their

involvement in the strike. This loss of agency could have been lowered wages or stipulations that

workers must be non-union. Other information about the outcome of this strike is difficult to

find, however, so this is only speculation. The author of the Journal article clearly thought that

workers’ issues were laughable, and workers had no rights to argue about. This unfavorable view

of strikers resembled the sentiment expressed in the Brunswick Telegraph of the same year. The

difference between the Telegraph’s reporting and the Journal’s was the presentation of the

striking workers: the Telegraph portrayed them as communists, easily swayed by violent leaders,

while the Journal characterized them more as petulant children. Both newspapers equated the

working class with emotional, easily pliable children who need to be cared for by their

paternalist employers.

Where are the Ladies?

Government reports and company payroll records provide interesting insight into the

changing establishment views of the working class, women and trade unions in the Progressive

43 “The Situation at Fall River,” Lewiston Evening Journal (Lewiston, ME), Sept. 27, 1875, https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=oQQVFBP0nzwC&dat=18750925&printsec=frontpage&hl=en, 2.44 “The Situation at Fall River.”

29

Era. Some of the most relevant records regarding mill workers were the annual reports of the

Maine Bureau of Industrial and Labor Statistics. These statistics helped determine the views of

the government officials about mill workers, mill owners, and mill work generally. These records

also provide a better understanding of how government officials viewed the immigrant women

that worked in mills and the relationships between women of different ethnicities.

A particularly useful source is the Second Annual Report of the Bureau of Industrial and

Labor Statistics for the state of Maine, 1888. This pamphlet was created by the Honorable

Samuel W. Matthews, Special Agent of the Maine Bureau of Industrial and Labor Statistics, and

focused specifically on the women working in the state of Maine at that time. Given that this

source was produced for the government, it can be inferred that it was attempting to present a

favorable view of women’s work and conditions of the mills in order to support the state’s

economic interests in the capital produced by those mills. The mills were so profitable that it was

advantageous for the government to present them in a favorable light. For this reason, Matthews

included whimsical, endearing facts about mill life; such as that many girls used cotton waste to

curl their hair, or that they dressed up for payday. While he throughout the pamphlet praises the

mills and their workers, does admit to certain issues that affected the women’s performance at

work and their health.

Matthews visited and assessed eight textile mills in the state of Maine: Androscoggin,

Avon, Bates, Continental, and Hills in Lewiston, Laconia and Pepperell in Biddeford, and York

in Saco. He estimated that around 7,000 women worked in Maine’s mills. Women over the age

of 15 were employed as tenders of frame looms (including various types of looms, such as

intermediate, fly, and jack frames), carders, ring spinners, reelers, spoolers, web-drawers,

30

beamers, weavers, finishers, folders, ticketers, sample makers and clerks. Jobs like mule spinning

were often male dominated, whereas weaving was often female dominated.

Matthews described the workspaces within the mills as having private boxes, something

like a locker, where a worker might put her personal belongings while at work. In some cases,

these boxes could serve as stools if the worker needed a break. In fact, this secondary use of the

boxes was necessary because the mill owners did not often provide stools or chairs for workers

to use, expecting them to be on their feet from 8 to 11 hours per day. In 1888, regular weekly

working hours were between 7am and 6pm, 11 hours per day. The workday was slightly shorter

on Saturday, consisting of 8 hours from 7am to 3pm. According to Matthews, female weavers

doing piece-work were paid at the same rate as the male weavers. This statement cannot be

corroborated by other sources, which typically list females as making less than males. It is

therefore unclear if this was implemented at a single mill in his study or across the board, and

also whether this practice continued.

In regards to the ethnicity and religion of the female workers of Maine’s textile mills,

Matthews says that the French Canadians were the most populous immigrant group, but there

were various Scottish, Irish, and English immigrant workers as well. According to his research,

anywhere from half to two-thirds of employees in Maine textile mills were French Canadian.

Matthews also differentiated between French Canadian and Franco-American workers, most

likely due to the differences in understanding of English, length of time their family had spent in

the country, and their adoption of American culture. Given the nuanced aspects of French

Canadian affiliation with American culture, it is interesting that a non-immigrant at the time was

able to take note of second-generation immigrants as a separate group from their parents. This is

significant because it was a demonstration of the government taking note of different generations

31

of immigrants in their state and the contributions of the French Canadian community to the

Maine economy. He also described some of the mill women as being of mixed white and Native

American descent. No other source in this study mentioned these women, so no further

information about their status within the mill or discrimination against them has been found.

According to Matthews, Native-born white Yankee girls were more likely to get the best jobs in

the mills, working as weavers, drawers, or in the cloth halls. No other government reports from

the period focused so heavily on the ethnicity of the women working in textile manufacturing. It

is unclear why Matthews did so, though perhaps it was to show the growth of Maine’s economy

by the influx of immigrants. Another possibility could have been to demonstrate the state’s

success in creating prosperity in immigrant communities.

When it came to discrimination against immigrants, Matthews says that French-

Canadians received the most hatred from the Yankee girls, perhaps because of their language

differences. “Let it be remembered that many of these are married women, who attend, as well as

they can, to their household affairs also; that they are shut out from many enlightening influences

by their ignorance of the English language, that they are, I must say, often hated by their

coworkers, and that their ancestors were on this continent before ours were.”45 While Matthews

believed in the civilizing nature of American culture--in this case via understanding of the

English language--he recognized that discrimination against immigrants was rampant and that

they struggled to preserve their culture in the face of hatred from their Yankee neighbors. He

also mentioned marital status in order to allude to the morality of these hardworking women,

who, though foreign, were not the corrupting influences others believed them to be. Aware of the

public dislike of French-Canadian immigrants, Matthews portrayed them in a sympathetic light,

45 Samuel W. Matthews, Second Annual Report of the Bureau of Industrial and Labor Statistics for the state of Maine, 1888 (Augusta, Me.: Burleigh & Flynt, 1889. Maine Historical Society Collections), 132.

32

saying they were more religious and more studious than the native-born girls. In his opinion,

“...the Catholics are much better church-goers.”46 And in his discussion of the work of the Bates

Street Evening School, which provided lessons to girls of all nationalities, he stated that French

girls were especially keen to learn. Not only did Matthews defend the morality of French

Canadian workers, through his description of religious devotion and marital status, he also

depicted them as intellectual, an unpopular observation regarding working class immigrants at

the time.

The French-Canadian girls tended to live in separate boarding houses from the other

workers. Matthews was unclear on whether this represented preference on their part, or whether

they were actively excluded from the Yankee and English-speaking immigrant boarding houses.

As William Moran discusses, immigrants often weren’t allowed to stay in the same boarding

houses as Yankee workers.47 Given the dislike of French girls discussed by Matthews, it is likely

that they were forced by necessity to find different places to live. Matthews mentioned the

existence of French boarding houses, but he didn’t review them as he did Yankee ones. He

commented that generally the French-Canadian mill workers lived in crowded homes, which was

typical for working class immigrants of the period. Matthews was allowed to stay in a mill run

boarding house in order to better understand the worker’s lives, and while unclear whether it was

a Yankee or simply an English speaking house, no French-Canadians lived there. Based on

Matthews’ inspection of this house, he determined that boarding house mistresses were very

respectable and could make good money in such a position. He also noted that non-mill workers

could pay to live in a company boarding house as well.

46 Samuel W. Matthews, Second Annual Report of the Bureau of Industrial and Labor Statistics for the state of Maine, 1888, 124. 47 Moran.

33

Matthews discussed the health and behavior of mill women, specifically their use of

snuff. He mentioned snuff repeatedly, how many women used it, and how mill owners and

agents attempted to curtail its use. This focus on the comportment of their workers recalls the

moral policing mentioned by William Moran.48 The idea that workers needed to be controlled in

this manner also demonstrates the paternalist attitudes held by mill owners that their workers

were like children. Female workers were expected to behave in certain, respectable ways, and if

they did not conform to what their employers thought was proper, they could be punished. As

mentioned by Moran, many Yankees attempted to attribute such bad habits to the corrupting

influence of immigrants. Clearly having heard these opinions, Matthews quickly debunked them,

saying that snuff was popular among all mill women, regardless of their country of origin. This

universal use of snuff was further indicated by the fact that most mills hung notices in both

French and English that spitting tobacco on the floor was forbidden.

Matthews hoped to present an overall positive view of mill work, so he rarely discussed

working conditions that might cause illness or injury to workers. He claimed that most sickness

in mill workers likely came from wearing damp clothing. This assertion erased the culpability of

the mill owners and placed the blame for their illnesses on the working women themselves. He

also mentioned that he noticed occasional issues of deafness among the women and that cotton

inhalation could be an issue. Many historians, such as Charles Scontras, have recognized the

problems that bad ventilation in mills could cause for women inhaling cotton for up to twelve

hours a day.49 Deafness caused by the machinery also seemed common, but Matthews suggested

this hearing loss was possibly unrelated to mill work. When discussing the various occupations

mill women might participate in, he contended that “web-drawers” and “beamers,” whose jobs

48 Moran.49 Charles A. Scontras, Collective Efforts Among Maine Workers: Beginnings and Foundations, 1820-1880.

34

involved paying close attention to locations of thin pieces of thread, were a very jovial group, but

that the work could be hard on their eyes. This statement was the only allowance he made for

work related illness or injury in mills, apart from an observation, not elaborated on, that lead

dyes could be a cause for health concern.

Matthews also discussed child labor in Maine textile mills. According to the Maine

Department of Labor, in 1887, laws passed in Maine required that children under 15 attend at

least 16 weeks of school per year.50 This meant that in 1888, fewer children were working in

Maine textile mills than in the earlier years of the decade. Matthews says that girls under 15 were

often employed during school vacations, and that they worked in the easiest jobs, as sweepers,

doffers, and piecers. It was his personal opinion that 12 was too young to work 10 hour days, and

that the working age for children should continue to be raised. He mentioned that before the new

laws, some mills had school rooms for children, where they could learn during their breaks from

work. There was no mention of the success of these schools, or whether they were actually used

to promote education among mill working children. Matthews demonstrated to the government

that the mill owners were obeying laws related to working children’s schooling requirements, but

he did not mention whether these schools were actually used or only for show. Some night

schools, such as the Bates Street Evening School, were helpful in providing education to

immigrant mill women, though from Matthew’s report it seems that most of the students there

were adults not children. Like the Yankee girls across New England, immigrant mill women

hoped to improve their education and grow intellectually while working at the mills. These night

schools did not have affiliation with the mills or their owners, they were separate entities, and

therefore could focus on edification, while mill schools often existed due to legal requirements

50 “Maine Laws Governing the Employment of Minors,” State of Maine Department of Labor, September, 2008, https://www1.maine.gov/labor/labor_laws/publications/minorsguide.html.

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from the state rather than intention to educate. Many of these night schools also supported the

idea of “Americanization,” attempting to assimilate immigrants into American culture. This

assimilation was not always at the expense of immigrant communities’ culture and heritage, but

did focus, as did Matthews, on the idea that American culture was the ideal to be imitated.

Labor union involvement and strikes were conspicuously absent from Matthews’ 1888

pamphlet. His presentation of the facts of mill life suggested that such things were unnecessary,

as conditions, work hours, and pay were not disputed by the workers in his idealistic mill world.

While he cannot avoid mentioning possible health concerns for mill women, in order to preserve

the idea of the mills as inherently good, and particularly good for the state, he ignored any issues

which would lead to labor action. This absence does not mean that workers at the mills he visited

did not participate in strikes and other labor union activities, only that Matthew’s report, for his

own benefit, did not include mention of these activities.

Another source documenting mill working women are the company payroll records,

which document the number of female immigrant workers working in the late 19th and early

20th centuries, and how those demographics changed overtime. However, like Matthew’s 1888

report, these records do not mention labor activity. Though collections including lists of

“blacklisted” workers do exist, they were not available for study. Companies during this period

would have no other reason to record strike involvement or labor organization. A useful

collection detailing the population of Maine mill women the is the Robinson Manufacturing

Company Records which is located at the Maine Historical Society. The Robinson Company was

a small operation located in Oxford, Maine. The company’s well-kept log-books document the

number of women and immigrants who worked there. The Robinson Company was one of the

oldest family run businesses in Maine when it closed in 2003. Joseph Robinson, an English

36

immigrant, and his partners H.J. and F.O. Libby bought the Oxford Woolen Manufacturing

Company in 1850s and renamed it the Robinson Manufacturing Company. The mill was

powered by a dam on a nearby lake, which Robinson flooded to ensure year-round power. This

produced many lawsuits with various landowners in the area about the newly expanded lake. The

lawsuits section of the records doesn’t include any injury suits from employees, but is largely

about these land rights.

While the Robinson Company records don’t show information about mistreatment of

workers, they can help determine the ratio of female to male employees. Using last names, it is

also easy to determine who working at the Robinson Company was an Irish or French Canadian

immigrant. As early as the 1860s workers with the last names of Moody and Kavanhough were

working in the mill. In the 1870s, however, the numbers of immigrant workers grew

substantially, with names like Jewell, Millett, McAllister and Doran populating the mill.51 Many

families seem to have sent multiple family members to work in the Robinson mill, similar to the

French-Canadians who worked at Cabot. Multiple McAllisters, Libbys, and Kavanoughs worked

there in 1873, as well as multiple Robinsons. Throughout the 1860s and 1870s the company

ranged between 48-67 employees, showing that their operation was much smaller than that of

Cabot. In 1862, the log books recorded 67 employees, 28 of whom were women. By 1868, of 48

employees, 17 were female and more immigrant names were evident. In 1873, 52 employees

were listed, and only 14 were female. Robinson’s employees often worked on a month to month

basis and many came back multiple times, but were not what would today be considered

permanent employees. The workers at the Robinson mill appear to have possessed more agency

in terms of choosing their work schedules than did the workers at Cabot, who had no other job

51 Robinson Manufacturing Company Records, 1823-1994. Series 2, Vol. 1-28. Maine Historical Society Collections.

37

prospects and were required to spend their money in specific locations for the company’s benefit.

This agency likely developed because of the size of the Robinson Company, and its location in a

smaller, farming community. Most likely when not working in the mill employees worked on

family farms in the area.

While the Robinson numbers suggest an increase in immigrant workers in Maine over

time, more obvious increases, especially in French Canadian names, can be found in the records

of the Bates Company. Bates was a large mill complex employing hundreds of workers in the

bustling textile hub of Lewiston, Maine. Their employee payroll records from February 1-13,

1886, make it clear that there were many female immigrant workers. In some cases, the clerk

who kept the records reported only the employee’s last name, so we are not able to determine

gender from all of the records from this pay period. When the records include first names, the

particular jobs performed by men or women within the Bates mill become evident. These records

represent only one of the multiple mill buildings within the Bates Company complex. While the

exact numbers and demographics of employees in each Bates mill building cannot be gathered

from this sample, they can be inferred to be similar.

In the carding room of mill #1, Irish women made up a large percentage of the Fly Frame

loom hands, while Irish men worked as carders. French Canadian men worked as pickers, and

French Canadian women as intermediate hands. In the spinning room of mill #1, first names

were not given, and a separate “mule room” was listed, so it is possible that these workers were

using ring spinners. Typically, women worked ring spinning machines and men worked mule

spinners. Therefore, it is highly probable that these workers were female. Six Irish spinners

worked in this room, along with three French Canadian spinners and several French Canadian

doffers. In the mule room the male Irish and French Canadian spinners made considerably more

38

money than most other workers in the mill, except for the weavers. In the weaving room both

Irish and French Canadian men and women were listed as working, along with several workers

with German and British sounding names. German immigrants, like the Irish, came in large

numbers before the greatest influx of French Canadians. The names of British origin could be

British immigrants, but they also could belong to native-born Americans. Either way, the

German and British names had the best positions and made the most money overall, ranging

between $3.80-$7.96 per week.52 From this information we can see that in the year 1886, German

immigrants and Native-born workers were more likely to hold the most desirable mill jobs,

whereas Irish and French Canadian immigrants were not.

By summer 1910, the demographics of Bates mill workers changed. While in 1886 there

were several Irish names, by 1910 the payroll lists nearly exclusively French Canadian names.

The payroll documents from June-July 1910 also much more consistently spelled French

Canadian names than in 1886. This accuracy could suggest the establishment of French Canadian

immigrants in the mills and also in roles of minor management, as Bruno Ramirez found in his

article.53 The carding room 2nd hand, a minor management position, was a man whose last name

was Gagnon.* Of the 37 ring spinners listed in this payroll document, 34 of them were French

Canadian women. There were many more ring spinners listed in 1910 than there were in 1886.

This fact suggests that Bates mill was using ring spinning machines in favor of mule spinners,

and therefore employed more female spinners than male at the time.

Throughout the period between 1860-1880, many establishment voices hoped to control

workers by treating them as children, prevent strikes by claiming they were destructive to the

52 Bates Manufacturing Company Records, 1852-1990, Series 7A, Box 1. Lewiston Public Library Collections. 53 Ramirez.* “Second Hand” is listed in the payroll documents directly under the overseer, the highest level manager in a given room.

39

economy and denounce unions as foreign and anti-American. However, the beginnings of textile

industry reform also could be found in the period. Women’s contributions to the economy were

recognized by the government, discrimination against immigrants was decried, and issues with

length of the work day were discussed. As time went on, the Laissez-faire ideals of the upper

classes would fade in favor of reforms that would benefit all classes and recognition of unions as

useful to provide a check on the power of the textile companies.

Chapter 2: Progressive Era Beginnings--1890-1912

During the Progressive Era, newspaper articles and government reports ceased to overtly

favor textile companies over workers. They recognized problems workers faced at such

companies, and sympathized with them. They began to view unions positively, and no longer

identified strikes and labor organizations with communism. In spite of this, there was still

evident bias towards companies. Though reforms occurred during the Progressive Era, it was not

perfect.

40

Female Invisibility and Union Masculinity

When examining the records of Maine textile companies, we can see that many French

Canadian and Irish immigrant women were employed there, but most newspaper and

government reports of strikes and union organization focus on male workers. This male

dominance does not mean that female workers were not involved, only that they were not as

prominently discussed in the time period.

In Matthews’ Sixteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Industrial and Labor Statistics

for the State of Maine, 1902, he discussed and evaluated trade union membership in Maine. In

his detailed report he does not mention women in the labor movement. Yet, the willingness to

document trade unions at all indicated Progressive Era reform movements and their effect on the

government’s perception of working conditions in their state. By 1902, Matthews was no longer

the “Special Agent” but now the Commissioner of the Bureau of Industrial and Labor Statistics.

As such, he likely did not participate directly in inspections of factories and other workplaces as

he did in his 1888 report, but rather managed people who did that work. His tone was much more

business-like and observations more analytical than in his earlier report. In the 1888 report, he

made conversational observations humanizing the working women and giving people a view into

their lives. In the 1902 report, he focuses heavily on statistics and doesn’t provide the added flair

found in his writings in 1888.

In the 1902 introduction, Matthews mentioned that the bureau had some difficulty in

information gathering from union organizations, likely because of the unions’ wariness of

governmental interest. Matthews stated: “The unions have largely increased in numbers,

membership, and influence, and nearly every trade is represented...it will be seen that trade

41

unionism in Maine has become an important factor in its industrial conditions.”54 In the

intervening years between 1888 and 1902, the government establishment in Maine went from

ignoring the presence of unions entirely to declaring that they were “important” to the industry of

the state and therefore worthy of study.

Matthews defined the objectives of trade unions.

...first, such as may be accomplished by a friendly or benefit society, and secondly, such as may be accomplished by a trade society or guild. In the former capacity they afford relief to their members when they are out of work for any cause...occasionally provide them with superannuation allowances and they almost always make burial allowances on account of deceased members and their wives. In the latter capacity it is their special business to promote what they conceive to be the interest of the trade with which they are connected.55

In this definition Matthews succinctly described the purpose of unions and how they might view

themselves. He also took care to mention that unions act as they “conceive” to be in the interest

of their trade. This word choice could suggest Matthews’ allowance that mill owners and other

companies could disagree with the unions perception of what was in the best interest of their

common trade. This definition also showed that Matthews thought of union membership as male.

His mention of “members and their wives” suggested that women could not themselves be

members in unions. This was untrue, however, and despite disputes between union men about

women’s membership in their organizations, many unions had female members, or were entirely

created by women.

In his assessment of unions, Matthews stated that: “It is not our province either to

advocate or discourage the organization of labor, but to deal with facts and results.”56 This

observation came after his admission in his introduction that previous to fact finding in 1902 his

54 Samuel W. Matthews, Sixteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Industrial and Labor Statistics for the State of Maine, 1902 (Augusta, Me.: Kennebec Journal Print, 1903), https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015067958986;view=1up;seq=7, 5.55 Samuel W. Matthews, Sixteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Industrial and Labor Statistics for the State of Maine, 1902, 71. 56 Ibid, 75.

42

organization was ignorant of the extent of union membership in Maine. This admission could

mean that previous to their pursuit of “facts and results” the bureau had different ideas about

whether they should discourage union membership, which is why they omitted union

information from the 1888 report. Also in the 1902 introduction, he observed that unionists were

less than likely to respond favorably to government requests to provide information on their

organization. Nevertheless, it seems the government had come to accept the importance of

unions within the structure of Maine’s economy. Matthews claimed that unions were necessary

because they prevent the violence and economic loss that could occur as a result of strikes by

fostering relationships between workers and their bosses. He took care to say that economic loss

from strike actions affected not only companies but workers as well. For example: “During the

last twenty years the strikes and lockouts have involved a loss to employe[e]s of over

$300,000,000 and to employers more than $140,000,000.”57 According to these numbers it is

clear that strikes caused significant financial losses among strikers, and in fact, they lost more

money than their bosses.

According to Matthews, not only the government, but also the mill owners themselves,

had become more friendly toward unions and their members. “As a general thing the operators

do not oppose unions and in many cases they favor them for the reason that they bring them a

better class of workmen.”58 It is unclear why Matthews made this observation since he gave no

sources to support this opinion. His survey of union members might have produced this

assertion, but it is unlikely that unionists would comment on the thoughts of their bosses. No

information is given on whether company owners were also interviewed, or if Matthews made

this correlation himself. Most likely it is a conclusion he has reached himself. In spite of

57 Ibid, 99.58 Ibid, 93.

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Matthews’ opinion that companies favored union workers, many unions were not accepted by

company owners until much later than 1902. For example, the Textile Workers Union of

America (CIO) didn’t gain recognition from the Bates Company in Lewiston until the 1940s.

According to Matthews, at least nine textile mill specific unions existed in Maine by

1902: three in Augusta, two in Biddeford, and four in Lewiston. Each town had a Loom Fixers’

Union, Lewiston and Augusta had carders’ and weavers’ unions as well. Slasher tenders in

Biddeford had a union, as did the Lewiston Mule Spinners. The gender of the members of the

unions was not given, nor was it even asked by the Bureau. This suggests that the Bureau

assumed that union membership was male. Given that the unions listed were for loom fixers,

mule spinners, and carders, typically male positions, it is likely that most union membership was,

in fact, male. It is impossible to know specifics, however, especially given that many women

worked as weavers--one of the surveyed unions--but as noted above many male-led unions were

opposed to accepting female members.

The survey from the Bureau asked various questions of union leaders about their

organizations, such as: number of members, date of organization, qualification for membership,

minimum daily wages, number of hours worked per day, and what they felt they had

accomplished since they were founded. Many surveys were returned incomplete, and none of the

textile unions answered all the questions provided. Interestingly, the four Lewiston textile unions

declined to return their answers at all. Most of the unions in Biddeford and Augusta supplied

their membership numbers, daily wages, and hours worked per day. By 1902, 10 hours seems to

have become the daily norm, rather than the 11 worked in 1888. Wages also increased, though

men were paid about $2 more than women on average.59 Wages for piece-work were not

59 Samuel W. Matthews, Sixteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Industrial and Labor Statistics for the State of Maine, 1902, 106.

44

recorded separately in this report, so it is unknown if women weavers working by the piece were

still paid the same as men, as Matthews observed in 1888. This is unlikely given the clear

disparity between the men’s wages and the women’s by 1902.

On December 18, 1908, the Bridgton, ME newspaper Bridgton News ran an article called

“Women in Maine Cotton Mills: Snapshots at Miss Eva L. Shorey’s write up while on tour of

investigation as Special Agent Maine Industrial Bureau.” This special report focused on women

workers in Maine, similar to Matthews’ report of 1888. Like Matthews, Shorey omitted labor

union information from her discussion of female workers. Unlike Matthews, she presented a

different view of workers’ health in cotton mills. Shorey documented the ratio of female to male

workers, the number of immigrant workers, and details the work of weavers, while also stressing

the unhealthy conditions in the mills.

According to Shorey, Lewiston and its neighboring town of Auburn had the biggest

concentration of cotton and woolen mills in the state of Maine by 1908, 12 mills in total. In

Lewiston there were 5,173 textile mill workers, 2,958 of whom were women. At Bates mill in

particular, there were 1,960 workers, 1,216 of them women, and 75% of them French

Canadian.60 The other 25% was comprised of Irish, Scotch, Polish, Greek, Russian and native-

born workers. Across the Lewiston mills, the largest population of immigrant workers were the

French Canadians, often between 75%-95% of the female workers surveyed by Shorey. In the

early 1900s, new groups of immigrants such as the Greeks and Polish began to arrive in

America, and joined the earlier French Canadian and Irish workers in the mills, but their

numbers in Maine were not as large as in other regions.

60 “Women in Maine Cotton Mills: Snapshots at Miss Eva L. Shorey’s write up while on tour of investigation as Special Agent Maine Industrial Bureau,” Bridgton News (Bridgton, ME), Dec. 18, 1908. University of Southern Maine, Franco American Collection, Box H-SS.

45

Shorey’s report focused on the work and home lives of textile mill women, weavers in

particular. She outlined the weaver’s job, to maintain six looms simultaneously, to make sure the

threads don’t break, and to keep the shuttle filled. Often in the weaving rooms male workers

called “loom fixers” maintained the machines that the weavers used. Weavers were likely to

develop health problems due to breathing in cotton: “A habit which cannot fail to be harmful is

that of threading the shuttle, by placing it in the mouth and drawing the thread through by the

suction of the breath.”61 Another problem for the mill women was the lack of ventilation and the

humidity in their work spaces. Shorey stated that humidifiers were used in the mills to keep the

thread from drying out and breaking, but their use was detrimental to the workers. She

commented, “It is claimed that the ‘humidifiers’ which render the warp moist and pliable, and

other devices, are a benefit in improving ventilation, but the sallow, tired faces of some of the

weavers show that the air they breathe is not as invigorating as it should be.”62 While Matthews

contended that “damp clothing” and not mill-work created illness, Shorey’s observations about

humidifiers state that the cause of that damp clothing was mill-work. While Shorey’s

commentary on respiratory issues within the mills was not accusatory, she was still clear about

the health problems caused by textile work. Whereas Matthews, thirty years earlier, denied the

probability of textile operatives developing work-related illnesses; Shorey not only

acknowledged the possibility but placed the blame on the employers. This is position resembled

the newspaper articles from the Progressive Era, by moving away from the clear preference

toward the mill owners to a more realistic and sympathetic view of the daily lives of mill

workers.

61 “Women in Maine Cotton Mills: Snapshots at Miss Eva L. Shorey’s write up while on tour of investigation as Special Agent Maine Industrial Bureau.” 62 Ibid.

46

Shorey also discussed the wages received by female workers in 1908. For a weaver, the

average was $7.60 per week, though depending on the complexity of the pattern desired on the

final product, and how many looms she worked, a weaver could be paid more. For example:

“The weavers of seersuckers and ‘dobby,’ or fancy ginghams, etc., make higher wages than those

on plain goods.”63 The highest paid weavers she surveyed received $11.42 per week, though this

was subject to change from week to week because payment was by the piece. Another factor was

the kind of looms used: Shorey says that “narrow” looms could earn a weaver slightly less than

“broad” looms, which were used to produce larger objects like quilts. Given these factors, the

highest payment per week for a weaver that Shorey surveyed could be as high as $13, but could

also be as low as $5.47. This range demonstrates the absurdity of the earlier claims in the

Brunswick Telegraph’s “Eight Hour Movement,” opinion piece. In the intervening years between

1865 and 1908, after wage increases, an expert weaver making complex fabrics might stand the

chance of making $50 dollars a month but was likely to make less. This fact demonstrates how

uninformed the author of the article was about the extreme outlier he mentions as having made

“$55 dollars a month” in 1865.

Shorey’s portrayal of the living conditions of the tenements was romanticized, as though

she was trying to endear the workers to her readers by describing their poverty in a charming

manner. Yet, she used words like “squalor” to describe the neighborhood, so she was not

unaware of the struggles of the families living in company housing. She observed that many

children were left unminded while their parents were at work, or under the care of their slightly

older sisters, whom she referred to as “little mothers.”64 In many cases, Shorey found, women

worked more hours than their husbands: “...‘father’s job’ doesn’t keep him busy all the time,

63 Ibid.64 Ibid.

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while mother is working the full sixty hours a week.”65 She also commented that mill women

preferred their factory jobs to housework or other forms of employment, comparable to Daniel

Walkowitz’s observation that immigrant women found more status and fulfillment in mill work

than their American-born peers.66

Shorey’s report contained some of the whimsy that Matthews employed, especially in her

depiction of the happy, but poor, children of the women working in the mills. Unlike Matthews,

she acknowledged some of the hardship and life-long health issues that came from working in a

textile mill. While not accusatory towards the mill owners, she suggested that there should be a

better way to run a textile operation, but did not offer any ideas on what might work better than

the system she observed. Like Matthews, Shorey didn’t include information about women’s

involvement in labor unions. It could be that her longer report, not found in the Bridgton News

piece, contained such information, but the newspaper did not mention unions or strike actions.

This absence is significant, especially given that Matthew’s 1902 report discussed male trade

unions at length. It seems that the government of the state of Maine did not consider female trade

union membership to be worthy of recording.

It should be noted as well that both Matthews’ 1888 and Shorey’s 1908 reports were

focused specifically on female workers, while the regular annual reports often barely mention

women workers at all. The lack of information about female workers in the yearly reports

undoubtedly led to the production of these special reports on female workers. While these

female-centered reports do show that the state had interest in and knowledge of its thousands of

female textile workers, they also seemed more heavily focused on reporting about male workers

more frequently. The fact that the 1888 and 1908 reports are 30 years apart, and no other special

65 Ibid.66 Walkowitz.

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reports solely on female workers during the period seem to exist, suggests further the invisibility

of Maine textile women, even in the reform-minded Progressive Era.

“Neutrality” at the Expense of Workers

Throughout the early 1900s reporters at the Lewiston Evening Journal and the Brunswick

Telegraph, by now the Brunswick Record, attempted “fair and factual” reporting, just as

Matthews did for the government. This became problematic, for often the newspapers still

supported the mill owners, but they felt they could not do so overtly. They did develop more

sympathetic views of the working class, but continued to cater to an upper class readership. This

is evident in a 1902 article published in the Journal describing a trolley worker strike in New

Haven, Connecticut. The author attempted to remain impartial but did seem to appreciate the

legitimate struggles that the workers faced. The article, “Tie Up Expected” detailed the situations

which brought on the strike: “For months the motormen and conductors have been complaining

of ‘long hours, arbitrary management, unjust treatment, and discharge without cause.’’’67 Here

the complaints of the workers were listed in quotations, suggesting that the reporter could not

verify them, and therefore it is implied that the trolley drivers’ reasons for striking were based on

unproven facts. The author did allow that many men had recently been fired, as strikers claimed.

“Recent discharges have been numerous and the men claim that the employe[e]s have been

discharged simply because they have been active in the work of organization.”68 This

contradicted his earlier statement that suggested the claims of “discharge without cause” were

unsubstantiated. The reporter made an effort to be respectful of the workers when describing

their meetings. He referred to their exchanges as “heated” but did not equate their passion with

67 “Tie Up Expected,” Lewiston Evening Journal (Lewiston, ME), August 5, 1902, https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=oQQVFBP0nzwC&dat=19020805&printsec=frontpage&hl=en,1.68 “Tie Up Expected.”

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violence, as the writers for the Brunswick Telegraph did in their 1875 article about the Fall River

strike.69

Vitriol against labor leaders and labor reform decreased markedly in the 1900s, part of

the newspapers’ attempts to remain impartial. This is obvious in the Brunswick Record’s report

on the Lawrence, Massachusetts, “Bread and Roses” strike in 1912. The strike began due to a

wage decrease that came about because of a new law limiting the number of hours a woman

could work to 54 a week instead of 56.70 The January 19, 1912, edition of the Record included an

article titled “Mill Men Hold Back,” the tone of which was much more neutral than the 1875 Fall

River article. The author is fairer to the strikers, mentioning how they were trying to arrive at an

agreement with the mill owners, but the owners were unwilling to come to terms with them. This

assertion placed more blame on the mill owners than the strikers. “The strikers stand by their

agreement to discuss their grievances with the manufacturers at a conference...but all attempts to

have the mill owners delegate representatives to meet the strikers at such a conference continue

to be unsuccessful. Thus mediation is not immediately in prospect, and arbitration of the

difficulties is not in sight.”71 This article’s attempt to avoid opinion entirely and only express the

facts of the situation was evident when it discussed the violent altercations between the strikers

and the military, who were called in to protect the strike breakers. “There were two small

demonstrations this morning, but the militia dispersed both crowds without difficulty.”72 This

suggests a much more orderly encounter between the strikers and the law than took place, and

demonstrates the paper’s unwillingness to appear as though they chose sides with either the mill

owners or the strikers in Lawrence.

69 Ibid.70 “Lawrence Strike of 1912,” Harvard University Library Open Collections Program: Women Working, 1800-1930, http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/ww/lawrencestrike.html. 71 “Mill Men Hold Back,” Brunswick Record (Brunswick, ME) Jan. 19, 1912. Pejepscot Historical Society Collections. 72 “Mill Men Hold Back.”

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While many women famously participated in the 1912 “Bread and Roses” strike, the

Record doesn’t discuss the involvement of female mill operatives at all. This is most evident in

the title of the article: “Mill Men Hold Back.” (emphasis mine.) An article published February

16, 1912, mentioned an unnamed “Italian woman,” who died as a result of strike riots. The

Record doesn’t characterize this woman as a bystander or as a striker. This article “More Join

Mill Force” detailed the ongoing struggle in Lawrence. According to the author, increasing

numbers of former strikers headed back to work, at odds with those continuing to strike. The

riots that caused this woman’s death took place between January 15-29th. The author of the

January 19th article must have known of the extent of the violence that was unfolding, but chose

to downplay it in his article. The February article reported on the trial of the strike leaders

charged with causing this woman’s death. The strike leaders, Joseph J. Etter and Arturo

Giovannotti were charged with “...being accessories before the fact to the murder…” and the

article mentions that the district attorney in the case hoped to prove a conspiracy between them

to cause the riots and the consequent death.73 According to an article published for the

International Workers of the World (IWW) website in 2012, violence erupted on both sides of

the strike, but the police were especially brutal.74 True to their Progressive Era form, the paper

offered no opinions on the guilt or innocence of the strikers or police. Their failure to openly

declare favoritism for either side helped maintain their assumed impartiality. Yet, in their

attempts at neutrality, the Record omitted mention of police violence sanctioned by mill owners,

and therefore cannot be viewed as objective.

A March 1, 1912, article called “Trouble at Lawrence,” ventured more of an opinion on

the circumstances in Lawrence than any other from the “Bread and Roses” time period. The 73 “More Join Mill Force,” Brunswick Record (Brunswick, ME), Feb. 16, 1912. Pejepscot Historical Society Collections.74 Andy Piascik, “Bread and Roses a Hundred Years On,” Industrial Workers of the World, published Jan. 11, 2012. https://iww.org/content/bread-and-roses-hundred-years.

51

author described a clash between the strikers and police, during which “strike sympathizers,”

fired upon police officers, and many arrests were made for “...intimidation and disturbances.”75

Further, the author states: “Essex St. was in a state of disorder for half an hour while several

thousand women and men paraded along the picket line, jeering at police and militia, singing

revolutionary songs and creating a general disturbance.”76 This author apparently sided with the

police and militia rather than the strikers, whom he believed caused unnecessary problems in

town. This opinion is demonstrated by his continued use of the word “disturbance” to describe

strike action, and “jeering” to suggest his view that the strikers were part of the problem. His

mention of “revolutionary songs,” suggests that there was a socialist or communist element

among the strikers, given the common association of working class revolution with socialism. It

seems that, however, the use of “evil” communism as an anti-union battle cry was no longer as

relevant as it was in 1875, for the author does not comment directly about the unfavorable

affiliations between unions and communism.

A January 20, 1912 Lewiston Evening Journal article discussing the Lawrence

Massachusetts “Bread and Roses” strike included the word “sensational” in its title, though the

reporting still fairly represented the strikers, even given the violence described.77 A strike leader

named Sarais Marad, a Syrian, was arrested for possession of dynamite, along with other Syrians

and an African American. The race and ethnicity of Marad and his associates was prominently

mentioned, but no racial comments were made about immigrant workers as a result. This

omission may be as a result of the paper’s attempts to be impartial and allow their readership to

make their own assumptions. However, the constant references to race indicated the author’s

75 “Trouble at Lawrence,” Brunswick Record (Brunswick, ME), Mar. 1, 1912. Pejepscot Historical Society Collections.76 “Trouble at Lawrence.” 77 “Dynamite Found, Seven Arrested: Sensational Move on Part of Officers at Lawrence, Mass,” Lewiston Evening Journal (Lewiston, ME), Jan. 20, 1912, https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=oQQVFBP0nzwC&dat=19120120&printsec=frontpage&hl=en, 1.

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biases, and likely framed the basis of the reader’s assumptions about the relationship between

violence and immigrant strikers. This article contained more detail than a similar report in the

Brunswick Record, listing the names of the arrestees, which included two women, Miss Zekia

Rashell and Miss Mary Swizy. These women were named and therefore given agency. Their

involvement in the strike was not ignored or left out of this presentation of the events, which

points to the invisibility of textile mill immigrant working women in the labor movement in

other newspaper accounts. While immigrant women workers did participate in labor action, they

were not thought of as important enough to report on.

Moves to Progressivism

During the 1890s-1910s, it is apparent that both newspaper writers and government

officials had begun to think differently in terms of usefulness of labor unions and to develop an

understanding of workers’ rights. However, as with the “neutrality” discussed above, certain

biases were difficult to escape. For example, paternalistic views of female workers can be found

in a February, 1912, article in the Brunswick Record called “Energy from an Outlook,” reprinted

from the Indianapolis News. The article presented a more whimsical view of factory life for mill

women during the Progressive Era. According to the article, female operatives were going on

strike due to lack of a view and natural light from the windows in their workplace. “To the girls

in the factory the trains that go by are the expression of all the world of life. They bring dreams

of everything from everywhere and the dreams become more real than the machines.” For this

reason, the author stated, “our sympathy is with the girls.”78 The article emphasized the

importance of intellectual stimulation in the workplace to break up the monotony of factory life.

While it might seem odd to strike for a view, the author articulated why the mill workers might

78 “Energy from an Outlook,” Brunswick Record (Brunswick, ME), Feb. 9, 1912. Pejepscot Historical Society Collections.

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do so. While this article sympathized with the female operatives, it maintained a playful tone

which suggests that the author understood why an observer might find the strike foolish. The

constant use of the word “girls” to describe the mill women further suggests the author’s view of

the workers as child-like.

Government reports from the 1890s contribute to the understanding of the government’s

view on labor organization and strikes, and the shift towards Progressive Era reform ideas about

workers’ rights. As seen in the above article, however, while the government hoped to improve

workers’ lives, they could still be paternalistic. Most informative on these topics are the Bureau’s

annual reports for 1895 and 1899. In Matthew’s introduction to the 1895 report, he gave an

overview of the labor statistics and conditions in the state that year. This included information on

the growth and expansion of industry, as well as the status of labor organization in the state. He

stated: “The relations between employers and employed during the year have generally been

amicable and satisfactory, but few strikes and other ‘labor troubles’ have occurred. Labor of all

kinds has had employment at fair wages and a marked improvement in many lines of business is

noticeable.”79 This is an interesting assessment, because while it addresses the occurrence of

strikes, it goes on to say that employment has been at “fair wages.” If this statement was true,

why were there labor disturbances in the first place? This mention of “labor troubles” admits that

such things happen while at the same time declaring that conditions have been such that they are

no longer necessary now that relations between workers and their bosses have improved. Clearly,

the government hoped for continued understandings between these parties for the future profit of

the state’s economy.

79 Samuel W. Matthews, Ninth Annual Report of the Bureau of Industrial and Labor Statistics for the State of Maine, 1895 (Augusta, Me.: Burleigh & Flynt, 1896), https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3011020;view=1up;seq=9, 5.

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The same short mention of labor conditions appeared in the Bureau’s 1899 report. In

1899 it seems that there were fewer “labor troubles,” than in 1895, because this report introduced

the situation of workers as much rosier: “The conditions of labor have been very satisfactory

during the past year. Our working people have experienced no lack of employment at fair wages.

Labor disturbances have been few in numbers and brief in duration.”80 The evolution between

1895 and 1899 appears, according to these reports, to be a growth of understanding between the

employer and the employed. Again, this description simplified the labor actions of that year, but

it suggests that the movement towards understanding workers’ issues had begun to be a concern

of the established powers such as the government. This concern was further developed in the

1899 report which detailed the proceedings of the National Convention of Labor Bureaus for that

year. One speaker, Col. Wright, from the United States Industrial Commission, believed that it

should be part of his commission’s responsibilities to help employers and their workers develop

an understanding of each other’s needs and to mediate their issues. He first detailed what he

believed to be the main issues between employers and employees. “We all know that the chief

cause of difficulties which come between the employer and the employee is that of suspicion.

Each suspects the other of some motive...which will be detrimental to its own interest. The work

of the Commission can do much to remove this suspicious attitude, or rather to modify it, if not

more than that.”81 Wright went on to say that maybe by helping employers and employees reach

mutual understandings the government could avoid economic problems that might occur should

a labor action take place. “...If it [the commission] can convince both employer and employee

that each has the perfect right to know the conditions of the industry in which they are interested,

80 Samuel W. Matthews, Thirteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Industrial and Labor Statistics for the State of Maine, 1899 (Augusta, Me.: Kennebec Journal Print, 1900), https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo.31924062269141;view=1up;seq=7, 6.81Samuel W. Matthews, Thirteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Industrial and Labor Statistics for the State of Maine, 1899, 160-161.

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that the man who receives two dollars a day has just as good a right to want two dollars and a

half a day as the man who is getting fifty thousand dollars income has a right to want seventy-

five thousand--if you can once get that principle instilled...you will reduce the number of strikes

and increase the prosperity of all concerned.”82 This speech presented a very progressive view of

the government as equalizer between disparate classes. Therefore it demonstrates the changing

views between the 1880s and the 1890s on the rights and problems of the worker. The

government in 1888, as represented by Matthews as their “special agent,” did not even address

labor issues. Just eleven years later a government official suggested not only that workers have

rights, but that the government possessed the responsibility to help them come to an

understanding with their employer about those rights. While these ideas constitute a step toward

governmental acceptance of unions, they are also problematic. The idea that the government will

always mediate fairly in labor disputes was idealistic to say the least. Wright’s ideas of economic

issues arising from strikes also conformed to the era’s stereotype that strikes, both successful and

unsuccessful, were detrimental to the economy and should be avoided. This presented a

conundrum: if strikes should be avoided at all cost in order to preserve the state’s economic

gains, then what reasons would the government have to mediate them in the favor of the worker,

besides a moral obligation to do so if the situation warranted it. The government stood to profit

more from association with companies than with unions, therefore the government would be

working against the economic interest of the state if they attempted to help the workers. As

government is run by fallible officials, it is idealistic to assume that the government would

always arbitrate fairly between employer and employed. This speech of Wright’s moved toward

the Progressive Era’s acceptance of worker’s rights but has not found a solution for government

involvement in labor action.

82 Ibid, 161.

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The reforms of the Progressive Era helped to create a greater understanding

between members of the upper classes and the working class. Still, newspaper editors and

government reports maintained a covert bias to mill owners when writing their reports. And

despite the high documented number of immigrant women working in mills, they were not often

discussed as labor actors among the establishment elite. Even though progressivism championed

equality, unions and labor activities were still considered to be the purview of men.

Conclusion

Textile company records help determine the number of immigrant women working in

Maine’s textile mills between 1860-1910s. Establishment sources such as newspapers and

government reports also occasionally document these women and their work. In the middle of

the 19th century members of the upper classes were more likely to exhibit views of paternalism

towards workers and to prosecute unions in their reports. In spite of this, during the period

between the 1860s-1880s these sources also recognized the work women contributed to the

economy of their state, considered the possibility of fewer hours for the work day, and didn’t

actively discriminate against immigrants.

When Progressive Era ideals of equality and peace began to take hold in the 1890s-

1910s, there was a growth in understanding between the upper classes and the working class.

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Workplace reforms that helped increase wages, decrease hours, and prevent work-related illness

took hold. Yet, regardless of these improvements, the Progressive Era was not perfect. Often

established elite still favored mill owners over workers, only less overtly than in previous years.

And despite all the immigrant women working in the textile industry in Maine, women were not

considered to be labor actors, and excluded from government reports and newspaper articles

discussing unionism. Despite the beneficial reforms of the Progressive Era, Maine immigrant

textile mill women were still largely missing from the records of the time period. Reading

against the grain of establishment sources is necessary in order to continue to bring their

experiences and labor action to light.

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