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Labor in a Massachusetts Cotton Mill, 1853–601

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2012

Ray Ginger
Ray Ginger
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Business History at Harvard University
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Abstract

Skilled textile workers migrated from Scotland to Massachusetts in the 1850's because of a large wage differential and low steerage rates for the transatlantic passage. For each one of 56 women weavers in the Lyman Mills, expenditures on current consumption took less than 75 per cent of income. But the circumstances were unusual, so this sample does not permit any conclusions about the role of wage-earners' savings in the accumulation of capital in New England. In this mill, two-thirds of the labor force in 1860 had been working there less than three years. The impact of this high degree of labor mobility on labor relations and on the technology of the industry is tentatively assessed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , March 1954 , pp. 67 - 91
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1954

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References

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30 Bill presented to Charles Cochran by John Gebbie, solicitor, of Glasgow, Box LW-1, Lyman Mills Papers.

31 Ledger LH-1, ibid.

32 The entries for earnings in Ledger LH-1 have been checked against the entries in the payroll ledgers (Payroll Ledgers LX-2, LX-3, LY-1, Lyman Mills Papers), and have been confirmed in every case.

33 Income spent to repay a debt is obviously equivalent to savings, in the sense that it is withheld from current consumption.

34 Statement signed by Christina McKimm et al., 16 July 1853, Box LW-1, Lyman Mills Papers.

35 Receipts for these drafts are in Box LW-1, ibid.

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54 Printed circulars of Enoch Train & Company and its Boston agents, ibid.

55 This tax had a tortuous history. The Passenger Act of 1837 in Massachusetts provided for a head tax on alien passengers. This tax was stricken down by the U. S. Supreme Court on 7 Feb. 1849 (Smith vs. Turner and Norria vs. City of Boston, 48 US 282, 7 Howard 283, 12 L.Ed. 702). Massachusetts then passed a new act requiring the master, owner or consignee of every ship bringing alien passengers to the state to post a bond of $1,000 for each such person which would be forfeited if the person became a public charge at any time during his life. In the case of able-bodied aliens, this bond could be commuted by payment of a head tax of $2.00 for each alien. The shipping companies, rather than post the impossible aggregate of bonds, paid the commutation fee whenever they were permitted to do so (Hale, Letters on Irish Emigration, 24–27). A similar act in New York was declared unconstitutional by the U. S. Supreme Court in 1875 (Henderson et al. vs. Mayor of New York et al., 92 US 259).

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60 This factor does not greatly affect any specific entry.

61 In addition to the 66 women included in Table 2, Table 3 covers the following groups: (a) 33 women weavers, 11 piecers, and 7 fly-frame girls, who arrived in Holyoke about 1 June, 1854; (b) 34 persons (of whom 29 were women weavers), who arrived in Holyoke in late October, 1855.

62 In the usual modern terminology, these jobs would be designated foreman, assistant foreman, slasher tender, and loomfixer.

63 In the Pepperell mills at Biddeford, Maine, from 1870 to 1920, the managerial ranks — agents, superintendents, overseers — “stayed with the company for long periods.” Knowlton, Pepperell's Progress, 153. The writer found a similar result in a study of the managerial ranks in the anthracite industry in 1902; see an article based on this research which will appear soon in the Journal of Economic History.

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70 This account is based on several memoranda in the Miscellaneous administrative papers, Vol. 19, Hamilton Mfg. Co. Papers, Baker Library, Harvard University.

71 Register LA-1, Lyman Mills Papers.

72 Quoted by Green, Holyoke, 48–49.

73 Jane Wallace to Stephen Holman, 8 Dee. 1858, Box LW-1, Lyman Mills Papers.

74 Same to same, 9 Oct. 1858, ibid.

75 Memorandum labeled “Mr. Mills letter of instructions to me when going to New York to make arrangements for DeWylder [?],” ibid.

76 A. G. Goodwin to Stephen Holman, 16 Nov. 1854, ibid. Goodwin was superintendent of the Office of the Commissioner of Alien Passengers in Boston.

77 Bartlett, Vindication, 14.

78 Lowell, John A., “Patrick Tracy Jackson,” in Hunt, Freeman, ed., Lives of American Merchants, 2 vols. (New York, 1858), I, 564–5Google Scholar. Compare Chancellor Harper's comment that the free laborer “may change his employer if he is dissatisfied with his conduct towards him; but this is a privilege he would in the majority of cases gladly abandon, and render the connection between them indissoluble.” [Harper, Williamet al.], The Pro-Slavery Argument (Philadelphia, 1853), 52–53.Google Scholar

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