Destination: Holyoke

Holyoke's industries were built from entrepreneurship using immigrant and migrant labor. By the 1880s, Holyoke, known as the Paper City, was a booming industrial center. Not only did immigrant labor from Ireland contribute to the booming paper industry, but groups like the French Canadians, Polish and Germans worked in textile factories producing cotton, wool and silk.  

Workers in the mills were on the job at 5:00 am. At 6:00 am they could stop for breakfast for an hour. Dinner came at 12:15 pm for 45 minutes. At 6:30 pm, workers got another 45 minutes for supper. They often worked until 9:00 pm for six days a week.

There were no legal regulations of hours or conditions of labor in Massachusetts before 1874. All immigrant groups to some extent shared the problems of low wages, long hours and poor working conditions. Holyoke’s average wages were below that for the state.  In 1876 a mass meeting of unemployed marched upon City Hall to demand of the Board of Aldermen the building of a new sewer which would supply work. “We did not come to this country to starve,” cried one (Transcript, September 16, 1876). In the fall of 1878, women who had supported families on their earnings as rag sorters in the fine writing-paper mills had to ask the city for assistance when their hours were reduced.

 
Chemical Paper Company, located on the third level canal, 1887. The company was formed by the four Newton brothers and was the largest paper mill when it was built in 1880. Though originally founded as the Newton Company with Moses and James Newton in 1876, it was eventually jointly established by the four brothers, including John and Daniel, into Chemical Paper Company. In 1913, however, Clifton Crocker and Frank McElwain purchased the plant and created the more efficient Crocker-McElwain Company.

 

 

 

 William Whiting, made his first appearance in connection with the paper business in 1858, as clerk in the Holyoke Paper Company. His first attempt at paper-manufacturing was in connection with the Hampden Company. When the old Holyoke Company disposed of its establishment Mr. Whiting ceased his connection with it, and having sold his interest in the Hampden, in 1865 he organized the Whiting Paper Company, pictured here in the 1890s.  In 1879, it was the second largest paper manufactory in the world, with a capacity of nearly eleven tons per day.

A state law of 1867 stipulated that all children under 15 years of age, no matter what background, must be sent to school at least three months out of every year under penalty of fine to be collected from the employer. A survey conducted in 1869, however, revealed general disregard of that law by employers. In the 151 mill towns where child labor was used, between 5,000 -6,000 children under 15 were employed in mills and shops, of whom 60% could not read or write. Early labor regulations governing female and child labor were critical in shaping the textile industry, but did not, however, affect the paper industry because of its vast predominance in adult male labor. Photographs from the Collection of Lewis W. Hine.

American Thread Company workers, c. 1920s.  In 1911 there was a general business expansion for the American Thread Company. During this time, capacity increased to 2,000 employees and wages increased by 5%. The American Thread Company was increasingly tied to the interests of the English Corporation owning them, the English Sewing Cotton Company. In the general business expansion of 1916, the capacity of the mill was enlarged and 2000 employees were given a 5% wage increase; when business fell off after World War I, wages were cut.

Clinton Silk Mills, c. 1950s. Joseph Hampson founded a textile factory at 58 Canal Street. In 1938, he deeded the property to his son, Walter, and Walter named the business Clinton Silk Mills, named after his first born son, Clinton. Their silk was used in the production of parachutes during World War II, along with the products of cotton and synthetic cloth used for lining in suit coats. It is currently the site of Hadley Printing Company, who purchased it in 1976. Photograph courtesy of Anna Hampson and Family.

 

 

 

Eugenie Cote was born in France in 1904. Her parents immigrated to Holyoke when she was seven years old. When she was fourteen, she went to work for the Skinner Mills and worked there from 1918 to 1940. She is standing at the warping machine at William Skinner & Sons Silk Manufacturing Company, c. 1926. She said, “There were always quite a few openings [for jobs]…There was one time that work must have been slow or something because the ones that had their husbands working, they got laid off for a while but now I don’t remember if that was during the depression or what. I worked steady.” 

The spinning department at the Farr Alpaca Mills on Jackson Street in Holyoke employed Stella Baran and Julia Werbiskis Gardner as doffers.  At the Farr Alpaca dye house women were paid $12-14 a week.

 

The Lyman and Farr Alpaca mill closings were part of what might be called the deindustrialization of the New England textile industry. Between 1920 and World War II, Massachusetts lost nearly 45% of its textile production jobs. But after 1940, a large infusion of military contracts, promising unprecedented profits, stabilized the regional industry and led some manufacturers to reopen deserted plants. During this period, however, nearly 200 mills were shut down. Others drastically reduced their scale of operations. The decline of the New England textile industry had lasting consequences, not simply for the communities directly affected, but for the entire region and the rest of the country as well. Competition for jobs increased due to the layoff of over 100,000 textile workers; consequently, wage rates were reduced. From 1950 – 1960, manufacturing workers’ wages in New England declined 16% relative to the rest of the nation. The high unemployment rate in New England, largely stemming from textile plant shutdowns, as compared with most of the rest of the country in the 1950s and the insecurity and demoralization caused by the unemployment, seriously debilitated the region’s labor movement.

he first Holyoke local assembly of the Knights of Labor was organized in November 1882 with 14 members. The activities of the Holyoke Knights were directed toward the passage of a weekly payments law, shortening the hours of the paper mill workers and arbitration of strikes. The Knights of Labor got involved in the paper mill workers’ campaign to shorten their weekend hours. Hours of labor were much on the minds of workers in post-Civil War Massachusetts. A law passed in 1874 stated women and children under 18 years old were restricted to working 60 hours per week. That had effectively shortened the workday for all textile mill employees, but the paper mills, which employed far fewer women and children and in less strategic jobs in the overall manufacturing operation were hardly affected at all.

During the early 1890s wage and hour disputes stopped the textile machinery at the Farr Alpaca Company, Lyman Mills and Merrick Thread Company. In 1899, the strikers at Farr Alpaca, mostly French Canadian women, accepted a company offer to revise the fine system and increase wages by 5%, but not before they had formed a union. Within a few weeks, the Polish and French Canadian weavers at Lyman Mills also established separate unions and joined operatives in other departments in seeking to restore the 1896 wage schedule.

Anna Sullivan was a leader in the organizing drive of the Amalgamated Textile Workers Union during the 1930s. The union brought the first 40 hour week to Skinner in 1936; she was hired by the Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO) in 1938 as a full-time organizer, and she eventually became the vice-president of the Massachusetts CIO: “I organized in Easthampton, Ludlow, door-to-door and leafleting factories. I had three types of leaflets - - in Polish, in French and in English. The people came out and waited to get their leaflet…From that, we built up. We came up a whole lot compared to what we ever had.”

Other Holyoke Businesses

Holyoke & South Hadley Falls Ice Company (above) and Holyoke Ice Company (below) which delivered to Ashley Pond, were important resources for the citizens and businesses of Holyoke. Photographs courtesy of Mark Larrow.

 

Vollert’s Dairy started before the 1900s and progressed for years, delivering milk to Holyoke. Their dairy was located at Dwight and Northampton Streets.  Photographs courtesy of the Holyoke Public Library History Room.