Threads of history

By Deborah Allard Dion

An ancestry search into his grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ work in the Fall River mills led retired attorney Jay J. Lambert to complete a years-long history project that has culminated in American Textile Colossus, a new book published by the Fall River Historical Society Press.

The book focuses on the story of Fall River’s cotton manufacturing mills and its people and shines a new light on an industry that transformed a small town into a thriving, internationally known center of business.

“There really was no reason for Fall River at all, other than its mills,” Lambert said. “It had good luck to be built on the Quequechan River. The mills needed water power in their early days.”

The Quequechan River gave those mills all the power they needed to first compete, and then to thrive.

Manufacturing cotton textiles in Fall River began in 1811 in a small wooden factory building owned by Col. Joseph Durfee in the Globe area of the city.

By the 1870s, there were 115 mills in the city, all owned by 40 corporations, making it the largest textile center in the country. And, there were plenty of workers as immigrants flooded to the city for the opportunity to give their families a better life.

The city’s population grew from 14,026 in 1860 to 45,160 in 1875 and to more than 100,000 by 1900.

“It was the English and Irish that came over first,” Lambert said. “Then the French-Canadians came over. It was by far the largest population in Fall River at one time.”

Their work was hard and their pay was small. No one worker could support the family solely, so husbands, wives, and their children often all worked in the mills.

A study into the textile wage system found that youth working in the mills contributed about a third of their family’s entire income.

“The grind would begin even before the start-up of the machines,” Lambert wrote in his book, based on historical accounts. “The spinners rarely had breakfast before entering the mill in the morning. They were required to be there early in order to clean and oil their machines before starting up; they had no time and in many cases no inclination to eat.”

Oftentimes, workers would have a mouthful here and there while they worked. They rarely left the mill during the day and stayed late to clean up.

Lambert, is his research, found firsthand accounts of mill workers that he included in his book.

“I have been nine years in Fall River, and have never worked anywhere else, except in England, where we worked at high speed, but not [to] the extent practiced here[.] ” one mill worker was quoted.

Another talked about the difficult conditions for some of the women.

“The spool tenders, God pity them, were the hardest working girls I ever saw. Their work was always ahead of them, so feet and arms and body were going all day long. They were paid by the box, and could earn seventy cents a day.”

The same worker continued, “There may have been honest mill men, probably there were, but I believe most of them were mad on the matter of production at low cost. All or nearly all the mills stole time. They were supposed to start the mill in the early years at six o’clock, later at six-thirty. They started ten minutes before the hour under the plea they had to get headway, which only took two or three minutes. They started earlier at the noon. They ran until five minutes past six and so on. Always having in mind to get a little more out of the help than they were entitled to.”

Grueling work

Lambert said his mother worked in the mills for only a short time, as most of the cotton mills closed “one mill after another” in the 1920s. A few remained at diminished capacity until the early 1960s.

His mother, he said, worked in the city’s sewing shops all her life as did many others when the cotton industry folded.

“I never thought of the mills that much,” Lambert said.

But, he discovered in a genealogy search that nearly all of his family members in the late 19th and early 20th centuries worked in the mills, either in England or Fall River.

Lambert learned that his maternal grandmother, born in 1875, came with her parents to Fall River when she was a year old. By the age of 14, she was working in the mills, as were her parents.

“They all worked in the mills,” Lambert said. “That’s all there was.” He also discovered that his grandmother was actually 12 when she started working, and like so many other youngsters had lied about her age to get a mill job and contribute to the family’s income.

“I learned a lot about my own family,” Lambert said.

He researched at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Library and the Fall River Historical Society and started to create folders on different topics related to Fall River textile mill history.

Roughly two years ago, Lambert began writing the book. “I came to the conclusion that there really isn’t a book about the mills after 1946,” Lambert said. “It finally closes the last chapter on the mills in Fall River.”

The “American Textile Colossus” offers 545 pages of stories, data, and history along with 45 illustrations in 32 chapters, plus extensive endnotes, bibliography, and index.

The book is for sale by the Fall River Historical Society for $28.95 at its Museum Shop, 451 Rock Street, open Monday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. For information, contact Curator Michael Martins at curator@fallriverhistorical.org or call 508-679-1071 Ext. 101.