PBS - Mill Times - David Macaulay

there was a time before automobiles and shopping malls and cell phones when you had to work pretty hard to get the things you needed just to live a reasonable life in fact most of life's essentials like the clothing on your back the food on your table even the house in which you lived were the product of muscle human as well as animal and individual skill because you had to grow or make the things you needed it took a lot longer to get want fast food forget it no drive-in chicken joints here a new house a bigger barn start with the trees at the edge of the forest but about 200 years ago all that began to change with the help of Mills these early factories turned out machine made products that could be bought in stores and they offered a new way of working that change the way people lived societies that once responded to the rhythm of the Sun and seasons now move to the beating of the cloth this Industrial Revolution would bring giant factories and working classes entrepreneurs and inventors and an era we call Milton's major funding for mill Times has been provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities for 30 years expanding our understanding of the world and by the National Science Foundation America's investment in the future funding is also provided by the Arthur vining Davis foundations and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you thank you so what did people do 200 years ago if they needed a necessity of life like clothing say you need a new pair of pants or a shirt there's no mall nearby so you have to make them and the first thing you must do is gather the raw material now in some regions you turn to cotton or flax but here at New England's Old Sturbridge Village you turn to sheep for their wool of course it wasn't that easy sheep shearing was a laborious process for the Shearer and the Sheep and then you had to have someone with enough skill to turn all this raw wool into cloth after cleaning the rule it had to be carted this took strong fingers and prickly brushes like pet brushes to untangle and separate the fibers and to create wispy tubes of wool called slivers you then stretch the sliders into yarn on a spinning rule notice how the yarn gets twisted as it winds onto the spindle this makes it strong enough to leave without breaking you turn yarn into fabric on a loom this is a typical hand loom now weaving was done by both men and women so I should probably do okay at this first of all we have to set up the loom by drawing threads from the warp beam behind the loom across the top to another beam near my feet the warp threads passed through harnesses which I can raise or lower by pressing down on these foot pedals and when I do that it creates a space between alternating sets of warp threads we're going to take the shuttle which is this wooden contraption with a spool of yarn in it called a bobbin I'm going to push it across through that space perpendicular to the warp threads I then press it down change pedals to raise the other harness to create that over-and-under pattern that you get used to seeing and weaving I send the shuttle back through pull it snug tamp it down and repeat this process over and over again until there's something else I'm supposed to do or my arms fall off you can see just how much time is going to go into this to produce enough fabric to make clothes I mean there's the carding and the spinning and the weaving then there's the cutting in the stitching and so on which sort of explains why people back then would have had relatively few clothes but by the middle of the 1700s help is on the way and it began with water powered machines for centuries people had used the turning force of waterways to help with tough jobs like driving blades for sawing wood and rotating for stones for grinding grain into flour but eventually waterwheels began to power more complicated devices that would revolutionize cloth making like this carding machine what an improvement over the pet brushes and by rolling out wispy slivers all day long it was a great labor saving device but this was even better I'm standing next to a machine called a water friend it was created by the famous English inventor Richard Arkwright this models from the 1780s to spin cotton into yarn so it looks fairly complex it really isn't it runs on water power just like the carding machine and saw blades we saw earlier the cotton in the top spools is drawn out by the action of the machine which twists it nice and tight and then gathers the yarn onto these bottom spools it works just like a hand spinning 96 of them actually so it's little wonder but spinning by machine would eventually make spinning by hand pop soon in no time spinning Mills began springing up all over him by the late 1700s these mills were putting whole villages to work making yarn inside the new factories or weaving it into cloth in their homes the spinning industry was so successful it quickly spread to the rest of Europe and it was only a matter of time before it reached England's former colonies in America as well but under the where the Lodi graduate knows my name and you prey on Huntington I'm going to America to start my own mill a thread making mill you where my brother is already in America a mechanic like myself hope to go into business with him could such an English spinning mill be built in this rough land there aren't many who would have the skill but if anyone could do it it'll be me now I need only find some person of means to invest in my vision Welsh a track we've still got many more appointments today please God one will show some interest you'll never make money out of that in America mr. Huntington good day to you I suppose I'd best be writing my brother about that job after all well they say America is a land of opportunity for a man with a vision and I'm sure I am that man and this breast wheel design mr. Ketcham is ideally suited to the rivers hereabouts and and and this spot on the Blackstone River would be perfect perhaps now I know little of these thread making mills I am certain the mill such as this will be profitable in no time I'd like a man with vision evidently so does my daughter Elizabeth it seems that you've gained both our interest you will dine with us tonight I would be honored sir Shadrach shadrach good news very good news we have an investor hmm I hope you'll not be disappointed oh I'm certain we'll succeed you and I now call upon my son-in-law whose vision inspired me in this noble enterprise to inaugurate Huntington Mill friends and neighbors on this day our community is entering a new era such as has never been seen before in this land Huntington Mill will bring new jobs new opportunity a new prosperity for all you dear father pram has accomplished a great deal with your support the local people are quite taken with the new mill even Mary Methuen who was one of the best hand spinners in the area has come she now runs the boarding house for the men who work in the mill each spinning frame produces as much yarn in a day as 50 hand spinners Priam is already taking orders from Boston all in the community are doing better because of our mill before they dam the river for the mill we had all the fish we needed now the salmon are blocked from swimming upstream to spawn I say just chop up the dam and be done with it one year ago today we opened our doors shadrach and you've yet to turn the profit ah but close still building our business our time will come did you see this what's this embargo all about no British goods to be sold here this embargo was your idea I suppose no but with people not able to buy English yarn now thereafter by hours another drink perhaps are we drum just to warm the adults all mills need a steady supply of running water and here in New England there's plenty of rain and melting snow to feed powerful rivers that once drove the big wheels of the new textile mills but any rivers flow can be unpredictable sometimes there's too much water sometimes not enough so to control the power of the river mill owners built dams this old dam on the branch River in Rhode Island is a typical mill dam it doesn't completely block the river but it raises the height of the water to create an elevated mill pond now if we dig a channel called a head race from the pond to the mill that pent-up water behind the dam will flow through the head race turn the wheel and then rejoin the river through the tail race so dams in their ponds acted like storage tanks where the h2o fuel the waterwheel engines ran on you can still find scores of mill dams all along New England's rivers but this one in particular Oh Thailand is special because it powered America's very first spinning me legend has it that in 1789 a young entrepreneur named Samuel Slater defied the laws of England by supervising the construction of English style cotton spinning machinery at the mill and Pawtucket England had tried to protect its fledgling monopoly on spinning machines with patents but Slater who worked in the mills understood how to make similar machines and came to America to seek his fortune other Rhode Island Mills quickly followed Slater's successful venture including the picturesque Wilkinson mill right next door which houses a beautifully restored waterwheel and gives us a pretty good idea of how a power train actually works at the Wilkinson mill water from the head race flows into a wheelhouse where it steadily turns the big waterwheel the wheel is connected to revolving metal gears and as the gears turn and rhythm with the wheel they rotate a vertical pole called the main shaft the main shaft Rises through the ceiling and extends all the way to the top of the building on each floor the vertical shaft turns horizontal shafts that hang just below the ceiling a leather belt carries the power from those horizontal shafts to a pair of pulleys above each machine now to get the power to the machine itself I'm going to turn the machine on by sliding the belt from one pulley to another and voila the machine works now this is not a spinning machine it's a leg a lot of Mills like Wilkinson had their own machine shops this is a wood lathe was actually used to produce those humble workhorses of the spinning industry the bobbin yarn from the spinning machines was spooled onto bobbins and in the beginning that's all the textile mills produced yarn but by the 1820s inventors had finally figured out how to make machines that could take all those spools of yarn and weave them into cloth this power loom is weaving a plain piece of fabric all the things I had to do on the handloom are now being performed by this machine only a whole lot faster in fact the wooden shuttle I through by hand whips its thread back and forth so quickly we have to slow down the action for you to see it these looms could be very dangerous if a shuttle like this should break free pierce it's less like a bullet you got your sleeve hot it can cost you an arm but when the power loom is perfected weaving like yarn spinning before it would move from the home to the mill many newer mills became huge his owners sought greater profits by bringing carting spinning and weaving all under the same roof as more and more mills sprang up that was increased competition and the occasional dispute over issues like backwater backwater would occur when one Mills Dam impeded the natural flow of the river to the point where water wheels in upstream Mills couldn't turn properly because water was so valuable as fuel clashes over water rights were common but with the demand for machine made textiles soaring it looked like everyone's profits would just keep flowing you Daniel come back now you're getting cold just a few more minutes mama so determined just like his father what's that what a meal shaft just connect ice ah machines don't last forever you know we've all these new alders to fill by the time you get the thing going again will we still have customers and what will these repairs cost dare I ask shouldn't be cheap but they're safe I know it looks great but this actually could be good for us really is optimism could be the difference you know the idea why don't we regard this as an opportunity to increase the size and capacity of the mill we could improve the dam and install a bigger wheel to run even more machines I don't ever thought of that and I've soared the shaft in half myself before now Josiah I believe we'd make back the investment many times over you're talking about rebuilding the entire mill investing in new machines it will take years to recover our funds spinning is merely the beginning there are looms now they will actually weave cloth we can be the first in the area to have them there's no end to progress if we only prepare ourselves to meet it the mill established by my father and grandfather is much larger now for some time I have helped in running business shadrach has now brought in his nephew Zachary to help him with the machinery the new mechanical looms can be temperamental I hope it holds together as his Shadrach when they don't function as they should Zach is doing a fine job in the mill so as Mary Matthew wins young niece Sarah I do believe Zach has taken a fancy to her she came last year after her parents died he started as a bobbin girl and progressed quickly into one of our best Weaver's she even finds time to help Mary at the boarding house in fact everything in our little community has been going splendidly but now I run up against it now ladies Oh Shadrach you are always gloomy ma'am but today there's a real reason for gloom and so I give you Northgate mill yes shadrach we are not alone anymore ah the new mills dam has created backwater the wheel cannot turn freely and none of our machines can operate properly that's intolerable and they've twice the workers we have they've no right people have a right to work Daniel and a right to steal away our business and what might I do for you esteemed gentlemen we'd like to speak with the owners regrettably they live out of town who are they they're prefer to remain discreet prudent business you know last week your dam backed up the water and made it impossible to turn our wheel at speed you're depriving us of our just water rights a matter of opinion I'm sure a matter of fact with respect sir what is a matter of fact if memory serves is that you dam the river long before my employers did sir well that was a different situation but germane I should think good day to you gentlemen we shall achieve our desired outcome through the courts but if they don't do anything we could be ruined you've worked too hard for that father it should be remember that when you built your mill some of the farmers complained about your dam and what it was doing to their fishing but with our mill brought jobs to this community north great mill brings even more you will pay full restitution to the Northgate owners to rebuild their dam but wait a moment this isn't fair after all the work we've done and you two have done enough damage as it is and I expect both parties to meet and work out an arrangement to use the river for everyone's benefit I expect to see a report to that effect in 30 days port is adjourned mr. Zachary Maura yes sir I've heard you're mechanically minded and get the most out of your workers those are valuable skills young man valuable skills indeed in an industry such as our this huge room would have been fairly typical of weaving floors in the big textile mills of the 19th century as Mills grew larger some of them changed from businesses that could be managed by one or two people and a small workforce to a factory system with hundreds of workers and scores of managers overseers and accountants the biggest problem for the biggest mills like boot mill here in Lowell Massachusetts was finding enough workers to run the machinery in the early 19th century 9 out of 10 Americans still lived on farms and had no experience with mill work without enough skilled hands to run the complex machinery the big Mills of Lowell Massachusetts would have remained a dream it was American textile entrepreneur Francis Cabot Lowell who had the vision in the first place he had witnessed the terrible conditions faced by mill workers in England and decided he could create a wholesome atmosphere that would attract country women to work in his Mills when he offered decent wages to the daughters of cash-strapped farmers flocked to this unique city of mills and became famous as the Lowell girls when they arrived the women found that Lowell was serious about the wholesome atmosphere there were rules and curfews that everyone had to follow even when they weren't working drinking alcohol was strictly prohibited for example and to further protect their reputations and souls employers required all women to attend Sunday church service all other times Belle's called the women to work their day would last 12 to 13 hours or more and when they weren't working they spent most of their time inside one of the hundreds of boarding houses scattered throughout the city the women of Lowell were very well fed by their employers one wrote we had Cod soup baked cod and fish hash we have pie two or three times a day coffee and warm biscuits all the workers got three decent meals a day clean linens and a room to sleep in and all for about a dollar and a quarter a week now that me sound like a bargain but it only left them two or three dollars a week after working for 70 hours or more now that's about the same as a few hundred dollars in today's money not great for all that work but still a lot better than working on the farm where they probably would have gotten nothing excuse me is there any more of that fish hash the young women lived in cramped rooms with two or three beds to a room sharing beds wasn't too bad considering they often slept in worse conditions back home they love to write letters and keep journals complaints about rodents the communal outhouse and a lack of privacy were common but most women clearly liked the boardinghouse life and the excitement of the city especially on Sundays there one day off after church they would spend their time courting socializing or promenade in the fresh air they might attend a play a lecture or a concert until this brief respite was over and then it was back to the mills for another week of heavy toil the work at Lowell was fast-paced and strenuous the noise of the machinery made some workers death and the dust filled air was unhealthy to breathe most women saved them and left after a few years some returned home others struck out to make their own destiny but while they were here they became highly skilled workers capable of performing the intricate tasks that made these Mills successful I'm so pleased you elected to join us here at Northgate you will be an overseer with many responsibilities and opportunities and just sign here mr. Moore it was a difficult decision moving over to Northgate mill with uncle Shadrach and old mr. Huntington passed on to their reward and Daniel unwilling to take on the cost of expanding I feel I have no choice you'll be very happy here I'm sure I knowing Daniel thinks I deserted him this mill represents the future far more than his someday perhaps I could even own my own mill that would be splendid mr. Moore please call me Zachary or even just Zach if you prefer what about you miss mithoon Sarah and of what do you dream I've never found dreaming a particularly productive activity go on tell him Sarah well if you must know I'd love to own a small shop someday perhaps sell hats oh I shouldn't have told you come over to Northgate Sarah I've told them about you they pay good cash wages you can begin saving for your shop I'd be old before I'd saved enough some of the weavers put away as much as $50 a year but they must work so much harder and faster I hear tell how most country girls who don't know the ways of industry with your experience you'd be fine a top earner in no time I'll consider your offer mr. Moore I hope you will did you hear that cash wages and Albin I could operate a loom just like you and you could get to know mr. Moore even better stop these opportunities don't come along every day I'm sorry Mary but I won't make an exception if Sara no longer works in my mill she no longer lives in my boarding house now Sara you don't have to worry about me North gets a good opportunity and it's not like you're moving far away there are nice families you can live with there and we still see each other on Sundays so don't make no buts you have to make your own place in this world just as I came from the farm to the mill when I was about your age the market is blotted and prices continue to fall we are being forced to sell our cloth for less therefore we must find ways to be more productive and lower costs everyone is working diligently perhaps costs could be cut by having each girl tend three machines instead of two that may be hard and some of the girls well since each weaver will be producing more cloth at least they can make more money on their peace rate I've already considered that point since each weaver will be producing more cloths we can lower the peace rate and they can still earn the same as before if they can keep up it must be nice having a bull who's such a friend to us workers he's not my boat I hear they're rewarding him for getting more work out of us I'm sure that is it true he isn't like the rest of them he is them then we'll have to fight for ourselves and don't forget to tell them about what nearly happened when your Bob and girls apron got caught she could have been killed Sara it's just not safe we the undersigned considering ourselves wronged and our privileges invaded by our unjust and unreasonable lowering of our wages do hereby mutually and cheerfully engage not to enter the factory after Monday next next for the purpose of work until such time as our grievances are addressed internal alone someone must have put them up to this you're known to have your eye on Sara McEwan it must have been you it was not but they do make a case for themselves we speeded up the machines and Lord the wages surely you would grumble to what should we do then Zachary you tell me cut profits to our investors if we do that they will close the mill entirely that our lower wages and none at all these are tough time quick get help that could have been any of us I'm leaving I'll find work somewhere else me too no none of us should have to leave and if one or two of us do they can easily replace us but not if we all stand together this is Moses Brown the Rhode Island business man who enticed Samuels later to Pawtucket and then helped finance Slater's pioneering cotton wheel Moses was a chance taker who was fascinated by inventions like his prized electrostatic generator and by visionary enterprises like spinning mouse I'm standing in the beautifully restored home of Moses's brother John Brown who was a fighting patriot a friend of George Washington's and a very successful financier John owned a world-renowned shipping company and was a prominent investor in the manufacture of rum the smelting of iron and the trading of slaves his businesses made him extremely rich so he built this impressive home in Providence and filled it with famous guests and fine furnishings though they were both successful businessmen the brown brothers did not necessarily see eye-to-eye John was unabashed in his support of the slave trade and Moses a converted and devout Quaker was so opposed to slavery he fought hard to abolish it but like his brother Moses Brown remained an entrepreneur and when he chanced upon textile manufacturing he could hardly have imagined he was helping to transform New England now Moses was basically an investor in the industry other textile pioneers built their mills from the ground up and spent their lives trying to make them successful this bucolic looking place is Harrisville New Hampshire Harrisville began as a single woollen mill and like similar enterprises grew in size and importance after the American embargo of British textiles in 1809 the mill was started by Beth Ewell Harris and his sons Cyrus and Milan with a few thousand dollars and a dozen workers they began a woollen operation that would last 150 years the Harrises lived in those houses over there not a stone's throw from their mill over time they built more Mills boarding houses for single workers and individual homes for families mylan harris even built this schoolhouse for the workers children which unfortunately was very cold in the winter rather than repair the drafty schoolhouse he stuffed wool which he had plenty of into the cracks of the floors the result was at the teachers and kids nearly froze and Milam was chastised by state authorities for running one of the worst schools in New Hampshire but the Harrises were not mean or greedy and treated their workers fairly when they could afford to for unlike rich owners the Harris's were completely dependent on the fortunes of their mill they personally fixed machinery fought icy wheels hired and fired workers sweated over accounts and hustled for business if prices fell or labor costs rose or natural disaster struck their enterprise could fail instantly and without the deep pockets of rich mill owners the Harrises were never far from financial ruin but with equal parts luck and hard work the Harrises made it becoming country comfortable rather than brown family rich and for mill owners like the Harrises that was enough now not all New England textile mills succeeded but the big cotton mills generally did very well because the American South was an excellent source of cheap slave grown cotton and an even better market for machine-made cloth abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner railed against the conspiracy between the lords of the lash in the south and the lords of the loom in the north thinking that Sumner had equated them with slaves lolz workers passionately declared themselves the daughters of freemen but mill workers could be treated very unfairly especially when demand fell and prices dropped owners could cut wages increase hours or speed up production all in an effort to maintain profits on rare occasions workers fought back by turning out going on strike but then as now such tactics could be very risky for both sides they actually walked out these girls must be taught a lesson we cannot have them dictating terms next they'll want Saturday's off who was their leader I believe a young woman by the name of Sarah must you in well get rid of her bio leave gentlemen perhaps a subtler plan might be effective with the upturn in the market the Northgate mill owners have authorized the following they will shorten the work day by 1/2 hour and I'm prepared to pay an extra penny on peace rate well at least they've done something I know how unfairly you've been treated but I hope you feel this is a step in the right direction if the workers wish to consider this a victory that is a fortuitous turn of affairs a happy worker is a productive worker but now even I think it would be prudent to deliver a timely message begin training the new girls from the carding room to work the looms you're not nearly as experienced but more desperate for employment I should think and they can be taught about the looms far easier than the others could be taught not to be troublesome we must regard our workers as part of a sheet if one part of braids the rest can be done what is that Sarah I've been sacked you are to leave the premises immediately gather your belongings from the boarding house and be gone by tomorrow morning here's the money Sara I heard what happened I'm sure you did it's not the way you think where will you go my aunt is frail she needs help with the boardinghouse mr. daniel has kindly permitted me to return daniel's mill has no future and neither does a boardinghouse you can't be thinking I can be thinking anything I please in this free country mr. Moore it is the one thing I do that cannot be regulated sirrah you must believe I knew nothing about this and why should I believe you this time after all because when I found out I quit I've saved some money and I want to go west now here there's a great opportunity out there for a man who's not afraid to be industrious Lord knows you're not that Zachary Moore good luck to you it could be a hard life at first until I get my feet planted but it could be a great adventure and it's an adventure I dearly like to share I'm sorry my aunt needs me I won't give up a new Sarah promise you that Sarah this came for you Sarah all the way from California my dear Sarah perhaps you've heard about the gold strikes in the new state of California my mechanical skills have paid off handsomely the design of mining machinery I'm in San Francisco now where I definitely detect the need for a fine hat shop dad dearly love to invest and be your partner in that enterprise and make you my partner in all other things as well I know I'm not very good at putting things into words Sarah but if you could see a future in California as my wife you would make me the happiest man in this fortunate land of our ventually has been on the brink of another disaster the first line I lit candles he sent for his children to come home which they did afterwards he and I had a considerable of a warm debate now the letter was the telephone of its day the primary means of communication over distance and this letter from Samuel Slater shows his annoyance with a parent named Benchley who kept his children from working in the mill even after Slater had lit extra candles so they could see in the dark yes children worked hard at Slater and at other Mills throughout New England they also worked on farms and in craft shops just about everywhere few children had the luxury of going to school full-time at working in the mills at least meant a decent place to eat and sleep Slater appreciated his younger workers what he complained about where their overly protective parents and the fickle adult workers who were constantly leaving him to work in other mills he was also unhappy about his personal fortune though he ran a successful mill that bore his name he was not the majority owner and felt he could do better with his own venture so in 1806 he built a new mill complex and proudly named it Slater's ville over the decades the surrounding community grew along with the mill and by mid-century the Slater family had built two additional mills and installed steam engines to help power the machinery Bari Bank mill in England houses an early working model this remarkable contraption is an old steam engine look at the precise movement of the vertical piston it's moved up and down by the rise and fall of steam pressure inside the cylinder and that up-and-down motion is converted into rotary motion which operates all the machines this was a revolutionary device it made it possible to run machines anytime anyplace and in any kind of weather over the years operators used both steam power and water power but eventually the steam engine replaced water wheels is the primary source of power for most metals with steam engines to run machinery mills no longer had to be located near rivers and once freed from the river the stage was set for the demise of the new england mill by the middle of the 20th century many New England textile companies had moved south labor was cheap wear cotton grew right outside the door and we're Swift moving rivers no longer mattered in more recent decades the industry has moved to even cheaper labor markets in Asia and the Pacific today the largest textile centers in the world live far beyond the United States and Great Britain leaving places like Slater's Ville abandoned and desert in England and New England the textile industry is only a shadow of the enterprise at once was and many old mills are now rotting from neglect or completely gone a few communities have restored mill buildings turning them into apartments shopping malls even art studios but here in New England the industry that supported generation after generation of working families is for the most part over at their height mills were criticized for bringing a decline in craftsmanship and a machine like regimentation to the workplace but they created enormous benefits as well as anchors for cities as innovators of new technologies they put vast numbers of people to work and brought affordable products to consumers everywhere for better or worse mills have shaped our world and the way we live as surely as any force in history you you major funding for mill Times has been provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities for 30 years expanding our understanding of the world and by the National Science Foundation America's investment in the future funding is also provided by the Arthur vining Davis foundations and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you thank you

Channel: anthony223

Views: 330,597

Rating: 4.2862644 out of 5

Keywords: Mill times, Industrial revolution, Europe, America, 18th century, Colonial, animation, documentary, history

Id: toV9uIDIJMs

Length: 56min 39sec (3399 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 01 2012