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Pillar of the Community
United States
731 Posts |
Critical to the success in the early 20th century southern textile industry were the mill villages. Like coal camps and mining towns that supported their respective industries, mill villages supported textile and cotton mills, and consisted of company-provided worker homes, schools, churches, and of course, the company stores. And like the coal camps, mill villages were a way that companies could exert a watchful eye over their workers, as well as indirectly manage their lives during non-working hours.
As with coal towns, housing was supplied to workers for nominal rent. In exchange for the nominal rent, however, for each room that a house had, a worker was required. That is, for a five-room house, five occupants were required to work in the mill; for a three-room house, three were required. Naturally, since most homes were occupied by a family, and exceeded two rooms, children often were occupants who were used to meet the company's occupancy requirement. In South Carolina at the time, children were permitted to work at any age in the summer months, provided they attended school for at least four months each year and could read and write.
The Toxaway Mill was incorporated in 1902. By 1906 it had 16,128 spindles, 484 looms, 2,400 bales of cotton, and created a product with a value of $265,000. It employed 150 operators with a payroll of $42,000 -- or about $5.38 per week per worker. The village which supported the mill had a population of 500. 110 were under the age of 12.
Below please find several Toxaway Mills patent scrip. Each is approximately very fine to fine. They were redeemable at the Toxaway Mills Company Store. All specimens were photographed using axial lighting with clear glass angled at 45 degrees.
The Toxaway textile mills operated for most of the 20th century, until closure in the 1980s.
Thanks,
- Cheetah
______________
Sources:
The Library of Congress
The Independent, Volume 82, April 1915
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Pillar of the Community
United States
4416 Posts |
This sure is a fine presentation that depicts how one could then "owe my soul to the company store" ...
The workers' housing and other daily (token) needs were linked to the success of the company; a feudal form of capitalism, if you will.
Yet another admirable posting, Cheetah!
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
14454 Posts |
its amazing that the twisting machines haven't changed very much at all in all those years. Me being from NC, textiles was a huge part of the history around here. Everyone in my family worked in some type of textile mill including myself. Most of the guys were either weavers or fixers for weaving looms (I did both). I really loved working in the mill myself because I am one of those types that likes knowing what I have to do when I walk in the door but when they started closing all the mills around here down because they were moving them overseas I knew it was time for a change in careers. I think I worked for 5 different companies in 6 years in the mid 90's and worked there until they all closed down and got laid off, and these werent small companies, these were companies that had been in business for almost 70-80 years and had numerous locations. Its really sad when you think about it because even though you werent going to get rich doing this type of work it was an honest days pay for an honest days work and plenty of families had been raised by their families working in these mills. I live in a small city (with a population of around 5,000) and we had 4 pretty good sized mills in this small city. Two employing over 500 employees
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Posted 06/20/2011 3:23 pm
