Civil War Rosie the Riveters: Garment Workers

Hundreds of Northern and Southern women/girls played an integral role working in textile mills during the Civil War. This wasn’t a novel occurrence, though. As early as 1823, single immigrant women, young girls in most cases, traveled from all over New England to join the work force at the Lowell textile mills in Lowell, Massachusetts. The girls had acquired sewing skills in their homes and needed little additional training.

Conditions were horrendous. They labored at least 12-hour days, 6.5 days a week, operating thread-winding machines, bleach/dyeing machines, scutching machines carding machines, and spinning machines.[1] It was freezing in the winter and stifling in the summer; the roar of the machines was deafening; the acrid smell from the dyes sickening. The women united fighting the company bosses after wages were dropped in 1834. The bosses won.[2] Even under such conditions, the ranks of the women textile workers grew to about 8,000 by the 1840s. Lowell company saw the height of their success in the 1850s. By the Civil War, business began to slow, at least for the Lowell mill.[3]

Other garment-textile factories soon popped up. Auerbach, Finch, Van Slyck and Co. established a manufacturing department in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1861. The wholesale dry goods company supported the Union effort and employed over five hundred girls. These women operated the sewing machines powered by steam and made, on a daily basis, 4,000 to 6,000 items: oat and bran sacks and export bags, tarpaulins, wagon covers, awnings, tents, and underwear. The conditions reminded one visitor of the New England mills, not a great environment to work in; but it was money.[4]

Outside of Lawson, Missouri, Waltus L. Watkins built a small mill in 1860. He hired forty employees: 25 men, 10 women, and 5 children. Employing children was a common practice in that era.  These forty workers processed 40,000-60,000 pounds of wool each year. The women were the weavers. They made blankets, shawls, knitting yarns and batting. Watkins maintained a good business selling clothing at least up until 1864. It was then that pro-Confederate Missouri insurgents, “bushwhackers,” began raiding the area and forced the mill to close.[5]

The South had a few garment mills as well. Washington Woolen mill was one of the more famous factories. It was built in Fredericksburg, VA in 1861. The Fredericksburg News described the newly constructed factory on January 18, 1861.

This building is 120 feet long by 60 in width, and five stories high, including the basement. The machinery consists of nineteen 6-4 looms and eighteen 3-4 looms, giving employment to 35 female hands. There are also four spinning machines, running 1000 spindles—four setts of cards, one wool pick and one duster—three eye kettles, three fulling mills and a lace to wash wool—three presses for pressing and finishing cloth, and ten 3-4 and twelve 6-4 bars for drying cloth. In this department, in which males alone are engaged, constant employment is given to about 35 hands.

Whether these “female hands” were slaves or not isn’t clear. The women who did work there, didn’t for long. It was turned into a hospital mid-December 1862 to accommodate the thousands of wounded from the Battle of Fredericksburg.[6]

Down near the Atlanta, Georgia area, Roswell King ran his company that comprised several individual mills.[7] It was the Confederacy’s lead manufacturing company where about 400 women worked (most likely slaves were a part of the operations). The two cotton mills and a woolen mill produced cloth for uniforms, as well as rope, canvas, and tent cloth. This production came to a screeching halt when Major General William T. Sherman and his army arrived in July 1864. Here, he implemented his policy of crushing the Confederate war machine. He ordered the mills burned and all the workers and owners arrested as traitors. The owners were long gone and hiding. Sherman allowed the women textile workers to take their children with them as the Union troops transported them by wagon to Marietta, Georgia. One group was sent to Louisville, Kentucky. Another group was taken to Indiana.[8] Many of the women and their children started new lives and never returned home.

Though history knows the general story of women in the textile business during the Civil War, we know little about the individuals.  It’s difficult to find any of their letters or diaries. In fact, the stories of the buildings are more available than the names of the women. The literacy rate was low among immigrants, and many were children who hadn’t even gone to school. The workers also had little down time. Any breaks were probably spent sleeping or taking care of personal needs or tending to personal injuries. Civil War author, Rebecca Harding Davis wrote about some of the hardships women and men faced in the factories.[9]

If a current injury report, noted in a lawsuit, is any indication, textile work is tough on the body to say the least. The women suffered from painful and swollen feet from prolong standing or torn muscles and tendons from overexertion. Women had their fingers and arms burned, bruised, or mangled in the machinery. Their lungs were damaged by the exposure to fibers and dust while their hearing was damaged by the high machinery decibels.[10] In the decades to come, women textile workers united and demanded safer conditions and fairer wages—and the fight continues.[11]

Sources:

[1]https://www.asme.org/wwwasmeorg/media/resourcefiles/aboutasme/who%20we%20are/engineering%20history/landmarks/251-19th-century-textile-tools.pdf. The scutching machine passes the cotton through a pair of rollers, then strikes it with iron or steel bars, called beaters. The rapidly turning beaters strike the cotton hard and knock the seeds out. This process is done over a series of parallel bars, allowing the seeds to fall through.

[2] https://aflcio.org/about/history/labor-history-events/lowell-mill-women-form-union.

[3] https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/spotlight-primary-source/lowell-mill-girls-and-factory-system-1840.

[4] https://www.mnopedia.org/group/women-industrial-workers-twin-cities-1860s-1945.

[5] https://mostateparks.com/page/55164/watkins-woolen-mill and https://www.asme.org/about-asme/engineering-history/landmarks/43-watkins-woolen-mill. The mill still stands today. It is a Missouri State Park.

[6] https://npsfrsp.wordpress.com/2010/08/12/a-vivid-image-of-an-1864-hospital-the-washington-woolen-mill/ and https://theclio.com/entry/86755 and https://www.innattheoldesilkmill.com/woolen-mill.

[7] Roswell King bought the land for his company from the State of Georgia. The Cherokee had been removed from this land in 1832, and the property sold to the highest bidder. https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=227728

[8] https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/deportation-of-roswell-mill-women/; https://www.visitroswellga.com/blog/roswells-mill-legacy/; https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=227728

[9] https://pabook.libraries.psu.edu/literary-cultural-heritage-map-pa/bios/Davis__Rebecca_Harding.

[10] https://www.lawyernc.com/workers-compensation-lawyer/common-workplace-injuries/textile-mill-employees/#:~:text=Prolonged%20standing%20%E2%80%93%20When%20workers%20must,tendon%20(tendinitis)%2C%20heel%20spurs.

[11] https://www.ncpedia.org/anchor/harriet-henderson-textile-strike-1959.