fabric of history

New names

2008-05-15T14:35:00.002-04:00

Jean, Brenda and Annie Baltimore, 1707 Woolen Mills Road

The arrival of Northern investors was the only major change in the management of the mill before 1910. As noted above, these men entered the company by accepting stock in payment for machinery. Such a move was not unusual or new. Many Southern industries, especially cotton mills, found this an excellent way to entice southward some of the Northern capitalists who were at that moment eagerly seeking opportunities for investment.

New names now appeared on the Woolen Mills directory. Among them was an old friend, C. A. Furbish. He purchased large holdings of common and preferred stock and until 1896 assumed the role of adviser to Marchant. Furbush became the first vice-president of the company, a new office, bringing no compensation, which was created in 1883 to ease some of the responsibilities of the president.--Harry Poindexter

Kalamazoo

2008-05-14T11:21:00.001-04:00

According to oral history, Thomas Jefferson Baltimore, born September 13, 1911, was the first Woolen Mills Road child to arrive in the world in hospital rather than home. Obstetrics bill from 1949 underlines continuing escalation in the cost of medical treatment

For many years, however, a firm located in New York and Boston served the mill as agent for New York, New England, and the Pacific coast. By 1906 the company's largest markets were in New York. Philadelphia, San Francisco, Columbus, Chicago, Cincinnati, and Kalamazoo. It appears that sales were made directly to organizations which then contracted for tailoring of the cloth. The company records are vague on this point.
Entirely clear, though, were the healthy profits that these sales brought. By 1914 the company had enjoyed over twenty years of almost uninterrupted success--Harry Poindexter

traveling salesmen

2008-05-13T11:47:00.002-04:00

the youngster in the photo is possibly Roy Jackson Baltimore

To insure continued high quality the mill performed every operation in its own plant under rigid controls. Its efforts were well rewarded. By 1909 sales had gone well over $300,000 and hovered at that peak until war broke in 1914.
For a time after 1882 the company attempted to sell its output through commission houses rather than by traveling salesmen. Furbush from his vantage point in Philadelphia looked around for satisfactory terms and an agent was dispatched to Philadelphia and New York. The houses which entered into agreements proved unreliable and the experiment failed. Thereafter, the mill returned to the use of salesmen, a practice which most mills were also adopting.--Harry Poindexter

never lose sight of Charlottesville

2008-05-12T12:36:00.001-04:00

C.B. Holloway with his nephews, Charles and Jimmie, 1943

Uniform fabrics monopolized the company's output until about 1948. Military schools took up much of the output. As early as 1892 every important military institution in the South and, with few exceptions, all major ones in states south and west of New York used Charlottesville cloth. The same was true of many municipal police and fire departments, several railroads and the Pullman Company. "In fact," the mill boasted in 1933, "one could travel by train from one end of the Nation to the other and never lose sight of Charlottesville."--Harry Poindexter

West Point

2008-05-08T08:14:00.001-04:00

Nellie Melton, George Marion at the end of Woolen Mills Road, this area referred to as "under the hill" by residents of the Woolen Mills Village

The United States government was a large purchaser from 1884 on. Large amounts went to disabled soldiers' homes. From 1899 until at least the middle 1930's, the cadets of West Point were clothed in Charlottesville fabrics. Beginning in the late eighties, the mill succeeded in surplanting foreign mills as the manufacturer of fine doeskins used in the pants and trimmings for the highest ranking army officers. This was accomplished only after six months of experimentation and was quite impressive since no American mill was able to make such fabrics. Thereafter, on several occasions, other mills underbid the Charlottesville company and won this contract, but in every case the contractor gave up his efforts and bought the material from Marchant's firm.

uniforms for the letter carriers

2008-05-07T08:32:00.001-04:00

Marion House

Beginning in 1887, the mill won in competition with all the mills in the country a large contract to supply 1000 uniforms for the letter carriers of Philadelphia. Two years later, a postoffice circular calling for bids on these uniforms set as the standard cloth certain meltons and doeskins made by the Charlottesville Woolen Mills. This specification was not, of course, designed to give the company a monopoly of that contract but such was the result since no other mill could reproduce the high quality of the cloth.--Harry Poindexter

gold medals for uniform cloth

2008-05-06T09:04:00.000-04:00

Drayman's House, VADHR 002-1260-0080

The problems of the Charlottesville Woolen Mills, then, were twofold: to gain a reputation for high quality; to create a market.
The mill quickly earned a national acclaim for the quality of its cloth. Fine kerseys, Venetian overcoatings, doeskins, and meltons of dark-blue, sky-blue, and cadet-gray were the chief products of its looms. Military uniforms were its speciality. Before the fire, the mill produced a limited quantity of these fabrics, but afterward they were improved greatly in quality and reputation. Furthermore, the company designed original fabrics and created a market for then. Perhaps it means little to find a local paper extolling them "as among the finest made in this country," having "few peers and no superiors." But the truth of these statements is proved by other sources. At the Chicago and St. Louis Expositions the mill won the only gold medals awarded for uniform cloths. The Chicago Fair Commissioners in 1892 chose a Charlottesville fabric for the standard to be used in uniforming the 1500 guards at the Exposition.--Harry Poindexter

uniform cloth

2008-05-05T09:00:00.001-04:00

Damage to Harlow's wall is done by vehicles large and small

In the years between the War of Secession and the first World War, Americans voiced a preference for light weight clothing more in line with new modes of heating, transportation, and styles. It was this change which sealed the fate of primitive rural mills.

In plotting their course after 1882, the directors of the Charlottesville mill determined to continue making heavy fabrics, but production was shifted from cloth for men's suitings to material for uniforms of various types. Whether this decision was farsighted or whether later events made it seem so, cannot be known. However, its effect was obvious. Uniform styles changed slowly and once a market was established a mill of that type could estimate its output much more shrewdly than one making apparel fabrics. Since close similarity in subsequent orders of uniform cloth was of prime importance to an institution, competition was lessened once a mill had won a contract. furthermore, foreign cloths were practically excluded because of the requirements of uniformity.--Harry Poindexter

cause for survival

2008-05-04T10:27:00.001-04:00

Union Chapel Sunday School minutes

The Charlottesville Woolen Mills not only escaped the fate of many of its Southern counterparts but managed to avoid the extremes of prosperity and depression which frequently rocked the industry in the North. Before 1882 the company had developed in a pattern typical of the American wool manufacture, but after that date its history bore little relation to the apparel-producing mills which dominated the industry. Foreign competition, changes in styles, and the appearance of worsteds did not create the disturbances that worried many manufacturers. Only in one respect did the mill follow a major pattern after 1882. That was in its almost complete specialization of product. It was this event which moved the company to a lightly populated fringe of the industry and made it relatively immune from the diseases afflicting woolen mills after 1893. Perhaps, too, it was the major cause for its survival in an unfavorable location. --Harry Poindexter

Rubber v stone

2008-05-03T10:17:00.001-04:00

Damaged resource. Cel Harlow's stone wall shows damage secondary to commercial traffic short cutting through this residential neighborhood.

It will be noted that the Central Atlantic region held its own. New England's increasing percentage came from two factors: the rise of new mills there and the decline of the small inefficient western and southern mills whose income was mainly based on custom carding and local sales. By 1914 the South possessed only sixty of the 1000-odd mills in the nation; Massachusetts alone had nearly one hundred. In 1919 New England mills employed sixty percent of all woolen workers.--Harry Poindexter

Woolen Mills Village

2008-05-01T10:50:00.003-04:00

Union Chapel and millhouses foreground, Mill and Monticello, background

Shrinking profit margins put a premium on plant location. With raw material and product markets primarily oriented at Boston, the industry shoved a strong tendency to concentrate in New England. The following table showing the changing distribution of the woolen industry by sections is significant:

--Harry Poindexter

ninety employees

2008-04-30T10:03:00.001-04:00

Ryalls House porch detail

Competition from worsteds and foreign cloth, fluctuating raw materials costs, style changes, and slowly rising wage rates, all combined to force the woolen industry "to do an increasing volume of business under conditions which make it constantly more difficult to prevent a decrease in the margin of profit." As a consequence, limited production of given styles and the need for low inventories made the small plant typical of the industry. Usually its annual production in the period from 1900 to 1909 varied between $115,000 and $180,000, and its employees numbered about ninety.--Harry Poindexter

worsteds rise

2008-04-29T10:09:00.001-04:00

Nathaniel Leake House

Woolen mills throughout the period either had to combat this new cloth or go to the expense of installing machinery for making it. The result was that from 1889 to 1909 the trend in wool manufacturing was downward while in worsteds it was upward. In 1889, about 200,000,000 yards of woolens and less than half that amount of worsteds rolled off the looms. Twenty years later, worsted production was nearly three times the volume of ordinary woolens.--Harry Poindexter

Woolen Mills Office

2008-04-23T00:10:00.001-04:00

12/17/05

Charlottesville Woolen Mill

2008-04-22T07:01:00.000-04:00

worsted

2008-04-18T07:32:00.000-04:00

1901 Woolen Mills Road

As if such problems were not enough, the woolen industry was confronted by a strong rival: worsted cloth. This material, although woolen, was smoother than ordinary woolen cloth. Made from a different type fibre, worsteds required machinery especially designed for their production. In 1860 this branch of the industry had hardly existed, but after the war consumer demand brought rapid expansion. By 1890 worsteds were close competitors of woolens. Ten years later, both in the value of product and the amount of wool consumed, worsted manufacturing surpassed the woolen branch of the industry.--Harry Poindexter

vicious financing system

2008-04-15T09:12:00.000-04:00

Hudson House, home of Woolen Mills transportation supervisor

These same buyers kept the cloth makers on the ropes by means of a vicious financing system. According to one spokesman, "the manufacturer, in most instances, actually begins his production for the year to come before he has received his money for the production of the previous year. The extension of credits is of course equivalent to a reduction in price, but it cannot be indicated in market quotations."--Harry Poindexter

supply of raw wool inflexible

2008-04-12T09:59:00.000-04:00

1709 Woolen Mills Road

Aside from fluctuations in the national economy, woolen mills faced several internal problems. Since there was no wool exchange and with the supply of raw wool inflexible in the short-run, the industry continued to be harassed by wide variations in costs. Moreover, Americans were changing clothing styles with greater frequency. Originating abroad, these styles gave foreign cloths an advantage and production problems arose because of the unpredictable demands. To complicate matters, wholesalers and ready-to-wear clothing manufacturers refused to buy in large quantities. This transferred the risk of loss from style changes back to the mills.--Harry Poindexter

the woolen machinery was idle

2008-04-11T00:10:00.002-04:00

Harlow, Starkes, Gianniny Houses (Monticello in the background)

Perhaps there were grounds for this attitude toward the tariff. Recovery in the woolen industry began about 1897--the year the Dingley bill restored protection to the 1890 level--and lasted for a decade. Even the 1907 panic, weathered behind the tariff screen, was minor compared to the 1893 debacle. Effective protection remained virtually unchanged until the Simmons-Underwood tariff of 1913 drastically reduced rates. While its effect could only be guessed at because the outbreak of war cut off woolen imports, nevertheless, on the eve of the war one-fourth of the woolen machinery of the country was idle.--Harry Poindexter

effects of the 1893 crash

2008-04-10T10:33:00.003-04:00

Hudson-Baltimore-Pritchett-Starkes Houses

The effects of the 1893 crash were severe and lingering. The depression was complicated by the tariff of 1894 which lowered the amount of protection. Changes in machinery and in types of product seemed obligatory in the face of new foreign competition. Samuel N. D. North, secretary of the National Association of Wool Manufacturers, argued that:

Many manufacturers will find themselves compelled to change altogether the character of their products... At present it seems as though the hardest struggle was before the mills which have been engaged in making the medium cassimeres and similar goods for the masses. These mills have had the American manufacture to themselves... That great advantage will no longer be theirs.

--Harry Poindexter

violent swings of the business cycle

2008-04-02T11:20:00.002-04:00

C.E. Mallory House, for sale...

During the three decades after 1880 the American woolen industry experienced the violent swings of the business cycle which were more and more becoming a characteristic of the national economy. Since the tariffs of 1883 and 1890 generally raised rates on woolens and extended protection to a wider variety of goods, pre-1893 prosperity was laid partly to the tariff schedule.
In the finer grades of cloths and dress goods, however, importations continued in large amounts. But American mills held their own and enjoyed profitable seasons until 1893.--Harry Poindexter

170

2008-04-01T03:10:00.000-04:00

Henry Clay Marchant, b. April 1, 1838, d. October 11, 1910

In the 1870s. Clay Marchant's vision for the social structure of the Woolen Mills Village began to take shape. That vision employed a two-pronged approach combining humanitarianism and practicality. His company started providing housing for his employees as well as for management. Mill records show him purchasing food and heating fuel by the boxcar and selling it to his employees at cost. A primitive form of health insurance was set into place. And in a gesture that was quite unusual, even in the present day, Marchant chose to live among his workers, in a house that was eventually owned by the mill itself.

In an 1881 company report, Marchant made a telling statement regarding his attitude towards his workers?a statement that would set the tone for the mill village for decades to come:

"The property of a manufacturing company must ultimately rest on the efficiency and fidelity of its labor. It must be impaired by whatever impairs the comfort and morale of its operatives. It must be promoted by whatever promotes their self respect, elevates their character, and cultivates local attachments and the home feeling. Nor is it easy to estimate the pecuniary advantages of such a liberal policy as shall strengthen our hold on the entire body of employees, and more particularly on those whose value is apt to bring tempting offers from abroad."

Personal ethics formed the central core of Marchant's life and informed his company's policies as well. Prospective employees were assessed to ensure that they were "of good character." The people holding management positions had to exhibit exemplary character in addition to possessing the required strong work skills and leadership abilities. As a result, Woolen Mills employees developed a reputation in the greater Charlottesville community for responsibility and honesty, a fact that aided them when applying for credit from banks and store owners.

new source of energy

2008-03-29T10:34:00.002-04:00

The effective use of electricity had already been demonstrated locally when in 1894 the city street railway line adopted it. As these cars rattled about the town, the woolen mills directory pondered the possibilities of the dynamo for their own use. In 1899 the mill began receiving supplemental power from the local electric light company and in the following year installed its own dynamo to "add very materially to the capacity of the mills."
At the same time, embedded in a series of proposed amendments to the company's charter was a provision giving the mill the right to dispose of any portion of its power by contract, lease, or sale. This clause anticipated the prospect of developing on nearby property an electric power plant connected to a dam on the Rivanna. Several experts were called in but when they estimated the cost to be about $100,000 the plan was shelved. In 1909, however, when contract negotiations with the electric light company broke down, an "oil engine" was purchased to provide light and power.
With electricity gradually assuming more and more of the burden, the mill approached the war years still utilizing water power but gradually adopting the new source of energy. --Harry Poindexter

early user of electricity

2008-03-28T09:53:00.002-04:00

photo courtesy the Pritchett collection, subject unknown

In the decade following the 1893 panic, hydroelectric power was first developed in this country for factory use. American woolen mills slowly adopted the new source of energy, but at the turn of the century only a small portion of their machinery was operated by electricity. Even as late as 1905 the amount was insignificant. The following table, based on the percentage of horsepower consumption in the woolen industry will indicate the trend.

The Charlottesville Woolen Mills became one of the early users of electricity. It had been necessary in 1889 to add another waterwheel and in 1902 steps were taken to increase not only machinery but the waterpower as well. Waterpower, hampered by floods, droughts, and obstructions, had long been a drawback to uninterrupted work, but no adequate substitute existed. During a dry spell in 1895, Marchant investigated the use of an electric motor for supplemental power but found the cost too great.--Harry Poindexter

road not taken

2008-03-27T10:45:00.002-04:00

Bettie Baltimore, courtesy of the Drumheller Collection

In the seventies the Charlottesville mill had continually made improvements and additions to its property in bad times as well as good. The period under study witnessed a continuation of this policy in two directions. One was toward expanded facilities in the face of fast-growing sales; the other was a search for more and better power devices.

The building program extended throughout the years from 1883 to 1917. None of the structures was large or expensive. Mostly they were small detached units scattered about the main building. A few were new dwellings for employees. Nevertheless, by 1887 a visitor, marvelling at the activity, jestingly expressed wonder that the area did not "ask for articles of incorporation in the near future, and set up the town business for herself." Unfortunately, with manufacturing costs low and with a steadily growing market for its goods, the mill did not systematically plan its new structures for the efficient movement of production from one department to the next. After the first World War, when keen business competition necessitated a more economical organization, a whole new program had to be launched.--Harry Poindexter