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Vol. 30:4 ISSN 0160-8460 December 2002
Documenting the Industrial Life of a Maine City
by Rick Speer
The Lewiston Public Library has received an NHPRC grant to preserve and make available to researchers the business records of the Bates Manufacturing Company, a major New England textile producer that began operations in 1852. Lewiston, the second largest city in Maine, is located in the southern part of the state, 35 miles north of Portland. The records provide insight into the industrial history of New England and will enable researchers to analyze and document the industrial revolution in the East. The collection will provide data to illustrate further the societal change in America from an agrarian to an urban culture during the 19th century. The span of the records (1852-1980) will also assist in researching the decline of manufacturing in the northeastern United States during the latter part of the 20th century.
Bates Mill workers in the late 19th century. The cotton fiber is sent through "combers" and other machinery that gradually reduces it in size until the desired thread thickness is reached. Photography courtesy of the Lewiston Public Library.
The records represent a remarkably full picture of the day-to-day operations of one of the major employers in Lewiston, Maine. The 596 cubic feet of documents include personnel records, payroll registers, accounting records, ledgers, journals, and more. They document the economic life of the employees, the construction of the company's major mill buildings, and the transition from water to electricity as a power source. They also illustrate how work was organized in the mills, how the company coped with labor shortages during the Civil War and two World Wars, and how Bates recruited workers locally and from Canada.
From its earliest days, the Bates Manufacturing Company was a significant force in the regional economy of southern Maine. Even today, the Bates Mill buildings are being used for restaurant, retail, and office space and they dominate the historic mill district of Lewiston. The company began production in 1852. By 1857 the Lewiston Falls Journal newspaper reported that the mills at Lowell and Lawrence, Massachusetts, could not equal the enterprise at Bates. One of the original owners, Benjamin Bates, has often been praised for his business savvy due to his stockpiling of cotton prior to the Civil War. This fortuitous circumstance enabled his mills to stay in production throughout the war, while most others in the region were forced to close for lack of raw materials.
By the late 1860s, Bates operated five of the eight cotton mills in Lewiston. At that time, these mills employed over 3,500 women and 1,500 men. The textile industry in both Lewiston and the entire northeastern United States grew during the 1870s. During the postwar depression of 1873-75 (which affected both the U.S. and neighboring Canada), the Bates Manufacturing Company expanded four of its five Lewiston mills.
Workers in the Bates Textile Mill in Lewiston, Maine, in the late 19th century. Photography courtesy of the Lewiston Public Library.
The population of Lewiston grew along with its booming textile industry. While the number of people in Maine declined during the 1860s, Lewiston's population grew by 83 percent in that decade and experienced another jump of 40 percent between 1870 and 1880!
Many of these new residents were workers recruited from the French-speaking cities and farms in the province of Quebec, Canada. These decades changed the cultural mosaic of Lewiston from a Yankee village to a bilingual city. By 1900, 40 percent of Lewiston's population was foreign-born. The vast majority of these immigrants were from French-speaking parts of Canada. Even today, more than 60 percent of Lewiston's residents identify themselves as Franco-American, the largest ethnic group in Maine.
Not surprisingly, there has been a resurgence of interest in Franco-American culture by researchers in both countries. While there is and expanding interest in genealogy, researchers are exploring the historical patterns of immigration from Canada to Maine. The Bates records will prove valuable to scholars looking at both the immigrant and minority experience in New England.
The Bates Collection will also provide a valuable perspective for researchers in the field of American women's history. Most of the original mill workers in the1850s were women who had moved off the farms. Women continued to be a significant part of the Bates Manufacturing Company workforce throughout the history of the company.
One potentially valuable group of records included in this collection are the working papers that were developed by both the company and the union in the 1960s and early 1970s in their attempts to re-engineer work processes to make the company more competitive with textile mills in the South. These items comprise approximately 32 linear feet and include work analyses, time studies, and profit and loss statements. They not only document the effort to save jobs, they also provide a clear and detailed picture of each department in the mill.
These papers and ledgers include an abundance of financial information. The stock registers could provide data for an analysis of the company owners and investors and their change over time from those connected by family and geography to a more national distribution. Researchers will also be able to track the mill's acquisition of raw cotton and the trading of cotton futures. Other potential avenues of research, using the Bates Collection along with the other manuscript collections held by the Library, include the study of business in Maine, the textile industry, and the New England economy.
The Lewiston Public Library currently has two other manuscript collections among its holdings: The W. S. Libbey Company Collection and the Franklin Company Collection. The Franklin Company, chartered by the Maine legislature in 1845, was one of two companies that owned most of the property in what is now the downtown area of Lewiston. The other company was the Lewiston Water Power Company, which was later acquired by the Franklin Company. In addition to owning most of the property near the Androscoggin River, the Franklin Company owned the waterpower rights to the river and financed the construction of the two earliest cotton mills in Lewiston.
The W. S. Libbey Company records were given to the Library in 1996 shortly before the Libbey Mill building was demolished. Libbey was another major textile manufacturer with roots going back to the early industrial and economic development of Lewiston. Although the Libbey company was formed in the 1890s, it originated through the acquisition of the assets of two major corporations that began in the mid-19th century: the Lincoln Mill and Columbia Woolen Mills.
In addition to the preservation of the Bates Manufacturing Company's records, this NHPRC grant will help to establish professional archival services at the Lewiston Public Library. Up to this point, the Library's archival collections have been processed through support provided by Dr. Christopher Beam, archivist at the Edmund S. Muskie Archives at Bates College (and a former NARA staff member). The soon-to-be-hired project archivist will be the first professional archivist on the Library's staff.
The Lewiston Public Library has also begun design work for an expansion project that will include a 3,000-square-foot Regional History Center and Archives. The Library has acquired an adjoining building, which is slated to house a community meeting and performance space in addition to the archives. Once completed, the total Library facility will measure 45,000 square feet.
Rick Speer is director of the Lewiston Public Library.
