American Mill Research Articles

Immigration and Industrialization: Ethnicity in an American Mill Town, 1870-1940

Immigration and Industrialization: Ethnicity in an American Mill Town, 1870-1940

Immigration and Industrialization: Ethnicity in an American Mill Town, 1870–1940. By John E. Bodnar. Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1977. Pp. xix + 213. $11.95

Immigration and Industrialization: Ethnicity in an American Mill Town, 1870–1940. By John E. Bodnar. Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1977. Pp. xix + 213. $11.95

Book Review: Immigration and Industrialization: Ethnicity in an American Mill Town, 1870–1940

Book Review: Immigration and Industrialization: Ethnicity in an American Mill Town, 1870–1940

Immigration and Industrialization: Ethnicity in an American Mill Town, 1870–1940. By John Bodnar. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1977. Pp. 213.

Immigration and Industrialization: Ethnicity in an American Mill Town, 1870–1940. By John Bodnar. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1977. Pp. 213.

Immigration and Industrialization: Ethnicity in an American Mill Town, 1870-1940.

Immigration and Industrialization: Ethnicity in an American Mill Town, 1870-1940.

Portrait of an American Mill Town: Demographic Response in Mid-Nineteenth Century Warren, Rhode Island

Abstract Utilizing census and vital statistics records, the author demonstrates how low levels of fertility in a nineteenth-century New England mill town are closely interrelated with the economic and social structure of the community. The ready availability of relatively unskilled job opportunities drew large numbers of foreign-born women to this community leading to an imbalance in the sex ratios in the primary marrying ages and a subsequent low percentage of women married. This relative unavailability of marriage partners for the women was further aggravated by a strong unwillingness of men and women to marry outside their own ethnic group. Partly as a result of this unusual marriage pattern, fertility in this nineteenth-century industrial town was well below the level necessary to ensure the long term maintenance of the community. Extremely low levels of marital fertility are also noted for this community and are also attributed to the same economic factors. Thus, a pattern of demographic imbalance is...

The Nature of Paper

Paper is so ubiquitous in our daily lives that it is difficult to imagine effective functioning of our technological society without it. Indeed, we often measure the level of contemporary cultures by the amount of consumed. In the United States the amount is more than 500 pounds per capita annually and is rising year by year. The contributions of are not without drawbacks: a limited supply of fibrous source materials, problems of air and water pollution in manufacturing processes, and questions of disposal of the once it has served its intended purposes. Paper has not always held so important a place in the human economy; the multitude of demands that now fills were necessarily satisfied by other materials. It is significant that the earliest use of was in written communication. In this, it was preceded by other less-abundant or less-appropriate materials; baked clay tablets in the Near East, sheets of papyrus in the Nile valley, parchment or vellum in the Near East and Europe, cloth or strips of wood and bamboo in China, and sheets of macerated barks in Oceania, Africa, and the early Americas. The word paper is used to describe a felted sheet of fibers formed by passing a liquid suspension of the fibers through a fine screen. The liquid drains away to leave a mat of fibers which is removed from the screen and dried. The definition is general. The fibers commonly used are composed chiefly of cellulose, although can be and is made from fibers of many other types, including glass, asbestos, wool, metals, and synthetic polymers. The liquid is almost always water, although other liquids can be used. Water is inexpensive and plentiful, and its interaction with cellulose fibers contributes unique properties-in swelling of fibers during mechanical processing and in formation of the sheet, and in fiber-to-fiber bonding which occurs as the sheet is dried and which is responsible for the greater part of the mechanical strength of paper. Paper is reported to have been in use in China before the Christian era, although Hou Han Shu (Book of the Second Han Dynasty) credits its invention in A.D. 105 to Ts'ai Lun, who is said to have made sheets of from macerated tree bark, hemp waste, old rags, and fishnets [1]. The craft soon spread to Korea and Japan, and found its way into Central Asia and Persia by the routes of the camel caravans. The Arabs began making about A.D. 750, and the art spread to Syria, Egypt, and Morocco. The Moors introduced into Spain about A.D. 1150. In 1268 a mill was established at Fabriano, Italy. Papermaking began in France and Germany in the fourteenth century and in England in the fifteenth. The first American mill was established in 1690 near Germantown, Pennsylvania, by William Rittenhouse, a Dutch papermaker. Until the invention of the machine, was made by a labori-

Mill Architecture in Fall River: 1865-1880

T HE story of American mill architecture in the nineteenth century follows the rise of the cotton textile industry as the intensity of activity shifted from one locality to another. Thus, the early stone mills of Rhode Island, the big brick factories of Lowell, the buildings for the new companies in southern New Hampshire and those at Lawrence represent successsive developments before 186o. During this time cotton manufacturing in Fall River progressed rather slowly, but after the Civil War the industry of the city expanded at a phenomenal rate.1 In nine years twenty-three new corporations were organized, thirty new mills were built, and at least seven full-sized additions were made to old mills, with an increase in capitalization of nearly twelve million dollars,2 a boom which was not shared in anything like equal measure by other textile cities of the northeast.3 The year of most significant activity in the growth of Fall River was 1872; moreover, the full impact of the panic of 1873 was delayed until 1878, when a strong market and new capital brought quick recovery and further progress. The frenzy of mill building at the height of the boom

American Mill Methods—A Popular Description of how Flour is Made at the Present Time

American Mill Methods—A Popular Description of how Flour is Made at the Present Time