BOOK REVIEW: A HISTORY OF THE RISE AND FALL OF SILK IN U.S.
William Barry
Maine Today. Maine
June 11 2007
Book Review: "American Silk, 1830-1930: Entrepreneurs And Artifacts,"
by Jacqueline Field, Marjorie Senechal and Madelyn Shaw.
When one thinks of New England’s historic textile industries, cotton
and wool come quickly to mind; silk hardly ever. There were, though,
times when the latter played fascinating roles in our region and
state, as the handsome, eminently readable new volume "American Silk,
1830-1930" makes clear.
Written by three leading scholars, this tri-pronged approach is
flawlessly carried forth, offering insight into a variety of the
nation’s silk manufacturing and development. There is something for
everyone, from labor history to technology to trade with China and
later Japan, to some of the finest costumes in a Maine collection
(illustrated in color) and, in particular, Westbrook industry.
The book opens with an introduction by Jacqueline Field, former
costume curator and professor of textiles and design at Westbrook
College, and the continuing mainstay of knowledge and handling for
many institutional holdings in Maine. Her statement ties the subsequent
essays into a coherent whole.
The first section is deftly written by Marjorie Senechal, professor of
mathematics and history of science and technology at Smith College. She
opens with King James I’s aborted attempt to replace Jamestown’s
tobacco plantations with mulberry bushes and silk worms.
Early attempts to rid America of sot-weed persisted.
In the 1650s, the governor of Virginia hired Armenian experts, again
with scant results. Senechal then takes us north to Connecticut,
and eventually upriver to Massachusetts. There in the 1840s was
founded, a utopian agricultural group, the Northampton Association of
Education and Industry, a visionary anti-slavery group that included
Joseph Conant, the Stetson family and Sojourner Truth. What began
with the dream of communal self-sufficiency through silk culture led
to brutal child labor and financial disaster. Later reorganized as
Nonotuck Silk, under businessman S.L.Hill, the company provided just
the right strength silk thread for Isaac Singer’s new sewing machine
and the rest was, well history. Eventually purchased by Corticelli,
problems on the national and international levels led to the collapse
of the business during the early part of the Depression.
Perhaps the second section, written by Jacqueline Field, will be the
most consulted locally, in that it chronicles the rise and fall of
the Haskell Silk Co. in Westbrook, on the Presumpscot River. It is a
testament to the authors unrivaled research skills that she has been
able to re-create such a thorough, colorful and accurate history.
Briefly, in 1874, 66-year-old mill owner James Haskell passed the
Westbrook Manufacturing Co. (cotton) to his son Frank and started a
new mill on the opposite side of Sacarappa Falls. Field notes this
was perhaps "the prospect of a new challenge, or perhaps a legacy
for younger son Edwin." That is how it turned out, and using account
books at Harvard Business School, the Portland Board of Trade Journal,
surviving examples of Haskell silk at the Victoria Mansion and Maine
Historical Society she gives quite a full history.
The company was well-run and benefited from duty-free raw silk coming
in from Japan at just the right time. It expanded and found the
perfect niche up to the 1920s, when "Haskell silk fabrics garnered
their national reputation as the ‘standard’ for their trade" The
1920s marked a tough time for the conservative company and others
like it and, in spite of attempts by local boosters to reorganize, the
factory was done by the early 1930s. However, there is a great family,
community story preserved here, against the backdrop of changing,
international economic weather.
Madelyn Shaw, curator of the costume and textile collection at the
Rhode Island Scholl of Design Museum, offers a dramatic ending to the
book with H.R. Mallinson high end silk company, "the most innovative
and interesting of all American silk manufacturers, although it was
never the largest." Begun in 1895 and ended in 1937, it was founded
by M.C. Migel and H.R. Mallinson, two young salesman "who never worked
in a textile mill or had any firsthand knowledge of how to manufacture
silk yarns or cloth."
In 1912, Migel sold out to his partner, who quickly consolidated and
expanded operations under new management, hiring visionaries including
E. Irving Hanson and the wonderfully named Mrs. Carolyn Trowbridge
Radnor-Lewis. Through advertising and trips to European decorative
and industrial art expositions, they challenged the Paris fashion
industry in the 1920s and sold their "Mallinson print" designs in
the U.S., Europe and South America (Argentina was hot).
Indeed Mallinson established quite a name for itself, for American
design and for American silk. Still, times were changing, synthetics
were coming in, demand for silk as a luxury for the rich had spread
and was, well not, for a time in the ’20s, a luxury.
Finally, the Depression, lack of demand, price fluctuations and
other factors led to the end of Mallinson as well. The authors
state that the intention of their book was "to recover aspects of
the long neglected silk industry history and, by reviving interest,
to encourage further studies."
They have accomplished the first part with great skill and substance.
It is hard to imagine that researchers, like general readers, will
not be drawn into further explorations.
William D. Barry is a local historian who has authored five books,
including "Tate House: Crown of the Maine Mass Trade" and the novel
"Pyrrhus Venture." He lives in Portland.