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 Former factories of the Draper Corporation in Hopedale, Massachusetts | |
| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Power looms |
The Draper Corporation was once the largest maker of power looms for the textile industry in the United States. It operated in Hopedale, Massachusetts for more than 130 years.
In the early 19th century, Ira Draper was a prosperous farmer from Weston, Massachusetts, with an ability for tinkering and improving machinery, such as a threshing machine that was a great improvement on any previous one made at the time. His great-great grandfather, James Draper had landed in Boston from England in 1650, and was "one of the first men in the American colonies to engage in the business of weaving and selling cloth". [1]
In 1816, shortly after the first successful power loom in the United States was developed by Paul Moody at Waltham, Massachusetts, Ira was granted a patent on an improved flyshuttle hand loom and the first self-acting temple. [2] A temple is part of a loom used to improve the edges of the fabric. The improvement allowed a weaver to run two power looms instead of one. Its labor-saving feature appealed to Ira, and he decided to push its sale to weavers in the area. In 1829 he took out a patent for an improvement on his original invention. In 1830 he sold his patents and the business to his eldest son, James of Wayland, Massachusetts.
Ebenezer, a younger brother, bought the business in 1837, and later moved it from Wayland to Uxbridge, Massachusetts, the center of the growing textile mill area of the Blackstone Valley. In 1841, Ebenezer moved the company to nearby Hopedale, Massachusetts, where a new Christian settlement had been formed by Adin Ballou in 1841. Known as “Fraternal Community No. 1” it was a communal association determined to create an ideal society. Hopedale was one of the most successful communal experiments of the era, but failed after fifteen years.
Another brother George came to Hopedale in 1853 to join his brother in the firm of E.D. & George Draper. A year later he bought an interest in the new Dutcher temple, then made in North Bennington, Vermont that was an improvement on previous models. Two years later, the two companies would combine forces at Hopedale and become known as W. W. Dutcher & Company. This would be the first of several industries to be located in Hopedale within the next dozen years, for all of which E.D. & George Draper became managers and agents. Among the others were the Hopedale Machine Company and Hopedale Furnace Company.
Ebenezer D. Draper retired in 1868. Over the 42 years that he was with the company, he patented many inventions that had improved the art of textile weaving.
Between 1868 and 1887 George Draper became the leader and driving force behind the company started by his father years before. After Ebenezer's retirement in 1868, the company ventured into and made improvements the developing sector of ring spinning. By 1887, George Draper owned the patent rights or controlled the sale of 12 named varieties of ring spindles. Draper also made improvements to warpers and spoolers in this period.
In 1886, the three Draper Brothers of the third generation, still doing business at George Draper & Son were ready to increase their part in the loom field. They decided to undertake the design and manufacture of an automatic loom. There had been many patents of automatic devices but not one of them had ever proved practical: nor was any of them in successful operation anywhere.
The company developed two shuttle-changing looms, the Rhoades in 1888 and the Northrop in 1889. The prototypes were given field tests at the Seaconnett Mills in Fall River, Massachusetts with encouraging results. The Northrop was named after its inventor, James H. Northrop who had emigrated from Keighley, Yorkshire, England in 1881. Northrop conceived the idea of forcing the spent bobbin through and out of the shuttle and replacing it with fresh bobbin. Further developments were made, and in 1894, eight years after beginning their venture, the Draper brothers were ready to begin production of the Northrop loom for the trade. In August 1894, the first Northrop Looms to be sold to a mill were shipped from Hopedale to Queen City Cotton Mills at Burlington, Vermont. There were 729 looms in the order. The Northrop Loom relieved the weaver of much of the drudgery of her work and enabled her to run sixteen looms at once. It is a very loud device however, and the noise of hundreds operating at once in the same room must have been overwhelming. The power looms also created a lot of vibrations, which forced them to be located on the lower level of the mills, or eventually in separate weave sheds, apart from the main mill buildings.
In 1895, the Northrop Automatic Loom was patented in England, Belgium, Germany, Russia, Austria, and Spain. By 1900, Draper had sold over 60,000 Northrop Looms. [3]
Amid a wave of strikes in Massachusetts in 1913, Draper's 2,000 employees walked out on April 1 for a nine-hour day, a 22-cent minimum hourly wage, and the end of piecework. After Draper's director, the former Massachusetts governor Eben Draper rejected their demands, the workers voted to continue their strike indefinitely, supported by the Industrial Workers of the World's Joseph Coldwell. The strike disintegrated after three months. [4]
In 1917, the company became known as Draper Corporation. Focusing on looms for the cotton textile industry, Draper became part of the "Big Three" textile machinery makers in the Blackstone Valley, along with Crompton & Knowles of Worcester, Massachusetts, which focused on looms for wool, and the mighty Whitin Machine Works in nearby Whitinsville, Massachusetts which largely made spinning frames and cotton preparation machinery.
The Draper automatic looms were a significant factor in the movement of the cotton textile industry to the South during this time. Draper even financed the construction of some of new Southern mills, to be filled with their superior product. Many Northern mill owners were reluctant, or were so heavily invested in older, outdated equipment that they could not afford to make the switch.
At one time, more than 3,000 people were employed there. Long after most of the New England mills had closed, Draper continued to improve their products and sell them to the Southern textile companies, and others around the world.
In 1967, control of the Draper Corporation was passed to Rockwell International. Eventually, competition from the highly technical, increasingly computerized Japanese machinery makers led to a demise in the textile machinery industry in the Blackstone Valley. Production ceased in the mid-1970s.
A descendant of the family, Kristin Draper, is currently running Draper Knitting, a knitting mill and garment contractor. [5]
The Draper Mill was torn down in the summer of 2021. [6]
This timeline of clothing and textiles technology covers events relating to fiber and flexible woven material worn on the body. This includes the making, modification, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, and manufacturing systems (technology).
Hopedale is a town in Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. It is located 25 miles southwest of Boston, in eastern Massachusetts. With origins as a Christian utopian community, the town was later home to Draper Corporation, a large loom manufacturer throughout the 20th century until its closure in 1980. Today, Hopedale has become a bedroom community for professionals working in Greater Boston and is home to highly ranked public schools. The population was 6,017 as of the 2020 census.
A power loom is a mechanized loom, and was one of the key developments in the industrialization of weaving during the early Industrial Revolution. The first power loom was designed and patented in 1785 by Edmund Cartwright. It was refined over the next 47 years until a design by the Howard and Bullough company made the operation completely automatic. This device was designed in 1834 by James Bullough and William Kenworthy, and was named the Lancashire loom.
EbenSumner Draper was an American businessman and politician from Massachusetts. He was for many years a leading figure in what later became the Draper Corporation, the dominant manufacturer of cotton textile process machinery in the world during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He served as the 44th Governor of Massachusetts from 1909 to 1911.
Paul Moody was a U.S. textile machinery inventor born in Byfield, Massachusetts. He is often credited with developing and perfecting the first power loom in America, which launched the first successful integrated cotton mill at Waltham, Massachusetts, in 1814, under the leadership of Francis Cabot Lowell and his associates.
A cotton mill is a building that houses spinning or weaving machinery for the production of yarn or cloth from cotton, an important product during the Industrial Revolution in the development of the factory system.
Textile manufacture during the British Industrial Revolution was centred in south Lancashire and the towns on both sides of the Pennines in the United Kingdom. The main drivers of the Industrial Revolution were textile manufacturing, iron founding, steam power, oil drilling, the discovery of electricity and its many industrial applications, the telegraph and many others. Railroads, steamboats, the telegraph and other innovations massively increased worker productivity and raised standards of living by greatly reducing time spent during travel, transportation and communications.
William Mason was a master mechanical engineer and builder of textile machinery and railroad steam locomotives. He founded Mason Machine Works of Taunton, Massachusetts. His company was a significant supplier of locomotives and rifles for the Union Army during the American Civil War. The company also later produced printing presses.
Platt Brothers, also known as Platt Bros & Co Ltd, was a British company based at Werneth in Oldham, North West England. The company manufactured textile machinery and were iron founders and colliery proprietors. By the end of the 19th century, the company had become the largest textile machinery manufacturer in the world, employing more than 12,000 workers.
Col. Paul Whitin, (1767–1831) was an American blacksmith and pioneering industrialist who in 1826 Northbridge, Massachusetts established P Whitin and Sons, a new cotton mill with his sons. This company would grow and acquire other mills in the area. In 1831 his son John C Whitin obtained a patent for a mechanized Cotton Picker. Textile machinery would become a larger percentage of their business over time. would later become the largest maker of specialty textile machinery in the world.
The Whitin Machine Works (WMW) was founded by Paul Whitin and his sons in 1831 on the banks of the Mumford River in South Northbridge, Massachusetts. The village of South Northbridge became known as Whitinsville in 1835, in honor of its founder.
The Mason Machine Works was a machinery manufacturing company located in Taunton, Massachusetts, between 1845 and 1944. The company became famous for an early invention by its creator, William Mason, the self-acting mule, first patented in 1840. The company also later produced locomotives, rifles during the American Civil War, and later printing presses. However, the production of textile machinery would remain the company's core business during the late 19th century, until its decline in the 1920s.
Clover Leaf Mills is a historic cotton textile mill complex located at 1 & 21 Father DeValles Boulevard in Fall River, Massachusetts. Begun in 1884, the mill is a good example of 1880s industrial architecture. The site was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.
James Henry Northrop, was born in Keighley, West Yorkshire in the United Kingdom, where he worked in the textile industry. He emigrated to Boston, Massachusetts, in 1881. By 1898, working in Hopedale, Massachusetts for George Draper and Sons he had filed several hundred patents some of which were used in the Northrop Loom. He retired at 42. He died in Santa Ana, California on 12 December 1940, at 84.
The Northrop Loom was a fully automatic power loom marketed by George Draper and Sons, Hopedale, Massachusetts beginning in 1895. It was named after James Henry Northrop who invented the shuttle-charging mechanism.
The Lancashire Loom was a semi-automatic power loom invented by James Bullough and William Kenworthy in 1842. Although it is self-acting, it has to be stopped to recharge empty shuttles. It was the mainstay of the Lancashire cotton industry for a century.
The Roberts loom was a cast-iron power loom introduced by Richard Roberts in 1830. It was the first loom that was more viable than a hand loom and was easily adjustable and reliable, which led to its widespread use in the Lancashire cotton industry.
Ring spinning is a spindle-based method of spinning fibres, such as cotton, flax or wool, to make a yarn. The ring frame developed from the throstle frame, which in its turn was a descendant of Arkwright's water frame. Ring spinning is a continuous process, unlike mule spinning which uses an intermittent action. In ring spinning, the roving is first attenuated by using drawing rollers, then spun and wound around a rotating spindle which in its turn is contained within an independently rotating ring flyer. Traditionally ring frames could only be used for the coarser counts, but they could be attended by semi-skilled labour.
The more looms system was a productivity strategy introduced in the Lancashire cotton industry, whereby each weaver would manage a greater number of looms. It was an alternative to investing in the more productive Northrop automatic looms in the 1930s. It caused resentment, resulted in industrial action, and failed to achieve any significant cost savings.
"Kissing the shuttle" is the term for a process by which weavers used their mouths to pull thread through the eye of a shuttle when the pirn was replaced. The same shuttles were used by many weavers, and the practice was unpopular. It was outlawed in the U.S. state of Massachusetts in 1911 but continued even after it had been outlawed in Lancashire, England in 1952. The Lancashire cotton industry was loath to invest in hand-threaded shuttles, or in the more productive Northrop automatic looms with self-threading shuttles, which were introduced in 1902.