 Dominion Textile plant at Montmorency Falls | |
| Industry | Textile industry |
|---|---|
| Predecessor | Montmorency Cotton Mills |
| Founded | 1905 |
| Defunct | 1998 |
| Fate | Purchased by Polymer Group |
Area served | Canada (primarily) |
| Products | Bedding, towels, underwear, other textiles |
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The Dominion Textile Inc. or Domtex was a Canadian textile manufacturer that was founded in 1905 and closed in 1998 when its remains were purchased by the American Polymer Group, at the time headed by Jerry Zucker.
Following the instituting of the National Policy in 1879, Canadian manufacturers gained a degree of insulation from global markets, leading to a rapid increase in the number of cotton mills. [1] Overproduction soon ensued, which created problems for the industry. Toward the turn of the century, it became increasingly consolidated and dominated by trusts and cartels. [1] In 1905, four of the largest textile companies in Canada, which between them owned over half the looms and spindles in the country, [1] merged to form Dominion Textile, which soon gained a near monopoly in the tariff-protected Canadian market. Based in Montreal, it was one of Canada's leading companies and had close links to the government. Most of the company's production was based in small towns in Quebec and elsewhere across Canada; in most of these towns, the mill was the primary employer. Dominion Textile and its affiliate, Montreal Cottons, used the Slater, or family method of recruitment, which involved sending agents into the rural Quebec countryside to encourage entire families to move to mill towns. This was successful because of Quebec's large population of surplus labour relative to its arable land. [1] In general, the Quebec cotton industry had employed children since the 1880s, but legislation and a large working population resulted in a slow shift toward greater predominance of adults by the 20th century, many of whom were unmarried women. [1] A concentration of textile mill workers were young women aged around sixteen to eighteen, who lived with their parents, often also mill workers, and who formed a significant part of the family as an economic unit. [2] These women were concentrated heavily in lighter, semi-skilled work, with little upward mobility. [1]
Canada's textile industry suffered considerably during the Great Depression, resulting in layoffs and shifting the balance of employees for the first time to a majority of men. [3] This was abruptly reversed during the Second World War, with production rising and women taking on new roles within the mills. [1] Amidst labour market instability and the postwar Canadian strike wave (which also saw a major strike at Ford in Windsor, Ontario), there was a strike in June 1946 by the United Textile Workers of America (UTWA) at the Montreal Cottons plant in Valleyfield, Quebec as well as four Dominion Textile mills in Montreal. While the latter strikes were settled by August, the former continued on bitterly until September, and became notable for its rioting.
In 1948 the economic situation changed dramatically as tariffs between western nations were greatly reduced, and Dominion Textile was exposed to strong competition from the United States and Britain. Dominion Textiles' market share fell dramatically from nearly 100% of the Canadian market in 1947 to only 47% a decade later. The company almost collapsed, but eventually adapted to the new conditions. It was rebranded as Domtex and moved into new areas such as the production of polyester. In the same period it became seen by Quebec nationalists as a prime example of the anglophone businesses that controlled the province. In 1967 FLQ member Jean Corbo died when a bomb detonated prematurely in an attempted attack on a Dominion Textile plant in Montreal.
In the 1970s the company began to expand abroad, seeking to compete outside Canada. It purchased smaller companies in other nations and built new factories. At its peak in the 1980s it had 14,000 employees and factories in Canada, the United States, Ireland, France, Italy and Tunisia. A leader in a number of areas, it became the world's largest producer of denim.
In the 1980s the textile industry was again changing, as General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) provisions came into effect that opened the business to competition from low wage developing economies. Domtex tried to adapt. It entered into a long battle to try to get concessions from its unions and closed half its Canadian factories. In 1987 it made a failed bid for American giant Burlington Industries, that would have made it a global textile leader. Over the course of the 1990s the company slowly collapsed, and by 1997 it was left with only two factories. The remnants were bought for some $600 million by the Polymer Group of South Carolina in 1998.
Many of its products were once household names in Canada, such as the Texmade bedding line, Caldwell towels, and Penman's underwear.
There is a Dominion Textile fonds at Library and Archives Canada. [4] It contains around 94 m of textual records, 45,000 photographs and 500 architectural drawings. Archival reference number is R1351.
The Industrial Revolution, also known as the First Industrial Revolution, was a period of global transition of the human economy towards more widespread, efficient and stable manufacturing processes that succeeded the Agricultural Revolution, starting from Great Britain and spreading to continental Europe and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going from hand production methods to machines; new chemical manufacturing and iron production processes; the increasing use of water power and steam power; the development of machine tools; and the rise of the mechanized factory system. Output greatly increased, and the result was an unprecedented rise in population and the rate of population growth. The textile industry was the first to use modern production methods, and textiles became the dominant industry in terms of employment, value of output, and capital invested.
The worldwide Great Depression of the early 1930s was a social and economic shock that left millions of Canadians unemployed, hungry and often homeless. Few countries were affected as severely as Canada during what became known as the "Dirty Thirties", due to Canada's heavy dependence on raw material and farm exports, combined with a crippling Prairies drought known as the Dust Bowl. Widespread losses of jobs and savings ultimately transformed the country by triggering the birth of social welfare, a variety of populist political movements, and a more activist role for government in the economy.
Canadian historians until the 1960s tended to focus on the history of Canada's economy because of the far fewer political, economic, religious and military conflicts present in Canadian history than in other societies. Many of the most prominent English Canadian historians from this period were economic historians, such as Harold Innis, Donald Creighton and Arthur R. M. Lower.
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.
The textile industry is primarily concerned with the design, production and distribution of textiles: yarn, cloth and clothing. The raw material may be natural, or synthetic using products of the chemical industry.
Canadian Industries Limited, also known as C-I-L, is a Canadian chemicals manufacturer. Products include paints, fertilizers and pesticides, and explosives. It was formed in 1910 by the merger of five Canadian explosives companies. It was until recently a subsidiary of Imperial Chemical Industries until ICI was purchased by AkzoNobel.
The Amoskeag Manufacturing Company was a textile manufacturer which founded Manchester, New Hampshire, United States. From modest beginnings it grew throughout the 19th century into the largest cotton textile plant in the world. At its peak, Amoskeag had 17,000 employees and around 30 buildings.
The Lowell mill girls were young female workers who came to work in textile mills in Lowell, Massachusetts during the Industrial Revolution in the United States. The workers initially recruited by the corporations were daughters of New England farmers, typically between the ages of 15 and 35. By 1840, at the height of the Textile Revolution, the Lowell textile mills had recruited over 8,000 workers, with women making up nearly three-quarters of the mill workforce.
Harmony Mills, in Cohoes, New York, United States, is an industrial district that is bordered by the Mohawk River and the tracks of the former Troy and Schenectady Railroad. It was listed as Harmony Mills Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. A portion of the district encompassing the industrial buildings and some of the housing built for millworkers was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1999. The centerpiece building, Harmony Mill No. 3 was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971.
The textile and clothing industries provide a single source of growth in Bangladesh's rapidly developing economy. Exports of textiles and garments are the principal source of foreign exchange earnings. By 2002 exports of textiles, clothing, and ready-made garments (RMG) accounted for 77% of Bangladesh's total merchandise exports. Emerging as the world's second-largest exporter of ready-made garment (RMG) products, Bangladesh significantly bolstered employment within the manufacturing sector.
The history of cotton can be traced to domestication for an important role in the history of India, the British Empire, and the United States, and continues to be an important crop and commodity.
The textile industry in India traditionally, after agriculture, is the only industry that has generated huge employment for both skilled and unskilled labour. The textile industry continues to be the second-largest employment generating sector in India. It offers direct employment to over 35 million people in the country. India is the world's second largest exporter of textiles and clothing, and in the fiscal year 2022, the exports stood at US$ 44.4 billion. According to the Ministry of Textiles, the share of textiles in total exports during April–July 2010 was 11.04%. During 2009–2010, the Indian textile industry was pegged at US$55 billion, 64% of which services domestic demand. In 2010, there were 2,500 textile weaving factories and 4,135 textile finishing factories in all of India. According to AT Kearney’s ‘Retail Apparel Index’, India was ranked as the fourth most promising market for apparel retailers in 2009.
The Nova Scotia Cotton Manufacturing Company was a cotton mill located in Halifax, Nova Scotia which was founded in 1882 and destroyed with great loss of life by the Halifax Explosion in 1917.
Madeleine Parent was a Canadian labour, feminist and aboriginal rights activist. Her achievements included her work in establishing the Canadian Textile and Chemical Union and the Confederation of Canadian Unions alongside her partner and fellow trade unionist Kent Rowley. She was a prominent figure in the 1946 Montreal Cottons strike. Retiring from union work in 1983 to Montréal, Parent continued her social activist role, focusing on women's rights. She became a founding member of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC) and has played an active role in addressing issues faced by immigrant and Aboriginal women.
The Kreenholm Manufacturing Company was a textile manufacturing company located on the river island of Kreenholm in the city of Narva, Estonia, near the border with Russia. It is situated along the banks of the Narva river, by the large Narva Falls, 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) from the Baltic Sea. It was founded by Ludwig Knoop in 1857, a cotton merchant from Bremen, Germany. At one point, the company's cotton spinning and manufacturing mills were the largest in the world; and Kreenholm was considered in its time to be the most important mill of the former Russian Empire, owning 32,000 acres of land and employing 12,000 people.
The Montreal Cottons Company strike of 1946 was a hundred-day-long strike in which 3,000 mill workers from Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, Quebec, fought for the right to obtain a collective agreement. Mill workers in Valleyfield walked off the job on June 1, 1946, as part of a larger textile strike movement which included one of Dominion Textile's mills located within Montreal. The strikes were organized by the Textile Workers Union of America (TWUA), an international union. In Valleyfield, Kent Rowley and Madeleine Parent acted as representatives of the UTWA.
In Scotland, the Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes and economic expansion between the mid-eighteenth century and the late nineteenth century. By the start of the eighteenth century, a political union between Scotland and England became politically and economically attractive, promising to open up the much larger markets of England, as well as those of the growing British Empire, resulting in the Treaty of Union of 1707. There was a conscious attempt among the gentry and nobility to improve agriculture in Scotland. New crops were introduced and enclosures began to displace the run rig system and free pasture. The economic benefits of union were very slow to appear, some progress was visible, such as the sales of linen and cattle to England, the cash flows from military service, and the tobacco trade that was dominated by Glasgow after 1740. Merchants who profited from the American trade began investing in leather, textiles, iron, coal, sugar, rope, sailcloth, glass-works, breweries, and soap-works, setting the foundations for the city's emergence as a leading industrial center after 1815.
The textile industry in China is the largest in the world in both overall production and exports. China exported $274 billion in textiles in 2013, a volume that was nearly seven times that of Bangladesh, the second largest exporter with $40 billion in exports. This accounted for 43.1% of global clothing exports. According to Women's Wear Daily, they account for more than 50 percent of the world's total overall production, exports, and retail. As of 2022, their textile and garment exports total up to around $316 billion and their retail up to $672 billion. China has been ranked as the world's largest manufacturer since 2010.
The Ministry of Textiles is a ministry in the Government of Maharashtra. It is responsible for the promotion of the textile industry in Maharashtra.
The cotton industry was the first and leading industry of Catalan industrialisation which led, by the mid-19th century, to Catalonia becoming the main industrial region of Spain. It is the one Mediterranean exception to the tendency for early industrialisation to be concentrated in northern Europe. The Catalan cotton industry, in common with many European countries and the United States, was the first large-scale application of modern technology and the factory system.
