The Texas Textile Mill and Mckinney, Texas, 1903-1968
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INTERWEAVING HISTORY: THE TEXAS TEXTILE MILL AND McKINNEY, TEXAS, 1903-1968 Deborah Katheryn Kilgore, B.S. Thesis Prepared for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS August 2009 APPROVED: Elizabeth Hays Turner, Major Professor Roberto R. Calderón, Committee Member J. Todd Moye, Committee Member Richard B. McCaslin, Chair of the Department of History Michael Monticino, Dean of the Robert B. Toulouse School of Graduate Studies Kilgore, Deborah Katheryn. Interweaving History: The Texas Textile Mill and McKinney, Texas, 1903-1968. Master of Arts (History), August 2009, 264 pp., 3 tables, 56 illustrations, reference list, 253 titles. Texas textile mills comprise an untold part of the modern South. The bulk of Texas mills were built between 1890 and 1925, a compressed period of expansion in contrast to the longer developmental pattern of mills in the rest of the United States. This compression meant that Texas mill owners benefited from knowledge gained from mill expansion elsewhere, and owners ran their mills along the same lines as the dominant southeastern model. Owners veered from the established pattern when conditions warranted. This case study focuses on three mills in Texas that operated both independently and as a corporation for a total of sixty years. One mill in McKinney dominated the economy of a small town and serves as the primary focus of this paper. A second mill in Waco served a diversified economy in the center of the state; and the third mill, built in Dallas was concentrated in a major city in a highly competitive job market. All three of these mills will illuminate the single greatest difference between Texas mills and mills elsewhere, the composition of the labor force. Women did not dominate the mill labor force in Texas nor did children, except in limited cases, make-up a large portion of the workers. Today mill studies of southern mills have found only scattered textile factories with a preponderance of male employees, but in Texas this was the norm. This study demonstrates the unique features of McKinney’s textile mill and its similarities to other mills in Texas and in the southeast. Copyright 2009 By Deborah Katheryn Kilgore ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This paper could not have been completed without the support and input of many individuals. Elizabeth Turner introduced me to textile mill studies and continues to encourage me to discover the threads of history. Todd Moye accepted my proposal for conducting mill interviews for the Oral History Collection at the University of North Texas and provided time and money for additional interviews. Roberto Calderón enthusiastically shared advice for discovering hidden details in newspapers and advice for preserving crumbling documents. Thank you all for supporting me. Former mill employees, their families, and McKinney residents made this research possible by letting me interview them, sharing memories, experiences, clippings, and photos. Bryan Lean, collections curator, and Vicki Day of the North Texas History Center allowed me to dig through drawers of materials looking for signposts of mill history. Guy Giersch, McKinney’s historic preservation officer helped identify vanished buildings around town. Darla Lovett allowed me to walk around the mill and showed me the items found under and around the mill. Thanks to your efforts, history came alive. Librarians and archivists in McKinney, Denton, Waco, Arlington, and Austin helped me locate books, records, articles, and data and gracefully handled my requests for copies of material to help illustrate Texas textile mills. My gratitude goes out to all. As a graduate student I found my fellow students inspiring and supportive. Mark Stanley shared his work on Governor Pat Neff and Jessica Wranasky provided leads on Dallas history. Lisa Fox played devil’s advocate over cups of tea, finding weak spots in my research. Thanks for listening. iii Finally this could not have been done without the support of my friends and family. Nancy and Liten provided room and board every time I needed to research in Austin. Don dragged me out to lunch every few months to keep me sane. My sister-in-law Cheryl listened to hours of mill history in the middle of every family gathering. Mom and Dad gave me love and support throughout that made this entire adventure possible. Thanks for having faith in me. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...............................................................................................iii LIST OF TABLES............................................................................................................vi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.............................................................................................vii 1. INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND .................................................... 1 2. EARLY TEXAS TEXTILE MILLS, 1854-1903 .......................................... 22 3. BUILDING THE TEXAS COTTON MILL, 1903-1919............................... 59 4. MILL FEVER REDUX, 1920-1925 ........................................................... 86 5. BOOM AND BUST, 1926-1936.............................................................. 132 6. SWEPT AWAY, 1937-1968 ................................................................... 176 APPENDIX .................................................................................................................. 233 BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................................................................... 247 v LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1 Texas Population Changes...................................................................... 52 Table 4.1 Total Mill Employment for 19 Texas Mills............................................... 100 Table 5.1. Average Hourly Wages at Twenty Texas Cotton Mills for 1927 ............ 143 vi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure 2.1. Shain Block, downtown McKinney .............................................................. 35 Figure 2.2. Stephan Heard’s 1900 home....................................................................... 38 Figure 2.3. Heard store ................................................................................................. 38 Figure 2.4. Kirkpatrick home ......................................................................................... 40 Figure 2.5. Burrus flour mill, McKinney.......................................................................... 42 Figure 2.6. J. Perry Burrus home .................................................................................. 42 Figure 2.7. William Newsome home.............................................................................. 44 Figure 2.8. Outgrowing a Rival cartoon......................................................................... 51 Figure 3.1. Mrs. W. E. Marshall Millinery....................................................................... 63 Figure 3.2. Picker/slasher room with elevator ............................................................... 66 Figure 3.3. Ruins of the original cotton warehouses ..................................................... 66 Figure 3.4. Last mill house in the mill village ................................................................. 67 Figure 3.5 Remains of the dye room ............................................................................. 69 Figure 3.6. Texas Cotton Mill Company 1916, map ...................................................... 74 Figure 3.7. Noon Hour at Texas Cotton Mill, I Found None Under Fifteen.................... 75 Figure 3.8 Advertisement from 1917 Bison yearbook ................................................... 84 Figure 4.1 Map of Texas counties in the Blacklands with mill numbers......................... 87 Figure 4.2. The South’s Mattress .................................................................................. 90 Figure 4.3. Doffers at the Texas Cotton Mill Company.................................................. 93 Figure 4.4. South Ward School ..................................................................................... 98 Figure 4.5. Spinning room at the Texas Cotton Mill Company .................................... 106 vii Figure 4.6. Miller Cotton Mills, Waco........................................................................... 109 Figure 4.7. Engine shed, Miller Cotton Mills ................................................................ 109 Figure 4.8. Principle product of the Miller Cotton Mills ................................................ 110 Figure 4.9. Weave room-Miller Cotton Mills ................................................................ 111 Figure 4.10. Nothing to Wear ...................................................................................... 114 Figure 4.11. C. R. Miller Manufacturing Company, Texas Cotton Mills Band.............. 119 Figure 4.12. Advertisement from Textile World magazine, 1923................................. 122 Figure 4.13. He Profits Most Who Serves Best ........................................................... 124 Figure 4.14. Dallas Love Field 1930 Bird’s Eye View.................................................. 130 Figure 5.1. Comes High but He Must Have it .............................................................. 135 Figure 5.2. Clarence Miller’s home in Dallas ............................................................... 137 Figure 5.3. Male employees in the spinning room....................................................... 146 Figure 5.4. Waco Cotton Convention cartoon ............................................................