University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings Textile Society of America 2016 The eM rchants and the Dyers: The Rise of a Dyeing Service Industry in Massachusetts and New York 1800-1850 Linda Jean Thorsen [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/tsaconf Part of the Art and Materials Conservation Commons, Art Practice Commons, Fashion Design Commons, Fiber, Textile, and Weaving Arts Commons, Fine Arts Commons, and the Museum Studies Commons Thorsen, Linda Jean, "The eM rchants and the Dyers: The Rise of a Dyeing Service Industry in Massachusetts nda New York 1800-1850" (2016). Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings. 995. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/tsaconf/995 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Textile Society of America at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. Crosscurrents: Land, Labor, and the Port. Textile Society of America’s 15th Biennial Symposium. Savannah, GA, October 19-23, 2016. 490 The Merchants and the Dyers: The Rise of a Dyeing Service Industry in Massachusetts and New York 1800-18501 Linda Jean Thorsen [email protected] Introduction Histories of dyeing in the United States have tended to emphasize home craft processes, early textile manufacturing, or the growth of synthetic dyes. But in the first decades of the nineteenth century, a vibrant independent dyeing service industry emerged in U.S. port cities. Using natural dyes, working with a variety of fibers, colors, and finishing processes, and developing sophisticated skills and equipment, these dyers served import merchants, retailers, elite households, and businesses such as hotels. They received cloth, garments, or home furnishings, cleaned, bleached, and/or dyed them, and then returned them “like new.” To satisfy customers, these businesses had to at least approach the original materials’ quality of dyeing and finishing, which meant adapting state-of-the-art practices from London and Europe. Through a case study of businesses owned and operated by the Barrett family of Malden, Massachusetts and Staten Island, New York, this paper illuminates the nature and growth of the industry in the early nineteenth century. Operating through a succession of partnerships, the Barrett dyeing business expanded rapidly after 1800, aided by internal improvements, and was highly profitable into the 1820s, when the Barrett family opened a second business on Staten Island to serve merchants and households in New York and further south. The enterprise soon grew to incorporate printing as well as dyeing. Profits declined in the 1830s and 1840s as competing dyers and cheaper cloth drove prices down. It seems that at least before 1830, these independent dyers, rather than the early textile manufacturers in Pawtucket, Waltham, and Lowell, drove technical advances and commercial success in high-end dyeing in the United States. Access to a profitable household market (referred to as the “retail” arm of the business) helped to mitigate dyers’ dependence on powerful merchants. In effect, profit from dyeing for households subsidized the significant “wholesale” dyeing business that reduced merchants’ import risk and increased their profits. Exploiting a Dyeing Opportunity The rise of a profitable American trade with the East Indies in the 1790s was probably the chief source of dyeing opportunity. While Americans made homespun wool and linen, many textiles purchased and used by American households toward the end of the eighteenth century were imported. People with money to spend purchased fine woolens, cottons, linens, and silks from the British Isles, Europe, India, or China, and transformed them into garments and home furnishings such as bed linens, drapes, carpets, and upholstery. Indian cotton goods were 1 I explore this topic at considerable length in my 2015 Harvard Extension School master’s thesis. Linda Jean Thorsen, “The Merchants’ Manufacturer: The Barrett Family’s Dyeing Businesses in Massachusetts and New York, 1790-1850” (master’s thesis, Harvard Extension School, Harvard University, 2015). Interested readers can contact me for a complete project bibliography. Crosscurrents: Land, Labor, and the Port. Textile Society of America’s 15th Biennial Symposium. Savannah, GA, October 19-23, 2016. 491 available in a range of weights and weaves, plain or brightly colored, and often printed.2 They had been entering North America—either legally or illegally—since the late seventeenth century, if not earlier.3 As early as the 1690s, British policymakers viewed Americans as potentially important consumers of British India goods. As a result, they were exempted from the Calico Acts of 1700 and 1721; while British people could not wear imported Indian calicos, Americans could—as long as goods came through London via the East India Company. After independence, Americans could purchase goods directly from India. Because Britain was reluctant to antagonize America, particularly during the various wars with France in which the new country was a neutral party, it kept Indian ports open to American ships.4 This direct trade reduced the prices merchants needed to pay for India goods—by half or more.5 Abetted by British merchants, Americans seized opportunities to profit from trading in ports in India and farther east, and also in European ports closed to the warring nations.6 In addition to cottons, plain or brightly colored silk goods came from India and China. Once Americans began trading in China in the 1780s and 90s, Chinese silks were part of the cargo that returned to the U.S. with tea shipments.7 William Barrett (1775-1834), a younger son from a prominent middling family in Concord, Massachusetts, needed a livelihood.8 In the 1790s he was apprenticed to a local clothier—a village artisan who transformed homespun wool into serviceable cloth. Local households, in addition to bringing their homespun to the clothier stand to be scoured, fulled, and dyed, also sometimes brought garments and home furnishings to be refurbished. When people increasingly brought them cottons and silks, Barrett and his master farmed out the work to Hugh Thompson, an Englishman living in Charlestown who had developed sophisticated dyeing skills in London and could work with silk and cotton. Thompson was one of many textile artisans who came to the young United States seeking opportunity. Though dyers had advertised their service in American cities from at least the 1740s, migration of artisans accelerated in the late eighteenth century.9 Of 2368 artisans who emigrated from England between Dec. 1773 and March 1776 (a little over two years), or roughly a third were in textile trades.10 Realizing that high-end dyeing was in high demand, William Barrett joined with Thompson to exploit the business opportunity. In February of 1801, their partnership, the firm of “William 2 James R. Fichter, So Great a Proffit: How the East Indies Trade Transformed American Capitalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 95. 3 Jonathan Eacott, “Making an Imperial Compromise: The Calico Acts, the Atlantic Colonies, and the Structure of the British Empire,” William and Mary Quarterly 69, no. 4 (October 2012): 732-745. Eacott, “Making an Imperial Compromise,” 735. 4 Fichter, So Great a Proffit, 177. 5 Ibid., 42. 6 Summarized from Fichter, So Great a Proffit. 7 John Jacob Astor, for example, in his arrangement with the North West Company, brought silks and teas back after bringing furs to China. Fichter, So Great a Proffit, 217. 8 He was a grandson of Colonel James Barrett, commanding officer at the Battle of Concord on April 19, 1775. 9 “Michael Brown, Silk Dyer from London,” Pennsylvania Gazette, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, July 1, 1742, 4, Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers. 10 Bernard Bailyn, Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution (New York: Random House, 1986), 131-132, 150, 282-284. See also Maxine Berg, The Age of Manufactures: Industry, Innovation, and Work in Britain, 1700-1820 (Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble, 1985), 224. Crosscurrents: Land, Labor, and the Port. Textile Society of America’s 15th Biennial Symposium. Savannah, GA, October 19-23, 2016. 492 Barrett & Co.,” was announced to readers of Boston papers.11 Prominent in their ads were mentions of Thompson’s London experience and skill. Thompson said he had been “foreman to one of the first dye houses in London,” and successfully run his own dyeing business in Liverpool.12 Claims to quality sometimes said “as completely as can be done in Europe,” but often referenced London specifically. High-end cloth manufacturing on the other side of the Atlantic set the bar, and dyers like Thompson knew that their ability to meet that standard would matter to both households and merchants who wanted goods returned like new. In addition to promising London quality, ads mentioned dyers’ ability to work with a wide array of cloth and garment types, listing many by name. For example, in an 1801 advertisement, William Barrett & Co. explained that they could dye “all kinds of silks, such as satins, damasks, lustrings, Modes, and Persians; blond Lace and Netting, silk Velvets, Ribbons, Ferreting, Sewing Silk, silk Gloves and Mitts; silk and camel’s-hair shawls, Muslins, Cottons, and Callicoes, by the piece or bale; muslin Gowns, Coats, Vests, Pantaloons, and Small Cloaths, dyed whole; --Broad- Cloths, Kerseymeres, Lambskins, Ratteens, Forrest-Cloths, Elastics, Plains, Swansdowns, Baizes, and Flannels, Hosiery of all kinds, Nankins and Nankinetts, Corduroys and Velvets, by the piece or bale.”13 Also very important was the ability to finish cloth properly—a process that required specialized machinery. Ads often stated that the firm could both “dye of warranted colors” and “finish in superior style,” two factors clearly important to customers.14 William Barrett & Co.