Documenting the Scranton Lace Company

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  • This collaged shot shows the Scranton Lace Factory in the existing context of the site. This shot predates the large clocktower, which was added to the Factory in 1927.
  • Three women smile while inspecting the lace and materials in font of them to make sure that the lace was made correctly. According to the picture the women are Charlote Mack, Janet Tapp, and Isabel Macksutis.
  • 10 male workers with their names being legible on the bottom of the image. A sign behind them reads "Janitor Service". There aren't any young children or teenagers in this cohort, and their work attires vary.
  • At this point the Factory employed around a thousand employees and sold to over 9,300 retailers.
  • Due to encroachment of industry, many families left the area and homes were demolished. With decreasing student population, the school decided to plan to move. The space was sold as the school began a three-year move to a new location for the school, with the understanding that the space could not be used by the Factory until the new school was in operation.
  • This 48-page document gives an overview of the history of lace generally and the specific achievements of the Scranton Lace Company in its first 50 years in operation. This document represents a time before the fall of the lace industry in Scranton. It is noteworthy because it subtly hints towards the social acceptance of child labor in this century, as seen in an image on page 14. The document mostly focuses on the three generations of management but also highlights employees and products.

    Lacemaking is a tradition rooted in craftsmanship that has existed for over 2,000 years, dating back to thread embroidery corselets used by the Egyptians in 550 B.C.E. Thread embroidery morphed into the production and design of lace. The lace produced by the Scranton Lace Factory relied on the methods employed by 15th century practitioners, namely cutwork, drawnwork, and darned nettings. Lacework was at times prohibited to be sold to common people and was only available to elites and aristocrats. Women became the main laborers of intricate lace, and nuns were responsible for many of the lasting lace artifacts.

    Once clear glass became conventionally installed in windows in the end of the 18th century, lace curtain demand grew. To fill orders, expansion of producing lace by machine became necessary. One of the first documented attempts at mechanically produced lace was between 1760 and 1778. Once the jacquard (a type of cloth with a pattern woven into it) was able to be added to the loom, the product known as Nottingham Lace emerged. Nottingham lace, originating in Nottingham, England, soon became popular in the United States. The lace was imported, but eventually the demand grew and labor in Nottingham was unable to meet the orders needed to be filled. A request for a new company in the United States was proposed and accepted. Plans began for a company to be placed in Scranton, PA due to the abundance of cheap energy in coal and its strong labor force.

    The initial name of this company was Scranton Lace Curtain Manufacturing Company; it was financially unsuccessful. But local businessmen bound together to reinvest and redevelop this industry in the hopes of its future success. A charter under the name Scranton Lace Curtain Company was born. By 1905, plant expansion was necessary due to the volume of sales. In 1907, the Company left the commission house it sold under and managed sales themselves. In 1914, the Company began selling to department stores directly in addition to the main market of bulk sales to distributors. In 1916, the sales name and company name merged to the Scranton Lace Company. In 1927 the Clock Tower was erected, and in the same year the 34 School was purchased by the Company, as the residential population was decreasing as industry boomed.

    The Company remained profitable during the Great Depression. In 1937, the President launched an operation to increase volume of production to lower operation costs. 8 new looms were erected, which was expected to result in a 15% increase in production, with subsequent additions planned in several years. New weaving and receiving buildings were erected on Glenn Street. The Company stopped its sales of bedspreads and sold the machinery to make room for more lace manufacturing. During World War Two (WW2), the machinery was modified to serve military needs. First, the Company began producing mosquito netting. Then, the Company shifted to human parachutes, mine carriers, and finally reconditioned steel ammunition boxes. Post WW2, what was once parachute manufacturing became window curtains.

    One instance of interesting word choice in the document is referring to the executive management group as the “executive family”. The “executive family” managed their 1,100 employees. The Company did have many long lasting employees, as this publication boasted that 421 staff members had been employed at the Company for over 10 years. The Company claimed to have “maintained a cordial relationship with employees… by [high] wage rates… paid vacation, group insurance, and annual profit sharing”(Our First Fifty Years…) In addition to the financial incentives, the Company highlighted working conditions, stating, “lighting, heating, cleanliness, restrooms, showers have constant attention…employee club house [contains] a gymnasium, cafeteria, bowling alley… and music room” (Our First Fifty Years…). There was an effort to keep engagement in sports high in the workplace, as employee committees were established to maintain these traditions.

    People bought Scranton Lace because owning the material represented a class distinction, as the history of lace was one where it was kept to the elite class. It represented values of American success in industry and labor, as its public image of successful sports teams and employee retention built it into a positive landmark of Scranton. The Company capitalized on community, evident as early as 1927 when they added the Clocktower that would become a preserved monument even as the site leaves its industrial and returns to becoming a residential area once again.
  • The Scranton Lace company seems to be surrounded and engulfed by this big body of water. The sidewalks, streets, cars, fields, etc.. are all swallowed up by the body of water.
  • This picture is another angle of the body of water engulfing the building and its surroundings.
  • Picture of the laborers who worked in the company at the time in May 1953.
  • This is a photograph of approximately fifty workers for the Scranton Lace Company, taken in 1899. This image highlights the separation between male and female workers, and the large amount of child labor that took place prior to child labor laws. As you look deeper into the photo, more and more faces will pop out as seeming young, with many pictured individuals looking as if they are under the age of fifteen. It is important to note that a large majority of workers during this time were immigrants or other people struggling to make ends meet, hence the large number of children working in the factory. This was not uncommon for the time, in 1870 approximately one out of eight children were working, and this number rose to one in five around 1910. Unfortunately, this practice of child labor continued for many years after this photograph was taken.
    In the late 19th century, the factories created with the rise of the Industrial Revolution were at some of their most successful points, the Scranton Lace Company was no exception. Child labor has been a common practice throughout history, as many children were apprentices or servants. This practice, however, reached its peak during the Industrial Revolution. During this time, many families were desperate for work, and many factory workers were either immigrants or were forced to move to industrial areas to make a living. While having small children work factories may not seem appealing, many large factory owners looked to hire children. This is mostly because children would be hired for smaller wages and companies knew that children were not likely to form unions- a practice that allowed workers to band together for better conditions and pay (Shuman, 2017). As you can imagine, this in the end would lead to a cycle of children unable to go to school, and then in most cases, unable to climb the social ladder.
    Working conditions for children were just as demanding and dangerous as that of their adult counterparts. It was not abnormal to hear of a child working twelve hour days five to six days a week, working around the same heavy machinery as adults and being tasked with jobs that were ideal for their ‘small hands’ (Schuman, 2017). Children were also subjected to work in sometimes fatal conditions. Factories often consisted of heavy equipment that workers could easily be hurt while operating, not to mention the long term effects of the smoke and fumes created by factories. While there is not much information circulating about the working conditions for workers in the Scranton Lace Company, it can be assumed that it shared the many dangers of its competitors. It can also be assumed that the company did not stop the practices of child labor until forced to, when laws were created defining the legal age of employment.
    It was not until 1900, one year after this photo was taken, that a movement to end child labor was in the center of social reformations. In 1904 the National Child Labor Committee was formed, with a goal of emphasizing reform. In the years of 1902 to 1915, images of children working were used to bring awareness and spark outrage among the public. In the 1920s there was a push for a constitutional amendment that was eventually passed in 1924, the problem with this was that not many states wished to ratify it. In fact it was not until 1938 that the Fair Labor Standards Act set a minimum wage, maximum number of work hours per week and set limitations for child labor (History.com Editors, 2009). This means that by the time these laws were implemented the children in this photograph were well into adulthood, and their children most likely also ended up in the vicious cycle of child labor before reform came about.
    Ultimately, this image is a stark reminder of how common child labor was in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Many factories at this time hired multiple young workers and the Scranton Lace Company was no exception. Looking at the photograph, it is easy to spot multiple children under the current legal working age, and there is a chance that there were many more young workers that were not included in this specific picture. At the end of the day, child labor was one of the lows in the history of the United States, and thankfully today there are laws to protect the rights of children. Today, laws preventing child labor lead to an increase in childhood education, which allows children to be given to tools to succeed.




















    References
    History.com Editors (2009, October 27). Child Labor. History.com.
    https://www.history.com/topics/industrial-revolution/child-labor
    Michael Schuman, "History of child labor in the United States—part 1: little children working,"
    Monthly Labor Review, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, January 2017, https://doi.org/10.21916/mlr.2017.1

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