How the Mills Worked 

Most of the visitors to our site probably know little about what went on in the mills at Porterdale. We are still trying to obtain actual descriptions and photographs of activities there. Until we can do so, we thought the following would provide some background on the internal workings of cotton mills. The book “Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World” (University of North Carolina Press, 1987) gives a good description of the basic processes.   An extended quote from the book follows. These process descriptions of course don’t capture what the actual working conditions in the mills were – the noise, the heat (or cold – there was no air conditioning), the lint, the danger, and the just plain hard work. (“Like a Family” is an excellent reference on the evolution of cotton mill communities, the lives of people who lived in them, and the working conditions in the mills.)

We have also added photos from various sources and given credit when known. Again these photos are NOT from the Porterdale Mills (at least as far as we know.) They are provided for you as an example of the machinery and workings inside a cotton mill. We hope that someone out there will have and share with us actual photos from the Porterdale Mills.  Note that some photos are linked to the text and others are linked  below. 

Many of the photos included predate the 1930s.  A striking feature of these pictures is the presence – and ages – of children, both boys and girls.  Child labor was very prevalent in the workplace then.   At the national level, the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 outlawed child labor.  The Act was declared unconstitutional in 1935, and child labor was finally abolished by the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.

We would especially welcome any information describing the actual operations in the Porterdale mills.

Description of a cotton mill From “Like a Family”.

“Integrated cotton mills were ‘designed to move cotton through a precise series of production processes that separated, straightened, and twisted cotton fibers, combined them into yarn, then wove the yarn into cloth. Manufacturing began in the opening room, where workers removed the ties and bagging from bales of raw cotton. Because of the dust and dirt and the ever-present danger of fire, this room was often located in an adjacent warehouse or in the basement of the mill. The opening machine tore apart the compressed cotton, removing dirt and short fibers. As the cotton was fluffed, a vacuum system carried it through a giant tube to the picker room, where pickers -- or lappers as they were also known -- continued to clean the cotton and organize it into continuous, even sheets. Card hands then fed these sheets into carding machines, where sharp metal teeth again tore apart the cotton, removing any remaining twigs or dirt, and converted the mass into a continuous sliver, or loosely compacted rope, that coiled into cans.’"

"The fibers in the sliver were almost parallel, but because the cotton tended to twist and curl, it needed more processing. Workers directed four or more slivers through a series of rollers in the head of a drawing frame, where they were combined in a single strand. Since each set of rollers ran at increasing speeds, the drawing frame straightened -- or drew out -- the sliver and made it thinner. To ensure the permanent union of the fibers, the yarn was then subjected to roving, where it was slightly twisted, and to spinning, where the fibers were wound still more tightly around one another. As bobbins on the spinning frames filled with thread, doffers replaced them with empty ones. The spinner's job was to move quickly up and down a row of machines, repairing breaks and snags."

"Spoolers ran machines that combined the thread from ten to fifteen different bobbins. Operating a spooling frame was relatively simple, but problems resulted when the threads broke. At this stage broken ends could be repaired only by tying them with a knot rather than simply twisting them together. If a stronger or larger yarn was desired, single threads were twisted together to produce multi-ply yarn. A final step, winding, prepared the yarn for its various uses. It could be wound into balls for sale, put into cops for the weaver to use in the shuttle of a loom, or wound on cones, tube, cheeses, or reels for later processes in the mill."

"The production of cloth began in the weave room. Yarn that ran lengthwise, called warp, was interlaced with yarn running crosswise, called filling or weft. The first step was the preparation of the warp, as workers mounted yarn from the winder on a large frame called a creel. They directed the threads from each cone through individual parallel wires onto a rotating beam. The yarn from several beams was combined, dipped into a bath of hot starch and oil, dried over steam-heated drums, and wound onto a giant spool known as a a loom beam."

"Before weavers placed the beam on a loom, draw in hands laced each warp thread through individual eyes in the harness. The harness raised and lowered threads in the warp, separating them to allow for the introduction of the weft. Once ‘drawing-in’ was completed, weavers put the beam and harness on the loom, which could be very simple or very elaborate depending on the type of cloth desired. A simple loom had two harnesses, one that raised a section of the warp and another that lowered the section. The shuttle, which contained the weft, passed between the openings in the warp and the union of warp and weft was completed as the reed beat the filling back against the previously woven cloth. The harnesses then changed position and the process continued until the desired length of cloth was produced. This type of loom made simple cloth like sheeting, but more complicated looms produced fabric with an almost infinite variety of patterns and designs."

Miscellaneous Photos from various Cotton Mills.  Any help in identifying Mill and or activity being performed would be appreciated.

Misc. Photos