The Living Mill
Village of Perry, Wyoming County, New York (1902): A Matrix of Connectedness
In the Clark Rice Collection, many photographs of the Perry Knitting Co. are of machines. They are organs of the human brain, created by the human hand; the power of knowledge, objectified. Sometimes the machines stand alone and in other photos they are accompanied by mill-hands. During the 19th century critics of industry were horrified by that symbiosis. Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels decried how a factory-hand becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. Is this really how workers at the Perry Knitting Co. experienced their lives, though? What if we still thought of the mill as a living machine, created by human hands, and tried to envision its daily work? Sometimes it was experienced as hard and repetitive work, sometimes as a satisfaction (however fleeting) at the awesome transformation of cotton bolls into clothing. Industrialization changed the ownership of labor, but not entirely the satisfaction of cooperative production; a community endeavor bigger than even factory shareholders could harness.
1. At first horse-drawn Dutch Ships carry their freight of flour, potash, and whiskey out of Perry and are loaded on the return trip with all sorts of machinery and merchandise. A clothiery is built in 1822, then mills all along the Silver Lake Outlet. Financiers like Milo H. Olin want the town to grow and give Perry rail communication with the outside world.
2. Mill #1, the parent cell, divides and then divides again. Buildings arise and are linked with aerial walkways. By 1913 a thousand incandescent lamps are illuminating a thousand mill hands. Connecting all the parts is a complete telephone system, with twenty-two stations, giving instant communication with the foreman of every department. Every day, twenty-eight thousand garments are spun from cotton.
3. Symmetrical rows of spinning machinery stand ready for the work of mill-hands. Who are not so symmetrical.
4. Karl Sharpsteen is foreman, perhaps the vested gentleman with a mustache. He's surrounded by two dozen women, most in their teens and twenties, who are gathered for a photo and are thinking who knows what. In a country where conditions change with such rapidity...the average American is much more influenced by his contemporaries than by his elders. On Saturdays the women spend their earnings on stockings, lace, fancy buckles, velvet ribbons, elaborate hairpins. They're not working to save, they tell a writer, but for their own pleasure.
5. In the Sewing Room, sometime during the mid-1950s, a couple pauses to celebrate. It's their 33rd anniversary, whether of marriage or employment at the mill we don't know. Along with a sign, the gentleman seems to be holding a bonus check. Meanwhile work continues in the background. What memories haven't made it into the frame of this photograph? Plumbing-lined walls carry gallons of water in and out of the mill, machines are brought to life by the flow of electricity. Perry Knitting Co. lived a lifetime; it grew and aged alongside those who gave it purpose. After workers finally leave their shift, the Sewing Room appears empty but still vibrates with remembered movement, potential energy left stiff in the stale air. Inaudible, clanging metal reverberates through the glaring factory floor. Light presses against tired eyes no longer here. Nimble hands and cramped fingers have moved in time with the sleepless machines; muscles have made calculated movements in the name of industry or, simply put, life. Now the building exhales them beyond its foundation, back to the complex depth of each life lived outside its brick walls.
6. How far does the living mill extend? At Decker's Confectionary on Main Street, red blush and neon signs push through a black & white past. A paper dollar is briefly caressed, unnamed mill-hands at first reluctant to let go of hard-earned pay. But friendly smiles and colorful advertisements beckon. Work becomes an ice cream soda or Easter candy for the children. Wages from the PK flow outward to a thousand contact points, each spark passing from hand to hand.
7. Finally, we see the 1961 all-star team from the PK Bowling league, the best of Unit I, Unit II, the Cutters, and the Office. No matter how divided their work, conversations and momentary glances float through the mill like cotton. For this short time, at least, they represent the PK. Legs and arms swinging in time, aiming for the perfect release: strike.
Sources Consulted
This is a work of speculative nonfiction, drawing upon images from the Clark Rice Photography Collection and texts (which are italicized) from the following documents for each numbered paragraph.
Introduction: Kark Marx, "Fragment on Machines," Grundrisse (1858). Web link here. Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto. Web link here.
1. Frank D. Roberts and Carl G. Clarke, History of the Town of Perry, New York (1915): 61, 85. Courtesy Internet Archive. Web link here.
2. Roberts and Clarke, 86-87.
4. Bessie Van Vorst, "The Woman That Toils: Experiences of a Literary Woman as a Working Girl," Everybody's Magazine 7 (1902): 413-425. Courtesy HathiTrust. Web link here.