What was it like working at the Thomas Kay Woolen Mill?
The short answer is it varied. In its 73-year existence the Thomas Kay Woolen Mill (TKWM) and the world changed quite a bit. On this page we try to paint a general picture of what work life was like for the hundreds of men and women who worked for the mill. If you want to learn more about the individuals who worked here check out our worker biographies page here.
Get an introduction to the work environment here with Tom Kay’s remembrances of worker camaraderie and habits from tobacco to horseshoe rivalries!
Arch Boyles in Dye House, 1947 (Detail). WHC Collections M3 1992-101-0010
Frequently Asked Questions
How long was a work week?
Work Week
Hours and numbers of days worked in a week varied based on the worker’s position, job, number of orders the mill had received and time period. World events like World War II saw increases in production and loosening of labor laws. Eventually a 40 hour work week would become the standard, but early workers often worked 6, 10 hour days a week. Learn more about hours and pay here.
Did workers ever strike?
Strikes
TKWM workers walked off the job during the national 1934 General Strike of Textile Workers in solidarity with workers across the country. The mill was closed for 16 days. The mill was closed for 15 days in 1940 because of a strike. Learn more about union activity at the TKWM here.
Were workers here unionized?
Unions
Being a union member was not a requirement of working at the TKWM until 1940. Many employees at the Thomas Kay Woolen Mill were mostly members of the United Textile Workers (UTW) of America Local 2090, which also had members at local linen mills. Learn more about organized labor at the TKWM here.
How did wartime affect the workers?
Wartime
During WWI, WWII and the Korean War the TKWM was considered and essential industry. This meant draft exemption for some of the workers. Many workers voluntarily chose military service and there is some evidence that more women entered the workforce during war time, but the TKWM employed women since the beginning. War regulations meant more federal regulations on wages. Employees were fingerprinted as a precaution against sabotage and some received special gas dispensations to be able to travel to work. Read more about wartime policies at the TKWM here.
What Did the Workers Do?
Workers had a wide range of jobs in production and administration of the company. This is partial list of jobs held at the TKWM and what their job duties might have entailed. Note, most departments in the mill had a foreman who was often referred to as “Boss.” In some of the records you might find Boss Carder or Boss Weaver. This means they were the head of that department and usually the highest paid!
What did they do? Burlers were in charge of picking out knots and lumps in the woven fabric. They would place a cut of fabric over a large slanted table (that looked a little bit like a drafting table) and with the aide of a tool called a burling iron (a big pair of tweezers) pull out these types of flaws.
Where did they work? Burlers worked in the Finishing Room on the first floor of the mill.
Carding Machine in Willamette Heritage Center exhibit
What did they do? The carding department oversaw the use of the carding machines, which take washed fleece and run the fiber through a series of wire rollers to detangle the fibers and get them aligned in the same direction. This allows the wool to be spun into yarn. The department was run by the Boss Carder who oversaw the workers. Depending on their skill level, carders may have operated the machinery, cleaned or sharpened the rollers, or swept the loose fibers off the floor (it was a very messy process).
Where did they work? The card room was located on the 3rd floor of the Mill Building. Its approximate location is celebrated by the museum’s Card Room, an event space that can be rented for private events. An example of a carding machine can be seen on the 2nd floor of the museum’s exhibits today.
Did you know? The carding machine was one of the more dangerous machines in the mill. The fast moving, toothed rollers had no guards and it was easy to get fingers and loose hanging clothing caught and crushed.
Katherine “Kitty” Squire drawing in warp for weaving. M3 1992-102-0008.
What did they do? Dressing is the process of setting up the warp (long ways threads) on a loom. The looms in the TWKM came with detachable harnesses and warp beams, so multiple warps could be prepared while the loom was weaving. Bobbin winding and spooling also happened in this department (but see their individual entries for descriptions of their work). Dressers took spools of yarn and combined them to wrap around large warp beams. Women were also employed to work on the drawing-in process, that is pulling the individual pieces of yarn through the heddles on the harnesses to control the weaving pattern.
What Did They Do: Dyeing is the process of putting color into the fiber. The Dye Master was the person that was in charge of formulating the dyes. Dyers were in charge of dipping fleece into big, steaming vats of dye and then removing and drying. Sometimes fabric was died after it was woven, and there were also large piece dyeing machines that dipped the cloth into the dye to color it.
Where did they work: The Dye Master had their own laboratory with big glass windows to help see the colors. The Dye Masters lab for a time was actually on the northside of the Warehouse at the west end where the patio now stands (building gone). Most of the actual work of dyeing happened in the Dye House.
Hear Tom Kay talk about the Dye House:
What did they do? The fulling department was in charge of the controlled shrinkage of a piece of woven cloth. The fulling process uses hot water, soap and friction to felt the wool (interlock the microscopic scales on the wool fiber). This tightens the weave structure and makes the cloth harder to unravel, thicker, and smoother in appearance. Fullers operated machines called fulling machines, which require large cuts of cloth to be sewn together in a big loop. Soapers mixed the soap and applied in even quantities into the machine.
Where did they work? In the wet finishing area on the 1st floor of the Mill Building.
Hear Tom Kay describe the Fulling Process:
What did they do? Menders rewove by hand into the woven cloth any broken threads in a cut of cloth. Usually the cloth was run over a roller suspended from the ceiling allowing them to be able to look through the cloth and make the repairs.
Where did they work? Due to the delicate nature of their work, menders were often afforded the best seats in the basement finishing room, next to the window.
Hear from Wyona Sandau who worked as a Mender at the Thomas Kay Woolen Mill:
Hear Tom Kay’s Remembrances about the Menders and other workers in the Finishing Room:
What did they do? The millwright was the chief mechanic on site and responsible for overseeing all the machinery at the TKWM and the upkeep and maintenance of the physical plant and facilities. They helped set up and install new machinery, oversaw the maintenance of the turbines, and made repairs to machines and buildings as needed.
Where did they work? The machine shop was their homebase, but they would go to where repairs or attention was needed. The machine shop was fitted with woodworking and metalworking tools. It also had small forge and the capacity to do some small scale casting.
Hear Tom Kay talk about the last millwright at the TKWM Wayne Mentzer:
Sorting wool garments at the Thomas Kay Woolen Mill (today’s warehouse building). Photo by Clyde Picha taken in 1958. WHC Digital Collections 2013.025.0001
What did they do? Rag pickers/sorters worked through bundles of old woolen garments brought into the mill for recycling. By re-processing old woolen goods with a little new “virgin” wool fibers, the mill could create a recycled product called Shoddy. It wasn’t as high a quality as pure virgin wool, but it could be produced and sold more cheaply. Rag pickers/sorters would work through the different garment bundles and determine what was useable and what wasn’t, remove buttons and zippers and other non-wool parts and prepare the materials to go to the rag picker machine to be torn up and reused.
Where did they work? Much of the rag picking over the history of the site happened in the Rag Warehouse (the western most portion of today’s current warehouse building). Museum employees and others found thousands of buttons underneath this building, some of which are on display today — look for the display.
Ernst Van Buren at Spinning Frame. Photo by Ackroyd Photography Inc., Portland. WHC Collections
M3 1992-103-0003
What did they do? The spinning department took rolls of carded woolen fibers and spun them into yarn. At the TKWM both Spinning Mules and Spinning Frames were used. The term “Spinner” appears to have been applied to both the folks that ran the machines, but also those who took care of doffing (or removing from the machine) the spindles filled with wool (although sometimes these positions were known as doffers or bobbin boys).
Where did they work? The Spinning Room was located on the 3rd Floor of the Thomas Kay Woolen Mill.
What did they do? Yarn at the TKWM was spun directly onto small individual spindles. In order to create a warp, you need thousands of individual strands of yarn. By machine, spoolers rewound yarn from the individual spindles onto larger spools in preparation for creating the warp.
Learn more about the machine spoolers used:
Talitha Magel Nusom working at loom at TKWM, 1947. WHC Collections M3 1992-101-0027a
What did they do? Weavers supervised looms on the weaving floor. Looms weave cloth. You can see a loom in action here.
Weavers were usually assigned two looms at once. While the machines do a lot of the work, weavers watch for broken threads that might cause flaws in the fabric. They needed to catch breaks fast! If a break occurred, they would stop the loom, tie up the broken thread and start again. In the days before automatic looms, weavers were also required to watch the bobbins in the shuttles. When the yarn was almost up, they would need to stop the loom, replace the bobbin with a fresh one, and restart the loom.
Where did they work? The weave room was the 2nd floor of the mill building. 32 looms were lined up in this one room.
Did you know? Weavers were sometimes paid not necessarily by the hour, but by their production or number of picks (one way pass of a shuttle across the loom). Different types of cloth had different scales of pay. The museum has a Weavers Scale Document from August 13, 1933 that shows a pay scale in mills per pick. A mill is 1/10th of a penny (i.e. 10 Mills = 1 cent):
Weavers Scale, 1933
Cloth — 3.48 mils per pick
Mackinaw & Overcoats — 3.55 mils per pick
Blankets (1 run or coarser) –3.55 mils per pick
Blankets Fine — 3.25 mils per pick (4/10Cents per yard extra for fancy borders!)
Looms were fitted with a pick counter, that would mark how many picks the weaver completed in a shift. The blanket on the museum’s demonstration loom currently is running 18 picks per inch. Using this scale, a weaver working on that blanket would be able to make about 6.4 Cents per inch of fabric woven. Looking at the loom running, you might think that a weaver could achieve a lot of inches and make a lot of money in an 8 hour day. But remember, any errors found in the weaving (broken thread, etc.) gets deducted from the weaver’s pay, and there can be a lot of down time switching out warps.
Grading Wool at the Thomas Kay Woolen Mill (2nd floor, east side of warehouse building). WHC Collections X2020.001.0026
What did they do? Sheep’s wool grows differently on different parts of their body. Longer finer fibers are used in fabrics that require a smoother finished goods. Wool Sorters or graders worked on long tables and by touch to evaluate the quality of the wool (which helped establish price paid to the supplier and proper sorts for use in different products).
Where did they work? Grading tables were laid out on the 2nd floor of the Wool Warehouse (east side of today’s warehouse building).
Did you know? Oral tradition around the museum stated that wool sorters had the smoothest hands because they would handle wool before it was washed which is covered in lanolin (an ingredient used in many cosmetics to moisturize skin).
Resources to Learn More:
Book: Cowley, Clarence Edward. Classing the Clip. Sydney, Australia : Angus & Robertson, 1928. WHC Collections M3 1985-015-0007. Read online at Hathitrust.