Lewiston's Textile Industry

     The powerful Androscoggin River was key to the industrial growth of Lewiston. Early settlers used the power of the river for grist and saw mills that the rural community needed. It was the efforts of the Frye, the Garcelon, and the Little families who realized the industrial potential of the falls of the Androscoggin River. Their hard work made use of the river's power and resulted in the building of mills and factories along the banks of the great river.
     As early as 1819 Michael Little established a small carding and fulling woolen mill. Dean Frye and his son, John managed the woolen mill and made it very successful. When this mill burned in 1829, it replaced with an even larger mill, and then incorporated into the Lewiston Falls Manufacturing Company. Samuel Pickard, John Frye, William and Alonzo Garcelon were investors who helped make the Lewiston Falls Manufacturing Company a thriving local enterprise.
     The manufacturing of cotton began in 1836. Ephraim Wood began the manufacturing of cotton warps and batting on the third floor of a wooden building near the falls. In 1844 Joseph Harding added three looms and began to produce cotton cloth. It was a great success. Some of Lewiston's leading businessmen notice the success of Harding's cotton mill and joined in the manufacturing of cotton. In 1845 Edward Little, John Frye, Alonzo Gacelon, James Lowell, and Daniel Briggs incorporated as the Lewiston Falls Cotton Mill Company and began to construct a cotton mill. The new mill had not even been completed before it was sold to the Lewiston Water Power Company.
     The Lewiston Water Power became the most important organization in Lewiston. Its goal was to develop a power site at the falls. The owners made plans for canals, dams, mill sites, and for the sale of power to the city. In order to accomplish these plans company stocks were sold to Boston investors. Thomas J. Hill, Lyman Nichols, George L. Ward, Alexander DeWitt, and Benjamin Bates invested money in the Lewiston Water Power Company.

    Benjamin Bates visited Lewiston. He saw the economic potential and invested most of his own money into the young company. He controlled the Lewiston Water Power Company and led Lewiston into its "Golden Age".

The Androscoggin and Kennebec Railroad linked Lewiston with the Atlantic and St. Lawrence railroad. The town of Lewiston was growing and in 1861 became a city. Woolen mills, cotton mills, the construction of the canals, and the development of waterpower were the reasons for Lewiston growth. The small agricultural community had become a major textile center.

Lewiston became a "company town". The Lewiston Water Power Company owned most of the land, the mills sites along the river, and the rights to the power from the river. Benjamin Bates and Thomas Hills also became the primary employers for the city of Lewiston. They encouraged the building schools and supported the development of Bates College, and dominated the intellectual activities of the community.

      The Lewiston Water Power Company became the Franklin Water Power Company and new mills were constructed. The Lewiston Bleachery, the Androscoggin Mill, and the Continental Mill were also constructed.

     The Bates, Hill, and Franklin companies together accounted for over one half of Lewiston's tax revenue. Their huge five and six storied brick mills were the center of the Lewiston landscape.
     The work force needed to operate the mills increased Lewiston's population. By 1900 Lewiston was a busy industrial city of 23,761 people. Over half the city's population worked for the mills. Immigrants from Canada and Europe came to work in the mills. A weaver could earn wages of $4.00 a week.

     At first most of the textile workers were young "Yankee" girls from neighboring rural areas. They sent most of their wages home to help their families. A working day was twelve to fourteen hours, six days a week. The girls tended three to four looms. This days work was not much different from the long hours they had worked on the farms.

     Many of these girls worked to pay off family debt, to set aside a dowry, or to pay for schooling. The first girl to graduate from Bates College paid for her education by working at a mill. These young girls lived in the boarding houses owned by the mills. The mill boarding homes were located across from the mills. They provided inexpensive, pleasant, and safe supervised living accommodations.      

The Irish immigrants began arriving around 1850. The Irish were generally unskilled refugees from the potato famine in their homeland of Ireland. They came to Lewiston in search of jobs with the hope for a better future. The Irish men dug the canals, mill, and house foundations earning a dollar a day, while the women served as maids and housekeepers in the Yankee household. The Irish immigrants also did much of the unpleasant work at the Bleachery and gas works.
     To many of Lewiston's Yankee inhabitants, the presence of the Irish represented a real threat to their social and cultural traditions. The Irish refugees were very poor and often needed public welfare. This was a new problem to Lewiston. Never before had so many people needed assistance. The poor Irish refugees did not have money for housing. They built shacks close together at the bottom of Bleachery Hill. There in their "patches" or neighborhoods diseases and sickness quickly spread. In 1854 an epidemic of cholera killed 200 residents, most of these were poor Irish immigrants that lived in the "patches". In order to stop the spread of this disease the Irish shacks were burned, and the city fathers set up temporary housing and provided welfare support for the needy. These temporary housing units were later called the "poor farms".
     The Irish brought with them a different religion and strange customs. These Irish Catholics were often mistreated, but the as the community grew and the French-Canadian immigrants began to arrive the Irish were gradually accepted in Lewiston's changing society.
     The greatest population change to Lewiston came in the late 1860. At that time a great number of French-Canadians came to Lewiston for jobs. Unlike the Irish immigrants that had come to Lewiston seeking jobs, mill agents recruited the French-Canadians. The French-Canadians recruited had reputations of being skilled hard workers. By 1875 the Lewiston Weekly Journal reported that 2,600 or more French-speaking residents in the city and an estimated 100 to 150 French-Canadians were arriving each day.
     Lewiston's population topped 19,000 in 1880. Immigrates were responsible for this increase and almost 40% were French-Canadian. The Irish, Italians, Greeks, Lithuanians, and Jewish immigrants made up another 35% of the population
     The arrival of these groups brought new languages, religions, and customs, which changed Lewiston. Most groups of immigrants lived in the same neighborhood. The French-Canadians lived in a section still referred to as "Le Petit Canada" or "Little Canada" located across from St. Mary's School.

     All of the immigrants experienced discrimination and friction in their relations with the Yankees. These immigrants lived in different sections of the city, attended different churches, and even spoke different languages. These new citizens became permanent urban workers.
     This was a time of great growth and development. The canals, the huge mills, the Gulf Island Dam, Bates College, Little Canada, the great churches, St. Joseph's Church Lewiston's first Catholic church, St. Mary's Church, St. Patrick church, St. Peter's and Paul Church, City Hall, and the grand Victorian homes of the mills owners and managers along Main Street and College Street are monuments of Lewiston's industrial era.

     Lewiston began to change after World War I. Cotton manufacturing dropped as fashions changed. Synthetic fabric like rayon became popular. The mills had to upgrade machinery to use these new fabrics. This upgrade was very costly. Competitions from the modern new southern mills, which cut down the cost of transportation, and labor seriously, damage the textile industry. New technology made the Lewiston's systems of canals, dams, locks, and individual water wheels old-fashion and obsolete. Lewiston's canals harnessed waterpower with wheels, belts, gears, and shafts.               
The new hydroelectricity changed the production of power. It produced cheap electrical power that could be transmitted over long distance. Waterpower became less important to industry. Other factors such as cost of transportation, labor, and taxes became the key factors for industrial development. The Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that followed had a terrible impact on Lewiston.
     Walter S. Wyman of Oakland, Maine and Samuel Insull of Chicago rescued Lewiston's mills. The Central Maine Power Company under the direction of Walter Wyman sold much of its power to Lewiston's population as well as to the city's mills. Wyman had invested 20 million dollars in expanding the Gulf Island Hydroelectric Plant. If the mills were closed than CMP would lose as well.
     In 1928 Wyman and Marin Insull purchased the Hill, the Androscoggin, and Bates Companies. These were turned into the Bates Manufacturing Company. Wyman-Insull controlled Lewiston's economic life, the water and the electricity that powered the mills, the textile mills, and the outlet stores. The 1950's could not prevent the decline of the textile industry. One by one the great textile mills began closing their doors. Some mills like the Androscoggin, the Continental, and the Hill Mills were converted to the manufacturing of shoes. After many years even these shoe shops began closing their doors and unemployment was on the rise in Lewiston.
      Lewiston has had to face the problems up keeping the Bates Mill Complex and finding new occupants for the huge structures that have been emptied. Today, Lewiston is still a city in transition as it joins with Auburn, its neighbor across the Androscoggin River, to develop Lewiston-Auburn into a thriving economic community.

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