In Kennebec County, Me., is the quiet borough of East Winthrop, for
more than half a century known wherever oilcloth carpeting was used as
Baileyville.
Were it not for the inventive brain of one of East Winthrop's early
inhabitants, says a contemporary, the village would hardly be known
across the lake, but early in the present century one of the numerous
family of Maine Baileys evolved a scheme to fill his purse faster than
the slow process of nature was likely to do it in growing crops.
Oilcloth carpetings were not known in the long ago, when Ezekiel
Bailey pictured in his mind how they might be made, and it was in the
little hamlet of East Winthrop that the conceit of their manufacture
was hatched and executed. Ezekiel Bailey was, in the days prior to the
war of 1812, looked upon as a very likely boy. He was studious and
industrious, and while other boys of the village were out in the white
oak groves setting box traps for gray squirrels, and spearing pickerel
by torch light in the waters of Cobosseecontee, Ezekiel was busy in
his little workshop fashioning useful things to be used about the
house.
Just how and when and where he was prompted to attempt the making of
oilcloth carpet nobody now living at East Winthrop seems to know. Many
of the burghers thought he was "a-wastin' uv his time," but they
thought different some years later when great factories for the
manufacture of oilcloth floor carpeting were erected in East Winthrop,
Hallowell, New Jersey, and other places.
And Ezekiel? He amassed a considerable fortune and left the path of
life much easier for his kin to pursue. Having met a peddler one day,
he bought a table cover made of a combination of burlap and paint.
Such things were a luxury in the country at that time, and Ezekiel
Bailey was shrewd enough to foresee a big demand for them if the cost
could be moderated a bit. While thinking, an idea came to him, and
following the idea a small voice which whispered: "Make 'em yourself."
He decided to try, and there is a legend to the effect that half the
farmers of the village quit work to see the first table cover.
Procuring a square of burlap, or rather enough burlap from which to
fashion a square of the desired size, Ezekiel Bailey framed up the
fabric as the good old grandmas used to hitch up quilts at a quilting
bee, the only difference being that the burlap was framed or stretched
over a table made of planed boards large enough for the full spread of
the burlap. With paint and brush he began his work. The first coat was
a tiller; the next, a thicker one, gave body to the cloth, and when
this was rubbed down to a smooth surface the last coat was prepared.
This was of a different color and was spread on thick. Then, with a
straight edge, a piece of board with a true, thin edge, reaching
across the whole surface of painted cloth, the finishing touches were
put on. Commencing at one end of the fabric, the straight edge was
moved back and forth, and straight along over the fresh paint once or
twice, and the whole thing left to dry.
The first table covers were great curiosities, and the homes of the
Baileys were visited by all the neighboring housewives, who were
anxious to see "how they worked." Of course, it was easy to keep them
clean, and they saved the woodwork of the table, which was
recommendation enough. To see a cloth was to covet it, and it was not
long before Ezekiel Bailey had a considerable business. Employing a
boy to help him, he turned out table cloths as fast as his limited
facilities would permit, and, as he progressed, new ideas for
decorating took shape in his mind. In less than a year he had men out
on the road selling them.
The turning out to perfection of an oilcloth carpet in those days was
a task that would make a person in these piping times of labor-saving
machinery wish for something easier. All the smoothing or rubbing down
was done by hand. Heavy, long-bladed knives, as big as the "Sword of
Bunker Hill," were used to scrape down the rough body coats of paint,
and a smooth surface, on which to stamp the geometrical figures in
colors, was fetched after long and laborious polishing with bricks and
pumice stone.
Drummers employed by Mr. Bailey traveled to Massachusetts, to New
York, and away down into the South, and ere long the demand for
oilcloth carpeting became so general that other factories were built
and made to chatter and clank with the new industry. There was living
not far from East Winthrop at this time a shrewd, wideawake Yankee
farmer named Sampson, who had kept his weather eye peeled on the
progress of Ezekiel Bailey, and when housewives everywhere began to
yearn for the new carpeting, taking a neighbor in as a partner, Mr.
Sampson built a factory, and in a very short time was in a position to
be considered a formidable rival of Mr. Bailey.
But the originator of the oilcloth carpet was not to be outdone.
Discerning good returns from a plant established close to a big center
of consumption, Mr. Bailey entered into a deal with New Jersey
capitalists, and a big factory was set a-going in that State. A
trusted employe of the Bailey concern, Levi Richardson (who still
lives and is the proprietor of a modest little store in East
Winthrop), was sent to New Jersey to instruct the green hands there
in the art of manufacture. While thus engaged, Mr. Richardson's brain
was busy with the problem of labor saving, and one day a phantom
device for smoothing and rubbing down the first rough coats on the
burlaps took form in his mind, and for some weeks he spent his spare
time in experimenting. The result was the present patent used in most
factories, whereby as much rubbing down can be done in one day as
could have been accomplished in four by the old hand method.
--Industrial World.
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