The great factories of the textile industries in this country are
fashioned after methods peculiarly adapted to the purposes for which
they are designed, particularly as regards the most convenient placing
of machinery, the distribution of power, the relation of the several
processes to each other in the natural sequence of manufacture, and
the arrangement of windows securing the most favorable lighting. The
floors and roofs embody the most economical distribution of material,
and the walls furnish examples of well known forms of masonry
originating with this class of buildings.
These features of construction have not been produced by a stroke of
genius on the part of any one man. There has been no Michael Angelo,
no Sir Christopher Wren, whose epitaph bids the reader to look around
for a monument; but the whole has been a matter of slow, steady
growth, advancing by hair's breadth; and, as the result of continual
efforts to adapt means to ends, an inorganic evolution has been
effected, resulting in the survival of the fittest, and literally
pushing the weaker to the wall.
This advance in methods has, like all inventions, resulted in the
impairment of invested capital. There are hundreds of mill buildings,
the wonder of their day, now used for storage because they cannot be
employed to sufficient advantage in manufacturing purposes to compete
with the facilities furnished by mills of later design. Thus their
owners have been compelled to erect new buildings, and, as far as the
original purpose of manufacturing is concerned, to abandon their old
mills.
In the case of a certain cotton mill built about thirty years ago, and
used for the manufacture of colored goods of fancy weave, the owners
added to the plant by constructing a one story mill, which proved to
be peculiarly adapted to this kind of manufacture, by reason of added
stability, better light, and increased facilities for transferring the
stock in process of manufacture; and they soon learned not only that
the old mill could not compete with the new one, but that they could
not afford to run it at any price; the annual saving in the cost of
gas, as measured by the identical meter used to measure the supply to
the old mill, being six per cent. on the cost of the new mill.
In another instance, one of two cordage mills burned, and a new mill
of one story construction was erected in its place. The advantage of
manufacture therein was so great that the owners of the property
changed the remaining old mill into a storehouse; and now, as they
wish to increase their business, it is to be torn down as a cumberer
of the ground, to make room for a building of similar construction to
the new mill.
It is true that such instances pertain more particularly to industries
and lines of manufacture where competition is close and conditions are
exacting. Still they apply in a greater or less degree to nearly every
industrial process in which a considerable portion of the expense of
manufacture consists in the application of organized labor to machines
of a high degree of perfection.
These changes have been solely due to the differences in the
conditions imposed by improvement in the methods of manufacture. The
early mills of this country were driven by water power, and situated
where that could be developed in the easiest manner. They were
therefore placed in the narrow valleys of rapid watercourses. The
method of applying water power in that day being strictly limited to
placing the overshot or breast wheel in the race leading from the
canal to the river, the mill was necessarily placed on a narrow strip
of land between these two bodies of water, with the race-way running
under the mill.
To meet these conditions of location, which was limited to this strip
of land, the mill must be narrow and short, and the requisite floor
area must be obtained by adding to the number of stories. It was
essential that the roof of such a mill should be strong and well
braced in order to sustain the excessive stress brought to bear upon
it. The old factory roof was a curious structure, with eaves springing
out of the edge of hollow cornices, the roof rising sharply until
about six feet above the attic floor, with an upright course of about
three feet, filled with sashes reaching to a second roof, which, at a
more moderate pitch than the first slope, trended to the ridge.
The attic was reduced to an approximately square room, by placing
sheathing between the columns underneath the sashes, and ceiling
underneath the collar beams above; thus forming a cock-loft above and
concealed spaces at the sides which diminished the practically
available floor space in the attic. This cock-loft and these concealed
spaces became receptacles for rubbish and harbors for vermin, both of
which were frequent causes of fire.
The floors of such a mill were similar in their arrangement to those
of a dwelling. Joists connecting the beams supported the floor; and
the under side was covered over by sheathing or lath and plaster, thus
forming, as in the case of the roof, hollow spaces which were a source
of danger. This method caused at the same time an extravagant
distribution of material, by the prodigal use of lumber and the
unnecessary thickness of such floors, and entailed an excessive amount
of masonry in the walls.
Mills built after this manner were frequently in odd dimensions; and
the machinery was necessarily placed in diversified arrangement,
calling forth a similar degree of wasted skill as that used in making
a Chinese puzzle conform to its given boundaries. Their area depended
upon the topography of the site, and their height upon the owner's
pocket book. There was in Massachusetts a mill with ten floors, built
on land worth at that time ten cents or less per square foot, which
has been torn down and a new mill rebuilt in its place, because, since
the advent of modern mills, it has failed every owner by reason of the
excessive expenditure necessary for the distribution of power, for
supervision, and for the transfer of stock in process, in comparison
with the mills of their competitors, built with greater ground area
and less number of stories.
With the advent of the steam engine as prime mover in mills, and the
introduction of the turbine wheel with its trunk, affording greater
facilities in the application of water power, the character of these
buildings changed very materially, though still retaining many of
their old features. One of the first of these changes may be noticed
in the consideration which millwrights gave to the problem of fixing
upon the dimensions of a mill so as to arrange the machinery in the
most convenient manner. Although the floors were still hollow, there
was a better distribution of material, the joists being deeper, of
longer span, and resting upon the beams, thus avoiding the pernicious
method of wasting lumber, and guarding against fracture by tenoning
joists into the upper side of beams.
But this secondary type of mills was not honest in the matter of
design. The influence of architects who attempted effects not
accordant with or subservient to the practical use of the property is
apparent in such mills. The most frequent of these wooden efforts at
classic architecture was the common practice of representing a
diminutive Grecian temple surrounding a factory bell perched in mid
air. There were also windows with Romanesque arches copied from
churches, and Mansard roofs, exiled from their true function of
decorating the home, covering a factory without an answering line
anywhere on its flat walls.
I do not mean to criticise any of these elements of design in their
proper place and environment; but utility is the fundamental element
in design, and should be especially noticeable in a building
constructed for industrial purposes, and used solely as a source of
commercial profit in such applications. Its lines therefore fulfill
their true function in design in such measure as they suggest
stability and convenience; and this can be obtained in such structures
without the adoption of bad proportions offensive to the taste. In
fact, certain decorative effects have been made with good results; but
these have been wholly subordinate to the fundamental idea of utility.
The endurance with which brick will withstand frost and fires, and the
disintegrating forces of nature, in addition to its resistance to
crushing and the facility of construction, constitute very important
reasons for its value for building purposes. But the use of this has
been too often limited to plain brick in plain walls, whose monotony
portrayed no artistic effect beyond that furnished by a few
geometrical designs of the most primitive form of ornament, and
falling far short of what the practice of recent years has shown to be
possible with this material.
Additions of cast iron serve as ornaments only in the phraseology of
trade catalogues; and the mixture of stone with brick shows results in
flaring contrasts, producing harsh dissonance in the effect. The
facades of such buildings show that this is brick, this is stone, or
this is cast iron; but they always fail to impress the beholder with
the idea of harmonious design. The use of finer varieties of clay in
terra cotta figures laid among the brickwork furnishes a field of
architectural design hardly appreciated. The heavy mass of brick,
divided by regular lines of demarkation, serves as the groundwork of
such ornamentation, while the suitable introduction in the proper
places of the same material in terra cotta imparts the most
appropriate elements of beauty in design; for clay in both forms shows
alike its capacity for utility and decoration. The absorption of light
by both forms of this material abates reflection, and renders its
proportions more clearly visible than any other substance used in
building construction.
The modern mill has been evolved out of the various exacting
conditions developed in the effort to reduce the cost of production to
the lowest terms. These conditions comprise in a great measure
questions of stability, repairs, insurance, distribution of power, and
arrangement of machinery.
In presenting to your attention some of the salient features of modern
mill construction, I do not assume to offer a general treatise upon
the subject; but propose to confine myself to a consideration of some
topics which may not have been brought to your notice, as they are
still largely matters of personal experience which have not yet found
their way into the books on the subject. Much of this, especially the
drawings thrown on the screen, is obtained from the experience of the
manufacturers' mutual insurance companies, with which I am connected.
By way of explanation, I will say that these companies confine their
work to writing upon industrial property; and there is not a
mechanical process, or method of building, or use of raw material,
which does not have its relation to the question of hazard by fire, by
reason of the elements of relative danger which it embodies.
It is indeed fortunate that it has been found by experience that those
methods of building which are most desirable for the underwriter are
also equally advantageous for the manufacturer. There is no pretense
made at demands to compass the erection of fireproof buildings. In
fact, as I have once remarked, a fireproof mill is commercially
impossible, whatever effort may be made to overcome the constructive
difficulties in the way of erecting and operating a mill which shall
be all that the name implies. The present practice is to build a mill
of slow burning construction.