Every so
often questions surface regarding the quality of fabrics made during
the Great Depression of the 1930s. There is this notion that because
times were hard that textiles suffered equally.
Thus, when Kim Wulfert presented the idea to research that era, this
article was born.
As you will see, quality isn’t necessarily affected by catastrophe.
Look at the Times
The National Scene
— Historians and economists, depending on their point of view of
economic recovery, give varying time frames for the Depression. 1930
to 1936 seems to be most prevalent with 1938 or 1940 as other ending
dates.
Regardless of the time span, those were tough years resulting in
widespread hunger, poverty, unemployment and worldwide economic
crisis as American capital which had sustained a Europe still
recovering from WW1 losses collapsed, causing panic overseas.
Certainly not what
economists thought was just a mild bump in the market trying to
correct itself. What made it the Great Depression was the breadth
and scale of the crisis, affecting this country far more severely
than other countries.
Not only from the financial hardships caused by stock manipulations
and other industrial and economic factors which created the fall of
the market on Oct. 29, 1929 – Black Tuesday -- but also the
unwelcome arrival of the Dust Bowl in the Southern Plains [parts of
Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico] which devastated
landowners who were still suffering from the drastic fall of
agricultural prices in 1925.
This weather plague would last for eight years, a yellowish-brown
wind haze in rolling walls of black. which whipped across the fields
raising billowing clouds of dust to the skies. The simplest acts of
life — breathing, eating a meal, taking a walk — were no longer
simple.
click to enlarge
Depression --
what Depression??
Sumptuous plushes, velours and
slinky satins featured in Chicago Mail Order's 1931 catalog would
have you believe the world was a carefree and lavish place. There
were probably many standing in breadlines in freezing weather who
would have loved to be snuggled in one of those coats.
Children wore dust masks
to and from school, women hung wet sheets over windows in a futile
attempt to stop the dirt, farmers watched helplessly as their crops
blew away.
Poor agricultural practices and years of sustained drought caused
the Dust Bowl. Plains grasslands had been deeply plowed and planted
to wheat. During the years when there was adequate rainfall, the
land produced bountiful crops. But as the droughts of the early
1930s deepened, the farmers kept plowing and planting and nothing
would grow. The ground cover that held the soil in place was gone.
Skies could darken for days, and even the most well-sealed homes
would have a thick layer of dust on furniture. In some places the
dust would drift like snow, covering entire farmsteads.
There were no government or insurance programs at that time such as
there are today. By 1931 local government and direct work programs
were proving ineffective; some city workers had not been paid for 8
months. Breadlines, hunger marches, worker protests often turned
violent, farm holidays [neighbors refusing to bid on farm auctions
and moving evicted tenants furniture back in their foreclosed homes]
and Hoovervilles [homeless encampments] were standard occurrences
and scenes nationwide.
By 1933 when President Franklin Roosevelt took office, nearly 27% of
wage earners, about 8 to 15 million, were unemployed due to firings
and layoffs. Most factory workers worked twice as hard to earn the
same amount of money they did before the Depression hit. Many lost
their lands because they couldn’t keep up their payments – 40% of
the farms in Missouri were up for foreclosure. Schools with little
budgets to work with, shortened their days and hours.
A wide variety of federally funded programs called the New Deal were
instituted to restore the economy and reform the system. These
programs included repealing Prohibition, a farm relief bill, a
four-day bank holiday to address the banking crisis, financial
reform and other programs giving rise to the origins of government
alphabet soup -- Civilian Conservation Corps [CCC] for conservation
projects including the Dust Bowl; the Tennessee Valley Authority
{TVA], which harnessed water power to create energy in the Tennessee
River Basin; and the Works Progress Administration [WPA] for drought
relief and other work projects employing more than 8.5 persons.
While the Okies, derived from Oklahoma which was hardest hit by the
Dust Bowl, traveled westward to the fertile valleys of California,
others came in droves from small towns to the large industrial
centers and cities to find work. My own parents and relatives were
among those hopefuls. And those already living at the poverty level
had no idea there was ever a Depression while former millionaire
businessmen were reduced to selling apples and pencils on street
corners. But there was work and some prosperity, uneven though it
was from region to region. People did have money to spend.
By 1936 higher agriculture prices, work programs and, industrial
orders were gradually improving the economy. However, while the New
Deal did help restore the GNP to its 1929 level, it was only when
the federal government imposed rationing, recruited 6 million
defense workers, drafted 6 million soldiers and ran massive deficits
to fight World War II did the Great Depression finally end.
The Textile Scene
— This industry was still reeling and trying to recover from one of
its worst periods of manufacturing from post-WWI through the 1920s.
Consumer demand for more and more novelty fabrics [fancier weaves
and textures and new color shades] spawned quantity over quality
manufacturing so mills could keep up with the non-stop consumption.
American fabrics were a laughing stock worldwide because of their
poor workmanship. Textile and trade publications, industry leaders
and consumer groups screamed for reforms within the textile industry
to set production and worker performance standards. Suffering the
most from the uproar were those mills producing high-quality
products as they attempted to keep their names reputable.
In the latter 1920s, many smaller mills faltered due to poor
management, unfair labor practices and shoddy merchandise. Most were
bought up by larger mills which kept some operations and disposed of
the rest. Signs of improvement were visible by1930 as the industry
began reshaping itself.
Ironically the Depression years were those of remarkable
achievements by and for the textile industry including
second-generation rayon technology, the Draper Northrop loom for
enhancing the weaving of rayon and its improved cotton machinery,
the removal of nitrocellular rayon from the marketplace due to its
toxic properties, and adherence to the Federal Trade Commission’s
Wool Products Labeling Act, to the listing of percentages in silk
weighting and to regulations on false and misleading advertising.
click to enlarge
The demand for novelty fabrics
from the 1920s carried over into the 1930s. This group of textured
fabrics ranging from shadow checks to nubby, crepey and meshy tweeds
were popular throughout the 1930s. Difficult to believe they are
cotton.
Cotton Textile Institute, 1931.
click to enlarge
An example of putting rush
manufacturing above quality to provide innovative fabric to a
demanding public in the 1920s -- this shirt is a cotton warp and
rayon filling. Two different bolts of rayon were used, and the rayon
from one bolt was unable to withstand ordinary laundering resulting
in a shredded sleeve with rayon disappearing. Had proper inspection
standards been in force, the rayon differences would have been
noticed before weaving and corrected.
Textile Fabrics, 1927
Many of the mills still
practiced paternalism by creating ways to keep employees on the
payroll; other mills with little heart were forced to follow
government guidelines regarding hours and wages. As the government
moved to implement job opportunities during the Depression, one of
the provisions in its National [Industrial] Recovery Act [NRA blue
eagle] of 1933 was spacing work hours so all employees would have an
equal chance to earn wages. This meant enforced limited work weeks
and equalizing wage rates regardless of region. Southern pay,
previously much lower than elsewhere, for the time being was now
equal to northern wages. The NRA was declared unconstitutional in
1936 as it wasn’t benefiting all businesses uniformly.
Thus the textile industry, subject to frequent periods of anxiety
due to the ups and downs of the cotton futures market and tariff
changes, survived the Depression in better financial condition than
many other industries, owing to its essential product.
Fabrics and Equipment
— One only has to browse through swatch books, catalogs,
magazines, promotionals and other publications of the 1930s to
realize the abundance and variety of textiles for consumers at all
levels. It was a decade of two fashion modes with long skirts and
sensuous styles for the first half and short skirts and casual
styles for the second half. Satins, rough wools, linen,
linen-textured cotton and rayon bold crepines called ruff were at
the top of the list for women. Linen and wool worsteds were
fashionable for men.
Some persons, particularly those who collect quilts and old fabric
for restoration but are not familiar with mill operations, discover
that their particular piece[s] of cloth from the 1930s or presumably
from that time period bleeds, fades and goes limp after washing
because it was so heavily sized, that is filled with starches to
make fabric appear firmer than it actually was.
They deduce that because these cottons, or any cottons or other
fibers for that matter, were made during the Depression they were
made from inferior substances with low thread counts under
substandard conditions because there was little money to upgrade
equipment or hire competent employees, etc.
Those assumptions are not necessarily valid as quality is not
confined to any age. While it is a given that not all the fabrics
made in the 1930s were quality goods, one can make the same
comparisons today in this age of affluence by going to any fabric
outlet store or outlet section in a fabric chain and find fabric
which crocks, is not colorfast and doesn’t look hardy enough to
withstand even one washing. It must be remembered that manufacturers
in general produce a range of price- affordable products as a matter
of economy and shrewd business sense to attract all consumer levels.
click to enlarge
The
effects of sizing --left photo shows muslin [slightly magnified] in
its finished state on the bolt. It has been sized with various
starches which give cloth the appearance of being firmly woven.
Right photo shows the collapse of weave structure after the first
laundering has washed out sizing. Many cheap fabrics were doctored
in this manner to mislead consumers about the quality of a cloth. -
Textile Fabrics, 1927
click to enlarge
Textile manufacturers,
including catalogs which featured their own house brand fabrics,
took great pains to draw attention to the reliability of their
cloths. Boilfast, colorfast, sunfast and preshrunk in some cases
were surefire sellers. Toward the end of the 1930s tubfast began
emerging as an umbrella term to replace colorfast and boilfast. -
Montgomery Ward 1939 catalog.
Mills and finishers of
the 1930s which produced cloth they were proud to claim as the best
were no different than their counterparts today. Quality depends on
many things: superior strains which will produce a surface to
properly absorb color; modern machinery for processing, spinning and
weaving; excellent dyes and inks and the correct equipment to
deliver those dyes and print to cloth; modern machinery for other
necessary or cosmetic finishing applications and final inspection to
insure a flawless operation. All of these factors must be taken into
consideration collectively for manufacturing a quality cloth.
click to
enlarge
These incredible
high thread count cotton swatches shown in the Cotton
Textile Institute 1931 fall promotional booklet
introduce the colors so characteristic throughout the
1930s. They range from embroidered chambray to
broadcloth to sateen to fine plains [superior cottons,
usually combed] which are silky and lustrous. Several
feel like they could be Sea Island cotton. One would
have to find a good specialty fabric store today to
obtain cottons of this high quality.
Modern
mills of the 1930s [those which stayed abreast of technology and
continually upgraded their equipment] which maintained
high-performance operations standards would ensure that not only was
the best of dyes used but that other components to get cloth to the
dyeing stage and dyeing operation itself were equally top notch.
Machine lubricant, automatic temperature controllers, grinders,
bleaching kiers [vats] with mechanisms for distributing even
circulation and liquid strength; dye gums and bleaching oils,
hydrosulphites, purification systems, foaming preventers in the dye
box and a host of other ingredients were vital to color perfection.
And of course follow that up with printing inks and machinery which
have their own specialty entourage.
Perhaps the most vital element because of its visibility to us is
dye or color. We think of color in broad terms of a dye put in a vat
and then soaking cloth in it. And if the dye is top grade, it will
be colorfast and fade proof forever. Of course that is not so. A
mill can have the best dyes in the world but if the all the
equipment to transfer them to cloth is inferior, then the result is
a bum dye job.
We are fortunate that yardage and garments from the 1930s, in fact
any decade, are available for use and study. Aside from their colors
and pattern, their history of how they were made are just as
important and interesting.
The next time you hold a 1930s era cloth that is substandard in some
respect, think about what part of the operation might have caused
that; could be something as simple as a cranky kier out of kilter.
By the same token, pay special attention to the array of 1930s
fabrics you might own. The 1930s produced incredibly beautiful
textiles which were not equaled until the glamour fabrics of the
1950s.
********** And thus ends
the Depression era. With the advent of WWII, technology in many
fields
would contribute new fibers and uses which would change the textile
industry forever.
Joan Kiplinger is an
antique doll costumer, vintage fabric collector, researcher and author. She
hosts a vintage fabric internet discussion list, writes a monthly vintage
fabric column and has been published in several textile magazines. Her book
Vintage Fabrics ID and Value Guide
1880-1959 was published in 2005. She welcomes any questions or
correspondence and can be contacted at
jkip@ncweb.com
