Threading America · Study guide · Chapter 7
The Silk City
Paterson and the Rise of American Silk · 1840–1920
Name
Class
Date
Guiding question
Did Paterson's founding plan to rely on cheap machine labor make conflict like the 1913 silk strike inevitable?
Part 1Before you read
- Read the guiding question. Write down what you already know, or think you know, about it.
- Predict one way your answer might change after reading the sources.
Part 2Read
While cotton was king, silk was luxury. Paterson, New Jersey, became 'Silk City'—the center of a specialized, high-skill industry that drew immigrant weavers from Lyon, Macclesfield, and northern Italy to the falls of the Passaic.
Silk demanded more skill than cotton. The fiber was costly, the looms intricate, the patterns commercially sensitive. Paterson's Great Falls of the Passaic, about seventy-seven feet high, provided power, and Alexander Hamilton's Society for Establishing Useful Manufactures, chartered by New Jersey in 1791, had laid the legal and hydraulic scaffolding of an industrial town. Silk manufacturing took root around 1840 and grew explosively after the Civil War, supplying everything from ribbons and thread to broad dress silks. With that skilled workforce came radical politics: Paterson became one of the most militant labor cities in America, culminating in the 1913 silk strike led by the Industrial Workers of the World.
Part 3Timeline
For each event, write one sentence on why it mattered.
- 1840
Silk Takes Root
Silk manufacturing begins in Paterson's water-powered mills; Christopher Colt's early venture is traditionally counted among the first.
- 1880s
Immigrant Weavers Arrive
Skilled silk workers from Lyon, Macclesfield, and northern Italy settle in Paterson, importing both technique and radical labor politics.
- 1913
The Paterson Silk Strike
Beginning February 25, roughly twenty-four thousand workers strike for an eight-hour day and against multiple-loom assignments; the strike lasts about five months and ends in defeat.
- 1920s
The Industry Disperses
Silk manufacturers increasingly move work to lower-wage mills in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, eroding Paterson's dominance.
Part 4Key terms
Write the letter of the matching definition beside each term.
- Four-loom system
- Picket line
- Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)
- Society for Establishing Useful Manufactures
- Broad silk
- A.A radical labor union founded in 1905 that aimed to organize all workers, skilled and unskilled, into "one big union."
- B.A line of striking workers outside a workplace who try to persuade others not to enter.
- C.Wide silk cloth woven for dresses and linings, Paterson's most important product in the early 1900s.
- D.A management plan requiring each silk weaver to run four looms instead of two, which workers saw as a speed-up that would cut jobs and pay.
- E.A private corporation chartered by New Jersey in 1791 to build an industrial city; it founded Paterson.
Part 5Primary source workshop
These excerpts are quoted word for word, including the spelling and language of their time.
Document A
Prospectus of the Society for Establishing Useful Manufactures
Alexander Hamilton (attributed), August 1791
The dearness of labour and the want of Capital are the two great objections to the success of manufactures in the United States. The first objection ceases to be formidable when it is recollected how prodigiously the proportion of manual labour in a variety of manufactures has been decreased by the late improvements in the construction and application of Machines—and when it is also considered to what an extent women and even children in the populous parts of the Country may be rendered auxiliary to undertakings of this nature. It is also to be taken into calculation that emigrants may be engaged on reasonable terms in countries where labour is cheap, and brought over to the United States.
Context: This prospectus launched the Society for Establishing Useful Manufactures, which founded Paterson, New Jersey, at the Great Falls of the Passaic River in 1792. Its plan to rely on machines, women, children, and imported workers foreshadowed the labor system of the later Silk City.
Source: Alexander Hamilton. Prospectus of the Society for Establishing Useful Manufactures, August 1791. Founders Online, National Archives. 1791. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-09-02-0114
- Historical context
- What was happening when and where this was created?
- Intended audience
- Who was meant to read, hear, or see it?
- Purpose
- Why was it created? What did its creator want to happen?
- Point of view
- Whose perspective does it show, and whose is missing?
Document B
War in Paterson
John Reed, June 1913
There's war in Paterson. But it's a curious kind of war. All the violence is the work of one side—the Mill Owners. Their servants, the Police, club unresisting men and women and ride down law-abiding crowds on horseback. Their paid mercenaries, the armed Detectives, shoot and kill innocent people. ... They control absolutely the Police, the Press, the Courts. Opposing them are about twenty-five thousand striking silk-workers, of whom perhaps ten thousand are active, and their weapon is the picket-line.
Context: Reed wrote this for the socialist magazine The Masses after being jailed while observing a picket line during the 1913 Paterson silk strike. The strike, led by the IWW against the multi-loom system, lasted about five months and ended in defeat for the workers.
Source: John Reed. War in Paterson. The Masses (via Marxists Internet Archive). 1913. https://www.marxists.org/archive/reed/1913/masses06.htm
- Historical context
- What was happening when and where this was created?
- Intended audience
- Who was meant to read, hear, or see it?
- Purpose
- Why was it created? What did its creator want to happen?
- Point of view
- Whose perspective does it show, and whose is missing?
Corroborate
Compare "Prospectus of the Society for Establishing Useful Manufactures" (Alexander Hamilton (attributed), August 1791) with "War in Paterson" (John Reed, June 1913). Where do they agree, where do they differ, and what might explain the differences?
Part 6Discuss
- What two "objections" to American manufacturing does the 1791 prospectus identify, and what solutions does it propose?
- John Reed was a radical journalist who openly supported the strikers and the IWW. Which words reveal his point of view, and what would a mill owner's account of the same events likely emphasize?
- The prospectus planned to recruit "emigrants ... in countries where labour is cheap." How did that plan play out a century later, when Paterson's skilled weavers arrived from Europe with their own traditions of labor activism?
- Companies today debate automation and staffing levels much as Paterson's weavers fought the four-loom system. Is requiring one worker to tend more machines a fair productivity gain or an unfair "speed-up"? Defend your answer.
Part 7Write: claim, evidence, reasoning
Answer the guiding question in one paragraph, using the documents and the reading.
| Claim | Answers the guiding question directly in one or two sentences. |
|---|---|
| Evidence | Cites at least two primary sources by name and at least one fact from the reading. |
| Reasoning | Explains how each piece of evidence supports the claim. |
| Sourcing | Notes at least one limitation of a source: who made it, when, and why. |
Part 8Exit ticket
- In one sentence, how would you answer the guiding question now?
- What piece of evidence would most change your mind?
Keep exploring
- Labor
The Paterson Pageant
The 1913 strike that staged itself in Madison Square Garden.
https://www.threadingamerica.com/topics/paterson-pageant
- Impact
The Multiple-Loom System
The speed-up that triggered an industrial uprising.
https://www.threadingamerica.com/topics/four-loom-system
- Biography
Hannah Silverman, Strike Captain
A teenager who led the women's picket lines.
https://www.threadingamerica.com/topics/hannah-silverman
Places: New Jersey, Connecticut