I Got Way Too Deep Into Draper Corporation 

So I've been researching Draper Corporation for an upcoming project and I have to share some of this.

Most of you know I've been in the Blackstone Valley mill rabbit hole for a while. Lonsdale, Ashton, Pawtucket, Woonsocket. Every time I walk into one of those old buildings and find a loom rusting in the corner, there's a good chance the machine came from one place. Hopedale, Massachusetts. A town most people in Rhode Island couldn't find on a map. And the company that ran that town for over a century was Draper. 

Now here's my favorite part of the whole thing.

The loom that made Draper a giant was called the Northrop. Named after James Northrop, a guy who emigrated from Yorkshire in 1881. In March of 1889 George Otis Draper drove out to Northrop's farm near the Hopedale and Mendon town line and saw the prototype. It was set up in a hen house. Like, a chicken coop. That's where the loom that changed the global textile industry got built.

Within a few years Draper was shipping hundreds of these looms at a time. By 1903 they'd sold 78,000 of them. One weaver could run sixteen at once.

It gets darker. By 1910 the Hopedale workforce was mostly Italian, a lot of them anarchists. One of those workers spent a year at Draper, first as a water boy and then in the foundry. His name was Nicola Sacco.

He'd already moved on by the time the strike hit in 1913, but on April 1st of that year 2,000 Draper workers walked off the job. They wanted a nine hour day and 22 cents an hour. The president of the company was Eben Draper, a former governor of Massachusetts, who reportedly said he'd spend a million dollars to break the strike before he'd negotiate. On April 24th a striker named Emidio Bacchiocci was shot and killed while picketing. The strike collapsed. Nobody tried to strike Draper again for the next 67 years.

Production wound down through the 70s. The plant closed for good in 1980. Then it just sat there for forty years. A massive brick complex falling apart in the middle of a town it built.

In 2021 they tore it all down.

If you want to actually see Draper looms in person, Slater Mill right in Pawtucket has them, and so does the Boott Cotton Mills Museum up in Lowell, MA. Both are worth the trip, and the Boott still runs looms in a working weave room which is wild to experience.

 

 

If you have anything on Draper, family stories or photos, send them my way. Always looking.

— Dave






















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