The Sunday Gazetteer
Sunday, October 14, 1900
pg. 3

LOCAL CONDENSATIONS
Monday, October 8 - Quite a town is springing up out at the cotton mill. About 300 people are living out there. The cottages looking out from the open post oak woods are very pretty, and give a delightful rural aspect to the scene.

The Sunday Gazetteer
Sunday, May 3, 1908

The Denison Cotton Mill
The following taken from the Houston Post will be read with great interest. It gives a better idea of the workings of the Denison cotton mills than anything yet published:
The present company was incorporated in 1906, the mill having originally incorporated as the Denison Manufacturing Company in 1890. It is capitalized at $150,000. It contains 200 looms, 42,144 spindles and consumes 6,000 bales of cotton annually. The building is a very large one, 4 stories high, and cost $135,000. All the stock of this mill is owned by parties in and around Denison. It manufactures 8 to 15-ounce duck, 20" wide and proportionate lengths and weights up to 72" wide. It also manufactures 14 and 16 two-ply skeins, When all the machinery is in operation the mill employs 350 hands, about 70% of whom are grown persons, about equally divided among the men and women. Most of the labor is picked up locally. Those outside of this locality were obtained from the Southern States east of the Mississippi river. Local employees come altogether....class. The mill owns.....4 and 6 rooms....room houses are what are termed double tenements, being 2 stories high and 2 families in a cottage. This plan, however, is very unsatisfactory, and the manager assured me that he regretted that any of the buildings were so constructed. The 4-room cottages rent for $6 per month and the 6-room cottages rent for $8 per month. This mill is situated outside of the city limits, but there is a district school on the grounds, affording educational facilities equal to the best districts in the state.

Cotton Mill houses
800 block, W. Coffin @ S. Scullin
1920s

The superintendent of this mill has been in the business ever since he was 16 years old, having learned the trade in Alabama. He says that it is his experience and observation that the opportunities of those who work in cotton mills are far better than farm renters. He said he had rather not employ children under 15 years of age, but that out of sympathy rather than anything else he employs many under that age. He, too, is an advocate of compulsory education, declaring in that connection that a great many children around the mills won't go to school, there being no work for them to do until they have arrived at 14 years of age.
"Unfortunately for those children," he said, "their parents won't compel them to go to school."
The expense of keeping the mill village clean and otherwise healthy is borne by the company. In fact, all the mills which I visited bear the expense incurred by sanitary regulations.
This mill is visited by a physician every morning in the year. He is paid for his services by collection 10c per week from each employee, collected by the officers of the mill and paid over to the physician. If any employee is feeling in need of medicine, he furnishes the overseer with his name, which is written on a slate kept for that purpose, so when the physician visits the mill in the morning he is able by consulting the slate to ascertain the names of all the hands needing medicine. These persons are examined and given the medicine needed for their several complaints. In this way a great deal of sickness is avoided. In the event that any operative is not able to be on duty the doctor goes to his house and there renders him medical assistance.
The manager told me that he tried lignite, but found coal more economical.
"The possibilities of cotton manufacture in this state are good," said the manufacturer, "but I want to emphasize the fact in that connection that foreign capital is very timid and will not come here until home capital demonstrates that the mills can be run at a profit." This mill is very prosperous, the manager being very optimistic as to the future. He agreed with the other managers that if any atmospheric troubles existed at all they would be easily overcome by artificial methods. This mill has 5 overseers, who receive $4 per day. The manager said that it ordinarily takes a green hand from 1 to 2 weeks to earn wages, but in order to encourage them to work we make it a rule to pay 50c a day from the start. He said that there is nothing unhealthy in the mill work, health conditions being better at the mill than in town. Speaking of the friendly relations between the employer and his employees, he said that any employee in his mill feels at perfect liberty to come to him at any time for the purpose of presenting any grievances.

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