The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1872-05-02
The Manufactures of Portland.
STRAW GOODS.

STRAW GUUDS.
Massachusetts has heretofore been the great
mart of New England for straw hats and bon
nets, quite a number of small villages in the
interior of that State being supported almost
entirely by this industry, while Boston has dis
tributed their products in every direction -
Thousands of girls earn livelihood Attn neat
and agreeable employment, and Maine furnish
es her quota of laborers. Messrs. Hillman,
Mellen & Co., who have been prominent whole
sale dealers in millinery goods, few years ago
| embarked in the manufacture of straw goods in
Portland, and have a very aeurishing establish
ment, occupying nearly all of three floors in
the building No Isl Middle street They are
| now employing over seventy girls in straw sew
ing, and nine males in the other branches of
manufacture, and their business has largely in
creased during the past year asl they are con-
stantly opening new markets in the lower Brit
ish Provinces, as well as in Maine. Last wear
they paid out for labor about $4,000, of which
over $1,000 was distributed among their girls;
and the present year the aggregate amount of
wages Will reach SIS, 900. 1t is pleasure to
visit their work-rooms; they are homes of busy
industry, filled with bright, intelligent, nimble
fingered young ladies, who make very hand
some wages at a neat and pleasant employment.
Almost all of these operatives are residents of
Portland and vicinity, and the number is to be
increased to hundred. With the present
working force over 700 hats and bonnets are
produced daily. Two presses are running con-
stantly, shaping hats, and two more are to be
added at once. The firm manufacture all their
dies and blocks, and have on hand all the styles
that have been popular since they have been in
business; and they have added about twenty
new shapes the present season. These dies are
first cast in plaster in their shop, and then in
iron by the founders and finished by the ma
chnists of Portland. Over forty casks of plas-
ter are used annually for this business, and
large quantity of dye-stuffs and bleaching ma
terials in coloring and whitening straw. The
firm now deal directly with first hands in the
purchase of supplies, buying all the varieties of
braid of the New York importers; and their
stock room is trimming full of the most elegant
material. A splendid trade has been worked
up in Maine and the Provinces, and the estab-
lishment is being worked to its full capacity
without keeping quite up to the orders. From
these statements it will be seen that single
manufacturing enterprise in this city, conduct
ed with skill and energy, is the means of put
ting in circulation considerable amount of
money yearly, giving employment to large
number of operatives and moving the machin-
cry and labor of other establishments. And
the discovery of one of these important con-
Germs developes the existence of another; and
as one pursues the investigation it becomes al
most matter of surprise to him to learn how
noiselessly and yet how rapidly manufacturing
interests have grown up in Portland within the
last half dozen years, and are increasing daily.
A little fostering care and liberalty on the part
of capitalists will make Portland what SO many
of us desire that she should be-the great dis
tributing point of our own State for large
class of manufactured goods which the people
have heretofore been obliged to go abroad for