page_title: Alexander Gibson (industrialist)
section_title: Cotton mill
hierarchical_section_title: Alexander Gibson (industrialist) / Cotton mill
caption_attribution_description: English: A postcard showing the cotton factory at Marysville New Brunswick. Created between 1910 and 1916.
context_page_description: Alexander "Boss" Gibson was a Canadian industrialist in New Brunswick, Canada. His business interests included sawmills, railways, and a cotton mill. He founded the company town of Marysville, New Brunswick.
context_section_description: In 1883 Gibson embarked on a new venture, the manufacture of cotton textiles. The protectionist National Policy of 1879 encouraged the building of cotton mills in Canada, particularly in the Atlantic Provinces, and Gibson soon had one of the largest in Canada. The mill, which was designed by Lockwood, Greene & Co. of Providence, Rhode Island, had four storeys and was 418 feet long by 100 feet wide. It had steam heat and a sprinkler system as fire protection. Its 800 carbon arc electric lights were the first in the Fredericton area.
  Most of the building materials came from Gibson's own land. The bricks were manufactured on the site, from clay dug on Gibson's property. Brick was used to construct rows of duplex houses for the mill workers, as well as a brick hotel to house unmarried female employees. Raw cotton from the United States started arriving at Marysville in 1885 and the mill was in full production by the end of 1889, employing 500 people by 1893.
caption: A postcard view of the cotton mill in the early 1900s
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