Women's Work at the North Star Woolen Mill

The Mill

The Mill represented the hope of nineteenth century investors that the city of Minneapolis would become a major textile center in the United States, on par with mills in the eastern United States.The North Star Woolen Mill's workforce was primarily young white women. Women were often hired for factory textile work (making clothes, blankets, etc.) because industrialists viewed it as a modern version of spinning fiber into cloth, which was a common task for women in households.

At Work in 1888

Work in the mill wasn't easy. The women’s jobs were low-paying, tough manual labor and included washing and processing wool.

Today, you can see that the converted loft condominiums have large windows that overlook the river. But in 1888, at the time Eva Valesh wrote her expose in the St. Paul Globe, the workroom would have been dimly lit and stiflingly hot on summer days. The workers had to squint in the dark room through their whole shift, and the stale air was made worse by the smell from the damp floor and wet wool.

In most sites Valesh visited, the workers were exposed to unsanitary and unsafe conditions. Valesh described the woolen mill as the “hardest looking workroom in the city,” These kinds of conditions often led to permanent health issues, but the young women who were recent immigrants to the United States or the primary bread winners for their families often feared retaliation and job loss if they demanded better conditions. 

Valesh's 1888 series for the St. Paul Globe called “‘Among Girls Who Toil” which described working conditions for white Minneapolis women who held a wide-variety of positions. While employers said her criticism was overblown, the articles generated support for working women on Minneapolis.

Other things to know about the Mill

• Mill workers produced blankets for railroads and the company had contracts with the United States government during the Spanish American War, World War I, and World War II.They reached the height of production in 1929 with 270 employees.
• In 1949, the company closed the Minneapolis Mill and moved production to Ohio, and used the Minneapolis riverfront buildings as a warehouse and offices.
• Like many buildings along the riverfront, it became shelter for people experiencing homelessness after it was closed in 1980. Despite the building having no heating or electricity, numerous people stayed on the second and third floors of the blanket building (one part of the mill complex). When the building was purchased in 1998, it was converted to loft condominiums.

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Cartwright, R.L.. Valesh, Eva McDonald (1866–1956), MNopedia. October 28th 2011. Accessed July 12th 2020. https://www.mnopedia.org/person/valesh-eva-mcdonald-1866-1956.

Faue, Elizabeth. Writing the Wrongs: Eva Valesh and the Rise of Labor Journalism. Ithaca, New York. Cornell University Press, 2002.

Frey, Martha. Historic American Engineering Record: North Star Woolen Mill, May 1st 1998. Accessed July 12th 2020. http://lcweb2.loc.gov/master/pnp/habshaer/mn/mn0500/mn0559/data/mn0559data.pdf.

Kane, Lucille. The Falls of St. Anthony: The Waterfall that Built Minneapolis. St. Paul, Minnesota. Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1987.