Women in the Amsterdam carpet mills
By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History, Daily Gazette, 04-18-15
Modestly but eloquently, Sue Fraczek described her life as an Amsterdam mill girl, “When I went to work, I was scared to death. It was my first time in a carpet mill. It was hot. It was noisy.”
Fraczek was surprised to see herself as a young mill worker in a still picture prominently featured in “Historic Views of the Carpet City,” the WMHT-TV documentary on Amsterdam first shown in 2000.
Co-producer Steve Dunn chose the picture of the young woman at a yarn twisting machine to symbolize the documentary that he and I produced.
Dunn recalled, “The black and white content expressed the whole theme—industrial workers in a mill town. I loved the way the spindles receded in the picture, and I loved the bandanna and the period clothes the woman wore.”
Fraczek did not recall having the photo taken and didn’t know the photo existed until she saw it on television. The photo is one of two pictures of her in the collection of the Walter Elwood Museum in Amsterdam.
Dunn and I did not know the identity of the mill girl until several months after the documentary appeared. School teacher Gerry Brown stopped to talk with me at the Amsterdam Price Chopper and identified the mill girl as her godmother and aunt.
Sue Fraczek’s parents were Polish immigrants. Her dad worked at Mohawk Carpets in the city’s East End. Her mother, who died young, sometimes worked at Bigelow Sanford, the rug mills that bordered their Park Hill neighborhood.
Handling yarn and fabric became Fraczek’s trade as a teenager. She took a power machine course at Vrooman Avenue School in 1940 and worked at Novak’s shirt factory on Edson Street and the Amsterdam Coat Company in the city’s West End.
Toward the end of World War II she got her job running a twisting machine at Bigelow Sanford Building 54. The machine took three strands of woolen yarn and twisted the strands into stronger fibers that would be used in weaving carpets. The yarn left the twisting room on spools or bobbins.
Twisters or winders were paid on a piece work basis. Their pay was determined by the weight of the yarn-filled bobbins they produced. Fraczek recalled making $45 for 40 hours work, a lot less than the carpet weavers made. “They made good money,” Fraczek said.
Fraczek stayed at Bigelow Sanford until the company left Amsterdam in 1955. She then held a similar job at Mohawk/Mohasco Carpet for another six years.
She later found employment using a sewing machine at White Stag in the East End where underwear was made, and Mohawk Sportswear in the West End. She retired from mill work in 1989. Fraczek was not the only Amsterdam mill veteran who could say, “Almost every job I lost was because the company moved out.”
Outside of the mills, Fraczek led a full life. She never married but spent countless hours helping raise children in her large extended family. She was known for having a great eye for selecting excellent gifts for nieces and nephews. After leaving the mills she enjoyed peace and quiet and was a voracious reader, especially enjoying the classics.
Ann Peconie, executive director of the Elwood Museum, said you can learn a lot from the dress, jewelry and demeanor of women photographed in the mills.
Peconie said one of her favorite mill pictures shows a woman tending a machine, looking at the camera and sporting a bracelet and high heels, “I make jokes saying the woman seems to be saying she would rather be in another place at another time.”
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