Shamron Mills LLC

We are having a warehouse sale! Many sizes and colors. Cash only, please bring small bills if you have them. Tell your friends, especially those in the health care industry. Please share this post! Hope to see you there!

Supply chain problems are everywhere. They affect every business, every industry and ultimately, every consumer. Shamron Mills is no exception. Here's why:

Inside America’s Broken Supply Chain The global supply chain that brings toys, clothing, electronics and furniture from Asia to the United States each year is clogged, an enduring impact of the pandemic that is unlikely to ease soon.

Fall, as the leaves are thinning, is one of the best times to see one of Troy’s most iconic buildings. If you happen to be driving north on I-787, and approaching South Troy, you can see it across the river – a tall red brick building with turrets that looks like a medieval castle, or fortress. In fact, that’s what it’s called by most people– “the Fortress.”

It’s 1 Jackson Street. What I like to call the Fortress of Shoddy.

The Fortress was constructed in 1902. Many people think it was an armory, but it wasn’t. It was built as the United Waste Manufacturing Company, and was a warehouse storing cotton and wool shoddy. The company’s main headquarters and factory was in Cohoes.

Troy, as most people know, is famous for its 19th century detachable collar and cuffs industry. Shirts and other clothing items were also made in the many factories that once lined the river and were elsewhere in the city and surrounding towns.

All of those cut goods produce fabric waste – the scraps, the ends of bolts, the damaged goods, plus other rags and fabrics were collected. Perhaps even more than in today’s recycling culture, such waste could not just be tossed, not when there were methods of manufacturing new materials out of it.

Shoddy is a cloth made from reconstituted wool and cotton rags. Shoddy was used to make blankets, workmen’s clothing, and more often, soldier’s uniforms. Many of the uniforms of the Union Army during the Civil War were made of shoddy, a practice that continued up until World War I.

Shoddy was not a superior material, it did not have the strength of either good wool or cotton, as the threads were short, not the long fibers of new goods. Not surprisingly, there was a great deal of complaining, especially during the Civil War, about the quality of the uniforms. The adjective “shoddy,” meaning inferior and badly made, as you can guess, comes from this fabric.

The manufacture of shoddy was a small, but lucrative industry. Troy actually had two shoddy mills, the building for the other, the Troy Waste Manufacturing Company, still stands at 444 River Street, recently converted into apartments.

The United Waste Manufacturing Company, founded in 1899, was one of 88 shoddy mills across the country by 1909; an industry that employed over 2,000 people. By 1906, the factory in Cohoes employed over 130 workers. In addition to the factory headquarters, they had an office in this warehouse, an office in Boston, and one on Leonard Street in lower Manhattan.

Producing shoddy was hard and hazardous work for the factory workers. The rags were soaked in muriatic acid, a process called “carbonizing, “and then dried at temperatures above 100 degrees, which reduced the cotton fibers to carbon. The whole mass was then mixed and oiled, and then ground into a fibrous mass.

From this soup, threads were twisted out, and woven into fabric that looked like dyed wool. As can be imagined, this was toxic to workers, especially those working with the hot and dry “carbonized” rags, and respiratory conditions similar to white lung were common.

Fire was a danger as well. This warehouse had a horrific fire in 1908, when a worker named Ann Rumnick had her dress catch fire from machinery sparks, in a baling room where the rags were bundled. The fire spread quickly in the hot dusty room filled with flammable rags.

Women were jumping out of the second story windows, and fortunately, the sprinkler system and the fire department were able to put the blaze out. Poor Ann Rumnick died, however, burned beyond recognition, but the only fatality. The fire caused over $50K in damages, and probably hastened the company’s demise.

More on the architecture, the owners of the warehouse, the fate of the company and the building: all revealed next time.

Story by Suzanne Spellen

Photographs of the building are mine, Vintage photos are of the Slack Shoddy Mill in Springfield, MA. The operations in Troy would have been quite similar.