Very few owners had compassion for the workers and thus the working conditions were poor, the salaries meager and the working hours long. Workers were expected to follow the politics of the mill owners. The mills owned the nearby “mill houses” and rented them to their employees. Although the managers and skilled workers were male, the laborious jobs were performed mostly by women and children. This expansion occurred after the flood of 1843 because that event destroyed nearly everything along the creeks.Most of the mills employed Immigrants from England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and later Irish Catholics. Kellys, Kents, and Wolfendens, built or converted to textile mills. Realizing the potential market for textiles, descendants of the Garretts, Sellers, and Levis, followed by the Burnleys. Philadelphia became a major textile center with many mills in Germantown, Manayunk, Kensington, and Blockley. This was the beginning of a prosperous large textile industry in Upper Darby that lasted into the mid-1900s.What became this country’s massive textile industry began in New England then spread to the Delaware Valley. About 1840, the mills became “integrated,” meaning they spun the yarn from raw material, then wove, finished and dyed the cloth. About 1830, some old grist mills were converted to spin yarn that was sold to individuals who wove their own crude cloth. Before 1830, the spinning of yarn and the weaving of cloth was mostly performed at home by the women and primarily to satisfy the family’s needs. The growth rate of the township changed about 1830 when textile making moved from the homes into mills.
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