Ecusta Employed Hundreds of Women

In the first half of the 20^th century the percentage of women in the U.S. workforce and the types of jobs available to them varied greatly.  In 1900 just 19% of working age women were employed outside of the home.  Most employed women were young and single and worked in low-paying mill jobs or as domestic servants.

From 1900-1945 industrialization and technological advances brought about major changes in the job market, girls and young women were being allowed to pursue higher education, and two world wars took large numbers of men away from jobs.  All of this contributed to the types of jobs available to women, as well as highs and lows in employment numbers.  Women were still expected to leave the workforce and return to domestic life when the men returned was military service.

Slitters created as many as 20,000 bobbins
a day in the Finishing Department.

When Harry Straus brought big industry to Transylvania County in 1939 the local job market and economy changed quickly.  Straus’ Ecusta Paper Corporation, Champagne Paper Corporation, and Boucher Cork Company on the Davidson River offered good paying jobs to hundreds of men and women.

From the beginning Straus employed a large number of women at the plant.  They worked in positions traditionally filled by women such as office assistants, secretaries, cafeteria workers, and in the medical and first aid department.  Women also worked in research, analytics, and quality control but the largest number of women worked in the Endless Belt Department, the Finishing Department, and the Booklet Department.

Tests were required for every phase of the paper manufacturing process.  In the Physical Testing Laboratory women tested paper for thickness, weight, porosity, strength, and opacity.  Cigarette paper also had to be tested for wet strength and burn rate.

Finishing Department A Shift, 1949.

Endless Belts were primarily used in making cigarettes.  A standard belt made of the finest Irish linen thread was one inch wide and eighty-six inches long.  Approximately two million cigarettes were produced during a belt’s lifetime of about five days.  Every cigarette made in the U.S. was made on belts manufactured at Ecusta.  There were 300 different sizes of belts.  Other industries that used the belts included soda straw and spaghetti plants.

The Booklet Department.

In the Finishing Department master rolls of cigarette paper were slit into bobbins, the narrow reels of paper used to make cigarettes.  The width of the bobbin was the circumference of a cigarette plus the overlap for adhesive.  A single bobbin could make approximately 850,000 cigarettes.

The Booklet Department produced machine and hand booklets.  Smokers preferred machine made cigarettes but when the economy was weak roll-your-own cigarettes, which used booklets, were more popular.  Booklets were also used in the home perm industry.

At its peak the plant had more than 3000 employees.  During the course of more than 60 years Ecusta provided jobs for thousands, many of them women.

Photographs and information for this column are provided by the Rowell Bosse North Carolina Room, Transylvania County Library.  Visit the NC Room during regular library hours (Monday-Friday) to learn more about our history and see additional photographs.  For more information, comments, or suggestions contact Marcy at marcy.thompson@transylvaniacounty.org or 828-884-1820.