The Kreenholm Manufacturing Company (historical alternate spelling: Krenholm; ; ; ) was a textile manufacturing company located on the river island of Kreenholm in the city of Narva, Estonia, near the border with Russia. It is situated along the banks of the Narva river, by the large Narva Falls, from the Baltic Sea. It was founded by Ludwig Knoop in 1857, a cotton merchant from Bremen, Germany. At one point, the company's cotton spinning and manufacturing mills were the largest in the world; and Kreenholm was considered in its time to be the most important mill of the former Russian Empire, owning 32,000 acres of land and employing 12,000 people.
In 1872, the Kreenholm factory was the site of the first labour strike in the history of Estonia, as well as one of the earliest labour strikes in all of the then Russian Empire. After the 1940 Soviet invasion and occupation of Estonia, the company's property was nationalised. Kreenholm's assets were privatised again in 1994, three years after Estonia had regained independence. The new company went bankrupt in 2010, and continued limited operations after purchase by the next set of owners (Kreenholmi Manufaktuur OÜ).
History
The island that the factory would come to be situated on was located between two waterfalls on the Narva (Narova) River overlooking the city of Narva (Narwa). The area was part of Sweden until being captured by the Tsardom of Russia (Muscovy) in 1704, during the 1700–1721 Great Northern War. Only one small sawmill was located on the island throughout the 18th century as a wealthy local German merchant family owned the island and used it as a vacation retreat. A German merchant made an unsuccessful attempt to start a wool manufacturing business on the island during the 1820s; it was dissolved in 1831.
Mid-19th century and the founding Kreenholm
In 1856, a pioneer of the cotton industry, Ludwig Knoop, purchased the island of Kreenholm for 50,000 roubles from the heirs of a local merchant Sutthoff. The manufacturing company was founded a year later in 1857 by Knoop, along with initial investors Kuzma Soldatyonkov, Aleksey Khludov, Gerasim Khludov, Richard Barlow, and Ernst Kolbe. It was listed as a joint stock operation initially made up of 400 shares at 5,000 roubles each, valuing the company at 2 million roubles. The charter was approved by Tsar Alexander II on July 23, 1857. Knoop was the director general of the company until his death in 1894, Johann Prowe succeeded him in this position.
A number of prominent guests attended the ceremonial laying of the cornerstone on April 30, 1857. The original factory layout was made up of four large buildings but consisting of two factories. A "left" and "right" spinning building (called korpus) that together made up the spinning factory, along with a weaving factory designed with the same concept. The left korpus of the spinning factory was the first to be completed in the fall of 1857 and began operating in the fall of 1858, it would go on to be known as the "Old Half" or "Old Wing". The other three buildings were constructed in the following years with most of the work completed around 1862, although a continuously growing workforce at the factory led to housing expansion for workers throughout the 1860s. Along with the factories and dormitories, other buildings constructed during these years included: an apartment house for office workers, a house for foreman and supervisors, a small school building, a small infirmary, and a pharmacy.
The factories were built with limestone from a local quarry; all the structures for workers were built with logs. As the Baltic Sea is only about 16 km away, large cotton warehouses were erected in the harbour at the mouth of the river where cotton, imported directly from the United States or Liverpool, was stored and brought up the river to the mill as needed. A new spinnery was built on the island in 1870, and the company bought the adjacent Georgiyevsky Island in 1872 and built another mill there in 1899. The company also purchased Joala Manor and converted it into a mill in 1884, expanding it in 1890. The complex initially manufactured calico and received its raw materials from the Americas, Egypt, and India. The introduction of the St. Petersburg–Tallinn (Reval) railroad opened up Central Asian markets. In 1893 it contained 340,000 spindles, 22,000 looms, and employed 7,000 people. Professor Gerhart von Schulze-Gävernitz visited the mills in the 1890s stating that "the whole place is a bit of England on Russian ground."
The carding and spinning machinery was from the firm of Platt Brothers & Co Ltd, in Oldham, England. Some of the looms were English, but most of them were made by the firm in its foundry and machine works, which were an adjunct of the mill. Riving power included 11 water turbines with a combined horsepower of 8,550, and supplementary steam engines of 700 horsepower were employed. Seventy per cent of the spindles were used in making yarns for sale principally among weavers in the St. Petersburg and Moscow textile districts. A specialty of the mill was 90s ply yarn, made from Egyptian yarn, for the rubber-tire manufacturers. The range of yarns produced was wide, running from 3s to 90s, and about 330,000 of the spindles were mules. The woven textile consisted mainly of print cloth in various types of construction and sateens, both woven from 34s warp and 38s weft. Practically all the goods were shipped to a factory in Moscow during this time.
The managers and assistant managers of the mills were mainly Englishmen, such as James Charnock. Others were Germans and Russians. The majority of the labourers were Estonians, but the initially smaller share of Russian workers would increase over time. The company provided a hospital, schooling for 1,200 children, a Lutheran church (for the Estonians and Germans), and a Russian Orthodox church (built at a cost of $250,000). Employees lived at the mill paying nominal rent. The owners provided a monthly allowance and board for workers who had spent longer than 30 years at the factory.
The strike of 1872
There was a cholera outbreak within the factory that started spreading amongst workers on 21 July 1872. The provincial medical inspector Dr. Johann-Eduard von Falk investigated the event and dated the timeline of the outbreak from 21 July to 21 September. He eventually reported 503 infections and 334 deaths at the factory, although these continuously revised estimates were challenged by both workers and outside contemporaries who though the true numbers were much higher. Amidst harsh working and living conditions, employees at the factory placed blame on the factory administration for being unable to respond to the rampant disease. On 9 August, masons who were working at the factory during this time requested back pay and permission to leave the factory until the disease subsided but were denied by management.
Upon denial of their initial requests on the same day, a group of 120 masons walked to the town of Narva to try and get help from the provisional government. Their meeting with the head of the regional office of Imperial Gendarmes was unsuccessful and the masons returned to the island that night. Once returning the factory, hundreds of masons began to solemnly march around the factory grounds in protest. The next day Major Nikolai Andreianov, the head of the regional office the masons had appealed to in Narva, received orders to assure better precautions against the epidemic were put in place at the factory and to dismiss any of the masons who still complained. Only 190 out of 450 of the mason artel members stayed at the factory, but less than a week later the cases of cholera peaked and those who deserted began to return to the factory. After this event the masons did not participate in anymore of the labor disputes.
During the workday of 14 August 1872, just a few days after the masons demonstration, an estimated 500 out of 900 weavers at the factories walked out from their looms to gather at the factory directors office to demand better working conditions. This was likely initiated from the windows in the factory being left open for hygienic reasons, since workers were cold and wanted to close them. Ernst Kolbe, the director at the time and a major shareholder of the factory, asked for help from the gendarme office in Narva once the workers began demanding more than just for the windows to be closed. Major Andreianov arrived with three additional officers to oversee negotiations between Kolbe and ten weavers self selected from the workers. After making their demands, Kolbe claimed that the owners would need to come to the factory from Moscow in order to allow these changes, so the workers agreed to wait and continue working under their current conditions. Throughout the week that they waited more workers from the factory joined the collective of those asking for change, with many of these workers notably being spinners who were not originally part of the crowd on 14 August. On 21 August the collective of workers negotiated their revised demands with two owners from Moscow, including the original and chief investor Ludwig Knoop, with the provincial governor present to intermediate. Over the course of the day some of the concessions were awarded to workers, including a slightly shorter workday and increased pay.
On 9 September 1872, a counter-petition was brought forward and signed by 24 workers who, likely in tandem with management, wanted for the old ways of Kreenholm to be restored. A group of workers was made aware of this in the factory tavern and marched towards the house of a factory manager to protest. The crowd was peacefully dispersed but the workers sent representatives to the gendarme office in Narva to appeal to the government about the counter revisions. A council with the governor was denied, although Andreianov suggested they take their concerns to the chief of police for the time being, whom the workers agreed to wait for. Later in the day, having heard of the previous nights disturbances from the perspective of the factory managers, the district chief of police Hakenrichter Girard arrested 6 delegates from the workers. They were sentenced to one week in the Narva prison for their actions the previous night.
The following morning at the factory some more workers were arrested. Having been informed about what had happened the previous day, 200 weavers left their stations to demand the release of their coworkers. The workers armed themselves with blunt objects and returned in the afternoon to surround the office that the managers and police were in, simultaneously blocking off the bridge connecting the island to its western shore. Another mob of workers, estimated to be a few hundred strong, marched to Narva to demand the release of the imprisoned workers from the prison. The military was called in by local authorities and factory management. 220 soldiers arrived at nightfall and dispersed the crowd, maintaining order at the factory throughout the night. The following morning skirmishes continued between workers and soldiers as large contingents of workers still refused to work and tried to prevent their compliant contemporaries from being able to access the factory. By noon those who had reported to work were sent home by management and the factory was effectively closed for the day. Unable to contain the now violent actions of the rebellious workers, the provincial governor and an entire imperial regiment were called in to restore order. They arrived by 6 pm and were able to put down all of the workers activities. This was the first major industrial strike in Estonia.