Part 2: Ostrich Riding, Burlesque Queens, And Child Labor Laws(Conclusion)

The commonality? Plumes!

Please note: This is the conclusion section of the two parts to this article. Be sure to start reading with Part 1, initially published only minutes earlier. Please enjoy!

This c. 1919 image records a couple and family friend enjoying an afternoon adventure at Cawston’s Ostrich Farm. Although often skittish and unpredictable, ostriches are also often calm and trainable. According to statistics, the giant birds can comfortably pull up to 150 lbs. or 68 kg. Image, public domain.

The Dark Side of the Ostrich Plume Trade: Willowing

“How doth the manufacturer
Improve the ostrich tail?
By willowing the scraggy ends
Until they’re fit for sale.
How cheerfully he sits and smiles
Throughout the livelong day
While children knot the tiny flues
And make the plumes that pay.”

From “Sorrowful Rhymes of Working Children” 
as recorded in the article “Home Work in the Tenements”
by Elizabeth C. Watson for Survey, Number 25, an Edwardian journal dedicated to informing the public about social welfare problems, dated February 4, 1911.

Head-turning, sublime, and sumptuous. These intricately extended ostrich plumes decorated the glorious hats and feathered fans that remained popular throughout the Edwardian years and well on into the early 1920s.  The most expensive, prized, and specialized ostrich feathers were referred to as “Willow Plumes” or sometimes “Waterfall Plumes.”  They were, and still are, immediately recognizable due to their extraordinarily long, drooping, and lavishly thick appearance.  Look closely at any antique willowed ostrich plume, if you can find one, and the extensions are still evident to this day and fascinating to examine.

Willowed plumes were advertised in every magazine publication related to women between 1901 through to the early 1920s. This image shows a page from Cawston’s Ostrich Farm 1909-1910 retail catalogue advertising Willow Plumes. The average featherworker made $1.10 per plume during this year when the feathers sold for as much as $35.00 or more.  To demonstrate the value of this plume today, in comparison, it would have a price of about $1200.00 per feather. Only the very wealthy could afford such luxurious fashion accessories in 1910.  Private collection.

The willowing effect was made by extending the length of the individual flues that were attached to the quill with flue fragments that had been trimmed from other ostrich feathers.  The loose flue was laid side-by-side onto the attached flue, and then the two were tied together typically by a long, single, human hair.  These were sometimes extended as many as three or four times so that the feathers eventually drooped with a dramatic shape resembling the silhouette of a weeping willow tree.  Therefore, ostrich plumes, with intricate extensions added in this manner, were officially described as “Willow Plumes.”

A Willow Plume with three extensions created c. 1910. Photograph by Julia Henri; plume from my private collection.

Willowing work was exacting and tedious.  Each long human hair was wrapped around the two flues with the goal that the extension was barely noticeable, therefore, sometimes, another flue was used to cover the hair and finish the knot. Every step of the way, the flues were held in place by systematic wrapping and then tied off with all those tiny knots. Willow Plumes were produced with unrelenting repetition. 

The willowing process went on for thousands of times per plume, which made these feathers extraordinarily glamorous, as well as fashionably popular, but each and every willowed plume was especially costly.  One writer from 1911 stated that the average willowed plume contained over 8500 knots that would have taken many days for a single worker to complete.

Close-up of a Willow Plume created c. 1910. Photograph by Julia Henri; plume from my private collection.

Willowed feathers were sold new in dedicated boutique shops and department stores specializing in plumage sales as well as to fashion and especially millinery designers.  Older feathers were also sent to feather-crafting repair shops where plumes were washed, bleached, or dyed again and then typically willowed to repair holes or snags; all in an effort to update their overall look.

This was a frugal alternative to discarding aged feathers that appeared limp, faded, and dusty.  Victorian and Edwardian women were socially thrifty; they saved the lovely feathers and taxidermied birds from their bonnets and hats so that these trims could be refreshed and added to a new millinery design at a later date.  Today, we can sometimes identify older feathers on newer antique or vintage hats.  This historical evidence demonstrates a prudent woman’s use of costly older refurbished feathers and taxidermied birds on newer styles.

Featherworkers were typically single young women and their children who washed, scraped, trimmed, knotted, and shaped exquisite plumes that went on to sell to wealthy, or at least well-to-do, shopkeepers and their clientele.

Featherworkers also spent their days and nights in wretched working conditions.  They were living and also employed at home in tenements. They survived in squalid, single-room housing surrounded by multiple family members. The threat of starvation lingered over them due to irregularities in obtaining work, and they were always paid meager wages. 

Featherworkers were not healthy, especially since they were exposed to often poisonous, or at least caustic, chemicals found in the bleach and dyes used to treat the plumage. If they were curling ostrich plumes, the workers did so over kettles that were constantly set to boil to supply the steam heat needed to set the curl. This only exacerbated the toxicity of the air within their working space.  Tuberculosis was the typical threat during this time of willowing work, again predominantly due to tight working and living quarters filled with stale air, dust, dirt, dander, and the fluff from the feathers they worked with. 

This photograph by Lewis Wickes Hine, American (1874-1940), who was a photographer famous for documenting the young children and mothers working day and night while also living in wretched conditions.  Hine was known for his photographic work which specifically contributed to the enforcement and creation of more restrictive child labor laws that were eventually instated during the 1930s.  This image, dated February 29, 1912, shows a mother, “Mrs. Larocca,” in her home within a New York City tenement doing willowing work with ostrich plumes.  You can see the sizable willowed feather in her lap.  The other woman was identified only as the grandmother by the photographer, adding that in his observations, the babies in this photograph had severe skin disease and also appeared feverish. Photograph courtesy, Library of Congress.

Featherworker salaries were typically barely livable wages; this for their intricate, exacting work that would later go on to sell at high-end retail establishments for exorbitant prices.  Many featherworkers were also recorded as having been involved in prostitution, and this was directly related to those times when willowing jobs did not provide enough money to feed or house their children.

However, it was well-known that the willowing process required even more specialized artisans. Tiny fingers and young eyes were needed to work in such intricate detail, and once the method of tying off flues was perfected, the willowing process became mechanical in the right hands.

Days of repetitive, nonstop work were required to complete the tasks required on each plume.  On average, a single plume would take three people one and a half days to complete as they often worked on a single feather in unison, according to one writer’s description in 1910.

This photograph by Lewis Wickes Hine, American (1874-1940), is known for documenting child labor in New York City’s tenement housing.  The photograph depicts a mother and her children working on willowing ostrich plumes at their only table in a small room where they all live under squalid conditions.  Hine’s notes indicate that “Mrs. Mary Molinari” lived at “304 E. 107th St.” in NYC.  His notes state that her daughter, “Six-year-old Antoinette ties (willows the plumes) like an old hand.” The photographer also remarks that her son, Dominick, is nine years old in this photograph and that his twin sister works in the shirt-waist factory.  The father, Hine wrote, is a “hod carrier,” which is a laborer who carries the supplies used in the trades for bricklaying, cement work, or plastering.  This photograph is dated January 1912.

Children as young as four years of age are documented as being taught the basics of learning the steps required for willowing work.  Of course, willowing was almost always regarded as a typical tenement sweatshop business both here in the United States (beginning in NYC) as well as Europe (especially Paris). It was said that they started training the youngest children without so much thought as to their age but based on how well they could hold a pair of scissors correctly.

“There was a man lived in our town
And he was wondrous wise,
He wanted folks to work at home, 
and so he advertised.
Then when he saw the people come
In crowds unto his door,
He said “I’ll give my work all out,
I need a shop no more!”

From “Sorrowful Rhymes of Working Children” 
as recorded in the article “Home Work in the Tenements”
by Elizabeth C. Watson for Survey, Number 25, an Edwardian journal dedicated to informing the public about social welfare problems, dated February 4, 1911.

The typical tenement building in New York City during 1911 may have housed as many as forty families, and many were non-English speaking immigrants desperately looking for work.  The people took to “homework,” as it was called, by answering ads in the local newspapers or through word-of-mouth on the street.

At the time, there were general governmental laws against making certain items “at home.”  These laws specifically listed homemade cigarettes or cigars, clothing such as coats, vests, and other very specific apparel, as well as certain types of foods like candy, ice creams, and even macaroni as prohibited items.  There were many other categories and all of these were specifically named and therefore outlawed from manufacture in a tenement house. 

But numerous craft items were not mentioned in these laws and were all quite legal, or at least overlooked to “slide” by.  Subsequently, tenement housing actually became a kind of underground 24-hour factory. The items that could be made without trouble from the law included crafts such as knitting, sewing any type of baby clothing or supplies, lace-making, any type of beading, and even the simplest tasks of pasting labels onto cigar boxes. This work was considered, basically, legal. Any type of millinery-related crafting, and that especially included willowing, was likewise loosely regulated.

The child labor laws at the time prohibited any children under the age of 14 from being employed in a factory or other place of business including restaurants or retail shops. But the law did not specifically specify a tenement house where children were doing so-called “homework.”  

Therefore, or as it was reported during this time, nearly all tenement children worked at home from six in the morning until school opened, and then went back to work again from three in the afternoon until midnight each and every day except most Sundays.  The child would not go to school but for the very least amount of days that would keep the local truant officer at bay. This type of lifestyle was absolutely required for tenement families if they were to survive inside their single, vermin-infested room with the very minimal food for a family to eat.

Photographer Lewis Wickes Hine documented the painful scenes of child labor in tenement housing during the turn-of-the-last-century.  His notes for this image record that the mother is willowing plumes with her three children, aged 12, 10, and 7 years of age.  He wrote that the four people depicted in this photograph made a total of $2.50 per week.  The father, Hine wrote, was a butcher.   Dated December 1911.

It was known that tenement work could be found through advertisements for workers listed in newspaper columns titled, “Help Wanted - Female” and there were hundreds of advertisements in the section that changed daily.  As for willowing, children as young as five years old are documented as having been hired as “experienced” workers to help with the intricate knotting of the flues.

Willowing work was paid by the inch and this also depended upon how many sets of knots there were to that inch.  By 1910, on average, workers were paid about $1.08 for a single, finished Willow Plume. 

That same year, Cawston’s Ostrich Farm retail catalogue lists Willow Plumes for as much as $35.00 each.  There are no records as to what Cawston paid his willowing workers, however, he openly advertised in every catalogue that each fashionable accessory from his business was handmade in “well lighted and perfectly ventilated workrooms” at Cawston-owned facilities.

Alluding to both the feather-related legislation as well as the big-city sweatshops, Cawston stated, “Feathers from California Birds may be worn without compunction by humane women.” 

Those Mesmerizing Plumes

By the time the 1920s rolled around, hats took on a much smaller silhouette and few had ostrich accents anywhere near so bold as what was seen during the Edwardian years.  The plumes were instead used as more ostentatious accents in clothing and headdress design.  However, fans and boas as well as other flamboyant garb continued to sell with the usual pretentious flair that had changed very little over the previous centuries.

A model from the 1920s wears a couture cape created from individually curled ostrich flues. Image owned by and provided with written copyright permission from the City of South Pasadena Public Library, South Pasadena, CA.

Commercial willowing faded and ended sometime during the 1930s due to fluctuations in the market for trendy fashions and a new level of enforcement of the more strict codes attached to the U.S. labor laws.  

Today, the monstrous yet delicate feathers remain just as captivating as they were throughout history.  Ostrich farming no longer has the same mystique but the giant birds’ status in the contemporary feather market remains strong for different reasons.

Today, Ostrich plumes are known for their specialty use in costuming for theatre, especially Las Vegas shows.  Couture clothing and hat designers continue to add ostrich feathers to their runway and red-carpet collections.  However, there has been a poignant loss of interest in ostrich plumes since the last half of the 20th century.  Although the finest plumes continue to symbolize beauty and wealth in many societies, ostrich plumes in the 21st century are reduced to little more than feather dusters in most of our lives today.

Above: Burlesque Queen, Sally Rand, introduced “The Fan Dance” during the 1933 World’s Fair in Chicago. This popularized the ostentatious hand fans for the following two decades and well beyond. Here, Rand dances her version dated 1942.  Rand started her career on stage as a chorus girl in a Kansas City nightclub when she was only 13 years old. She later appeared in silent movies for Cecil B. DeMille.  By 1923, Sally Rand had learned to fly after her brief interlude with Charles Lindbergh; she often flew herself to her working performances. By the mid-1930s, Sally Rand had purchased The Music Box burlesque hall in San Francisco, CA, and continued in burlesque for over 40 years.