MADE IN HAMILTON
20TH CENTURY
INDUSTRIAL TRAIL

SITE 26
IMPERIAL COTTON COMPANY LTD., 1900

The Imperial Cotton Company was Hamilton's third major primary cotton firm. It was opened in 1900 by James M. Young of the Hamilton Cotton Company and his associates. A group of New York capitalists took ownership soon after. In 1924, the company was amalgamated with another mill in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, creating the Cosmos-Imperial Cotton Company. Workers in this plant produced heavy cotton duck for sails, mechanical belting, railway car roofing and awnings. At times, the firm employed more than 300 workers, many of them women.

The Hamilton plant shut down in 1958. The buildings that remain form one of the most complete historic textile mill complexes in the province. The three-storey brick masonry building, with its medieval-style water tower, housed most of the machinery. Finishing work was done in the adjoining two-storey building.

In 1902, some of the founders of Imperial Cotton started the smaller Dominion Belting Company next door (see sign). It produced cotton duck belting for belt-driven machinery. This company closed in the late 1920s, after electrical power made this power transmission process obsolete.