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Crex Carpet Company

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Color illustration of three styles of rug manufactured by the Crex Carpet Company.

Illustration of three styles of rug manufactured by the Crex Carpet Company. Originally reproduced in a John H. Pray & Sons Company catalog (#30, page 38).

From 1898 to the early 1930s, St. Paul was the center of a national home furnishings industry based on wire grass, a plant that grew wild in the peat bogs of Minnesota and Wisconsin.

For centuries, the wild marsh plant called wire grass (carex stricta) had no practical use. It has none today. But between 1895 and 1930 it made up the raw material for an industry—based in St. Paul—that gave work to thousands of people.

It all began in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and it started with twine. Wire grass grew abundantly near the city and Midwest farmers had an endless need for binder twine. Some businessmen and mechanics in Oshkosh figured out that wire grass could be spun into a passable twine. In 1898 Northwestern Grass Twine Company moved to St. Paul, bought a farm implement company, and took over two factories. The next year, the name was changed to the American Grass Twine Company (AGT).

It soon turned out, though, that wire grass made bad twine, and by 1903 AGT had given up on it. By then the company's managers had learned that it made much better rugs and wicker.

The company set up a network of harvest camps in the marshes of Minnesota and Wisconsin. These operated from late summer, when the peat bogs began to dry, into the late fall. The workers, a mix of transients and locals, labored seven days a week, ten hours a day. They had four main jobs. Those who cut the grass used horse-drawn mowers; when the marshes were soft the horses wore "bog shoes," a wide wooden boot tied to their hooves, to keep them from sinking. Next came the men who turned the grass in the fields for drying, called "rubberbacks" for their stoop labor. The tyers, many of them women, used a special knot to gather the dried grass into sheaves. Finally the balers tossed the sheaves into a portable frame that compressed the sheaves and tied them into enormous bales. The bales then traveled by rail to the Como Avenue factory to be spun it into bundles and skeins.

Some was shipped to New York to be turned into wicker furniture—everything from baby carriages to umbrella stands to picture frames and desks (eventually four hundred items in all). These took their places in houses, offices, and hotels around the country.

St. Paul workers wove the rest of the processed wire grass into rugs. Rugs proved to be American Grass Twine's most successful product. They were light, had a pleasant, natural smell, and could be painted in any color and pattern. Department stores everywhere sold them, and AGT made money. By 1903 it employed almost nine hundred workers in St. Paul (more than any other manufacturing business in the city) and hundreds more in the harvest camps.

Then AGT stumbled. The officers and directors falsified the value of the company and looted its cash by paying themselves enormous dividends. A shareholder lawsuit exposed the fraud. In 1905, the disgraced officers agreed to resign and pay back $640,000 (by a conservative estimate, $13 million in 2014). Under more honest leadership, the company forged ahead.

In 1908, AGT became Crex Carpet Company and was listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Soon it phased out wicker and concentrated on rugs, all made in St. Paul. Between 1907 and 1925 the company averaged over $140,000 in profits yearly (about $3 million in 2014) with a peak of $447,000 in 1920. The factory employed about three hundred people, many of them operating mechanized looms. Most of these workers were women.

Crex's success did not last much longer. Grass rugs from Japan, inferior in quality but much cheaper, hit the market. The company's losses began in 1926 and reached $396,000 in 1929; then came the Depression.

The last wire grass harvest took place in 1931; the factory closed soon after. When Crex Carpet Company filed for bankruptcy in 1935, it had $24.90 in the bank. The factory building stood well into the 1970s. Crossroads Elementary School was built on the site in 1999.

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© Minnesota Historical Society
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  • Related Resources

Myrick, Herbert. Creating New Industries. Chicago: Orange Judd Co., 1901.

Nielsen, J.G. The Book of Minnesota. St. Paul: Pioneer Press, 1903.

Nelson, Paul D. "The Greatest Single Industry? Crex: Created Out of Nothing." Ramsey County History 40, no. 4 (Winter 2006): 4–15.

Related Images

Color illustration of three styles of rug manufactured by the Crex Carpet Company.
Color illustration of three styles of rug manufactured by the Crex Carpet Company.
Color illustration of a Crex Carpet Company employee operating a carpet loom, c.1908.
Color illustration of a Crex Carpet Company employee operating a carpet loom, c.1908.
Color illustration of a field of wire grass during harvest time c.1901.
Color illustration of a field of wire grass during harvest time c.1901.
Color illustration of the Crex Carpet Company office c.1901.
Color illustration of the Crex Carpet Company office c.1901.
Field worker examining Wire Grass, c.1903.
Field worker examining Wire Grass, c.1903.
Black and white aerial photograph of the Crex Carpet Company, c.1928.
Black and white aerial photograph of the Crex Carpet Company, c.1928.

Turning Point

In 1905 the American Grass Twine Company survives financial fraud, gets new, more honest leadership, and begins nearly twenty consecutive years of profits.

Chronology

1898

The Northwestern Grass Twine Company moves its operations to St. Paul and occupies a cordage factory on Front Avenue near Dale Street.

1899

Two companies merge to form the American Grass Twine Company (AGT). The company begins experimenting with using grass twine to make wicker furniture.

1900

American Grass Twine buys the Walter A. Wood Harvester works on the East Side and begins making the Minnie Harvester, designed to use grass twine in grain harvest operations.

1903

AGT sells its harvester works and leaves the twine business to concentrate on wicker and rugs. Its wicker furniture catalog features 260 items.

1905

Michael J. O'Shaughnessy and other directors are found to have overvalued the company and wrongly taken $640,000 in dividends. They are forced to resign and pay the money back.

1908

AGT changes its name to Crex Carpet Company and gets a listing on the New York Stock Exchange. In St. Paul the company builds a new warehouse and expands its factory twice.

1917

Synthetic wicker having replaced fiber wicker, Crex leaves the wicker furniture business. Employment at the St. Paul factory falls to around three hundred workers.

1920

Crex has its best year, earning profits of $447,000.

1925

The company's most profitable period draws to a close (between 1907 and 1925 it averaged annual profits of $140,000—about $3 million in 2014).

1926

Crex loses money for the first time: $30,000. Cheap grass rugs imported from Japan provide competition.

1929

The company's losses reach almost $400,000. The Great Depression begins.

1935

With the factory now closed and $24.90 in the bank, Crex Carpet Company declares bankruptcy.