Brush-making in Cambridge used prison labor, ultimately defeating an industry and principle

By Beth Folsom, 2025

Beginning in the early 19th century, individual craftspeople and small-scale workshops in East Cambridge made a variety of brushes for domestic and commercial use. By midcentury, this had expanded into larger-scale industrial production; in the 1850s, Stratton, Sherriff & Co. employed more than 150 workers in its brush factory on South Third Street making paint brushes, scrub brushes and specialized brushes for use at other industrial facilities.

The Cambridge City Directory for 1860 listed three brush-making companies in the city – Clark & Packard; Harvey, Burton & Co.; and Stratton, Sherriff & Co. – all in East Cambridge. Although these large firms dominated the market, home-based brush manufacturing persisted; as late as 1882, the Cambridge Chronicle reported “a fire in the brush shop of a Mrs. McKenna at the corner of First and Cambridge Streets.”

Middlesex County introduced brush-making in 1861 as part of the work program at the house of correction, also in East Cambridge. At first, the county contracted with the major private firms to manage the brush shop at the prison, but as early as 1862, it began to compete with the established companies. By the 1880s, more than 200 prisoners worked in the brush shop, making a wide variety of brushes with annual revenue totaling close to $70,000 (the equivalent of more than $2 million today). By the time the state Legislature passed a law in 1891 limiting the number of prisoners working in the brush shop to no more than 50, the last private brush-making firm in Cambridge had gone out of business.

In an article titled “Cambridge Forty Years Ago,” The Cambridge Press noted in 1887 that “this enterprise [brush-making] was carried on to a great extent in 1847,” but that the introduction of the brush shop at the house of correction “greatly affected the business outside as the price of labor was not considered above the price of cost for the maintenance of the prisoners employed.” Indeed, the brush shop was a profitable enterprise for the county; a February 1875 report in the Chronicle cited the 1874 profits of the brush department as $11,185.35 – a figure that would rise considerably over the next decade.

But monetary gain was not the only perceived benefit of the prison’s brush-making enterprise. Popular wisdom in the late 19th century held that a structured work environment was beneficial to prisoners as a tool of reform and a means of self-sufficiency upon their release. The conditions in the prison brush shop reflected the belief that hard work and discipline would help to instill moral fortitude in the prisoners –qualities it was believed they had lacked in their preprison life. Following an August 1874 visit to the house of correction, a reporter for the Chronicle noted that the workers in the brush shop “are subject to discipline as strict as if in a school-room. They are not allowed to leave their seats, or converse with each other or to look around from their work. An officer sits at the end of the room behind them, and if one finds it necessary to violate any of these rules he must raise his hand, and receive permission by a nod from the officer.”

Although these conditions may seem draconian, they were not all that different from those in many factories in the late 19th century that operated outside of prison walls. Strict discipline of workers was general practice, with factory managers overseeing the behavior and productivity of laborers to ensure discipline and maximize profits. The Legislature’s passage of a bill in 1891 limiting the number of workers in the prison brush shop to no more than 50 elicited criticism from prisoners themselves, as well as from the general public. An 1892 report in the Cambridge Tribune includes an interview with prisoner Frank White:

I am twenty-seven years old, am strong and well, and would like very much to have some work to do. The time passes very slowly and I can’t sleep nights because I have no exercise and I am restless. I want employment and plenty of it. I know it will affect our bodies and minds to be idle, and if we don’t have work and have it soon there is bound to be trouble, for our idle minds will become bent on mischief. I believe that if I stay here four years without work I shall be ruined for life, in both body and mind.

Just as productive employment would keep prisoners occupied and out of trouble while incarcerated, so too, it was believed, the skills they learned in the brush shop would give them valuable experience and a trade to help them reenter society when their sentences were finished. Many advocates supported the idea of paying inmates a small wage for their labor, which would allow them to get on their feet after leaving prison, and would thereby reduce recidivism and keep them from depending on charity. Ironically, it was the very success of the brush shop model of prison employment and its challenge to the private brush firms of East Cambridge that led to the collapse of the industry; by the time prisoners who had learned the brush trade behind bars emerged back into society, the local factories where they might have found employment had closed, leaving them to either move out of Cambridge in search of jobs in the brush-making industry or to start over in another sector.

This article originally appeared in Cambridge Day.