Farr Alpaca Company

Holyoke, Massachusetts
 

“It has often been said that the history of the Farr Alpaca Company reads like a romance. The reason is that from the beginning, the owners have aimed to give everyone connected with them all the opportunity the business could stand. Everyone so connected has caught the same spirit and in turn has done his or her best to make the Farr the great success it has been.

This policy was part of the original plans of Herbert M. Farr and Joseph Metcalf as they talked over the advisibility of removing Mr. Farr’s small factory from Hespeler, Ontario, to some live American town and expanding. It was good fortune of Holyoke that the Farr came here and vice versa. Mutuality in all dealings has, in fact, been the great secret of the concern’s progress.”

The First Mill of the Farr Alpaca Company in Holyoke. c. 1874.

The highly successful factory would go on to become the largest textile mill in the world.

“It is the most natural thing that 4000 people making 750 kinds of cloth, with some times as high as 100 shades in each kind, and using 142 different processes in the making represent a great variety of tastes, inclination and abilities, which has developed into a social structure centered about the industry in which all in common gain a livlihood. Common needs could not fail to arise among such a large mass of people.”

Holyoke Old and New. Fiftieth Anniversary.
Dillon Printing and Publishing Company. 1923