A Brief History of the Feedsack

Three vintage flour sacks with colorful designs and labels are laid side by side on a quilted surface, featuring patterns, brand names, and images such as birds and baking motifs.

How Cloth Sacks Replaced Barrels

The history of the cloth bag started in the early years of settling what later became the United States. At that time food staples, grain, seed, and animal feed were packed in tins, boxes, and wooden barrels. However, tin cans rusted and barrels wore out, allowing pests to get at the products within. Both of these forms of storage were also awkward to transport. They required a wagon and horses or mules, something many farmers or widows of farmers did not have. How much easier to toss a bag of feed over the back of a horse! The problem, however, was that no one could sew a seam strong enough to hold the contents of the bag. The solution came in 1846 with the invention of the sewing machine, which made it possible to sew seams to make the sacks secure. M. Hurd of Auburn, NY patented a machine for making flour sacks that was cost efficient.

Martha-White-Flour-Feedsack A vintage Martha White flour sack sits on colorful fabric decorated with bicycles, wheels, and geometric designs. The sack has a blue and yellow label with bakery goods images and a portrait of a woman.
Dixie-Home-Feedsack A vintage floral feed sack with a central label reading Dixie Home 17% Dairy Feed, featuring a cow illustration and red, green, and blue flower patterns around the edges on a quilted background.
Dixie-Home-Dairy-Feed-Feedsack A vintage Dixie Home dairy feed sack with red and gray floral patterns, 17% Dairy Feed text, and a circular logo from Dixie Grain Co., Shelbyville, TN, displayed on a quilted background.

The Growth of the American Feedsack Industry

Cloth was also scarce until the New England mills began weaving a good supply of American-made fabric in the 1800s. With U.S. manufacturers getting into the field, the American market no longer depended upon costly English and foreign yard goods. With machines to make the seams stronger and U.S. fabric now available, the American textile sack was possible. From about the 1880s through the 1940s the bags, as much as the products they contained, became hotly advertised items. One of the largest bag manufacturers in the nation was the Bemis Brothers Bag Company based in Minneapolis, MN. Today the Bemis bags and, in fact, all cloth bags are important collectors’ items.

Feedsack Ad Black-and-white vintage newspaper ad for Sunny Valley Flour, promoting its new printed flour sacks—perfect not only for dresses and other items, but also ideal for those interested in Dating Antique or Vintage Quilts. Features text, borders, and product images.
Two women wearing floral dresses sit and stand among large patterned feed sacks. One holds fabric and the other holds an open magazine as they talk, both surrounded by stacks of printed sacks.

Why “Feedsack” Is Not Quite the Right Name

The terms “feedbags” or “feedsacks” are not totally accurate. According to Anna Lue Cook in her book Identification and Value Guide to Textile Bags: The Feeding and Clothing of America, the flour industry consumed the largest share of the feedsack market with more than 42 percent, sugar was next with 17 percent, behind that were feed, seeds, rice, and fertilizer. Some people refer to these utilitarian bags as simply textile or cloth bags, chicken linen, or ‘pretties’. The loosely woven early bag was displaced when machinery became available and, as the trend for cloth packaging became more popular, a tighter cotton bag was more commonly used. When the product inside was used up, the frugal housewife, who wasted no scrap of cloth that came her way, was soon recycling the bags.

Walker-Bag-Company-Article Newspaper article titled WALKER BAG COMPANY HAS INCREASED TRADE IN PRINTING OF SACKS discusses increased cotton and burlap sack printing, new equipment, and use of water from a historical well at the companys Louisville, Kentucky plant.

Novelty Feedsacks and Advertising Characters

Fabric panel with printed cut-outs for making a Snow White doll, including doll parts, dress, and shoes, with sewing instructions and floral blue, pink, and white patterns.
Betty Bemis – put out by the Bemis company in 1949. It’s featured on the cover of Rag Darlings
White fabric with a repeating pattern of gray tabby kittens sleeping on pink pillows, surrounded by stitched lines and “Z” shapes to indicate sleep. The design is playful and cozy, suggesting rest and comfort.
Chessie the Cat was a hugely successful 1933 advertising mascot for the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O), depicted as a sleeping kitten to promote air-conditioned, comfortable sleeping cars with the slogan “Sleep Like a Kitten and Arrive Fresh as a Daisy”

How Families Reused Feedsacks

Feedsacks were far more than inexpensive packaging. They became clothing, curtains, towels, quilts, and sometimes nearly every piece of fabric used in a household. Their cheerful prints also tell a larger story about thrift, home sewing, rural life, and the growing influence women had on product design and marketing. Today, a surviving feedsack, or even a scrap tucked into an old quilt, is a small piece of American social and textile history.

Continue with The Feedsack Story to learn how manufacturers turned ordinary commodity bags into desirable fabric and how families reused them for clothing, household goods, and quilts.

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