USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Lawrence > Immigrant city: Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1845-1921 > Part 2
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The restrictionists were particularly interested in Lawrence be- cause it was almost a completely immigrant city. Unlike so many New England mill cities with their colonial backgrounds, Lawrence did not exist before the great immigrant invasions. Established in 1845 by the Essex Company on the sylvan banks of the Merrimack, its population rose by 1855 to 16,000, two-fifths of whom were born abroad, mostly in Ireland. By 1910 the population was 86,000, almost all of whom were either first- or second-generation Americans. Within one mile of the mills there were immigrants
13. Immigration Commission, "Woolen and Worsted Goods in Representative Community A," Immigrants in Industries, Part 4: Woolen and Worsted Goods Manufacturing, II, Immigration Commission, Reports, X (Washington, 1911); W. Jett Lauck, "The Lesson from Lawrence," North American Review, CXCV, Pt. 2 (1912), 665-72; Lorin F. Deland, "The Lawrence Strike: A Study," Atlantic Monthly, CIX (1912), 698; Boston Evening Transcript, Jan. 25, 31, Feb. 17, Mar. 8, 1912; Solomon, Ancestors, 199.
14. Ibid., pp. 200-1.
11
THE NOTORIOUS CITY, 1912
representing fifty-one countries and speaking forty-five languages.15
The immigrants came in three groups. Before the Civil War, Irish fleeing famine at home settled along the Merrimack to form the city. They continued to come after the war and were joined by French Canadians, English, and Germans. Between 1890 and 1912 the earlier immigration slowed as Italians, Austrians, Lith- uanians, Poles, and Syrians brought a new flavor to the city. Al- though they usually lived by themselves, the new immigrants were close enough to the old to permit the exchange of ideas and the growth of friction. Tipperary Irish in the heart of the city mixed with Mount Lebanon Syrians and Sicilian Italians; to the east, Galician Poles and Lithuanians adjoined Silesian or Saxon Ger- mans; while to the west, Vermonters mingled with arrivals from Quebec or Lancashire. Smaller groups such as Scots, Armenians, Portuguese, Franco-Belgians, and Chinese rounded out the immi- grant society of Lawrence during the strike.
The proportion of foreign-born to total residents in Lawrence, hovering steadily at the 45 percent mark, was so high that no more than three cities in the United States exceeded it between 1880 and 1900. In Massachusetts, Lawrence was second to Fall River or Holyoke until 1905 and from then on it led the state. The large Irish immigration doubled the population between 1850 and 1855. Invasions after the Civil War raised it by a third again by 1870. The influx of southeastern Europeans added 15,000 between 1905 and 1910.16 Immigration almost completely controlled the history of the city.
15. In 1910, 74,000 were either first- or second-generation Americans. See Table I. Maurice Dorgan, History of Lawrence, Mass., with War Records (Cambridge, Mass., 1924), pp. 11-14, 44, 174; Francis DeWitt, Abstract of the Census of ... Massachusetts ... 1855 ... (Boston, 1857), pp. 105, 206; United States Census Bureau, Thirteenth Census of the United States . 1910: Ab- stract of the Census . . . with Supplement for Massachusetts . . . (Washington, 1913), pp. 596, 609; Boston Evening Transcript, Jan. 12, 1912.
16. See Tables I, II, IV. Lawrence was third of fifty cities in the United States in 1880, fourth of 124 in 1890, third of 161 in 1900. United States Census Office, Tenth Census of the United States 1880, I (Washington, 1883), 538; United States Census Office, Eleventh Census of the United States: 1890, I (Washington, 1895), cxxvii-cxxviii; United States Census Office, Twelfth Census of the United States . .. 1900, I (Washington, 1901), cix, cx. Holyoke was first in Massachusetts (except for 1875) until 1890 and then Fall River until 1905. Lawrence was always second or third. Chief of the Bureau of Statistics of Labor, Census of ... Massachusetts 1905 (Boston, 1909), pp. xliii, 678.
12
IMMIGRANT CITY
To the American immigrant, Lawrence was a prominent city. It was the leading Irish center north of Boston and a thousand Hibernians met there in 1890. That same year over a quarter of the foreign-born in the city were from England and only one city in the United States exceeded that percentage. The French Canadians were so numerous that a convention of Canadian so- cieties from as far away as Chicago and Montreal took place in Lawrence in 1887. Next to Boston it was the largest German city in the state. It had more Syrians than any city in the nation except New York. All over the world hungry people looked to Lawrence with hope.17
But to America in 1912 Lawrence was a symbol of notoriety. Not only the indictments of the press but the reports of two federal surveys and one local study painted an unfavorable picture of the city. The Russell Sage Foundation sponsored a study of the city's living conditions in 1911. The report, filled with extremely ac- curate diagrams of crowded homes and blocks and illustrated by pictures of squalid slums, confirmed the journalists' descriptions. The strike hearings before the House Rules Committee included the lurid testimony of selected immigrants as well as the contrived questions and statements of Victor Berger. And Labor Commis- sioner Charles Neill, already familiar with Lawrence as a member of the Immigration Commission, corroborated all the other descrip- tions with his report. Even more damaging was the image of a lawless un-American Lawrence that emerged in the testimony at the Ettor-Giovannitti-Caruso trial after the strike. Although the state failed to prove that Caruso murdered Annie LoPezzi after being incited by Ettor and Giovannitti, the trial severely damaged the reputation of the city and its immigrants.18 And if this im- migrant city were as slum-ridden, diseased, poverty-stricken, law- less, and un-American as people said, then were not all immigrant cities? If the picture of Lawrence in 1912 was accurate, then the
17. The Evening Tribune, June 20, 1894; Eleventh Census . .. 1890, I, clii; Sunday Sun, June 14, 1908; W. Jett Lauck, "The Significance of the Situation at Lawrence: The Condition of the New England Woolen Mill Operative," The Survey, XXVII (1912), 1773; Census of Mass., 1905, I, 109.
18. Robert E. Todd and Frank B. Sanborn, The Report of the Lawrence Survey (Lawrence, 1912); Strike at Lawrence; Neill, Report; Transcript of the Trial of Commonwealth vs. Joseph Caruso, Joseph J. Ettor, Arturo Giovannitti, alias, Superior Court, Essex County, Massachusetts, Sept .- Oct., 1912.
13
THE NOTORIOUS CITY, 1912
millions of immigrants who came to America after 1845 had failed to find any semblance of security and had failed to become Americans.
But the immigrants themselves did not see it that way. Many of the oldtimers could look back half a century or more to the beginnings of Lawrence, when they themselves had met with an unfavorable reception. They realized that as other immigrants came to the city, their own position had improved until now they were tacitly accepted by the natives and had become Americans. The coming of successive waves of immigrants to Lawrence, which we shall call the immigrant cycle, made life easier for those that came first. While prejudice continued, and it was never stronger than in 1912, it was directed against different nationalities. The same oldtimer smiled when he heard the lurid descriptions of life in Lawrence, for he realized that there was more to security in a new world than housing and health alone. After six or seven decades in this immigrant city, he could explain, if he were asked, how the newcomers found security amid the squalor of Lawrence. No native could understand Lawrence in 1912, and no one using his point of view could understand the city even today. But if we imagine ourselves immigrants and transport ourselves back, not to 1912, but to the founding of the city in 1845, then we discover the truth about Lawrence and immigrant life in America. First we shall trace the story of Lawrence down through the years to 1912, unravelling the results of the immigrant cycle. Then we shall explore from the vantage point of the immigrant the many ways in which he found security. Only when we have completed these steps, shall we return to the Lawrence strike of 1912, but when we do, we shall be able to understand its true meaning.
Part One Model Town to Immigrant City, 1845-1912
CHAPTER II
Model Town, 1845-1850
At the beginning of the nineteenth century a traveller leaving Boston for Concord, New Hampshire, would walk north on the Essex Turnpike, and after an all day journey would cross low hills into the Merrimack Valley and reach Andover Square. Here he could stay at Locke's Tavern, stop at a private home, or camp out. The three-mile walk to the Merrimack the next morning would be easy because it was downhill and pleasant, following the meander- ing Shawsheen River. The turnpike crossed the Merrimack near Deer Jump Falls, where the river moved swiftly and powerfully, dropping twenty-six feet in a short distance. Since the bridge was frequently washed away, the traveller often went up or downstream a few hundred yards to a ford. Once across he soon passed an old county road connecting Lowell with Haverhill and then the tiny Spicket (originally "Spigot") River, which emptied several lakes into the Merrimack. Beyond was Methuen and the New Hamp- shire line, where the Londonderry Pike carried the walker to Con- cord. Only a few farmers tilled the sandy banks on either side of Deer Jump Falls. Here, halfway between Lowell and Haverhill, a group of Boston merchants in 1845 decided to build Lawrence.
Two of the merchants, Patrick Jackson and Nathan Appleton, had brought the spinning and weaving functions of the American cotton industry together for the first time in Waltham in 1814. The wonderful success of this venture led them eight years later to establish the Merrimack Manufacturing Company in Lowell, which by 1837 had 25 per cent of the cotton spindles in the state. In 1830 they sold stock to several merchants including Abbott Law- rence, who had risen from an obscure farm boy in Groton to one
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IMMIGRANT CITY
Map I
CONCORDAS
-E
I MANCHESTER (47,000)
-
E
HAVERHILL 1130,000)
NEWBURYPORT (14,000)
NASHUA (21.000)
MERRINA
BOUNDARY
LAWRENCE (+0,00)
LINE
MAP OF
LOWELL 1045 dos/
FITCHBURG
THE LOWER
MERRIMACK RIVER
SHOWING THE LOCATION OF THE PRINCIPAL
INCO
CITIES AND TOWNS
SUNTON
ON ITS
DRAINAGE AREA
SCALE OF MILES
ALPOROUCH
STATE BOARD OF HEALTH, 1892
Source: Massachusetts Board of Health, Annual Report, XXIV, Mass. Pub. Doc. 34, p. 668
of the richest businessmen in Boston. After listening to Daniel Saunders, who first thought of a dam at Deer Jump Falls, the triumvirate of Jackson, Appleton, and Lawrence brought in Charles Storrow, an engineer from Boston, and formed the Essex Company. Lawrence, president and principal owner, and Storrow, treasurer, took actual charge of the construction during the next few years.1
1. J. F. C. Hayes, History of the City of Lawrence, Mass. (Lawrence, 1868), pp. 9-17.
"ATLANTIC
MEARIMA
MESBURY VIDORI
NASHUA A
C
NEW HAMPSHIRE MASSACHUSETTS
19
MODEL TOWN, 1845-1850
The mills and dam rose rapidly. "On every side . .. up and down the river . . . [were] piled masses of granite and huge piles of brick, lumber, etc. Dirics [derricks] ... rose along the river ... in such profusion as to give the shore the appearance of a small seaport and its swarm of masts." The pride of the new town was its dam, which Charles Bigelow, a former army engineer, completed by 1848. Unlike its counterpart at Holyoke, which collapsed the day it was unveiled, Bigelow's dam stood up under the pounding of water that rushed down at it from the White Mountains and a century later is still an impressive sight. The longest dam on the Merrimack, it was for years one of the longest in the world. As the construction went on, the founders referred to the town as "New Settlement," "Andover Bridge," and "Merrimac"; the public, skeptical of the venture, dubbed it "Saunders' Folly."2 But when the General Court came to chartering the new town in 1847, it named it for Abbott Lawrence. It was a reasonable decision because the many-sided Lawrence continued to invest money and time in the town that bore his name.
The court formed Lawrence by taking three and a half square miles out of Methuen and two and a half from Andover.3 South of the Merrimack, Lawrence was a sandy plain with no particular landmarks save the Shawsheen River which made its eastern boundary. To the north, however, a crescent-shaped series of hills sloping down to the sluggish Spicket made half a circle about the marshy plain between the Spicket and the Merrimack. This flat rectangular area with Tower Hill to the west and Prospect Hill to the east was the heart of Lawrence from 1847 to 1912. Here were the mills, the stores, the government, the churches, and the Common, and within this core lived most of the residents, par- ticularly the immigrants. The digging of a canal north of the river turned the southern section of this rectangle into an island covered by mills. North of the canal were several parallel
2. The Merrimack Courier, Oct. 17, 1846; F. Morton Smith, The Essex Com- pany on the Merrimack at Lawrence (New York, 1947), p. 17; George H. Young, "The City of Lawrence, Massachusetts," New England Magazine, New Series, XVII (1897-98), 582-83; United States Worsted Company, Romance of USWO CO (New York, 1912).
3. "An Act to Incorporate the Town of Lawrence," MS, Massachusetts Archives, Acts 1847, Ch. 190, House Doc. 136, passed by House, April 9, 1847, and Senate, April 15, 1847.
20
IMMIGRANT CITY
streets running east and west: Canal and Methuen Streets with the corporation boarding houses and then Essex and Common Streets with the early stores. The Lawrence Common came next and north of that was Haverhill Street, formerly the old county road, and the Spicket River.
Early pictures show that Lawrence was originally a pleasant town with trees, grass, wandering animals, and children at play. Nor were these charms present by mere chance, since the founders had great interest in the physical appearance of their project. Like the early Puritans these Boston Brahmins took their responsibilities seriously and did not want observers to think they had done a poor job. They planted elms, laid out broad streets, and set aside many acres for a common and parks.
It never occurred to the founders or observers that anything unclean could come out of Lawrence. The Boston Daily Adver- tiser was thrilled with "the apparition of the new city of Lawrence, rising suddenly amidst the most quiet, rural scenery." Because of this "delightful" location "in the midst of a fertile and highly cultivated country," the Merrimack Courier believed Lawrence "designed by nature for the lovliest [sic] city in the world." Even in 1869 a book on the Merrimack closed with this note about Lawrence: "The desert waste grew green, active busy life dispelled the unpleasant silence, and the solitary place forthwith resounded with the cheerful rattle of machinery, the ring of the anvil, the vigorous strokes of the artisan and mechanic, the whirl and bustle of trade, and the constant rush of steadily augmenting throngs where once the few hardy fishermen . .. captured the . .. sal- mon .... " Boston Brahmins were proud that some of their number put money into such laudable enterprises. William Prescott wrote: "Under these auspices towns and villages grew up along the borders of the Merrimac and its numerous tributaries; and the spots which had once been little better than barren wastes of sand, where the silence was broken only by the moaning of the wind through the melancholy pines, became speedily alive with the cheerful hum of labor."4
4. The Lawrence Courier, Aug. 21, 1847; The Merrimack Courier, Oct. 17, 1846; J. W. Meader, The Merrimack River (Boston, 1869); William H. Prescott, Memoir of the Honorable Abbott Lawrence (N.p., 1856), p. 16.
21
MODEL TOWN, 1845-1850
And as the town grew into a city, it retained its half-rural char- acteristics. The first immigrants found trips to Crawford House, Profile House, and Flume House in the White Mountains advertised in the American. They caught trout a few miles outside the city, gathered wildflowers, picked grapes on Tower Hill, and attended cattle shows. Even after the Civil War the bucolic flavor remained. Excursion trains ran out from Boston on Sunday so that the tired workers of the big city could enjoy the river, dam, and rural pleasures of the small city. Butchers dressed their own steers while farmers planted crops, raised poultry, and milked cows. A bear got loose in 1876, and in 1885 some one shot a muskrat in the Spicket. Here was an environment more rural than in a large city and more urban than on the frontier.
Since the founders planned a model town in these pleasant sur- roundings, they kept close watch over most of the early homes. Haverhill Street could have only one house per lot and one family per dwelling for the first twenty years. Essex Street was restricted to brick and stone construction with a maximum of three stories and roofs of slate or metal. In addition to the brick boarding houses there were many wooden frame houses between the mills and the Common. East and north of the Common the first settlers built small, well-constructed homes with gardens. The wooden two-family houses on the "plains," an area bounded by the Spicket River and Haverhill, Jackson, and Hampshire Streets, had large slate mansard attics and dry stone cellars. The more affluent owned substantial homes on Haverhill Street or mansions on Prospect and Tower Hills.5
Most workers, though, stayed at the corporation boarding houses along Canal and Methuen Streets just north of the mills and river. The four brick blocks of the Bay State Mills were typical of the other boarding houses. Three stories high, each was divided into eight sections. On the first floor there was an office for the mistress, two dining rooms, and a kitchen; while above, the section contained a parlor, a sick room, and fourteen sleeping chambers
5. Smith, Essex Company, pp. 18-23; [Lemuel Shattuck], Sanitary Survey of the Town of Lawrence (Boston, 1850), p. 5; Young, "City of Lawrence," p. 584; Robert E. Todd and Frank B. Sanborn, The Report of the Lawrence Survey (Lawrence, 1912), p. 32; The Lawrence Sentinel, May 8, 1869; Lawrence American, Dec. 10, 1864.
22
IMMIGRANT CITY
for thirty-six boarders. Wood shed, privy, and well were in the backyard. The solid brick and slate construction, the ample yards, and the hundred square feet per person made the Bay State Com- pany boarding houses much in demand. They were as good as decent Boston homes and superior to those found in the villages of New Hampshire and Maine. The girls ordinarily took their meals at the boarding houses for $1.25 a week, but the men often preferred to eat out rather than pay the $1.50 or $2.00 rate. Lemuel Shattuck, who surveyed the town for the State Sanitary Commission in 1850, maintained that the mills set up the boarding houses to supervise the employees, not for any profit.6
The city's founders and mill owners certainly felt responsible for the moral, mental, and physical welfare of their workers. For the unmarried girl, whether from Kennebunk or Dublin, the Bay State boarding-house rules provided security. The landlady had to inform the mill agent whether her boarders went to church. Doors closed at 10 P.M. and no one could have company at "un- seasonable" hours. All had to be vaccinated, free of charge. Ashes were to be cared for so as to prevent fires. Equally pater- nalistic was the Pacific Mill, which could discharge a man for "lack of capacity and neatness," for "unfaithfulness," for "intem- perance," for "profanity," and for "improper" treatment of over- seers. The Pacific Corporation also required its workers to attend church and join its library association. Upon the library the opera- tive looked with mixed sentiments. For the dubious privilege of borrowing some of its 7,000 books, the immigrant, who frequently could not read, contributed one cent a week, a not insignificant sum at the time. The library balance, furthermore, was $1,000 to $2,000 that the mill could use interest free. Two cents a week contributed to the relief fund entitled the employee to thirty weeks of benefits when sick or injured.7 While the workers gained from these paternalistic arrangements, they also lost considerable free- dom.
6. [Shattuck], Sanitary Survey, pp. 9-20; Lawrence Journal, Jan. 25, 1879.
7. [Shattuck], Sanitary Survey, pp. 11-12; Pacific Mills, General Regulations (N.p., N.d.); Letter from W. C. Chapin to Samuel Austin, Lawrence, July 1, 1856, MS, Essex Institute; Pacific Mills, Statement Presented to the Special Jury of the Paris Exposition of 1867 (Lawrence, 1868), pp. 12-13 and notes; Pacific Mills Relief Society, Regulations, 1854 (Lawrence, 1854); ibid., 1868; Journal, Aug. 23, 1884.
23
MODEL TOWN, 1845-1850
The petition to the legislature asking for the incorporation of Lawrence revealed the founders' concern for their people's wel- fare. It complained that there was a "great increasing want of school houses," and said that a police force was "absolutely neces- sary ... because of the peculiar and mixed character of the popula- tion." The petition also wanted "suitable accommodations for the reception and relief of the poor and sick and those disabled by acci- dents or sudden illness. . . . " In order to cope with disease the founders attracted a dozen doctors to Lawrence within the first year. When Charles Storrow wrote Horace Mann about education in the new town, he commented that the population had doubled and num- bered 6,000. "They have come here mostly from New England homes," he said, "and therefore have New England wants among which schools are first." He wanted Mann to help him set up a high school and to establish a state normal school in Lawrence. "Where else," he commented, "can you find as here the elements of society ready to be moulded into a good or an evil shape: noth- ing to pull down, all to build up: a whole town composed of young people to influence and train as you would a school."8
Though the normal school never materialized, the public school system flourished at once. Mirrored in the reports of the School Committee were the aspirations and ideals of early Lawrence. The first report stressed the importance of education and the apathy shown it in Massachusetts. In a straightforward way it told teachers they must "assiduously teach their pupils to avoid idleness, truancy, falsehood, deceit, thieving, obscenity, profanity, and every other wicked and disgraceful practise. . . . "9 As early as 1850 there were eleven schools, all on land donated by the Essex Com- pany.
As in most communities a public library had to wait until after the Civil War, but Lawrence soon had six private collections, one with over 11,000 volumes. The preamble to the Franklin Library
8. Petition to Establish the Town of Lawrence, MS, Massachusetts Archives, Acts, 1847, Ch. 190; The Evening Tribune, Centennial Edition, 1953; Letter from Charles S. Storrow, Lawrence, Mass., to Horace Mann, Feb. 8, 1848, MS, Horace Mann Letters, Massachusetts Historical Society Library.
9. School Committee of ... Lawrence, Annual Report, 1847-1848 (Lawrence, 1848); School Committee of . . Lawrence, Rules and Regulations . . (Lawrence, 1856), p. 10; School Committee, Rules, 1858, p. 7; [Shattuck], Sanitary Survey, pp. 5, 11-12.
24
IMMIGRANT CITY
Association Charter in 1847 declared that "the welfare of every community was closely dependent upon the diffusion of general knowledge. . . . " When Abbott Lawrence gave $1,000 to the Franklin Association for books, he said the books should be the sort that would "tend to create mechanics, good Christians, and patriots." "Let the standard be high," he added, "in Religion, Moral and Intellectual Culture, and there can be no well grounded fear of the results. There will soon gather around you a large number of Mechanics, and others, who will desire to obtain a knowledge of the higher Mechanic Arts. ... If you possess a well furnished library ... you will ... send forth into the community a class of well educated Machinists, whose labors and influences will be felt throughout our country. ... " Nathaniel White had a similar concern for the welfare of the mechanics when he left money for the first public library and for a series of "edifying" public lectures. Both Herman Melville and Ralph Waldo Emerson spoke in the city before the Civil War.10
The workers for whom the founders showed such concern came first from New England or Ireland: by 1848 there were 3,750 Americans and 2,100 Irish in Lawrence. Farm boys and girls were drawn from all over New England, the 1870 figures showing 10,000 from Massachusetts, 4,600 from New Hampshire and Maine, and 1,200 from Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New York. The Lawrence Courier's concern for New Hampshire politics demonstrated how close Lawrence was to rural New Eng- land. Since its editor Jonathan Hayes was opposed to slavery, there were feature editorials in 1846 rejoicing in the election of New Hampshire Free Soilers, Amos Tuck and John P. Hale, to the House and Senate. Another Lawrence newspaper, the Messenger, was shifted to the town from Exeter, New Hampshire.11
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