"The French Canadians who migrated to New England came mostly from rural Quebec. They answered the call of the textile mills that needed new workers, first in the mid-nineteenth century and through the decades until the massive mill closings in the 1950s. People in the Richelieu Valley migrated to the mills of Woonsocket, and it became the most Franco-American city in America.While gathered with friends a few years ago, conversation turned to a discussion about the closing of a local photo processing facility. The group lamented about losing a local business but one remarked that it was better for the workers. Her logic went something like this; 'those workers are harming their own health by working there and have made a bad choice by working with all those chemicals.' I fumed. We had all entrusted our treasured memories to the hands of those workers. We had all benefited from the labor performed in what probably was not the healthiest of environments. None of us had decided to take fewer photos to protect the health of the workers or of the earth for that matter. I noted such to my friends. People choose jobs because of location, pay, their skills, or lack of skills, availability of transportation and often out of family loyalty and tradition. In this area, people still speak proudly of their work in the Velvet Mill or making guitars for Guild. Our houses are populated with luxuries and necessities created by the hands of people we will never meet. I told the group that I was from a family of farmers and mill workers. "Mill workers?" came back the group exclamation. Yes. Mill workers and damn proud of it. So to celebrate my heritage of Franco-American farmers and mill workers, a little history thanks to William Moran's book The Belles of New England.
Between 1860 and 1900 about six hundred thousand people, one-quarter of Quebec's population, migrated to New England and accounted for 10 percent of the population in the six states. So many left the village of St. Hilaire that the local baker closed his shop, followed his neighbors to Lowell, and opened a new bakery.
The mill managers welcomed the child workers. "There is such a thing as too much education for working people sometimes," said Thomas Livermore, agent at the Amoskeag Milles. "I have seen cases where young people were spoiled for labor by being educated to a little too much refinement." The Fall River school board agreed. "An exclusively bookish education," the board said, "has created in the minds of many of the [mill children] a radically wrong attitude toward life which would make the child look upon working at cotton manufacturing" as something to avoid.
Revered parish priests were the sturdiest guides leading the Franco-Americans through the pitfalls of American life... They were spiritual advisers, they were symbols of stability in times of great social adjustment and they were builders. They built schools, hospitals, colleges and universities, homes for unwed mothers, and orphanages at a time when young parents often died of lung diseases associated with mill work.
The priests taught the people that hard work was their destiny, that they were born to suffer in this life, but that they should not blames society for their condition.
The Irish-American bishops and priests who dominated the Catholic church in New England preached that immigrants must become part of society by speaking English and studying American history... In Rhode Island there was trouble when Bishop William Hickey launched a fundraiser drive in 1922 to build a bilingual high school in Woonsocket. Franco-Americans protested because they feared the dilution of their native language; they boycotted the drive. The bishop imposed the most severe punishment possible for a devout Catholic; he excommunicated sixty-two leaders of the uprising. He also suspended Frano-American priests who supported the boycott. The standoff ended only when the protesters gave in to the bishop and formally repented.
Conditions in the mills spurred campaigns to unionize the workforce. This created pressures for Franco-Americans who traditionally did not like unions, especially unions led by radical agitators from Europe. When union leaders called for work stoppages, coworkers demanded that the Franc ro-Americans join in the protests, but their priests and community leaders told them that strikes were wrong....
In Woonsocket, Rhode Island, there was a notable exception to the generalization that Franco-Americans were passive in their dealings with management. During the Great Depression of the 1930s French-speaking weavers from Belgium founded teh Independent Textile Workers, which affiliated with the national Congre3ss of Industrial Organizations, the CIO. The goal was to enlist all the mill workers in the city, unskilled laborers as well as accomplished craftsmen into one big union. The concept had rarely been accepted in the textile industry. Well-paid skilled workers could not often be persuaded that they had common cause with those who earned the lowest wages. But Woonsocket became a symbol of labor unity. Even workers not associated with the mills joined the union, including barbers, electricians, retail clerks, and public employees. Membership grew to eighteen thousand in the small city."
from The Belles of New England by William Moran
I am so proud of my Woonsocket ancestors! May we continue to be proud to work hard. And may our work lay the foundation for spiritual, economic and intellectual freedom for all.
