took
us to pass through our smallest state was far too short to find all the things
that were part of this land. We did find an interesting
town up on the northern border with Massachusetts. Here the Blackstone
River runs relentlessly to the sea. And it was the Blackstone that brought prosperity
and a new way of life for many foreigners seeking to better themselves in the
bright new land. The 1600s saw this part of the country still under the control
of the local Indians, but that changed in 1660 when Richard Arnold
constructed the first sawmill on the Blackstone River. Success breeds imitation
and shortly thereafter Arnold's friends, relatives and other enthusiastic colonists
migrated to the area and set up similar operations. With this, came the necessity
of other trades and business and soon there were 6 small villages along the
banks of the river. Trade grew steadily with the river always providing
ample power for the mills. With the 1800s 
came
an explosion in the area. Textiles had advanced in technology to allow
for large labor-intensive mills which required great power to run the massive
drive belts that pumped the hundred of looms throughout the mills. Again, the
Blackstone River supplied the never-ending power needed. The growth saw
the 6 small villages come together to form the town of Woonsocket. The beginning
of the 1900s saw Woonsocket at its heyday. During this time a ready made
labor force came down from Quebec to work the looms. These were hard times
for those who arrived. Much of the City's rich history is in the struggles
of these immigrants in a new land. The mills are all gone now, as is much
of the culture, but a small part of it is preserved in a museum in the middle of
the town. We dropped by to see what we could learn about the past and we
certainly found that. Inside we found the story of a world in change. Not only
was the industry brand new, 
the
workers were also new. Many of them came from the poor farmlands of Quebec
and didn't speak English. There were no rules in the factory to start
with. It was take or leave it job opportunity. Initially, the immigrants fell
into 4 categories. There were the unskilled laborers, fresh off the
farms. These people found work on the canals and building roads which were
expanding to carry away the goods, the factories were turning out. The
skilled workers or artisans, whose jobs soon disappeared when machines were made
to replace them, found themselves forced into the factory labor force. The
outworkers were those, mostly wives and mothers, who worked at cottage industries
in their homes. Many of the items they made were on display in the museum. This
was never a viable source of income as most of the items were labor intensive
and were sold individually for whatever the maker could get. The final
group was the children. In the early 1800s there were no child labor laws
and many families found it necessary to send their children to the factories
rather then school. With little body strength and no skills, the children got
the most mundane repetitive jobs which demanded that they act swiftly and accurately
if they had any hope of keeping their jobs. One of the jobs given to such
workers was to load the spindles
onto the spindle board. It took very little capital to build a textile
mill and soon competition was eating up profits. The factories developed a
solution called "speed up and stretch out" which meant that
factories began requiring more product to be produced per hour and longer hours for
the same amount of pay. This caused an increase in injuries and a general
unhappiness of the workers, but the factories were uninterested in these
conditions. Soon job actions began to spring up. Some skilled
workers unionized, others staged walkouts, and the poorest of them all simply
packed up and went home, when conditions got too bad. This had no effect on
the factories who were actively recruiting new immigrants to fill
their positions. The struggle did not end at the workplace. These
immigrants found themselves transplanted into an English speaking country with
different culture and values and religion. Many of the French workers did assimilate,
giving up their French ways for the new life in America. Many others
fought off this assimilation, and fought for their language and culture and
religion. The expression "la survivance" became the common term
for holding on to the French in their past. Even today one can find, among
the old folks around town, evidence of the old "la survivance". A tapestry sent
from Paris in 1920 and which hung in the Our Lady of Victories Church is an
example of the continued attachment to the homeland and the way it use to
be. There were other things to do in town, including some old mill tours and historical walks, and of course there is the ever constant Blackstone River with all its beauty running through all of it.
