Tamara K. Hareven - Amoskeag

Text Copyright 1978 by Tamara K. Hareven
Photos pages . Copyright 1978 by Randolph Langenbach

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Hareven, Tamara K.
Amoskeag.

1. Amoskeag Manufacturing CompanyHistory. 2. Manchester, N.H.History. I. Langenbach, Randolph, 1945 joint author. II. Title.
HD9879.A5H37 338.76770097428 78-52862
eISBN: 978-0-307-83159-0

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

Association Canado-Amricaine: Excerpts from Le Canado-Americain, November 10, 1913, published by the Association Canado-Amricaine, Manchester, New Hampshire. By permission of Mr. Grald Robert, President General.

Acknowledgments for photographs may be found on .

: the lower canal, 1968.

v3.1

To the people of Manchester, New Hampshire
past and present

Acknowledgments

Over the many years involved in the making of this book we have incurred debts too numerous to count.

We are deeply grateful to the people interviewed for this project, who opened their homes to us, who shared their life stories with us, and who so wisely taught us about their world. In addition to the people included in this book, we would like to thank the hundreds of people interviewed, whose stories are equally significant but which, because of the shortage in space, were not included in this book. Among these, we are especially grateful to William Sullivan, Gordon Osborn, Charles Parsons, Saul Greenspan, William Zopie, Roland Gagnon, and William Langois, all of whom enlightened us on different aspects of textile production and management. We would like to thank especially those who were intensely involved with this project, who allowed us to interview them several times, and who handled our recurring enquiries with patience and understanding: F. C. Dumaine, Jr., Dudley Dumaine, Alice and Marcel Olivier, Thomas Smith, Lewis and Virginia Erskine, Ora Pelletier, Cora Pellerin, and Bette Skrzyszowski and Mary Dancause and their families.

This book could not have been realized without the support of the following foundations and organizations: The National Endowment for the Humanities, The New Hampshire Council for the Humanities, The Norwin and Elizabeth Bean Foundation, The New Hampshire Charitable Funds and Trust, The Cogswell Trust in Manchester, New Hampshire, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Textile Workers Union of America, and the National Endowment for the Arts for support of Randolph Langenbachs photography.

We are extremely grateful to our chief interview and research assistant, Robert Perreault, as well as to Ron Petrin, and Sally Boynton; to Denise Perreault, Agnes Gotboud, Wanda Fisher, Jean Evangelauf, and Sidney Ellis for transcribing; to Jean Evangelauf for assistance in research and editing; to Ronald Grela for consultation on interviewing methods; and to Laurel Rosenthal, Judy Campbell, Karen Roche, Lynn McKay, Gloria Solari, and Connie Ickes for efficient and dedicated typing. The secretarial pool at Clark University, and especially Theresa Reynolds, invested an enormous effort in the many retypes of the manuscript. We are also indebted to Howard Litwark for assistance in researching and editing the manuscript.

The Manchester Historic Association housed the oral-history project during its first stage. We are grateful to the director, Virginia Plisko, and librarian Elizabeth L. Lessard for their continuing help and for permission to publish the photographs owned by the Manchester Historic Association. We also greatly benefitted from the assistance of the Association Canado-Amricaine in Manchester, particularly from the valuable information from Mr. Grald Robert, president of the Association. Mr. Robert Lovett of the Baker Library, Harvard Business School, has generously assisted us with information; and Dr. Thomas Leavitt, director of the Merrimack Valley Textile Museum, has provided support and guidance throughout the project. Clark University has generously helped with support for part of the tape transcription and with sabbatical leave. I [Tamara Hareven] am also extremely grateful to the Radcliffe Institute, where I was a Fellow during the completion of this book; and to the Rockefeller Foundations Center for Scholars in Bellagio, Italy, where we worked on parts of this book while scholars in residence. I am also indebted to the Center for Population Studies, Harvard University, where I am currently a Fellow; and especially to William Alonso and Dale Cohen.

Transformation of the four-year oral history into this book would not have been possible without the encouragement and guidance of Andr Schiffrin, who creates books rather than just publishes them.

Two people have contributed enormously to the creative and insightful shaping and editing of this book: Joan Rosenstock of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Tom Engelhardt of Pantheon Books. Both gave generously of their time beyond the call of duty. We are indebted to them for their patient struggle with thousands of pages of text and for their cheerful dedication to this laborious process. The expert copyediting of Donna Bass, who did much more than just copyedit, and the skillful and friendly management by Wendy Wolf, at Pantheon Books, have shuttled the manuscript through its final stages.

We would also like to thank all our friends and colleagues who have taken an active interest in this project and whose scholarly advice was extremely valuable, especially David Montgomery, John Modell, and Stephan Thernstrom; and our New Hampshire friends, for their hospitality while we were working on this project, John and Mona Brooks, Joseph Scannel, and Father Paul; and Edward and Ann Langenbach for support and encouragement.

Tamara K. Hareven and Randolph Langenbach Cambridge, Massachusetts
Spring 1978

Contents

Part One
The Setting

Part Two
First Generation

Part Three
The Corporation

Part Four
The World of Work

Part Five
Families

Part Six
Strike and Shutdown

Part Seven
Child of the Shutdown

Part Eight
Eulogy

Part One