My grandfather was born in 1855, soon after his parents had immigrated from Ireland. He and his brother were left with an order of Roman Catholic monks in or near Pawtucket RI. when their parents went west to improve their economic situation; their ages were 9 and 7. They worked to earn their keep in one of Pawtucket’s textile mills, possibly the famous Slater’s Mill. There, they were introduced to the cutting edge industrial technology of the time but also had to endure oppressive working conditions and, needless to say, received a pittance for wages. After a few years, the parents, not having found the level of prosperity in Wyoming or Montana they had hoped for, returned and the family resettled in northeastern CT where parents and children simultaneously worked at subsistence farming and as mill hands in the numerous textile mills that were springing up in that area. Formal schooling was not part of the narrative. My grandfather — probably drawing on his early experience as an apprentice mill worker in RI — eventually became a “mule spinner” and went to work in what became one of the largest textile manufacturing facilities in the country — a complex of 5 mills. He then worked for that company for 55 years, not retiring until he was past 75 years of age. Over time, he “worked his way up” to be Assistant Overseer of one of the mills in the complex — the “glass ceiling” for an Irish Catholic in that day and time. Fast forward to 1925. Prolonged labor strife culminated in a general strike of all the mills in the complex. My grandfather, even though he was in a lower level of management, joined the strikers. It was a defining moment that came late in his life and he cited it often in my thirteen years living in his house by saying pridefully “I went out with the men”. (Unfortunate sexism because women workers probably outnumbered their male colleagues among the strikers. But, he was a product of his time and, as my mother would say, “set in his ways”). Another not-so-positive trait was that he tended to carry a grudge, so he never forgot or forgave the strike breakers who were brought in and had a habit of calling them out to their faces as “scabs” well into has 9th decade. On the positive side, he was clearly a person of principle with strong allegiance to and respect for the people he worked with. Strong in character — willful, in fact — he was a force in my life and a role model. My father spent some of his working career in the same mill after his father had retired and was an active member of the TWUA, AFL/CIO. The mill complex dwindled and closed sometime in the 1960’s. Part has been preserved and re-purposed, including the mill in which my grandfather worked for 55 of his 96 years. I regard it as a memorial to him and to his fellow workers who put in 5 1/2 days per week at their jobs year-in and year-out. A print of a painting of that mill by A.N. Wyeth hangs prominently in my living room.
