What is this township to me? Why should I care or give a damn? Name even one famous and great U.S. president, who launched his successful carrier as a hard-working, ambitious mill rat on the Merrimack River weaving exquisite textiles for the country’s clothing industry?
When I read about Hawthorne, Thoreau and Emerson, naturally, I am carried away spiritually by the true grit, enthusiasm and love that these American authors extolled in their works of art, their visionary concepts and their elevating and heart-felt affirmation of the life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness we must all enjoy. But where is there life, liberty and happiness in the sordid tenement blocks and the poverty seen on Moody, Austin, Cabot and race Streets?
The soot-covered, red brick factory buildings located on Appleton, Upper Middlesex and Jackson Streets only promise the laborer a temporary stay from destitution through a meager pay envelop for his or her tedious 50 to 60 hour-long stints of dangerous work per week. Then, these same grimy wage-slaves are sent back home for, maybe, a Sunday afternoon spent with their extended families – spouses, children, aunts and uncles plus an occasional grandmother and grandfather.
All these festive activities are naturally highlighted with ample portions of pork, beef or fish stews – haddock and cod, usually – served with mugs of coffee for the adults and chocolate-milk for the kiddos. Sometimes, the coffee might be laced with a shot of bourbon to ward off any onset of illness. There were often recurring bouts of illness – colds, sniffles, headaches and heartaches – in Lowell when these relatives gathered together. Then, everyone must always remember to leave some room in their respective stomachs for the cakes and apple pies freshly drawn for the oven. Finally, a cold glass of beer was needed to wash down the repast.
Is this America, the Land of Milk and Honey? Why did those beautiful, human dreams of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness become drenched in the sweatshops of industrial, New England capitalism with its distinctive, textile flavored fabrics?
When I walk down old cobblestone roads of the 1830s now covered over with a macadamized, black glaze of summer gooey tar, strangely enough I fail to be spiritually elevated and transported by the moving words and the home-spun wisdom of Emerson, Thoreau and Hawthorne. How am I, Paul E. Bolduc, connected to their ideals, their hopes and their most fervent aspirations?
Black slave labor practices imposed by successful, Southern cotton farmers during the antebellum years meshed quite nicely with the industrialized, textile weaving entrepreneurs in New England. As a result of this mass production of cotton fabrics, America’s economic standing in the world leaped to the notice and envy of other nations – the Brits in particular.
But, what does the vision of many, ocean-going freighters leaving American ports loaded with the copious output of several sooty, red-brick factories from Lowell, Lawrence and Haverhill have to do with the life, liberty and happiness of typical, illiterate, poverty-stricken, farm laborers from New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine, who seek a better existence in a fair and equitable marketplace? To use a popular phrase from the world of psychologists today, there is much cognitive dissonance in this economic picture of the good life.
Maybe, my best hope to never end up as another example of the wasted life is to simply move onto other pastures like those awaiting me in State College, Pennsylvania? Of course, real life offers few guarantees, but I am certainly tempted to see what surprises and neat consequences just might open up to me with this change of venue. After all, Uncle Lucien, the Army colonel to first enter the liberated, Dachau Death Camp in Bavaria, made a similar choice decades before, and he remains my most respected and accomplished family member.
