After WWI, when the country was dealing with prohibition, race disputes and women’s suffrage in Europe and here, the employment landscape in the Merrimack Valley and in Lowell, in particular, was one of community belt-tightening and making due with less to stay above water, figuratively. But, here and there, the spirit of free enterprise still showed a promise for a better tomorrow for some, at least.
It is true that my grandfather, Pépère Charbonneau, had successfully become a recent, new entrepreneur in the milk delivery business to the point of purchasing a large and attractive house and barn on Hildreth Street – the high rent district – to help manage his affairs.
However, the expected return of a vibrant textile capitalism had not, as yet, opened up new employment avenues for the skilled but, mostly unskilled immigrant workers, the so-called operatives, from the remaining mills.
Yet, this was a period of new inventions and technologies worldwide, which would ultimately alter the economic realities of daily life for everyone, even the poor and almost destitute. The investment yea-Sayers on Wall Street were shouting their glorious praises to human progress and a brighter tomorrow for everyone.
But, yet, there was no immediate joy in Mudville where the average wage-earner toiled, usually, from early morn to sundown without health insurance, disability pay, annual vacation days, retirement benefits, or even safe working 
conditions in the factories. Yet, these workers were expected to toil 50 to 60 hours a week (there often was no overtime rates) for very little salary. Some chose to use alcohol as a self-administered drug, and quite effectively, it seems. Prohibition laws only made their temporary salvation more difficult to attain.
Advances in electrical power generation, Tesla’s alternating technology in competition with Edison’s direct current approach, early attempts at the creation of aero-planes and their avionic systems plus the advent of the telephone and telegraph all promised the arrival of a brave new world of technological ease and well being.
These technical advances in the mass production of new household items such as the radio, telephone, electric lights, telegraph, etc. plus new advances in trolleys also introduced to working-class Americans the need for up-to-date 
electromechanical skills to make a mark in the production shops of the region.
But, the average person working as a long-term mill employee (an operative) at the Boott Cotton Mills or Lawrence Manufacturing had been encouraged for years to provide his/her employer efficient, low cost, repetitive outputs. Theirs was not to propose innovative, new, mechanical improvements to the factory’s operation although an outside consultant from a scientific management firm might proffer an idea, which could lead to higher efficiency. Generally speaking, however, shop floor workers had but a limited say in the daily operation of the plant.
How might a father or mother of several young children, who was earning a living in the ear-shattering world of Lowell’s once busy denizens of spindles, 
levers, pulleys, whirling cranks and drive belts get out of the daily, textile rat race to, possibly, earn a more rewarding living in these emerging industries?
These new technologies required up-to-date machine shop skills that were not found in the textile factories along the Merrimack. Special training was required.
First and foremost, the mill worker needed to become aware of these new skills, and how to acquire them. The local city library might have served as an initial resource.
As a young man in the early 1950s, the Pollard Library had been an eye-opening experience for me, so, perhaps, it might have equally served the 
needs of any eager, early, 20th century resident, who was intent on getting ahead in life.
However, the reference librarian, who kindly solicited the requests of patrons, might only have access to journals and newspaper articles written in English, not surprisingly, of course.
But, many of the lower-skilled individuals from the mills had only a fragmented grasp of that language. Included in this group of persons were recent arrivals from French-Canada, Ireland, Greece, Poland, Portugal, etc., etc.
Language had to be the primary hurdle to overcome if English fluency had not been in the worker’s natural heritage. Franco-American, parochial schools with 
courses taught both in English and French had successfully, over many years, overcome this primary hurdle by the time I had reached kindergarten (1944). Irish-American schools like St. Patrick and Keith Academy also could claim success in these educational goals prior to WWII. Finally, the Greek-American schools in the Acre were producing new candidates for the local workforce during that same time period.
But, it is still unclear to the author how the youth coming from Portuguese, Rumanian, Polish, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Jewish or German stock managed to maintain their ethnic authenticity while also being integrated into the status quo. But, without special educational centers of cultural change, many children of early immigrants might have been left high and dry by the local businesses of the period.
There were, however, other resources available to men and women with a burning desire to better themselves through learning a trade (plumbing, 
painting, carpentry) or practical skills in the design and operation of electromechanical machinery such as the lathe, drill press, power saw and other metal working tools.
Actually, newspaper advertisements promoting such goals appeared regularly in magazines and journal articles like Science and Mechanics (1931), Popular Mechanics (1902), Popular Electronics (1954), Hemmings Motor News (1954) and Popular Science (1872) where the dates of first publication are shown to the right of the magazine name. Some libraries may have had annual subscriptions to these issues.
Clearly, the bells and whistles of new technologies were well advertised to that portion of the viewing public with reading skills, even way back to 1872.
Where were the first and second generation immigrants of the Merrimack Valley before the Great Depression, during and after the Second World War when the Cold War with the Soviets was starting to brew?
Commercial and military aircraft companies in California were going gang-busters with new and faster planes. General Dynamics Electric Boat, which had been building our nation’s submarines since 1899, produced the nation’s first nuclear sub, the Nautilus, which was christened by Mamie Eisenhower in 1954.
These technical accomplishments required advanced electromechanical skills, which were found at the company’s assembly locations at Groton, Connecticut and Newport News in Virginia.
But, where were the good-paying, highly skilled jobs in modern ship-building near or around the Greater-Boston area where unemployed Lowellians – some former mill workers – might go?
But, even to a casual observer, there seemed to be a major disconnect between the skills attained by the average high-school graduate in Lowell and 
those required by industry and the military at the time. Where were the local schools in providing life skills for future growth?
Were members of the Lowell City Council, the mayor’s office or the Board of Education partially responsible for the lack of marketplace competiveness in the ranks of the local workforce?
Would it have been reasonable for residents of the city to expect the decision-makers at the Boott Cotton Mills and Lawrence Manufacturing Company to have provided some of their operatives opportunities to obtain advanced electromechanical skills so as to better prepare them for useful lives across many industries?
These are difficult questions to address, but similar questions need to be handled today in dealing with the loss of jobs in the American Rust Belt and the lack of advanced technical training that is required in controlling robot-driven machinery in an industrial warehouse.
Can the lessons learned in the industrial decline and fall of Lowell’s textile industry from 1900 to 1955 teach us to become better urban planners where a technical education is blended with the ideals of democracy and good citizenship?
