Читать книгу The Inventive Life of Charles Hill Morgan: The Power of Improvement In Industry, Education and Civic Life - Allison Chisolm - Страница 10

Construction of the Blackstone Canal brought growth, riches and immigrants to Worcester. Irish workers cleared many of the waterways and built the series of locks to accommodate the changing topography between Worcester and Providence. More Irish arrived after the 1845 famine in Ireland. Many French Canadians also arrived before the Civil War to work in the city’s textile mills and plentiful boot and shoe factories.

As the metals and abrasives businesses grew, several companies, including Morgan Construction, recruited Swedes with experience in their home country’s successful ironworks. The population shift was rapid. Where in 1875 there were only 166 Swedish residents, ten years later that number had increased thirteen times to 2,112. In another 10 years, the Swedish population tripled again, so that by 1900, fully 10 percent of all Worcester residents were from Swedish families. Finns came to Worcester as well. At the turn of the century, almost half of all male Scandinavians had jobs in the metals trades. Typically ambitious and upwardly mobile, Swedes soon filled the more skilled positions in rolling mills and wire making, supervising more recently arrived immigrants among Irish, Lithuanian, Polish, Finnish and Armenian laborers.

The 1910 census lists Russians as one of the top five ethnic populations in the city, and Russian Jewish immigrants tended to settle near but not with the Poles and Lithuanians. Armenians (listed as “Turkey in Asia”), Turks (from “Turkey in Europe”), Albanians, Syrians and Greeks arrived in greater numbers in that first decade of the twentieth century. Germans, English Canadians, Scots, Welsh and English were also in the mix. Almost three-fourths of Worcester residents were foreign-born or born of foreign parents in 1920. Each group had its designated neighborhood within the city, and for quite some time, there was little interaction between groups.

The presence of so many newcomers meant that the terms “immigrant” and “blue-collar worker” were virtually interchangeable in turn-of-the century Worcester. Business owners benefited from lower-cost labor and, in an era of increasing union activity, profited from the divisions among ethnic groups. The Worcester Merchants Association’s 1913 promotional brochure, “Facts about Worcester,” noted that 45 nationalities were represented in the city’s population.

Like the generations before them, these newcomers also brought the power of new ideas and innovations, all to Worcester’s gain. Their achievements would take the city in different directions, but not necessarily according to the 19th century patterns of success. “Many of our mechanics own their own homes, and are naturally deeply interested in the welfare of the city,” wrote Ichabod Washburn’s descendant, historian Charles G. Washburn in his 1917 Industrial Worcester. “Avenues of advancement are always open to the capable and industrious ... From their ranks will come the leading businessmen of the next generation upon whom the continuance of prosperity will depend.”

While Washburn could not have predicted the global forces that would change the face of Worcester in the twentieth century, the city had many lessons to draw on from its successful history. Behind the inventors and innovators stood the many men and women whose contributions to the making of an industrial city are often veiled in anonymity but were no less important than the investments and improvements made by the likes of Washburn, Salisbury, Higgins, Merrifield and Morgan.

Charles Morgan’s life story is significant for its intersection with many of the key moments in Worcester’s industrial history. As the city began its meteoric growth, Morgan worked on Merrifield’s longest-lasting steam engine for his incubator building. When a new type of school needed a shop supervisor, Morgan found Milton Higgins. When Washburn & Moen needed more expertise to expand its markets overseas, Morgan encouraged his Swedish metal-working colleagues to make the journey to the U.S. And when Barber’s Crossing in Greendale started to expand as an industrial center, he moved the Morgan Spring Company and several Morgan Construction Co. departments up there. The story of Worcester’s growth and development parallels much of the story of Charles Morgan’s life.

His legacy has ensured the city’s continued success in education, manufacturing and invention. While Worcester today may be known more for biotechnology than metals manufacturing, Morgan Construction’s operations remain in the city as part of Siemens AG. WPI students learn modern mechanical engineering skills in the renovated Washburn Shops. And WPI professors enjoy support from the Morgan Teaching and Learning Center, which helps to guide their work as they prepare the next generation of people in the mould of Charles Hill Morgan—innovative engineers, scientists and industry leaders.