Book of the Week #31

Amoskeag: Life and Work in an American Factory-city in New England by Tamara K. Hareven and Randolph Langenbach (London: Methuen & Co, Ltd., 1979)

"The Amoskeag Company founded the city of Manchester and dominated it over the entire century of its existence. There was hardly a person in Manchester between 1838, when construction began, and 1936, when the mills shut down, whose life was not in some way affected by the Company." (p. 11)

This is the story of that Company as told by the people who worked there. Mixed in with the stories are images of the Mills. The contrast between the thriving mill city, the dilapidation of the 1970s (when the book was written) and today's Millyard is striking. There is an image in the book (p. 235 of my edition) of an exhibit that showed a single day's production of the mill -- it makes clear like nothing I had seen before how huge this company was.