A Shoemaker's Story: Being Chiefly about French Canadian Immigrants, Enterprising Photographers, Rascal Yankees, and Chinese Cobblers in a Nineteenth-Century Factory Town

Anthony W. Lee. A Shoemaker's Story: Being Chiefly about French Canadian Immigrants, Enterprising Photographers, Rascal Yankees, and Chinese Cobblers in a Nineteenth-Century Factory Town. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 2008. 314 pages. $45 (cloth). In 1870 workers at a North shoe factory went out on strike to their employer, manufacturing Calvin Sampson, to bargain with their union. Sampson, having not the slightest intention negotiating, immediately set out to replace them. Finding a new source of labor proved difficult, however, as the workers he brought in from regions were consistently either to work as scabs or were union members. Recognizing he to find workers that would not be pulled in by sentiments of union or ethnic solidarity, Sampson broadened his horizons and sent for a crew of Chinese immigrants to be brought in from San Francisco on the newly completed transcontinental railroad. Taking the bold step of importing replacement workers from China set offa storm of protests and national interest. It also successfully broke the strike and resulted in Chinese workers residing in the small New England town for the next decade. Ten years later, the anti-Chinese hysteria that preceded the Chinese Exclusion Act neared its apex, but with the local union ground into dust, Sampson simply declined to renew his contract with the Chinese workers and they vanished from the area never to return. A Shoemakers ' Story gives us a history of these events, offering an instructive and vividly written case study into the development of industry and unions, the deskilling of labor, the growth of immigration, and the transformation of identities that characterized post Civil War America. Lee successfully integrates the localized history in North Adams to the national and international current of events, ranging from the economic underpinnings of the French Canadian diaspora to the ethnic and cultural heterogeneousness of Chinese immigrants. More than a simple history, Lee tells this story by exploring the various visual documents left behind by the main participants, primarily in photographs. He centers his narrative around a photograph of the newly arrived Chinese workers standing in front of the North Adams shoe factory. Sampson inexplicably arranged to have the photo taken in the midst of the drama and protest of the very day of the Chinese workers arrival, when thousands had gathered to protest, and Sampson himself was carrying numerous firearms in anticipation of a fight. Lee investigates what each of the major protagonists saw in this photograph and the events surrounding it, giving each perspective an entire chapter to be explored: the shoe manufacturer, the photographers, French Canadian union workers, and the Chinese workers. In each of these chapters, Lee contextualizes and unpacks how the various groups were affected and responded to the arrival of the Chinese in North Adams. But reviewing the flood of photographic documents that resulted remains his focus. As an art historian, Lee shows his talents by offering rich analysis of the images that beautifully illustrate the pages of this book. He not only uses the photographs as a means to shed light on how the groups viewed themselves and wanted others to see them, but also as a way to show how the visual culture created by these photographs formed a new medium for struggle, conflict, and expression. …

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