Talk:Lawrence, Massachusetts

message: Oops -- Robert Frost was not born in Lawrence, Mass. He may be associated with New England, but he was born in San Francisco. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.80.224.146 (talk) 19:10, 8 September 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: oops

message: Some intersting things about Lawrence that I believe are true:
1. Lawrence was a planned industrial city built by a corporation set up for the production of woolen cloth, the Essex Company.  It was meant to be a copy of the profitable cotton town of Lowell, Massachusetts some ten-odd miles up the Merrimack River.
2. Many of the investors in the Essex Company were typical of textile investors across New England at the time: members of relatively prominent shipping families looking to diversify their wealth after the highly profitable far east spice trade dried up.
3. Little capital investment was given toward making the mills more productive, e.g. so they could diversify into more profitable items like multi-colored cloths, etc.  The failure to make capital investments was partially due to the desire of investors to pay themselves high dividends.  Thus the mills competed in terms of price rather than superior quality/value, meaning they had to hold wages down in order to survive.
4. This led to the hiring first of single farm girls and then of even cheaper immigrant labor, including children down to the age of 10 or so.
5. Even with these cost saving measures, competition drove most New England woolen mills into bankruptcy in the 1890s.  The American Woolen Company was set up to merge them all together and make them more efficient and to end competition, at least regionally.  In other words, it was the classic monopolistic trust of the late 19th century that the Sherman anti-trust act set out to eliminate.  
6. However, all the creation of the American Woolen Company did was to stretch out the twilight of low value woolen manufacturing for another 50 years.  The savior for the Lawrence woolen industry was government orders for blankets in World War I and II.  There was very little other demand for their goods at the prices they had to charge.
7. Lawrence has always struggled financially, not just recently.  In earlier years this was because the textile mills were exempt from real estate taxes.  Most of the rest of the real estate was tenement houses, mill housing (also exempt) and shops.
8. One silver lining: because its enormous mills were water powered, there is relatively little environmental contamination compared to its historical manufacturing significance.
Bibliography includes
*Dengler, Khalife and Skulski, "Lawrence Massachusetts" (Immigrant City Archives 1995)
*Roddy, "Mills, mansions, and mergers : the life of William M. Wood (1982)
Cbmccarthy 17:27, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Regarding this silver lining, the Bolta factory on Canal Street was one of the nastiest superfund sites in the country. So, they got the environmental contamination topic covered. EraserGirl (talk) 21:33, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Interesting things about Lawrence

message: As someone from Lowell, I'm interested in the parts of Lawrence.  I know where Downtown Lawrence is, I know South Lawrence is a recognized neighborhood, and when I was little, we had friends in Tower Hill (but I can't tell you exactly where it is).  I know Lawrence is a physically much smaller city, but maybe something like the neighborhoods information from the Lowell page would go nice here?  Thanks, CSZero 14:35, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I lived in Lawrence at the bottom of Tower Hill. Went to St. Augustine grammar school and St Mary’s High School. I might not have the precise streets for Tower Hill, but, I believe it started around the intersection of Margin St and Essex Streets and continued up the hill of Essex Street to at least Ames Street.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 1947baby (talk • contribs) 16:33, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Neighborhoods? 

message: :Image:Lawrence, MA Seal.gif is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.
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thread_title: Fair use rationale for Image:Lawrence, MA Seal.gif

message: Can someone please provide support that the nickname of Lawrence is "Mill City"?  I lived there for my first 18 years and never heard that expression. Cbmccarthy 14:36, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I went ahead and did it.  I changed the nickname to the one I have always heard: Immigrant City. 01:29, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually when you live IN the city you don't use a nickname. It's only people who are trying to think up quaint nicknames who use one.  EraserGirl (talk) 17:20, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Mill City is the nickname for Lowell, MA, not Lawrence, MA.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2603:3005:1302:C900:C965:D0:4791:D55C (talk) 15:10, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Mill City??

message: What pray tell does that section have to do with the article?  Every 5 or 10 years there is a massive fire in Lawrence, this last one is no more important than any of the previous ones, and by far smaller than the fires in the 80s. EraserGirl (talk) 17:20, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, but it's a general condition of Wikipedia that what is a major local event (this fire made national news) becomes a section on a Wikipedia page.  As time goes on, editors will need to have these discussions and remove things that never became generally important.  The way I look at it, Wikipedia is not paper ( WP:PAPER ), and therefore, around the time of the fire and for months afterwards, it would be a common thing for people to come to the Lawrence page to read about.  As it fizzles in notability in the grand scheme of Lawrence burning down, we can remove it.  As you said, a city made of wood (or at least having wood floors soaked in oil) tends to have fires.  Maybe it hurts the neutral point of view to highlight this one after it is no longer on everyone's mind.  Or maybe we remove it because it takes up precious screen real-estate.  CSZero (talk) 20:38, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps next time someone does a major addition, it should be removed. I don't feel strongly enough about it to do it today. EraserGirl (talk) 21:29, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I totally agree.  This section is out of place and should be deleted, for the reasons you cite. Cbmccarthy (talk) 16:28, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: recent fires?

message: Unlike other area towns and cities, there are a lot of reference sources for Lawrence, and nearly none appear in the notes.  Large portions of this article, though well written and most likely accurate have no notes or citations at all.  It should be very simple to obtain a few books and cite the information in the article.  
* Watson, Bruce. Bread and Roses: Mills, Migrants, and the Struggle for the American Dream
* Cole, Donald. Immigrant City: Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1845-1921
* Desantis, Ronald. Lawrence Police Department (Images of America)
* Dorgan, Maurice. Lawrence yesterday and today: (1845-1918) a concise history of Lawrence Massachusetts - her industries and institutions; municipal statistics and a variety of information concerning the city
* n.a. Life and Times in Immigrant City: Memories of a Textile Town
* Schinto, Jeanne. Huddle Fever: Living in the Immigrant City
* Baker, Julie. The Bread and Roses Strike of 1912
* Cahn, William. Lawrence 1912 The Bread and Roses Strike
* Immigrant Archives.  Lawrence, Massachusetts vol 1 (Images of America) 
* Skulski, Ken. Lawrence, Massachusetts vol 2 (Images of America) 
* Sandberg, Louise Brady. Lawrence in the Gilded Age (MA) (Images of America) 
If you are near Lawrence, the Lawrence History Center/Immigrant City Archives and Museum at 6 Essex St. will have all of these, the Lawrence Public Library will have some of them, though they are probably not circulation items. EraserGirl (talk) 14:13, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Adding citations is a very good start, however Eartha and Ken's picture book isn't the best original source material, I am sure in the back there is a bibliography of THEIR source material, now THAT's the stuff we need. Thanks for the update, if you need further clarification about citation format beyond WP:CITE just holler. EraserGirl (talk) 16:05, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: References

message: Because I live in New York and do not have access to specific books about Lawrence (except the ones I cited), I can't really improve on this article further. (I would add, however, that it has way more footnote citations already than a typical Wikipedia article). 
I thought by adding an organizational framework around immigrant communities, I could inspire others to fill it in.  I am sure a lot of people whose ancestors passed through Lawrence will also be interested to know where various immigrant communities were located. That is why I focused on churches, which often formed the geographic core of each community.
Can anyone build on the information that is already there? Cbmccarthy (talk) 16:26, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I can see your point about generating interest, anything is helpful, and until better, fuller information comes along, it will due as placeholders.  However I strongly disagree with your assumption that this article has "has way more footnote citations already than a typical Wikipedia article"  It has about as many as any "start class" article, but even so considering the the quality of the footnotes is less than desirable. I think in time it will grow, what we need is someone passionate with access to the proper sources. EraserGirl (talk) 22:19, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Improving this article

message: I call the highlighted section that reads “sustainable luxury apartments”  http://www.monarchlofts.com/ as a possible ad, anyone agree?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.61.172.186 (talk) 00:50, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Possible Ad 

message: Che Arrajj was recently added as a notable person. Seems like he is a local artist and has not recieved notable status. Any objections if I delete? Wkharrisjr (talk) 13:19, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: None to either whatsoever.  Please be WP:BOLD and just go ahead and do this sort of thing - no need to ask as Wikipedia:NOTE is very clear on this.  This - people adding non-encyclopedic people for either vandalism or promotion reasons - is a constant issue on locality pages (which I watch quite a few of) and it gets extremely frustrating.  Thanks and happy editing, CSZero (talk) 14:26, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  Done and doneWkharrisjr (talk) 14:49, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Notable persons

message: The Boston Associates did not invest in or build any mills in Lawrence.  Rather, they formed the Essex Company (which, oddly, is mentioned nowhere in the article) to build the Great Stone Dam, the canals and other basic waterworks, which in turn would provide power to mills.  They also built some housing.  The mills themselves were built by other groups of investors, who bought the rights to water power from the Essex Company.  Abbott Lawrence was a member of the Boston Associates. The Boston Associates, who had been in the textile business for nearly 30 years when Lawrence was founded, knew to insulate themselves from being dirctly in the mill business by this time, as profit margins were rapidly declining compared to the vast profits that had been available when they founded Lowell -- in fact, a number of Lawrence mills failed in the first 20 years of the city's existence, or had to be completely recapitalized.  I have a nice history of the Arlington Mills that tells the story of the Essex Company and the various mill corporations such as the Arlington, the Pacific, the Atlantic, the Pemberton, etc, and will fill in this section properly one of these days.
As for the American Woolen Company, it was a much later creation.  By the 1890s, the various little textile companies all over New England were largely unprofitable, thanks in part to the insistence of paying large dividends to shareholders instead of reinvesting to keep up with technology and new, better kinds of cloth.  Many were in bankruptcy.  The American Woolen Company was founded on the model of the great "trusts" of the era -- the idea being that if all the corporations in one industry were rolled up, economies of scale plus the ability to fix prices would drive up profits.  It took the form of a modern corporation, raising capital in the stock market from thousands of anonymous investors, as well as from the issuance of bonds.  William Wood, its President, was not so much a "mill owner" as a CEO, of the kind you would find in a modern corporation. His father-in-law, Frederick Ayer, who helped financially back the creation of the AWC, was akin to a sponsoring private equity firm that took charge of consolidating the mills and raising capital to fund the acquistions. The fact that the AWC paid Wood very lavishly seems no different than the lavish multi-million dollar pay given to successful CEOs in the current era.
I can also fill this in properly in due course. Cbmccarthy (talk) 22:42, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: History of formation not really accurate

message: I deleted this.  What is the source or cite?  There are at least 30 towns and cities on the Merrimack River in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Any one of them could be "The City of the Merrimack."  In fact, there is a Town of Merrimack, but it's not Lawrence. Cbmccarthy (talk) 21:20, 23 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  "City of the Merrimack" as purported nickname 

message: Deleted the part: Quebec..."where the soil had been depleted for lack of knowledge that crops needed to be rotated after a time".
The old parishes were overpopulated: some people moved up north (Abitibi and Saguenay Lac-Saint-Jean), while others moved in industrial towns to find work. ( Montreal, Quebec; but also in Ontario and United-States).  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.37.197.75 (talk) 17:07, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  /* The French Canadians */  

message: I realize there is a period between 1853 and 1912 that is left out.  I will try to put together a thumbnail version, which will draw on the 1880 Wadsworth history and the writings of Robt. Tewksbury.  I just don't have the time today. EraserGirl (talk) 23:57, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: History

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Where it lists the immigrant groups, "The Jews" is inconsistent with the other list items. The others are all adjectives such as "Lebanese", "English", etc. but "Jews" is a noun. Ideally, it should say "The Jewish", or else they should all be demonyms. Should we change it? Mechanic1c (talk) 02:01, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Jews": inconsistensy 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The notable people section is too large and unwieldy.  As noted at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Cities/US_Guideline#Notable_people, when the list becomes unwieldy, it is recommended to split it off into its own list article, per WP:SUMMARY.  If there are no objections, I will do that at some point.  --Jayron32 16:39, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Split proposed