Prologue: A sprint through 250 years of history -- Section one: From ships' captains to captains of industry. Head of the mercantile community of Boston -- A textile industry for New England -- Enter the Cabots -- Textiles in Brunswick - the first half-century -- Section two: The other side of the cotton. Franco-Americans rescue King Cotton -- Franco-Americans come to Brunswick -- The case of the Cabot Mill -- A rich uncle from the States? -- Who were the immigrants? -- They came from L'Islet -- Section three: The reception of Franco-Americans. Franco-Americans and Americanism -- Fears of Franco-American conspiracy -- Eugenics and the alien in our midst -- A Klan for New England -- Section four: Tenacity and modernity. Textiles go south -- Drifting away from Little Canada in body and mind -- A distinct alien race no longer -- Franco-Americans and Québécois -- Epilogue: Back to the cemetery.
Summary
In the later 19th century, French-Canadian Roman Catholic immigrants from Quebec were deemed a threat to the United States, potential terrorists in service of the Pope. Books and newspapers floated the conspiracy theory that the immigrants seeking work in New England's burgeoning textile industry were actually plotting to annex parts of the United States to a newly independent Quebec. Vermette's groundbreaking study sets this neglected and poignant tale in the broader context of North American history. He traces individuals and families, from the textile barons who created a new industry to the poor farmers and laborers of Quebec who crowded into the mills in the post-Civil War period. Vermette discusses the murky reception these cross-border immigrants met in the USA, including dehumanizing conditions in mill towns and early-20th-century campaigns led by the Ku Klux Klan and the Eugenics movement. Vermette also discusses what occurred when the textile industry moved to the Deep South and brings the story of emigrants up to the present day. Vermette shows how this little-known episode in U.S. history prefigures events as recent as yesterday's news. His well documented narrative touches on the issues of cross-border immigration; the Nativists fear of the Other; the rise and fall of manufacturing in the U.S.; and the construction of race and ethnicity.
