I’ve done everything from woodsheds to fourteen-story highrises.
—Reginald Grover, Local 424
“It’s a tough racket.” You hear that phrase a lot on construction sites.
Someone might say it during coffee break, as you try to shake off the freezing wind whipping through a half-completed building on a January morning; or to break the silence after someone falls several stories to serious injury or death; or outside the union hall when you discover a friend hasn’t been able to find work in six months. It is a tough racket.
But what exactly is it like? Surprisingly little has been written about construction—the nation’s largest industry, employing four million people. The popular stereotype of the narrow-minded hardhat, who loves to drink, swear, and fight, is about all we have. Very few people have bothered to penetrate the world of the building trades, to find out what our work is like and what we think about it.
In many respects, carpenters are no different from any other group of workers. We get up in the morning, put in a day’s work, come home, and try to handle the daily crises of living. But the world of construction has its own quirks. During building booms, work is plentiful and the money is good. It’s hard, it’s tiring, but at the end of the day, a carpenter can stand back and look at what has been built. It’s not a world of paper shuffling. The work is tangible and concrete; what’s there today wasn’t there yesterday. Not every group of workers can drive around their communities, proudly pointing out to family and friends, “I built that.”
During slumps, it’s a different story. Carpenters wait anxiously with their tools, grasping at anything, even if it’s only for a week. Time drags; there are only so many fix-it projects around the house. In the best of times, the work is still insecure—it’s in the nature of the industry. Building projects start and finish, lasting from a few weeks to a few years. Carpenters frequently work for two or three employers in a single year. The insecurity has driven many people out of the trade to lower-paying but stable jobs. It’s not easy working on a Monday, knowing you might be standing in a line at the unemployment office on Friday.
It’s a special world, a peculiar world—one whose rhythms and cycles have rarely been recorded. The physical monuments to the craft and skills are abundant and obvious. Every house, office building, factory, road, and bridge in Massachusetts has heard the ring of the hammer, felt the sharp teeth of the saw, and sensed the familiar hand of the carpenter. But the descriptive or analytic monuments are sorely lacking. “We work with our hands,” says John Greenland. “We are far more gifted with our hands than we are with our heads.” Greenland’s observation unfairly minimizes the poetry and intelligence built into the trade and the people who carry it out. But he is right in the sense that the trade has no tradition of documenting the experiences and perceptions of the men (and now increasingly women) who pass on a language, culture, and set of values from one generation to the next.
The Massachusetts Carpenters History Project was set up in 1983, with a grant from the Massachusetts Foundation for Humanities and Public Policy (a program of the National Endowment for the Humanities), to fill that vacuum and to write part of the unwritten history. The Project has been by, about, and in many ways, for carpenters.
The volume you are holding is not a dispassionate history. How could it be? I am a subject as well as a chronicler of the story. I have made my living as a carpenter for the last sixteen years, twelve of them as a member of Carpenters Local 40. I know the price that has been paid in terms of physical pain and economic insecurity for each wall, each floor, each door, and each piece of hardware that is leaned on, danced on, walked through, and turned. My sympathies are clearly with those workers who are responsible for the society’s structures that most people simply take for granted. I have, however, tried to tell the story as fairly as possible, reflecting the variety of events and perspectives that have influenced and altered the working lives of the carpenters of Massachusetts.
The idea for the Project emerged from the centennial of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America in 1981. The anniversary prompted two full histories of the national union and many shorter local and regional studies of the Brotherhood. This book is, in part, a comparable history of the unions in Massachusetts. Any discussion of carpenters that failed to focus on their labor organizations would be pointless. For over a century, trade competence and possession of a union book have been synonymous. That fusion of craft and union identities has broken down in the last fifteen years as nonunion carpenters have come to outnumber union carpenters, but the role of unionism remains central to the industry. Even so, this book is intended to be more than an account of the ups and downs of the various locals, district councils, and state organizations. I have also tried to focus on the workers themselves, their trade, and their lives in an industry whose structural instability has prompted an elaborate tradition of defensive mechanisms intended to assert some measure of control over a deeply insecure work existence. This book can be read as a history of the carpenters’ battle for control at the work site.
This is a conventional history in the sense that it relies heavily on historical research documents, but it also incorporates material from the dozens of interviews of active and retired carpenters that Project members conducted. The decision to work with oral histories was made in order to involve Massachusetts carpenters in both the process and product of the Project. I have tried to weave their observations and perspectives into the narrative so that the history of the Commonwealth’s carpenters is told by them as much as possible.
The use of oral histories creates its own set of problems. Memories are often faulty or affected by the changing assumptions of intervening years. Furthermore, each individual carpenter’s views are just that—his or her views alone. They are occasionally inaccurate or subject to another interpretation. But as long as that is understood, they are invaluable. For this book is not meant to be a dry citation of numbers and dates. It is a tale of how working lives changed, and how those changes were perceived. It is a history of how carpenters understood and remembered what happened as well as what did in fact happen. The idiosyncratic perspectives of the carpenters we interviewed are as valuable historical nuggets as any primary document that we may have unearthed. I can only hope we did them justice.
There is a plaque in the lobby of the Empire State Building in New York City that lists the names of the craftsmen who built that great symbol of American accomplishments. The decision to commemorate those men was a noble and thoughtful gesture, particularly remarkable because such recognition is so rare. The truth is that the vast majority of building trades workers receive little thanks for their contributions, let alone the majesty of a permanently engraved name. The coincidental fact of being associated with a historic monument should not be the basis for the presence or lack of recognition. After all, the workers who build the most commonplace shopping mall invest the same hours, skills, and care as the Empire State builders. They deserve our thanks as well. It is my hope that this book can serve as a modest plaque to the carpenters who build Massachusetts.
As director of the Massachusetts Carpenters History Project, I am ultimately responsible for the contents of this book. That does not mean, however, that other people made no contributions. On the contrary, the Project has been a collaborative effort from the beginning and I owe enormous debts of gratitude.
The Massachusetts Foundation for Humanities and Public Policy funded much of the work of the Project. I am grateful to the Foundation and Kent Jacobson and Faith White, in particular, for their support and encouragement. They attached remarkably few strings to the grant and made clear that they welcomed a popular history and the notion of coupling historical expertise with the articulated experiences and impressions of working people. An important goal of this Project has been to break down the barriers between “observer” and “observed” in the spirit of the British History Workshop as well as the Massachusetts History Workshop and the Brass Valley History Project here in New England. I appreciate the MFHPP’s willingness to foster continuing experiments in public history.
As research director, David Goldberg had the difficult but exciting task of developing a research strategy with minimal leads. Since very little has been written about carpenters or construction workers in Massachusetts, Dave was forced to start virtually from scratch. The historical and photographic documentation in this book, particularly in the period from 1880 to 1945, owes much of its existence to Dave’s weeks and months in libraries and archives. Dave also conducted many of the oral histories. For someone with no background in the building trades, he proved remarkably adept at grasping the work context of the interviewees. His sympathy and understanding made the interviews enjoyable for everyone involved. I may have written the words of this text, but Dave provided much of the raw material and helped shape many of the ideas. It is no exaggeration to say that the book could not have been written without his participation.
Historians David Montgomery, James Green, and Jeremy Brecher generously devoted many hours of their time from the Project’s early stages to the final draft of the manuscript. My sense of labor history has been influenced by their written work, and I have been delighted to discover that they are equally, if not more, provocative and stimulating as coworkers, critics, and friends. Jeff Grabelsky, Maurice Isserman, Mike Kazin, and Barbara Lipski all read and criticized the manuscript. They taught me how generous an act of friendship a careful and exhaustive reading can be. I would also like to thank Dave DuBusc, Mary Eich, Nordel Gagnon, Mark Hoffman, John Laurenson, Jr., Dick Monks, Miguel Picker, Ellie Reichlin, Rob Snyder, and the organization City Life/Vida Urbana.
The Project was an independent effort, but owes much to the support and good will of officers and members of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America. Andy Silins and Bob Bryant provided important assistance all the way through. As president of the Massachusetts State Council of Carpenters, Bob contacted all the local unions in the state and encouraged them to develop lists of retired carpenters for our interviews. Andy, the general agent of the Boston District Council of Carpenters, has been a reliable source of encouragement over the years. Both of them made it clear that they endorsed the idea of a thorough and responsible history of the union. Joe Power of Local 40 jumped into the Project with both feet. He conducted numerous interviews, commented on early chapters, and always helps me think about the world of work we share.
In addition, I would like to thank Massachusetts Carpenters Union officers Jim Martin, Mike Molinari, and Donald Shea. Help came from the International Office of the Brotherhood in Washington, D.C., through John Rogers, Roger Sheldon, Beverly Breton, Linda Coller, and Theresa Threlfall. Many, many more people in the union have known about and supported the Project in a variety of significant ways. Still, all the opinions expressed in this book are mine alone.
Last, but most definitely not least, I want to thank all those carpenters who allowed us into their homes, their lives, and their pasts. It was a pleasure on both sides of the tape recorder. Carpenters are not always accustomed to having their views being taken seriously enough for inclusion in a book. As a result, the people we interviewed eagerly opened their doors and shared their memories. For those of us in the Project, it was equally enjoyable. We got a rare and gratifying chance to listen to a generation’s experience unfold in front of us.
Throughout this book, quotations without source notes are from the collection of oral history interviews conducted by the Massachusetts Carpenters History Workshop. The names of all the interviewees are listed below. All quotes from documentary sources follow a standard citation format.
Carpenters interviewed were (in alphabetical order): Arthur Anctil, Nazadeen Arkil, James Audley, Carl Bathelt, Cliff Bennett, Leo Bernique, Ellis Blomquist, Gordon Boraks, Angelo Bruno, Bob Bryant, Faith Calhoun, Joe Corbett, Leo Coulombe, Richard Croteau, Angelo DeCarlo, Joseph Emanuello, Fred Ernest, Edward Gallagher, Wilfred Goneau, L. P. Goodspeed, John Greenland, Reginald Grover, Tom Harrington, Ed Henley, Harold Humphrey, Sharon Jones, Bob Jubenville, Ernest Landry, Joseph Leitao, Bob Marshall, John MacKinnon, Mitchel Mroz, Enock Peterson, Joseph Petitpas, Thomas Phalen, Joe Power, Oscar Pratt, Harold Rickard, Tom Rickard, Chester Sewell, John Short, Bob Thomas, Al Valli, Barney Walsh, Bob Weatherbee, Paul Weiner, Michael Weinstein, and Mary Ann Williams.
We also interviewed several people with other connections to the industry. They are: Omar Cannon, Felix J. Conte, Leo Fletcher, Wilbur Hoxie, Eric Nicmanis, Stephen Tocco, Chuck Turner, and Manny Weiner.
There were many more people who wanted to be interviewed than we were able to connect with. I apologize to them, knowing that the stories we missed were really our loss.