Meditations at the Power Plant (5) - PERCEPTIONS AND TENSIONS

By the height of quarrying operations in 1909, the Halibut Point landscape had been rendered into a desolate, open-pit mine. It supported a thriving if troubled granite industry.

The Power Plant amid derricks, 1909
Charles Cleaves photo, Sandy Bay Historical Society

Since colonial times much of the native vegetation had been cleared for agricultural development and livestock grazing. Exploitation of the stone outcroppings now began in earnest. A keen eye noticed parallel scratches from northwest to southeast, in the ledges where glaciers had recently dragged their crystal inclusions across the surface of the land.

An automobile and a stylish lady, 1909
Detail of the photo above

Suddenly the marginal acreage and shoreline of Yankee subsistence farmers and fishermen was valuable. There was money to be made by extracting, rendering, and delivering the obstinate granite to a modernizing world.

Drilling holes for splitting stone
Robert Phelps photo, Cape Ann Museum

The enterprise drew immigrants from abroad to work at arduous jobs while aspiring to a better life. It didn't take long for them to recognize that, if they were going to survive, let alone prosper, they had better learn English and develop mutual aid strategies.

"Stalwart quarry laborers" in 1892 with large pneumatic drill
The Nickerson Collection
Courtesy of John and Betty Erkkila, Souvenirs of Pigeon Cove, 2014

Workers in the more skilled trades successfully formed local chapters of the Granite Cutters Union (1874) and the Paving Cutters Union (1887) to improve their working conditions and compensation. Collective action by the Quarrymen's Union (1889) to seek similar status from the manufacturers came to a head in a protracted but unsuccessful strike in 1892. 

Louis Rogers, Treasurer of the Rockport Granite Company,
inspecting operations at Halibut Point
Sandy Bay Historical Society photo

Owners turned to the recruitment of laborers from Finland for a (temporarily) more malleable labor force.

Strikers on the Rockport Granite Company wharf, 1899
Louis Rogers photo from the Barbara Erkkila Collection
Cape Ann Museum

When Italian laborers from Boston were brought in to thwart a Stone Cutters strike in 1899, they were confronted by a mob of Finnish workers who then menaced Rockport Granite Company officials at the shipping wharf. Harry Rogers drew his pistol and his brother Louis took this photograph as they were being backed to the water's edge.

Remnants of the Power Plant foundation

Inequities drive the migrations of people from their homelands abroad, and their efforts to share in the prosperity of America. The motive forces of this history revolve around perceptions and tensions rather than absolutes. The outcomes shape our society somewhat the way weather conditions the land, wind and rain redistributing solar energy over a spinning planet even while its features appear to remain intact. But in the long run everything changes. New forms and concentrations of energy appear. Old foundations adjust or disappear.