The Ludlow Log
By: Brittany M., Brittany N.,
and Samantha R.
What do you think the community of Ludlow was like in the 1920’s?
How do you think the townspeople felt about the immigrant mill workers?
What activities did the people of Ludlow take part in during the 1920’s?
We looked at a mini-newspaper published in April, 1920. It was published by the Service Department of Ludlow Manufacturing Associates for the people who worked in the mills.
When we were looking at the log, we read some of the articles, looked at the pictures, and read the captions. There were articles about upcoming sports, gardening, keeping your house and yard clean, the new babies that were born, and deaths that just happened. There was also information about the sports that already happened, like scores of those games. There were pictures of the ice melting on the falls to show that spring was coming, a picture of the mills, and a cartoon of women picking up their houses and yards.
Newspaper photographs of the Chicopee River
One of the articles in The Ludlow Log was an article about health that was printed in three different languages: English, Polish, and Portuguese. This tells us that many of the readers didn’t speak or read English, and they thought this article was important, so they printed it in three languages so everybody could understand it. This article states that people needed to keep their houses cleaner and themselves cleaner. It seems like this article is implying that the immigrants or mill workers are unclean, although they never come right out and say it.
On every page there was at least one poem and there was a page filled with jokes. A lot of the poems were aimed towards immigrants. For example, one was about how everybody is an American, and another was about their home countries. Maybe these poems were submitted by the mill workers, most of them being immigrants.
Poem encouraging patriotism
By reading and looking at this log, we can tell that people cared about being healthy and keeping their community clean. Also, sports were important to them and they liked to know what was going on in the community. But we think that the most important thing we can tell by reading this log is that the Ludlow Manufacturing Associates wanted the immigrants to feel like they were a part of the community. They wanted them to get involved in the sports at the recreational center and in other activities going around the town.
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