Teaching Years

It is an understatement to say that teaching in Lawrence at that time represented a challenge. The rapidly growing textile manufacturing space created between 1906 and 1909 made it necessary to recruit 10,000 new workers. In addition to the Irish, English, German, French and Italians already engaged in the mills, mill owners expanded their search to include eastern Europeans from numerous nations and even from the Middle East.

From 1890 to 1915, the city’s population more than doubled, from 44,000 to 90,000. The children in the schools would have exhibited far more needs than conventional learning. They spoke many different languages; most were impoverished; and they would attend school sporadically, in some cases because they had to work in the mills.

They needed even more than a teacher, and they got it in O’Connor. By the time of the Lawrence Strike of 1912, O’Connor would have acquired substantial first hand knowledge of the lives of the newcomer families. This is reflected in the 1915 thesis she prepared documenting their condition and what is necessary to relieve it.
Cartoon found in Ms. O'Connor's diary.
Alice O'Connor's view of children going to work and not to high school.
The thesis, drawing on information about living and working conditions found in the newspapers, the Lawrence Survey, City and State reports, other immigration researchers, her own observations, and the Strike hearings, was evidently part of her process to develop expertise in social work.