The French Canadians of Michigan: Their Contribution to the Development of the Saginaw Valley and the Keweenaw Peninsula, 1840-1914

Conclusion

Conclusion The French Canadians made a significant contribution to the socioeconomic development of the Saginaw Valley and the Keweenaw Peninsula- From the early period of colonization to the dawn of the twentieth century, they participated actively in this development, first as pioneers and farmers, later as loggers and miners. An analysis of the migratory process of the French Canadians has revealed an exceptional transcontinental geographic mobility that runs counter to the "image of a static society that prevailed until recently in a good deal of the North American historiography of rural Quebec in the nineteenth century."1 While their contribution to the development of the two regions is remarkable, the nature of their participation in various labor markets presents some differences that are worthy of note. The French Canadian presence in the Saginaw Valley and the Keweenaw Peninsula was modest before the Civil War. In i860, the valley was home to four hundred French Canadians, and the peninsula to about seven hundred. For the most part, the first French Canadian migrants, already present in the broad region of the Great Lakes, had once worked in the fur trade and were unemployed after its decline in the 1830s. Consequently, the new development starting up in various regions of the state in the 1840s was of vital interest to them. In the Saginaw Valley, easy access to fertile land at affordable prices was the main attraction 153 154 CONCLUSION for migrants before the Civil War, while on the peninsula the attraction was the demand for unskilled labor to build the initial infrastructures for prospecting and mining. After the end of the Civil War, the economic context of both regions changed, and along with it their needs for labor, bringing greater numbers of French Canadians to the area. In 1900, the valley had a population of over ten thousand French Canadians , while the peninsula had almost nine thousand. The forestry and mining sectors were the main poles of attraction for the migrants until the end of the period examined here. The decline of the lumber industry, which began during the 1880s, together with the strike of 1885, slowed migration to the valley. French Canadian Catholic communities, deprived of new members, collapsed toward the end of the nineteenth century. Their counterparts on the peninsula survived for a longer period, but the changes affecting the mining industry at the end of the nineteenth century, in conjunction with the social tensions arising in the early years of the twentieth—including the strike of 1913-14—took a toll on those communities and they also declined. In spite of similarities in the development and migratory currents of the two regions, this study has shown that the migratory models for each differed significantly and that the behavior of the migrants also varied according to the economic structure of each area and the nature of their labor markets. In the valley, migratory models took different forms in different periods. Before 1840, the French Canadian presence was mainly the result of migration from southeast Michigan, while after 1850, migration from Quebec became the dominant model. However, we have seen that other models of migration developed alongside these ones, with points of departure in the semipermanent centers in New England, where French Canadian loggers and agricultural laborers were out of work due to the cessation of lumbering activities and the mechanization of agricultural production . Faced with this new situation in the Northeast, many French Canadian households decided to follow the timber frontier westward. Some of these households, having passed through Maine, New York, and Pennsylvania, reached the new timber Conclusion 155 frontier, which was by then in Michigan, during the 1850s. Some French Canadians residing in the Northeast wished to maintain their connection with agriculture and sought to take advantage of fertile lands available in the West. Apart from the predominant model of migration, French Canadians relied on two other migratory models. On the one hand, they participated in the "great migration" from the East to the West, looking for better-quality land. On the other hand, the continuous advance of the timber frontier drained a significant portion of the labor pool from east to west, creating a migratory market in the lumber industry—with which French Canadians had always been closely associated—that drew migration toward Michigan, mainly to the Saginaw Valley. When resources began to be depleted again, starting in the 1880s, the timber frontier moved west...