On January 10, 1923, NH’s more than 450,000 residents enjoyed equally the right to defend themselves, their families, their property and the state. By May of that year, 91,000 found themselves criminalized and statutorily stripped of those rights. But New Hampshire is the “Live Free or Die” state. How could that happen?
In 1922, more than 17,000 people were employed at the Amoskeag Mills in Manchester, the state’s largest enterprise and once the world’s largest cotton textile mill. Many had been recruited from overseas.
In fact, legal immigration to New Hampshire between 1880 and 1920 more than doubled from 46,284 to 91,397. In each of the years leading up to 1923, these foreign-born, legal residents enjoyed the same right of self-defense as any native-born New Hampshire citizen.
However, following the end of War World I, the falling demand for and growing competition to Amoskeag’s products started the mills’ slow decline. Despite good faith negotiations with Amoskeag’s Boston-based owners, on February 22, 1922, Amoskeag announced that pay would be reduced by 20 percent while hours increased from 48 to 54 hours per week. A nine-month strike ensued, but the 12,000 striking workers were eventually brought to heel in November of 1922.
On January 11 of 1923, Representative Cobliegh of Nashua introduced HB 26, “An act to control the possession, sale and use of pistols and revolvers” which, once enacted, disarmed and criminalized not just the foreign-born Amoskeag workers but 100% of the more than 91,000 “foreign-born, unnaturalized” people living in NH.
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