Two years ago, Louise Peloquin began sharing excerpts from L’Etoile, a French-language newspaper published in Lowell from 1886 to 1957. At my urging, she has agreed to compile some of her previous posts with added contextual information into a book manuscript to be called, L’Etoile: A Star on Prince Street. Starting this week, Louise will present draft chapters from the book in serial form here on the blog. Today, we have another installment.

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L’Etoile – A Star on Prince Street

Chapter 4 – The Daily Course

By Louise Peloquin

L’Etoile was a team venture, a collective adventure. Everyone played an indispensable role, always encouraged to activate their skills and to place them at the service of the public.

Some team members were out and about collecting local news, interviewing people around town, taking notes, writing reports and editorials. Others translated breaking world, national and regional news into French. Some met business owners and merchants interested in posting advertisements. And of course, the master artisans of the printing trade, the linotypists and machinists, enabled pursuing the paper’s objectives.

L’Etoile was a printing company whose business activities allowed publishing a French daily newspaper catering to Lowell’s Franco-American community. The Prince Street Star shone upon readers outside Lowell as well. All of this was never a single person’s accomplishment. On the contrary, the working body of L’Etoile members made everything possible.

The rolling, rumbling Mergenthaler linotype machines never took breaks. The days were full of numerous exchanges and activities involved in running a print shop and a newspaper:  placing orders for paper, discussing headlines, opinion pieces and layout, examining sales, distribution channels and so much more. Each day had its repeated tasks. The team was focused on meeting clients’ expectations. Community service, rather than the profit motive, propelled efforts.

Every day, the men and women of L’Etoile Printing and Publishing Company adapted to the demands at hand. Their versatility exploded stereotypes about who should be doing what. Linotypists turned into translators and reporters. Publicists served as newspaper couriers. Editors converted into canvassers, investigators and poets. Secretaries became accountants. No pair of hands, be they rough and calloused or dainty and white, shied away from handling blackened bits of lead to create catchy headlines and captivating accounts. Furthermore, everyone was an expert broom-pusher and tidy-upper. All hands were on deck.

Everyone knew a bit about the other’s specialty. Not being chained to a single function made for quite an exciting ambiance.

Other key players were the mechanical “colleagues.” Without the Mergenthalers, stationery, business cards, programs, order slips, let alone a foreign language newspaper, could not exist. The many components of L’Etoile’s equipment were really the queen bees of the Prince Street hive. Team members pampered them by feeding them strips of lead, rolls of paper, bottles of ink, drops of oil. In turn, they delivered the panels, leaves, folios and pages which enhanced local lives.

The royal machines’ residence took up the better part of the 24-26 Prince Street premises. Team members occupied narrow cramped corners whose austerity seemed to be conducive to reflection. It was out of the question to print stale news or provide defective office supplies.

While the human workers buzzed, the machine queen bees performed a symphony of clicks, clings, clangs, claps and occasional bings, bongs and boings. Each instrument played to the beat of its own metronome. The din was never found to be cacophonous. On the contrary, it was as reassuring as the whoosh of the nearby Merrimack and as energizing as the hustle and bustle outside – the early morning passers-by filing down narrow Little Canada streets rushing to work, the children gleefully pouring out of red brick buildings at the end of the school day, the fuzzy outlines of figures heading for tenements and shops at dusk. These sounds filled 24-26 Prince Street and serenaded L’Etoile’s team members’ lives.