USA > Massachusetts > Massachusetts of today; a memorial of the state, historical and biographical, issued for the World's Columbian exposition at Chicago > Part 2
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A recent writer, in describing the Exposition, has justly said that the finest exhibit in Chicago, in 1893, will be the city itself, with its wonderful growth and its suddenly acquired commercial importance. So it will be with the Bay State. Her exhibits will be worthy of her good name, and will surely meet the expectations of her citizens ; but the best contribution which she can make to an international exposition is such as cannot be made in glass cases, or upon raised platforms, or in ornamental booths. Her most valuable contribution will be in those many men and women who, inspired with the New England spirit, have migrated thence, and, by their industry and determination, by their high principles, and by their perseverance, have made possible the building of those mag- nificent cities of the West which are the wonder of the generation and a testimony to American character.
OFFICERS OF THE WORLD'S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION.
HARLOW N. HIGGINSON PRESIDENT. H. O. EDMONDS
SECRETARY.
A. F. SEEBERGER TREASURER.
MASSACHUSETTS MEMBERS OF THE WORLD'S COLUMBIAN COMMISSION.
(Appointed by the President of the United States.)
AUGUSTUS G. BULLOCK
COMMISSIONER AT LARGE.
FRANCIS W. BREED. THOMAS E. PROCTOR.
( Alternate.) (Alternate.)
GEORGE P. LADD. CHARLES E. ADAMS.
MASSACHUSETTS MEMBERS BOARD OF LADY MANAGERS.
MRS. JONAS H. FRENCH. (Alternate.) MISS MARY CREASE SEARS.
MRS. RUFUS S. FROST.
(l'acant.)
DIRECTOR GENERAL
GEORGE R. DAVIS.
I KIKIKLK
Copymented' 892 By J. Manz & @. Frg.Chicago
THE ADMINISTRATION BUILDING, WORLD'S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION.
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MASSACHUSETTS -1620-1892.
T' IFE pessimist, nowadays, is fond of saying that the glory of Massachusetts is waning ; that her pristine intel- lectual ascendancy has gone, never to return ; that her leadership in the councils of the nation is one of tradition, not of reality. He cites as proof of this fancied decadence that the patriotic man of Massa- chusetts can no longer point to such orators as Webster, and Everett, and Choate, and Phillips ; to such wise and great statesmen as the Adamses, Cushing, Sumner, and Wilson; to such brilliant literary names as Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau, Motley, Prescott, Longfellow, Lowell, and Whittier ; to such scientists as Agassiz ; to such theologians as Channing, Parker, and Freeman Clarke.
While ignoring the fact that no community of 2,238,000 souls reasonably could be expected to furnish all the brains and the intellectual inspiration for a nation numbering 65,000,000, he also fails to take into account the most suggestive fact that these men lived and achieved their fame in a period when the national character was unformed, the body politic was in the chrysalis state, and intellectual activity was nowhere thoroughly awakened. In fact, it is questionable whether either the orators, the literary men, or the theologians who have departed were as much appreciated by their contemporaries as by the generations which have suc- ceeded. Furthermore, the epochs in which most of them flourished were by their very nature a stimulant to greatness ; the orators were confronted by political issues which appealed to individual patriotism and the national pride more earnestly than at any time since the War of the Revolution ; there being no American literature worth the name, the literary men had a virgin field for their pro- OLD SOUTH CHURCH. (Boston.) ductions ; science was an even more untried field for the truth-seeker ; while the theologians, unlike their brethren of to-day, were not handicapped by the modern conflict between orthodoxy and heter- odoxy. Not that the writer would in the slightest degree disparage the greatness which these men achieved and deserved, but that he would prefer to see a less harsh judg- ment of latter-day men and affairs.
Be it remembered that times and conditions have changed, and still are chang- ing. Fifty years ago, there was a dearth of men whom nowadays we should designate as of average ability. From our point of view, the masses were untutored and unlearned ; the temper of the times was not distinguished by any especial intellectual interest. The man of any eminence in a given calling at once rose to heights of grandeur. He was one of ten thousand. The standard of intelligence, in Massachusetts as elsewhere, was far beneath that of to-day ; it was essentially an age of mediocrity, as we look back upon it.
The Massachusetts man of the present, and the Massachusetts woman, too, are far more intelligent, far better versed in all that pertains to a rounded and ripened culture ; their judgments are formed not by the impassioned utterances of orators, but by their own independent processes of thought, study, and reasoning. Mental training is now compulsory among all classes ; libraries, newspapers, the school and the college, the constant attrition of man with man and of woman with woman, in business, in social CHRIST CHURCH. (Boston.) intercourse, and in the hundred and one progressive movements which are a distinct feature of the social body in Massachusetts, together with the broader and less provincial view of the theatre of the world's activity made possible by the newspaper press and the telegraph, all have contributed toward improving the intellectual standard of the individual, toward developing and rewarding ability, and toward
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MASSACHUSETTS OF TO-DAY.
making keener the desire for knowledge. By means of this incomparable curriculum, the man and the woman of ability have been brought to the front ; brains are no longer the possession of a few, but are the heritage of the many. In the army of intellectual men and women in the Commonwealth to-day, are scientists and litera- teurs, political economists and historians, jurists and financiers, preachers and philosophers, educators, engineers, sociologists, archaeologists, linguists, a brilliant galaxy of masterly minds whose genius has added to the sum of the world's enlightenment and whose lustre shows no signs of diminishing.
If we will but look around us, the conclusion is inevitable that Massa- chusetts has not deteriorated ; on the contrary, she has but reached the full and rounded development of a noble and beautiful womanhood, which lavishes priceless gifts upon her offspring, nurtures their minds and bodies with the accumulated experience of two centuries and a half, and instils their moral and spiritual natures with the beneficent teachings of the fathers. It is true that some of her farms have been depopulated, that her once splendid mar- itime commerce has fallen away, and that an occasional literary man or artist has forsaken Boston for the metropolis. But here the retrograde ceases ; the other side of the picture is extremely bright, and will become even more so.
Coexistent with this development of the Massachusetts citizen, there has been going on for upwards of thirty years a change in the physical complexion of the social body. Unnoticed at first, and then gradually mak- ing its numbers felt, there has come an immense immigration from European countries, an influx of foreign blood whose proportions, in the census of OLD STATE HOUSE. (Boston.) 1890, as compared with those of the native population, are measured by the ratio of 29.4 to 70.6. This might at first glance seem an extraordinarily large percentage of foreigners, were it not that the historian Bancroft stated that in 1755 the colonies were inhabited by persons " one fifth of whom had for
their mother tongue some other language than the English." While in some other States the character of immigrants who have arrived and are still arriv- ing is such as very properly to alarm those who have the public interest at heart, yet it is undeniable that in the foreign-born population of this Com- monwealth there is nothing which either threatens the safety of its institutions or impairs its proud title as the most progressive and the most enlightened mem- ber of the sisterhood of States. The immigration to Massachusetts has been of an exceptionally high order. The alarmist has not yet succeeded in showing that this element of the population is not just as patriotic, as intensely American, as earnest, and as jealous of the right observance of those principles which underlie the government of the State and the nation, as the descendants of the Puritans themselves. Their very reverence of those principles, as manifested frequently in the every-day life of the people, attests the God-given privileges to the enjoyment of which they have been invited, and which they have in no instance disgraced. It could not be otherwise in a Commonwealth whose pride FANEUIL HALL. (Boston.) in itself and whose public spirit and lofty patriotism quickly impress themselves upon all new-comers. No fitter exemplification is recorded of the attitude of the foreigner in Massachusetts than the following from the pen of John Boyle O'Reilly, himself an immigrant, and a leader of the most numerous part of the foreign-born population, and an American citizen, esteemed in all classes : -
" No treason we bring from Erin, nor bring we shame or guilt ! The sword we hold may be broken, but we have not dropped the hilt;
The wreath we bear to Columbia is twisted of thorns, not bays,
And the songs we sing are saddened by thoughts of desolate days. But the hearts we bring for Freedom are washed in the surge of tears; And we claim our right by a People's fight outliving a thousand years ! "
The original fountainhead of population in Massachusetts flowed in no defiled stream through more than a century, and its passage accumulated so much strength and power for purity that, instead of being contaminated
MASSACHUSETTS OF TO DAY.
by the alien waters which flowed into it, it clarified and purified and made sweeter those waters themselves. In all the forty four States, there exists no happier realization of the Republican idea than within the confines of Massachusetts. There has been no great race friction, no class discrimination. The red hand of anarchy has never risen to strike at the life of the people; labor riots, which have disturbed other States, imperilling life and property, are, in Massachusetts, unheard of. Here are the British-American and the Irish, the German and the French-Canadian, the Portuguese and the Pole, the Swede and the Italian, almost all the types of the races of Europe, and with them the descendants of the twenty thousand English families who settled in Massachusetts mainly between 1630 and 1640, a happy and contented industrial and commercial family, whose common goal is prosperity, and moral and physical improvement. Ont of this common citizenship, there will come forth, in another day and generation, a new race of Massachusetts men. Meanwhile, the liberalizing tendencies of expe- rience will have obliterated whatever race prejudice that may exist, in a latent form, now. The evolution will
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STATE HOUSE, BOSTON.
be easy and natural ; by the intermarriage of the races, which has already begun, the superior bone and sinew, and the Spartan fortitude of the foreigner, and the cultured intellect and Athenian graces of the descendants of the Puritans will be interchanged, - the result will be a more perfect, more ennobling, more symmetrical manhood.
It is a magnificent tribute to the versatility of Massachusetts men, that while she has always led the nation in belles-lettres, in scholarship, and in scientific research, her sons have ever been remarkable for their adaptability in mechanical invention. Of the five great inventions which, more than any others, have contributed to the development of commerce and the comforts of the people, it is significant that four were, if not in all respects the original conceptions of Massachusetts men, first made practically useful in Massachusetts, and, except in one instance, by Massachusetts men. Prof. S. F. B. Morse, a native of Charlestown, was the first to operate the telegraph successfully at a public trial ; Eli Whitney, a native of Westborough, gave to the world the cotton-gin ; Elias Howe, who was born at Spencer, invented the sewing-machine ; and from Boston to Salem, in 1877, the first articulating telephone was tested successfully by Prof. A. G. Bell, a Scotchman, while Prof. Amos E. Dolbear, of Tufts College, at Medford, was a pioneer in the early experiments. Another son of Massachusetts, Benjamin Franklin, born at
MASSACHUSETTS OF TO-DAY.
Boston, made valuable investigations into the nature of lightning. In the Massachusetts General Hospital, the discovery of ether was first practically proved by William Thomas Green Morton, M. D. The first railroad in America was operated at Quincy, in 1826. Erastus B. Bigelow, born at West Boylston, invented, in 1839, a carpet loom, whose usefulness revolutionized the manufacture of carpets throughout the world. Many of what are now immense manufacturing enterprises sprang from humble beginnings on Massachusetts soil. Bricks were made at Salem the year fol- lowing its settlement ; the first cotton mill was built at Beverly in 1787 ; the first mill in the world capable of producing a finished cloth from the raw material was established at Waltham. In 1790, at Newburyport, Jacob Perkins set up a machine for cutting and heading ten thousand nails in a day ; in 1815, the tack industry was inaugurated at Bridgewater ; Lynn began making shoes in 1635 ; combs were made at West Newbury in 1759; cannon-balls were made within ten miles of Boston as early as 1664, and the first piece of casting made on American soil was " run in " at Lynn, in 1663 ; Boston and Charlestown had cordage works as early as 1631.
Thus was the impulse to manufacturing, which has now become the dominant industry east of the Mississippi river, early manifested in Massachusetts. Boston, as early as 1758, had a LINCOLN "Society for Encouraging Industry," and in that year it is interesting to note, as a sign of the times, that the Rev. Thomas Barnard, in a sermon, strongly urged "an industrious prosecution of the arts of civil life " as " very friendly to EMANCIPATION STATUE. (Boston.) virtue." With the ushering in of the industrial era, it was not long before the factories had as employés the sons and the daughters of farmers, who doubtless found factory life not only less arduous, but a good deal more attractive in a social way. These early factory operatives were most of them of the best American stock, a fact which unques- tionably aided in perfecting what is now the finest and most humane factory system in the country. The superiority of the Massachusetts factory employé in those days impressed Charles Dickens so vividly that he made mention of it in his " American Notes." Describing what he witnessed among the women operatives at Lowell, then as now the banner factory town in America, he says : -
"I am now going to state three facts which will startle a large class of readers on this side of the Atlantic, very much. Firstly, there is a joint stock piano in a great many of the boarding-houses. Secondly, nearly all these young ladies subscribe to circulating libraries. Thirdly, they have got up among them- selves a periodical called the 'Lowell Offering,' a repository of original articles written exclusively by females actively employed in the mills, which is duly printed, published, and sold, and whereof I brought away from Lowell four hundred good solid pages, which I have read from beginning to end."
Several of the young women operatives who wrote for the "Offering " subsequently made names for themselves in literature, while their unpretentious little publication attracted attention on both sides of the Atlantic.
The factory system of the State is conducted on a basis which has served as a model for other States. Massachusetts, always jealous of the moral and BUNKER HILL MONUMENT. (Boston.) physical condition of the people, years ago recognized that the onward march of industry, with its thousands of manufacturing plants and its improved methods of production by labor-saving machinery, while it might make the State wealthier and enhance the volume of busi- ness, yet would be accompanied by a corresponding deterioration in the welfare of the employé. The tendency of capital to sacrifice the wage-earner in order to make larger the percentage of profit was, therefore, met by legis- lation which might, in a measure, relieve the weaker part of the work-a-day population from the tyranny of industry.
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MASSACHUSETTS OF TO-DAY.
To this end were enacted laws prescribing the hours of labor in factories for women and for minors under eighteen at fifty-eight per week, and prohibiting the employment of children under thirteen during school hours unless they have had thirty weeks' schooling the preceding year, and unless they can read and write. It was also enacted that no minor over fourteen can be regularly employed unless he can read and write, and that the employer of minors under sixteen must keep "an age and schooling" certificate respecting such minor. Imprisonment for debt was virtually abolished, a lien law was provided, the necessary tools of an artisan were exempted from attachment, and the trustee process was curtailed. Regulations for the protection of life and health in factories were provided, and workingmen's co-operative associations and loan and building societies were authorized, the last conferring upon the wage-earner an incentive for thrift, the wisdom of which is now a matter of common knowledge. The legalization of one day in a year as Labor Day was another act of recognition of the dignity of labor. With free text-books in the schools and evening schools for any and all who would join reading-rooms in all the cities mental and moral improvement lowliest. It is in consequence needs of the masses that the laborer is a better spiritual man labor troubles are so infrequent, quickly settled by a State Board entire manufacturing popula- hundred thousand persons, eign extraction, is in complete tutions and principles.
them, and with free libraries and and towns, opportunities for are at the command of even the of this wise appreciation of the Massachusetts mechanic and than his father before him, that and, when they do occur, are of Arbitration, and that the tion, now numbering over four chiefly foreign-born or of for- sympathy with American insti- One need not travel far through the State to witness employé has surrounded him- factory towns the spectacle is cottages, either owned outright by sober and industrious me- mentary upon the efficacy of the the State has five hundred and taining three million five hun- and eighty-five volumes, or ries in the country - that these patronized chiefly by wage- Here is a phenomenon whereat probably even more than he the Lowell factory. with what comforts the factory self. In any one of a hundred afforded of colonies of attractive or in process of full ownership chanics. It is a striking com- Massachusetts library system - sixty-nine free libraries, con- dred and sixty-nine thousand about one fifth of all the libra- excellent citizen-makers are earners and their children. Mr. Dickens would marvel did at the blue - stockings of The statistics of manu- WASHINGTON ELM. (Cambridge.) chief source of the wealth of facturing show that it is the the State. "The invested capital approximates $600,000,000, with twenty-four thousand firms and corporations, and four hundred and twenty thousand operatives. The wages paid aggregates $188,000,000 ; the value of the product is estimated at $871,061,163. The chief industries are boots and shoes, carpetings, clothing, cotton goods, leather, machines and machinery, metals and metallic goods, woollen goods, and worsted goods. Other great industries are furniture, jewelry, paper, cars, rubber goods, chocolate, cocoa, watches, straw goods, food preparations, cordage and twine, carriages and wagons, paper and wooden boxes, tools, agricultural implements, liquors, musical instruments, wooden ware, silk and silk goods. The average yearly wages paid in 1891, was $441.90 ; the highest annual wages paid was $685.76 ; the lowest, $287.22. The chief centres of the boot and shoe industry are the cities of Lynn, Haverhill, and Brockton, the number of estab- lishments in each being as follows : Lynn, three hundred and twenty-three ; Haverhill, two hundred and twenty-six ; Brockton, seventy-three. Boston has one hundred and ninety-one clothing manufacturing establishments. In the manufacture of textiles the leading cities are Fall River, Lowell, Lawrence, New Bedford, and Holyoke. In the pro- duction of leather, Woburn, Peabody, Salem, and Lynn lead. Taunton, Worcester, and Fitchburg have extensive estab- lishments devoted to the manufacture of machinery. Boston, Worcester, Taunton, and Attleboro' also lead in the manufacture of metals and metallic goods. The chief paper manufacturing centre is Holyoke, with nineteen mills.
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MASSACHUSETTS OF TO-DAY.
No trait of character in the man of Massachusetts stands forth so prominently as that alert and far-sighted mental grasp, which enables him to take a quick and comprehensive view of the right conduct of large public enterprises. So infallible has this characteristic shown itself to be, in instances without number, that the country has learned to look to Massachusetts for leadership. This is true, not only of political and social reform, but also in all matters pertaining to the government of its State institutions. Of the latter it cannot be gainsaid that they are at least as well conducted and are as free from abuses as are those of any State in the Union.
There are several features in the care and management of the insane, the idiot, and the paupers, which emphasize anew the progressive tendency of the public administration of the State. Chief of these is the introduction of what is known as the Scotch or "boarding-out " system of treating the insane. It is argued that, in cases of mildly or curably insane persons, it is manifestly unjust, not to say cruel, to place them in intimate contact with persons who are violently and hopelessly insane. To avoid this, the experiment has been tried of "boarding out " in private families such patients as show reasonable hope of being restored to their normal activities of mind and body. Of this class, upwards of one hundred and fifty are boarded out, and the result of the experi- KING'S CHAPEL. ( Boston.) ment is being carefully studied. The chief State asylums are those at Danvers and at Worcester, both of which are magnificent structures. Other State asylums are at Westborough, Taunton, and Northampton. The total number of the insane under State supervision on March 31, 1891, was five thousand nine hundred and forty-four, of whom five thousand one hundred and ninety-eight were supported by the State. The average cost per capita ranges from $3.03 to $3.97 per week. The city and town almshouses of the State number two hundred and fifteen. The number of occupants receiving full support on July 1, 1891, was eight thousand two hundred and thirty-nine ; partial support, fourteen thousand and ninety-four. The management of the insane and the poor is in charge of the State Board of Lunacy and Charity, whose officials annually dispense charity, in one form or another, to sixteen thousand persons. The officers and agents of the Indoor Poor Depart- ment of the Board investigate the homes of juvenile offenders, visit the courts in the interest of juvenile law- breakers, visit girls placed out in families from industrial and reform schools, and examine all immigrants who are liable to become public charges. The Department of Out-door Poor has to do with unsettled paupers who are sick or who need relief, with foundlings and destitute infants, etc. A fact which is eloquent of that lofty humanity which actuates the people of Massachusetts is, that over eighty ladies in different parts of the Commonwealth have consented to act as agents with- out pay in the service of the State Board, in the visitation and over- sight of girls, wards of the State who have been placed in families.
The State Prison is at Charlestown, and has about six hundred criminals. At Concord is the Reformatory for Men, with seven hundred inmates, and at Sherborn, another for women, with two hundred and fifty inmates, both of which strive to reclaim the offenders for the first time against the law. There are besides county and city prisons and several other correctional institutions. All work by the convict is now done for the benefit of the State, contract labor having been abolished in 1887. Statistics of the JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL'S HOME. (Cambridge.) courts show that the number of commitments for drunkenness have increased over one hundred and fifty per cent since 1880, while there has been a notable decrease in the number of commitments for more serious crimes. For instance, the number of commitments for assault, burglary, forgery, homicide, larceny, etc., in 1858 was four thousand three hundred and three ; in 1880 it was three thousand two hundred and ninety, and in 1890 it was three thousand seven hundred and ninety-two, and this notwithstanding an enormous increase in the population.
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