Haverhill, Marlboro and Boston, in the order named, being the principal centres. The third industry in 1905 was that of foundry and machine-shop products ($58,508,793), of which Boston and Worcester are the principal centres. Lesser interests, in the order of importance, with the product value of each in 1905, were: rubber goods ($53,133,020), tanned, curried and finished leather ($33,352,999), in the manufacture of which Massachusetts ranked second among the states; paper and wood pulp[1] ($32,012,247), in the production of which the state ranked second among the states of the Union; slaughtering and meat packing ($30,253,838); printing and publishing ($33,900,748, of which $21,020,237 was the value of newspapers and periodicals); clothing ($21,724,056); electrical machinery, apparatus and supplies ($15,882,216); lumber ($12,636,329); iron and steel, steel works and rolling-mills products ($11,947,731; less than in 1900); cordage and twine ($11,173,521), in the manufacture of which Massachusetts was second only to New York; furniture ($11,092,581); malt liquors ($11,080,944); jewelry ($10,073,595), Massachusetts ranking second to Rhode Island; confectionery ($9,317,996), in which Massachusetts was third among the states.
Many of these industries have a history going back far into colonial times, some even dating from the first half of the 17th century. Textile products were really varied and of considerable importance before 1700. The policy of the British government towards such industries in the colonial period was in general repressive. The non-importation sentiment preceding the War of Independence fostered home manufactures considerably, and the Embargo and Non-Intercourse Acts before the war of 1812, as well as that war itself (despite the subsequent glut of British goods) had a much greater effect; for they mark the introduction of the factory system, which by 1830 was firmly established in the textile industry and was rapidly transforming other industries. Improvements were introduced much more slowly than in England, the cost of cotton machinery as late as 1826 being 50–60% greater in America. The first successful power loom in America was set up at Waltham in 1814. Carding, roving and spinning machines were constructed at Bridgewater in 1786. The first cotton mill had been established in Beverly in 1788, and the first real woollen factory at Byfield in 1794. Woolcard machinery destined to revolutionize the industry was devised by Amos Whittemore (1759–1828) in 1797; spinning jennies were in operation under water-power before 1815. Carpet-weaving was begun at Worcester in 1804. “Not a yard of fancy wool fabric had ever been woven by the power-loom in any country till done by William Crompton at the Middlesex Mills, Lowell, in 1840” (Samuel Lawrence).[2] The introduction of the remarkably complete machinery of the shoe industry was practically complete by 1865, this being the last of the great industries to come under the full dominance of machinery. At Pittsfield and at Dalton is centred the manufacture of fine writing papers, including that of paper used by the national government for bonds and paper money. Four-fifths of all loft-dried paper produced in the country from 1860–1897 was made within 15 m. of Springfield; Holyoke and South Hadley being the greatest producers. Vulcanized rubber is a Massachusetts invention. Most of the imitation jewelry of the United States is produced at Attleboro and North Attleboro, and in Providence, Rhode Island. In 1905 Boston produced 16.4% of all the manufactures of the state, and Lynn, the second city, which had been fifth in 1900, 4.9%. Some industries which have since become dead or of relatively slight magnitude were once of much greater significance, economically or socially: such as the rum-distilling connected with the colonial slave trade, and various interests concerned with shipbuilding and navigation. The packing of pork and beef formerly centred in Boston; but, while the volume of this business has not diminished, it has been greatly exceeded in the west. For many years Massachusetts controlled a vast lumber trade, drawing upon the forests of Maine, but the growth of the west changed the old channels of trade, and Boston carpenters came to make use of western timber. It was between 1840 and 1850 that the cotton manufactures of Massachusetts began to assume large proportions; and about the same time the manufacture of boots and shoes centred there. Medford ships began to be famous shortly after the beginning of the 19th century, and by 1845 that town employed one quarter of all the shipwrights in the state.
Fishing is an important industry. Drift whales were utilized in the earliest years of the colony, and shore boating for the baleen (or “right”) whale—rich in bone and in blubber yielding common oil—was an industry already regulated by various towns before 1650; but the pursuit of the sperm whale did not begin until about 1713. The former industry had died out before the War of Independence; the latter is not yet quite extinct. Nantucket and New Bedford were the centres of the whaling trade, which, for the energy and skill required and the length (three to five years when sailing vessels were employed) of the ever-widening voyages which finally took the fishermen into every quarter of the globe, contributes the most romantic chapters in the history of American commerce. At one time it gave occupation to a thousand ships, but the introduction of petroleum gradually diminished this resource of the lesser ports. The Newfoundland Bank fisheries were of greater economic importance and are still very important. Gloucester is the chief centre of the trade. The value of fishery products in 1895 was $5,703,143, and in 1905 $7,025,249; and 15,694 persons were engaged in the fisheries. Though cod is much the most important fish (in 1905 fresh cod were valued at $991,679, and salted cod at $696,928), haddock (fresh, $1,051,910; salted, $17,194), mackerel (value in 1905, including horse mackerel, $970,876), herring (fresh, $266,699; salted, $114,997), pollock ($267,927), hake ($258,438), halibut ($218,232), and many other varieties are taken in great quantities. The shell fisheries are less important than those of Maine.
Commerce.—Already by 1660 New England products were an “important element in the commerce and industries of the mother country” (Weeden). Codfish was perhaps the truest basis of her commerce, which soon came to include the West Indies, Africa and southern Europe. Of fundamental importance was the trade with the French West Indies, licit and illicit, particularly after the Peace of Utrecht (1713). Provisions taken to Newfoundland, poor fish to the West Indies, molasses to New England, rum to Africa and good cod to France and Spain, were the commonest ventures of foreign trade. The English Navigation Acts were generally evaded, and were economically of little effect; politically they were of great importance in Massachusetts as a force that worked for independence. Privateering, piracy and slave-trading—which though of less extent than in Rhode Island became early of importance, and declined but little before the American War of Independence—give colour to the history of colonial trade.
Trade with China and India from Salem was begun in 1785 (first voyage from New York, 1784), and was first controlled there, and afterwards in Boston till the trade was lost to New York. The Boston trade to the Canadian north-west coast was begun in 1788. The first regular steamship line from Boston to other American Atlantic ports was established in 1824. In commercial relations the chief port of Massachusetts attained its greatest importance about 1840, when it was selected as the American terminus of the first steamship line (Cunard) connecting Great Britain with the United States; but Boston lost the commercial prestige then won by the failure of the state to promote railway communication with the west, so as to equal the development effected by other cities. The decline of commerce, however, had already begun, manufacturing supplanting it in importance; and this decline was rapid by 1850. From 1840 to 1860 Massachusetts-built ships competed successfully in the carrying trade of the world. Before 1840 a ship of 500 tons was a large ship, but after the discovery of gold in California the size of vessels increased rapidly and their lines were more and more adapted to speed. The limit of size was reached in an immense clipper of 4555 tons, and the greatest speed was attained in a passage from San Francisco to Boston in seventy-five days, and from San Francisco to Cork in ninety-three days. The development of steam navigation for the carrying of large cargoes has driven this fleet from the sea. Only a small part of the exports and imports of Massachusetts is now carried in American bottoms.[3] The first grain elevator built in Boston, and one of the first in the world, was erected in 1843, when Massachusetts sent Indian corn to Ireland. When the Civil War and steam navigation put an end to the supremacy of Massachusetts wooden sailing ships, much of the capital which had been employed in navigation was turned into developing railway facilities and coasting steamship lines. In 1872 the great fire in Boston made large drains upon the capital of the state, and several years of depression followed. But in 1907 Boston was the second port of the United States in the magnitude of its foreign commerce. In that year the value of imports at the Boston-Charlestown customs district was $123,411,168, and the value of exports was $104,610,908; for 1909 the corresponding figures were $127,025,654 and $72,936,869. Other ports of entry in the state in 1909 were Newburyport, Gloucester, Salem, Marblehead, Plymouth, Barnstable, Nantucket, Edgartown, New Bedford and Fall River. A protective tariff was imposed in early colonial times and protection was generally approved in the state until toward the close of the 19th century, when a strong demand became apparent for reciprocity with Canada and for tariff reductions on the raw materials (notably hides) of Massachusetts manufactures.
At the end of 1908 the length of railway lines within the state was 2,109.33 miles. The Hoosac Tunnel, 534 m. long, pierces the Hoosac Mountain in the north-west corner of the state, affording a communication with western lines. It cost about $20,000,000, the state lending its credit, and was built between 1855 and 1874. The inter-urban electric railways are of very great importance in the state; in 1908 the total mileage of street and inter-urban electric
- ↑ In 1905 Massachusetts produced 60.7% of the writing paper manufactured in the country. Besides writing paper, book paper and building paper are made in the state, but very little newspaper.
- ↑ It must be noted, however, that the first successful construction of cards, drawing and roving, and of spindles, on the Arkwright principle was by S. Slater at Pawtucket, Rhode Island in 1790.
- ↑ The tax valuation on ships engaged in foreign trade was lowered between 1884 and 1900 from $2,801,405 to $147,768.
