1907.] FUTURE OF SMAIjL NEW ENGLAND TOWNS. 2/9 



THIRD DAY — EVENING SESSION. 



Convention called to order at 7.30 p. m., Vice-President 

 Seeley in the chair. 



Music. 



The President. I am happy to introduce the Rev. John 

 Calvin Goddard of Salisbury, Conn., who will address us rela- 

 tive to the future of the small New England town. 



THE FUTURE OF THE SMALL NEW ENGLAND 



TOWN. 



By Rev. John Calvin Goddard, Salisbury, Conn. 



Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen : Of the 168 towns 

 in Connecticut, 59 showed a loss at the last census: for ex- 

 ample, Colebrook, near Salisbury, the last town in Connecti- 

 cut to be organized, dropped from 1,098 to 684, 37 per cent. 

 While if McDuff should rise to inquire today : " Stands Scot- 

 land where it did ? " the painful reply from Windham County 

 could be : " No, Scotland has slipped in four decades from 

 720 to 471." Ninety-eight of our towns have receded from 

 their former maximum. Some of them remind us of what 

 Artemus Ward said of his friend, that he " had been dead two 

 vears and liked it." 



But rest you, merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay. 

 This is only one side of the shield. The other side is, that 

 not one of these small towns is in any danger of going out of 

 business. Not Marlborough, which holds the low water mark 

 at 322. Not Andover, at 385. Not Union, at 428, up in the 

 woods, where the pastor once said he could not keep his 

 chickens because the foxes got them all. It is possible that 

 some of them may decline even farther, and still not go out of 

 business. Just north of Salisbury, in Massachusetts, lies the 

 town of Mt. Washington, which contains neither doctor, law- 

 yer, nor minister, and keeps happy. Massachusetts has thir- 

 teen towns smaller than Connecticut's smallest. No, the small 

 town is not going to draw up its feet into the bed after it, and 

 be gathered unto its fathers yet a while. Kai gar, as they say 

 at Amherst, " and with good reason for." 



