MASSACHUSETTS 



3684 



MASSACHUSETTS 



the world by snow and impassable roads, but 

 in the summer overflow with visitors. 



Rivers. Massachusetts is well drained by its 

 many rivers, the chief of which is the Connec- 

 ticut, which flows in a north and south direc- 

 tion across the state. Its most important tribu- 

 taries are, from the east, Millers and the Chico- 

 pee, and from the west the Deerfield and the 

 Westfield. In the northeast is the Merrimac, 

 which has a course of but thirty-five miles within 

 the state but receives the waters of the Concord 

 and the Nashua. Other rivers of importance 

 are the Housatonic, famous for its picturesque 

 scenery, the Hoosac, which flows northwestward 

 into the Hudson; the Charles, with its literary 

 and historic associations; the Taunton and the 

 Blackstone. Few of these rivers, flowing through 

 their deep, wide valleys, are fitted for naviga- 

 tion, so broken are they by falls and rapids, but 

 this does not mean that they are of no impor- 

 tance industrially. Indeed, Massachusetts owes 

 its manufacturing supremacy largely to its riv- 

 ers, for they furnish unlimited water power ; and 

 the chief fall lines in the different rivers are 

 marked by the location of such industrial cities 

 as Lowell, Haverhill, Waltham and Lawrence. 

 See FALL LINE. 



Climate. Mark Twain declared that the cli- 

 mate of New England was made and managed 

 by one of Nature's unskilful journeymen, so 

 changeable and unsettled is it; and Massachu- 

 setts has its full share of this journeyman 

 weather. Extremes of heat and cold are great, 

 the changes in temperature are often very 

 abrupt, and spring is frequently almost non- 

 existent. In the mountainous region to the west 

 the winters are likely to be very severe, but 

 farther east the ocean exercises a tempering in- 

 fluence. Autumn is the pleasantest season, and 

 is often very beautiful, especially in the hill 

 country. Rainfall is everywhere plentiful, rang- 

 ing from forty to forty-five inches a year. 



Resources and Industries. Minerals. The one 

 great mineral product of Massachusetts is gran- 

 ite, in which for many years it was the leading 

 state. In recent years, however, Vermont sur- 

 passes it, though its yield is still valued at more 

 than $2,000,000 a year. Other building-stones, 

 of which the most important is the brown sand- 

 stone found in the Connecticut Valley; lime- 

 stone, used chiefly in the manufacture of large 

 quantities of lime; excellent clay; emery, of 

 which the state is one of the chief producers; 

 and such minor products as fuller's earth, feld- 

 spar and iron pyrites, make up the remainder 

 of the mineral output of Massachusetts. 



Fisheries. These have been of importance 

 since the very beginning of the colony, and to- 

 day the product of the fisheries of Massachu- 

 setts exceeds that of any other state. Whales 

 are no longer captured off Nantucket Island, as 

 in the olden days, but all along the coast there 

 are towns whose sole industry is fishing. Chief 

 of these is Gloucester. 



Scattering wide, or blown in ranks, 

 Yellow and white and brown, 

 Boats and boats from the fishing banks 

 Come home to Gloucester town, 



wrote William Vaughn Moody; for there are 

 regular fleets of fishing boats, which do not 

 merely hover about the home coast, but set sail 

 for the Grand Banks of Newfoundland and bring 

 home vast stores of cod and mackerel. Life on 

 these fishing boats and in the fishing villages is 

 one of the most characteristic forms of New 

 England life, and such books as Kipling's Cap- 

 tains Courageous owe their charm to their 

 graphic pictures of it. 



Besides the two varieties of fish mentioned 

 above the most valuable kinds taken are had- 

 dock, halibut, herring, hake, lobsters and pol- 

 lack, while on the southern coast there are ex- 

 tensive oyster beds. The station which the 

 United States Fish Commission maintains at 

 Woods Hole, on Buzzard's Bay, is important. 



Agriculture. Much has been said and written 

 in recent years of the exhausted farms of New 

 England; indeed, the soil of Massachusetts, ex- 

 cept in a few of the river valleys, is not very fer- 

 tile. The hillsides are stony and overgrown with 

 trees, and only about forty per cent of the area 

 of the state is actually improved farm land. 

 Agriculture, therefore, that industry to which 

 the earliest colonists turned for their very ex- 

 istence, is no longer of prime importance to the 

 state. Formerly cereals were raised in consid- 

 erable quantities, but Massachusetts no longer 

 tries to compete with the great wheat and corn- 

 growing states to the west. However, the large 

 number of cities in the state makes one thing 

 very desirable that plenty of vegetables, poul- 

 try, fruit and dairy products be produced to 

 supply the cities; and the carefully-cultivated 

 truck farms are perhaps the most valuable agri- 

 cultural land in the state. Many kinds of or- 

 chard fruits, especially apples, grow very well, 

 and small fruits are grown in abundance. A 

 very characteristic industry is the growing of 

 cranberries on the marshy lands of Cape Cod 

 and its vicinity; another of historic interest is 

 the raising of tobacco in the Connecticut Val- 

 ley, which was carried on in colonial days. 



