204 



THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



Photograph by Leon H. Abdalian 

 THE PILL- COATING ROOM OF A MASSACHUSETTS DRUG COMPANY 

 As these huge containers revolve they sugar-coat pills at the rate of 12,000,000 in 24 hours. 



Eight people out of nine in Fall River 

 may have foreign blood in their veins, but 

 Fall River never failed to go over the top 

 with every drive. Seven out of eight of 

 the inhabitants of Lawrence, where the 

 paper for The Geographic Magazine is 

 made (see also pages 234-238), may have 

 grandparents born under alien flags, but 

 in the Third Liberty Loan drive only six 

 of the major cities of the United States 

 showed a greater proportion of sub- 

 scribers. 



manufactures thrive at the Expense 

 of agriculture 



Manufacturing thrives in Massachu- 

 setts, but it does so at the expense of agri- 

 culture. No other State in the American 

 Union has such a small proportion of its 

 people engaged in the oldest of civilized 

 vocations. Only one breadwinner in a 

 score finds his food in farming, forestry, 

 animal husbandry, and fishing. 



What pathos there is in the thought 

 that more than half of the ground the 



Pilgrim people for two centuries fought 

 so hard to wrest from forest and stone 

 should have been surrendered to weed 

 and brush during the last three decades ! 



Motor out from Boston to Lexington, 

 and thence by Bedford to Lowell. Did 

 ever a hardy and spirited race leave a 

 greater monument to its determination in 

 combating inhospitable Nature than the 

 farmers of bygone generations left in the 

 thousands of miles of stone walls one 

 sees in this part of Massachusetts? 



Not only did they have to clear the 

 ground of a stumpage that yielded little 

 as lumber bv way of compensation, but 

 also of a vast amount of loose rock that 

 occurs so frequently where the soil is 

 best. 



The result was that fences were built, 

 not with reference to the needs of height 

 and width in field boundaries, but rather 

 of dimensions sufficient to provide a stor- 

 age place for the vast amount of rock that 

 had to be removed before the plow and 

 the harrow could make ready the soil or 



