244 



THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



Photograph. by Leon H. Abdalian 



IN THE SHADOW OF THE OLD SOUTH 

 CHURCH, BOSTON* 



Erected in 1729, Old South Church has lived 

 through the vicissitudes of war and peace for 

 nearly two centuries. Diagonally across the 

 street from it, Benjamin Franklin was born. 

 Within its walls were held many of the town 

 meetings that crystallized the purposes of the 

 colonists to be free. Not many years ago 

 commerce would have razed its walls and 

 reared on its site an office building. But the 

 people of Boston raised $.|oo.coo to keep it 

 as a shrine of our national beginnings. 



the correspondence of the world. It has 

 the largest belt factory, the largest loom 

 works, the largest grindstone plant, and 

 the largest automobile crank-shaft forg- 

 ing plant in existence. 



America's eoremost mill town 



Fall River, third in population among 

 flie cities of Massachusetts, is America's 

 foremost "mill town." It has 148 textile 

 mills and employs 40,000 operatives. 

 That it can bring coal for power from 

 Pennsylvania and cotton from the South, 

 paying the high freight rates, and still 

 compete with the South in the manufac- 

 ture of cotton goods is a proof of its 

 energy and efficient organization. Every 

 day the city weaves enough cloth a 

 yard wide to reach from New York to 

 Panama. It produces more goods than 

 any State in the Union except its own. 



A close competitor of Fall River is 

 New Bedford, making fewer yards of 

 cloth than its rival, but specializing in 

 finer grades, which it produces at the 

 rate of a mile a minute. New Bedford 

 has a twentieth-century prosperity based 

 on cotton as great as that in the seven- 

 teenth century based on the whaling in- 

 dustry. 



AMERICA'S CAPITAL OP EDUCATION 



Cambridge is so nearly part and parcel 

 of the New England metropolis that it 

 seems to have lost its identity in almost 

 every way except legally. When one is 

 reminded that this city, with its popula- 

 tion of 113,000, is without a daily news- 

 paper, or a good hotel, or a modern 

 theater, one can readily see that its 

 identity, except for purposes of taxation 

 and local law, has been thoroughly welded 

 into that of Boston. 



But in education it can almost claim to 

 be the nation's capital. With Harvard 

 and Radcliffe and Technology, its influ- 

 ence reaches wherever religion, philoso- 

 phy, science, and engineering extend. 



But Cambridge is more than a univer- 

 sity town. It is one of the principal 

 manufacturing centers of the Common- 

 wealth. 



"the workshop of the world" 



Lowell proudly calls itself the "work- 

 shop of the world." It is a busy town, 



