NEW BEDFORD, a city of Massachusetts, U.S.A., 56 m S.
of Boston at the mouth of the Acushnet river, on an arm of Buz zard's bay; a port of entry and one of the county seats of Bristol county. It is on Federal highway 6, and is served by the New York, New Haven and Hartford railroad, interurban trolley and motor-bus lines, and steamboats. Pop. (1920) 121,217 (4o% foreign-born white, including the largest colonies in the country from the Atlantic Islands and Portugal) ; in 1930 the population fell to 112,597, a loss of 7.1%. The city occupies about 20 sq.m. along the west side of the river and harbour, opposite Fair haven, with which it is connected by two highway bridges. It is in the heart of the summer-resort region of southern New Eng land, and is the port of sailing for the islands of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard. The harbour is a tidal estuary, with a 25 ft.
channel 30o ft. wide and a 14 ac. turning basin. The State pier, completed in 1917, is a modern steamship terminal, 670 ft. long, with large storage space, built by the Commonwealth of Massa chusetts. Boulevards almost encircle the city, including a broad drive along the shore of the harbour to Clark's point, where Ft. Rodman (erected during the Civil War) guards the entrance.
There are some handsome modern buildings, including the post office, the municipal building, the library and the high school. The library, established by a private society in 1802 and taken over by the city in 1853, was one of the first free public libraries in America. It has a fine collection of whaling prints and other material relating to the industry, and much material relating to the Quakers. The Bourne Whaling museum contains, among other exhibits, a full-rigged whaleship completely equipped; and in the Seamen's Bethel (1831) just across the street are the memorial tablets described by Melville in Moby Dick. The last of the full rigged whalers, the "Charles W. Morgan," set in a concrete basin on the estate of Col. E. H. R. Green at South Dartmouth (9 m. S.W. of New Bedford), is kept as a museum. Free educational opportunities, in addition to those provided by the public-school system, are offered by a State Textile school, the New Bedford Vocational school and the Swain Free School of Design. The morning newspaper, the Mercury, was established in 1807. Daily papers are published in French and in Portuguese.
New Bedford has long been one of the principal centres for the manufacture of fine cotton goods. It ranks second to Washington in the proportion of women employed in gainful occupations (46%, U. S. Census, 1920) and second to Fall River in the propor tion of children '0 to 15 years of age so employed (17% in 1920). Its aggregate factory output in 1927 was valued at of which $93,476,676 represented cotton goods. It is the spot
cotton market of the North, and its warehouses have a storage capacity for 300,00o bales. The traffic of the harbour in 1927 (including Fairhaven) amounted to 973,309 tons, valued at $144,760,415, almost all domestic commerce. In addition, there are large shipments of fish. The city's assessed valuation for 1927 was $216,197,725. Bank debits for 1927 aggregated The site of New Bedford was visited in 1602 by Gosnold, who traded with the Indians at the mouth of the Acushnet. It was originally part of the town of Dartmouth, settled in 1652 by colonists from Plymouth, who purchased the land from Massa soit. About 1665 there was a considerable influx of Quakers, who have ever since been an important and influential element in the population. There was no village on the site of the present city until 1760. In 1787 New Bedford was set off from Dartmouth and incorporated as a town, and in 1847 it was chartered as a city. Fairhaven was separated from it in 1812. The town was at first called Bedford (the family name of Joseph Russell, one of the founders), and later New was prefixed to distinguish it from Bedford in Middlesex county. On May 14, a local ship captured two armed British sloops just outside the New Bedford harbour. During the Revolution the harbour was a rendezvous of American privateers, and this led to an attack (Sept. 5, 1778) by a fleet and armed force under Earl Grey, which burned 7o ships and almost destroyed the town. The whaling industry be came established here after Joseph Rotch, a Nantucket merchant, in 1765 built wharves and warehouses on the west side of the harbour, and New Bedford was long the principal whaling port of the world. For more than a century the industry flourished, with interruptions due to the Revolution, the Embargo, the War of 1812 and the Civil War, reaching its peak in 1857, when 329 whaling ships were registered, representing an investment of $12, 000,000 and employing io,000 men ashore and afloat. The hunt ing grounds shifted after 1791 from off the Virginia and Carolina coast to the Pacific, and after 1848 to the Arctic waters. The first cotton-mill was built in 1847 by Joseph Grinnell (1789- 1885) and his associates, and began operation in 1848 with 15, 00o spindles and 200 looms. In 1928 the 66 mills making cotton yarn and cotton goods were equipped with 3,382,500 spindles (about io% of the total in the United States) and 58,000 looms, and they produce from 35 to 4o% of all the fine cotton fabrics made in the country. Because of the character of the goods made, New Bedford has suffered less than other New England cities from the competition of the new textile centres in the South.