239. Hardware and the peddler.—Factories which make the same product tend to be located in the same towns or cities. The manufacturers who make a large part of all the hard ware sold in the United States have their plants in Connecticut. In the town of New Britain, little but hardware is made. In the Naugatuck Valley. scores of factories are working in nothing but brass. How did these centers grow up? The peddlers started it more than a hundred years ago. Farmers, having little work to do in the winter sea son, would buy a quantity of pots, pans, axes, cowbells, door latches, and other articles that the blacksmiths had made in their shops. Each would load some of these articles into the farm wagon, or into the sleigh, or on a pack horse, and start off on a long journey to sell the things. The next winter each would start out with another load which the blacksmith had made during the sum mer. When the railroads came and made it easy to trade with distant parts of the country, the village blacksmiths could not make things fast enough to supply the demand. Hardware factories were built. Now many thousands of people are engaged in this industry, and there are whole districts where but little else is produced.
240. Cotton and woolen goods.— The people living in the valley of the Merrimac River are equally busy making cloth. At Lawrence and Lowell in Massachusetts, and Nashua and Manchester in New Hampshire, there are such high waterfalls that enormous power is furnished, and the factories are so huge that we are amazed at their size. The people here know little about work in metals, but they know how to make cotton and woolen yarn, cotton and woolen cloth, and carpets. They know their trade as thoroughly as children know how to play tag. In the towns of the valley of the Merrimac, thousands of spinners stand be fore long spinning machines; each machine is spinning hundreds of threads and winding each thread on a bobbin ready for weaving. Other thousands of workers, called weavers, are each one watching ten or a dozen clack ing looms that work away by themselves. But if one of the hundreds of threads on a machine breaks, the whole machine stops. Then the weaver quickly ties the broken thread, and starts the machine making cloth again. A single company at Manchester, New Hampshire, turns out 300 miles of cotton cloth in a day. At that rate enough cloth could be woven to reach from the factory to Europe in the same length of time in which a steamer would make the trip.
Seacoast towns, led by New Bedford and Fall River, Massachusetts, were once busy with the whale-oil industry, because whale fishermen outfitted their ships there, and brought their cargoes to these ports. But whaling has become a small business since the coal-oil lamp, gas light, and electric light have come. Now the people of these towns are busy in cotton mills, the machinery of which is driven by coal brought by sea from Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, and Norfolk.
Another great cotton-manufacturing town is Pawtucket, Rhode Island. It has water
power from the Blackstone River, and on the same stream boats can go down to Providence or Fall River. The chief cotton manufacturing towns of New England are New Bedford, Fall River, Pawtucket, Lawrence, and Lowell.
Some cities specialize in woolen rather than in cotton cloth. Lawrence and Provi dence are two leading cities that have developed this specialty; while Danbury, Connecticut, makes Australian rabbit furs into felt hats.
241. Making machinery.—Much machin ery is made in New England. It is an advan tage to have big, heavy machines made near the place where they are to be used. Why? It is natural that textile machinery, shoe machinery, and many other kinds of machin ery should be made in quantities in New England. Worcester, Springfield, Provi dence, and Boston are important centers for this industry.
242. Shoes.—Long ago, when the Con necticut farmers were peddling the black smiths' goods around the country, a few cobblers made shoes in a village in eastern Massachusetts. A peddler took some of the shoes away to sell. This started the shoe industry, and later factories were built and machines were made to do the work. New England now makes more than half the shoes used in the United States. Most of the work is centered in eastern Massachu setts, where the cities of Brockton and Lynn are respectively the first and the second shoe manufacturing cities in the country. Shoes are also made in the neighboring cities of Haverhill and Boston. Within a few city blocks in Boston you can find the offices of three hundred different shoe factories, the plants of which are scattered through the neighboring region.
There are many other special centers for manufacturing, such as Providence for jewel ry; Danbury, Connecticut, for hats; Holyoke. Massachusetts, for fine writing paper; and Augusta and Bangor, in Maine, for wood products.
243. Centers of manufacture.—Why do the factories which make the same article gather in groups in the different towns and neighborhoods? If you want to start a new shoe factory, can you do it more easily in some little western town, or in Brockton? Brockton stores keep the supplies which a shoe manufacturer needs; the western town does not have them. If the machinery breaks, there are men in Brockton who know how to repair it; not so in the western town. If you want to start a shoe factory, you will need to find men who know how to use shoe-making machinery. Thousands of such men live in Brockton; the western town has none of them. Retail merchants who want to buy shoes to sell go to Brockton, not to the western town. If you were a shoe worker looking for a job, Brockton would be a good place for you, because it has fifty factories where you might find work; the western town has none. You see, there are many advantages for the employer and for the worker in an established center of manu facture. We shall find many such centers as we study the different manufactures of the world.