‘Not so awful as that elsewhere’

Factory scene in Fall River in 1920.

“I cannot praise some aspects of the Yankee city. Such ulcerous growths of industrial New England as Lowell, Lawrence, Lynn, Pawtucket, Woonsocket, and Chelsea seem the products of nightmare. To spend a day in Fall River is to realize how limited were the imaginations of poets who have described hell. It is only when one remembers Newark, Syracuse, Pittsburgh, West Philadelphia, Gary, Hammond, Akron, and South Bend that this leprosy seems tolerable. The refuse of industrialism knows no sectional boundaries and is common to all America. It could be soundly argued that the New England debris is not so awful as that elsewhere – not so hideous as upper New Jersey or so terrifying as the New South. It could be shown that the feeble efforts of society to cope with this disease are not so feeble here as elsewhere. But realism has a sounder knowledge: industrial leadership has passed from New England, and its disease will wane. Lowell will slide into the Merrimack, and the salt marsh will once more cover Lynn — or nearly so. They will recede; the unpolluted sea air will blow over them, and the Yankee nature will reclaim its own.’’

— From “New England: There She Stands,’’ by historian, essayist and editor Bernard De Voto (1897-1955) in the March 1932 Harper’s Magazine. The article, written during the Great Depression is a fair and very resonant paean to the region. It’s still well worth reading.

1905 postcard