Old books, old industries
“The Bookworm’’ by Carl Spitzweg (1850)
Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
I was a guest the other week of a group of bibliophiles in Boston. Members’ passion for (mostly old) books, for their physical charms as well as their content, was endearing, as was the droll humor of some of the members I talked with.
At each of these dinner meetings, a member gives a talk. The speaker when I was there discussed a narrative about a Pacific island covered with guano, which for part of the 19th Century was used to make a highly profitable product in New England. Yankee businessmen would ship the stuff from the Pacific or the Caribbean, mix it with fish meal and market it as the best fertilizer, which it was until manmade ones came along (to eventually pose serious environmental problems). Some of my ancestors were investors in the Pacific Guano Co., in Woods Hole, on Cape Cod. (“Whitcomb, I always knew you were full of….”). The company occupied land where you now get the ferries to Martha’s Vineyard.
Pacific Guano Works, Woods Hole, Mass., circa 1860s; engraving by S.S. Kilburn. Woods Hole is a village in Falmouth.
Most industries eventually shrink or even disappear. In New England, the best examples are the shoe and textile sectors. (No comment on the slave trade or “The China Trade,’’ some of which involved selling opium.) So always diversify! Mix it up!
I thought of that while reading a Commonwealth Magazine article about Greater Boston losing manufacturing jobs and industrial land at an alarming pace. This needs to be reversed. We need more than white-collar jobs. And having local factories can help reduce supply-chain costs.
The article noted:
“A deteriorating regional industrial base has the potential to damage our region’s economic strength, pricing smaller companies out of the area and disproportionately impacting workers of color and those without college degrees. Economic studies tie healthy manufacturing employment and ecosystems to greater economic resilience and innovation, and the revitalization of American industry is key to building a middle class and addressing wage disparities. And yet, we are already facing a large-scale loss of space that could impact our state for many generations.’’
The region’s bio-tech biz has shown great growth in the past couple of decades, but it’s dangerous to depend on one sector. Just ask the folks in Silicon Valley.