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This article explores the demise of the Crompton Company, which filed for bankruptcy in October 1984, causing 2,450 workers in five states to lose their jobs. Crompton was founded in 1807 in Providence, Rhode Island and when it went out of business it was the oldest textile firm in the country, having been in continuous operation for 178 years. Despite its history, scholars have overlooked Crompton, partly because most work on deindustrialization has concentrated on heavy manufacturing industries, especially steel and automobiles. I argue that Crompton's demise throws much light on the broader decline of the American textile and apparel industry, which has lost over two million jobs since the mid-1970s, and shows that textiles deserve a more central place in the literature. Using company papers, this study shows that imports played the central role in causing Crompton's decline, although there were also other problems, including the strong dollar, declining exports, and a reluctance to diversify, which contributed to it. The paper also explores broader trends, including the earlier flight of the industry from New England to the South and the industry's unsuccessful campaign to pass import-restriction legislation, a fight in which Crompton's managers were very involved. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines a collection of iron artifacts from the Sarah Burnee/Sarah Boston Site, a late 18th- and early 19th-century Nipmuc home site in Grafton, Massachusetts. While the objects represented have a broad spectrum of purposes, the assemblage is assessed for its utility in the practice of woodsplint basketmaking, an emerging Native trade in 19th-century New England. Native woodsplint baskets were desired and prized by Anglo-American consumers for their authenticity and tradition, yet many of their forms, decorations and the associated toolkit were all developed in the specific economic conditions of post-revolutionary New England and are thus entangled with Euro-American materialities. DeLanda’s (2006) “assemblage theory” is examined as an appropriate concept with which to reconcile the apparent tension of innovation and tradition apparent in this collection, and in Indigenous historical archaeology at large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reports on the results of a joint industry-university study regarding possible steady-state voltage problems in portions of New England. Voltages problems in some portions of New England; Reactive power demand in particular portions of the system; Reactive power losses caused by heavy power transfers over long distances; Methods for defining nominal voltage profile.

Examines recessions in Southern California and New England areas of the United States in the early 1990s. Manufacturing industries' dismal business performance in New England; Industry structure in Southern California with little evidences of the recessions' effects.

In this paper, the authors propose to review the changed and changing economic structure of New England, and to project to the year 2000 New England's real gross regional product together with the real gross products of the region's ten component industries. Utilizing the time series data from 1958 to 1973 provided by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, the authors found that the overall movements of expansion and contraction are surprisingly similar at the regional and national levels, but New England's economic structure of industry mix as measured by each industry's contribution to the total is different from that of the United States. To further delineate the difference, semi-logarithmic functions were fitted to estimate the annual growth rates of the real gross products as well as the rates of shift of the industrial shares themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the development of industrial structure in southern New England. Information on the manufacturing growth of New England; Details on the manufacturing industries of New England; Reason for the superior national economic performance of Connecticut.

Heavy geographic patterning to the 2016 Brexit vote in UK and Trump vote in US has resulted in numerous ecological analyses of variations in area-level voting behaviours. We extend this work by employing modelling approaches that permit regionally-specific associations between outcome and explanatory variables. We do so by generating a large number of regional models using penalised regression for variable selection and coefficient evaluation. The results reinforce those already published in that we find associations in support of a 'left-behind' reading. Multivariate models are dominated by a single variable—levels of degree-education. Net of this effect, 'secondary' variables help explain the vote, but do so differently for different regions. For Brexit, variables relating to material disadvantage, and to a lesser extent structural-economic circumstances, are more important for regions with a strong industrial history than for regions that do not share such a history. For Trump, increased material disadvantage reduces the vote both in global models and models built mostly for Southern states, thereby undermining the 'left-behind' reading. The reverse is nevertheless true for many other states, particularly those in New England and the Mid-Atlantic, where comparatively high levels of disadvantage assist the Trump vote and where model outputs are more consistent with the UK, especially so for regions with closer economic histories. This pattern of associations is exposed via our regional modelling approach, application of penalised regression and use of carefully designed visualization to reason over 100+ model outputs located within their spatial context. Our analysis, documented in an accompanying github repository, is in response to recent calls in empirical Social and Political Science for fuller exploration of subnational contexts that are often controlled out of analyses, for use of modelling techniques more robust to replication and for greater transparency in research design and methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1720s and 1730s, a number of Boston merchants purchased rural property in the town’s hinterland. In these estates we see the transformative power of capital and slavery in colonial New England. Boston merchants reached into the countryside, purchased already improved land, equipped their farms with the latest agricultural technology, engaged in large-scale production, and employed slave labor to extract the fruits of the land, thus transforming Boston’s hinterland into one of drudgery and unfreedom. By positioning capital and slaves at the center of the New England economy, this study demonstrates there was a visible, albeit limited, slave economy in the middle decades of the eighteenth century that allowed a few wealthy Bostonians to deliberately reshape the countryside using their wealth and bound labor. Merchant capital, in short, had the potential to reconfigure how—and the way historians should think about how—the New England rural economy functioned and its relationship with the wider Atlantic world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how homeowners threatened with foreclosure attribute responsibility for their troubles and manage the stigma of mortgage default. In light of widespread home loss, at-risk owners develop an understanding of the crisis as a collective experience and yet still experience stigma and employ identity management techniques to construct themselves as responsible homeowners. Based on interviews and fieldwork, this article explores the tension between collective and individual responsibility and the implications of this attribution for identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dictatorial Dominion of New England (1686–1689) saw the rise and fall of the first operational bank scheme in America. Both events resulted from the appointed rulers' attempts to personally profit from real estate, subject to an absolutist constitution imposed by England. The first, local ruler led a nominally private land bank. The subsequent, foreign ruler invalidated all land titles and thus killed the bank. This unusual case study exemplifies an extension of Mancur Olson's model of stationary and roving bandits, and demonstrates how economic development can be affected in different ways by different types of dictators. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Most historians believe that inside contracting (IC), a system that had its origins in the early industrial revolution, remained an important practice throughout nineteenth-century America. Under IC, proprietors appointed a senior worker who agreed to supply components or completed articles at an agreed price. It was the contractor who bore the risk of failure or pocketed the profits. Here was a system that created an alternative locus of power within the workshop. Focusing on machine building, this article argues that IC should be seen as a feature of the earlier nineteenth century, primarily associated with New England's industrial development. In the workshops of 1870s and 1880s Philadelphia, proprietors and workers used the language of ‘contracting’ but its meaning was altogether different. In Philadelphia, a system of piece contracting (PC) emerged, encouraged by the crisis of the 1870s depression, as proprietors attempted to reduce costs and control skilled labour—in contrast to earlier IC which was an expression of owners’ reluctance or inability to take charge. At the Baldwin Locomotive Works and Cramp shipyard a sophisticated system of gang PC also developed. PC did not offer a share of the profits but only limited inducement to a layer of labour aristocrat ‘contractors’; overall, it intended to constrain the world of the skilled mechanic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the economic growth and standard of living in New England based on a sample of probated estates in Connecticut and Massachusetts from 1640 to 1774. Wealth growth during the colonial period; Factors that contributed to the growth of the white population of New England.

Traces existing commercial bank balance sheets for New England for the period 1785-1837. Steps involved in the process of estimating missing data; Importance of developing such a database for the reexamination of both microeconomic and macroeconomic issues.

Examines the rate of economic growth in colonial New England during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Rate of agricultural productivity; Areas of particular importance to colonial scholars.

Provides information on the economic history of New England. Details of labor force; Discussion on wages and work compensation; Economic growth status of the country.

Opinion. Focuses on industrialization and capitalism which took place in New England during 1815 to 1845. Examination of the the expression `Boston Associates'; Information on the beginning of the textile industry in Springfield; Details on several corporations which were set up during that period.

The article discusses about towns of New England and the beginning of the American capitalist democracy there. A general view has been that New England colonies were the cradle of modern American society and its significance has long been affirmed by such writers as Alexis de Tocqueville and James Bryce. However, this early evaluation was incomplete for it was made only in terms of the origin and development of local self-government and democracy. This general view still prevails to this day. Actually the town was the starting point of modern American society not only in the political and administrative sense but in an economic sense as well. It is capitalism, of course, which is the economic foundation of modern society; therefore when discussing the economic significance of the town, the main question is how it relates to the origin and early development of American capitalism. The author propose to explore this point, limiting his citations as far as possible to well-known works from which somewhat neglected points will be taken up and systematized. The author discusses general and basic form of land settlement, town grant in New England. The result of the town grant was a system of small land holdings. Finally the author suggests that free land ownership in New England has been basis of the American Capitalism.

A substantial increase in the population growth rate of northern New England is revealed by the 1970 Federal Census. Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine have experienced relatively low population growth rates since the mid-1800s, or even undergone population losses. Population increases have been greatest in the Burlington, Vermont, area, in southern New Hampshire, and in south coastal Maine. Extensive construction of limited access highways, a surge in second home ownership, an increase in recreational facilities, and the establishment of new plants and offices in northern New England are related to current growth patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information on the report of the representative of the American Sociological Society to the AAAS. The AAAS met in Durham, New Hampshire, during June 23-28, 1941. The following were the principal sections of the program: the second colonization of New England; economic and demographic aspects of the New England Area; social organizations and public policy; typical problems of the New England Areas; and Social Welfare in New England.

The dominant discourse of fisheries science and management, bioeconomics, places the behavior of individual fishermen operating on an open-access commons at the center of its understanding of fisheries resources and the fishing industry. Within this discourse, fishermen are the sole actors and the fishery is the fixed stage for an inevitable 'tragedy of the commons.' Starting from these particular assumptions of both subject and space, bioeconomics proposes solutions to fisheries crisis that differ sharply from fishers' perceptions of the resource and their desires for management. These divergent understandings of both the natural and social environments are reflected in the maps produced by fisheries scientists/managers and those produced by fishers themselves. Remapping fisheries in terms of fishers' perceptions and scales of operation reveals diverse natural landscapes and communities in which the dominant discourse charted only quantities of fish and individual fishermen. The landscape of fishing communities, once made visible, suggests an opportunity for forms of area-based management that might facilitate community development rather than just individual prosperity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]