Chapter 17

According to the census of 1910 there were 32 incorporated cities9in Massachusetts, of which 6 had between 12,000 and 20,000 inhabitants; 3 between 20,000 and 25,000 (Gloucester, Medford and North Adams); 11 between 25,000 and 50,000 (Maiden, Haverhill, Salem, Newton, Fitchburg, Taunton, Everett, Quincy, Pittsfield, Waltham, Chicopee); 7 between 50,000 and 100,000 (New Bedford, Lynn, Springfield, Lawrence, Somerville, Holyoke, Brockton); and 5 more than 100,000 (Boston, 670,585; Worcester, 145,986; Fall River, 119,295; Lowell, 106,294; Cambridge, 104,839).Taking quinquennial periods from 1856-1905 the birth-rates were 29.5, 25.3, 26.0, 27.6, 24.2, 25.0, 25.8, 27.6, 27.0 and 24.2 per 1,000; and the death-rates 17.7, 20.7, 18.2, 20.8, 18.8, 19.8, 19.4, 19.8, 18.0 and 16.4.10Pneumonia and consumption, approximately of equal fatality (15 to 18 per 10,000 each), exceed more than twofold the diseases of next lower fatality, cancer and cholera infantum.Of males (1,097,581) engaged in 1900 in gainful occupations 47.1% were engaged in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits (77.9 in every 100 in 1870 and 73 in 1900), 27.1 in trade and transportation, 14.2 in domestic and personal service, 7.4 in agricultural pursuits and 4.2 in professional service. The corresponding percentages for females (1,169,467) were 46.4 in manufacturing (in 1890, 52%), 32.3 in domestic and personal service, 13.6 in trade and transportation, 7.1 in professional service and 0.6 in agriculture. Formerly farmers’ daughters of native stock were much employed in factories; but since operatives of foreign birth or parentage have in great part taken their places, they have sought other occupations, largely in the manufacture of small wares in the cities, and particularly in departments of trade where skilled labour is essential. Household service is seldom now done, as it formerly was, by women of native stock. The federal census of 1900 showed that of every 100 persons employed for gain only 37.5% were of native descent (that is, had a native-born father). Natives heavily predominated in agriculture and the professions, slightly in trade, and held barely more than half of all governmental positions; but in transportation, personal service, manufactures, labour and domestic service, the predominance of the foreign element warranted the assertion of the state Bureau of Statistics of Labour that “the strong industrial condition of Massachusetts has been secured and is held not by the labour of what is called the ‘native stock,’ but by that of the immigrants.” After the original and exclusively English immigration from 1620 to 1640 there was nothing like regular foreign immigration until the 19th century; and it was a favourite assertion of Dr Palfrey that the blood of the fishing folk on Cape Cod was more purely English through two centuries than that of the inhabitants of any English county.With foreign immigration the strength of the Roman Catholic Church has greatly increased: in 1906 of every 1000 of estimated population 355 were members of the Roman Catholic Church (a proportion exceeded only in New Mexico and in Rhode Island; 310 was the number per 1000 in Louisiana), and only 148 were communicants of Protestant bodies; in 1906 there were 1,080,706 Roman Catholics (out of a total of 1,562,621 communicants of all denominations), 119,196 Congregationalists, 80,894 Baptists, 65,498 Methodists and 51,636 Protestant Episcopalians.Reference has been made to “abandoned farms” in Massachusetts. The desertion of farms was an inevitable result of the opening of the great cereal regions of the west, but it is by no means characteristic of Massachusetts alone. The Berkshire district affords an excellent example of the interrelations of topography, soil and population. Many hill towns once thriving have long since become abandoned, desolate and comparatively inaccessible; though with the development of the summer resident’s interests many will probably eventually regain prosperity. Almost half of the highland towns reached their maximum population before the opening of the 19th century, although Berkshire was scarcely settled till after 1760, and three-fourths of them before 1850. On the other hand three-fourths of the lowland towns reached their maximum since that date, and half of them since 1880. The lowland population increased six and a half times in the century, the upland diminished by an eighth. Socially and educationally the upland has furnished an interesting example of decadence. Since 1865 (at least) various parts of Cape Cod have shrunk greatly in population, agriculture and manufactures, and even in fishing interests; this reconstruction of industrial and social interests being, apparently, simply part of the general urban movement—a movement toward better opportunities. What prosperity or stability remains in various Cape Cod communities is largely due to foreign immigrants—especially British-Americans and Portuguese from the Azores; although the population remains, to a degree exceptional in northern states, of native stock.

Taking quinquennial periods from 1856-1905 the birth-rates were 29.5, 25.3, 26.0, 27.6, 24.2, 25.0, 25.8, 27.6, 27.0 and 24.2 per 1,000; and the death-rates 17.7, 20.7, 18.2, 20.8, 18.8, 19.8, 19.4, 19.8, 18.0 and 16.4.10Pneumonia and consumption, approximately of equal fatality (15 to 18 per 10,000 each), exceed more than twofold the diseases of next lower fatality, cancer and cholera infantum.

Of males (1,097,581) engaged in 1900 in gainful occupations 47.1% were engaged in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits (77.9 in every 100 in 1870 and 73 in 1900), 27.1 in trade and transportation, 14.2 in domestic and personal service, 7.4 in agricultural pursuits and 4.2 in professional service. The corresponding percentages for females (1,169,467) were 46.4 in manufacturing (in 1890, 52%), 32.3 in domestic and personal service, 13.6 in trade and transportation, 7.1 in professional service and 0.6 in agriculture. Formerly farmers’ daughters of native stock were much employed in factories; but since operatives of foreign birth or parentage have in great part taken their places, they have sought other occupations, largely in the manufacture of small wares in the cities, and particularly in departments of trade where skilled labour is essential. Household service is seldom now done, as it formerly was, by women of native stock. The federal census of 1900 showed that of every 100 persons employed for gain only 37.5% were of native descent (that is, had a native-born father). Natives heavily predominated in agriculture and the professions, slightly in trade, and held barely more than half of all governmental positions; but in transportation, personal service, manufactures, labour and domestic service, the predominance of the foreign element warranted the assertion of the state Bureau of Statistics of Labour that “the strong industrial condition of Massachusetts has been secured and is held not by the labour of what is called the ‘native stock,’ but by that of the immigrants.” After the original and exclusively English immigration from 1620 to 1640 there was nothing like regular foreign immigration until the 19th century; and it was a favourite assertion of Dr Palfrey that the blood of the fishing folk on Cape Cod was more purely English through two centuries than that of the inhabitants of any English county.

With foreign immigration the strength of the Roman Catholic Church has greatly increased: in 1906 of every 1000 of estimated population 355 were members of the Roman Catholic Church (a proportion exceeded only in New Mexico and in Rhode Island; 310 was the number per 1000 in Louisiana), and only 148 were communicants of Protestant bodies; in 1906 there were 1,080,706 Roman Catholics (out of a total of 1,562,621 communicants of all denominations), 119,196 Congregationalists, 80,894 Baptists, 65,498 Methodists and 51,636 Protestant Episcopalians.

Reference has been made to “abandoned farms” in Massachusetts. The desertion of farms was an inevitable result of the opening of the great cereal regions of the west, but it is by no means characteristic of Massachusetts alone. The Berkshire district affords an excellent example of the interrelations of topography, soil and population. Many hill towns once thriving have long since become abandoned, desolate and comparatively inaccessible; though with the development of the summer resident’s interests many will probably eventually regain prosperity. Almost half of the highland towns reached their maximum population before the opening of the 19th century, although Berkshire was scarcely settled till after 1760, and three-fourths of them before 1850. On the other hand three-fourths of the lowland towns reached their maximum since that date, and half of them since 1880. The lowland population increased six and a half times in the century, the upland diminished by an eighth. Socially and educationally the upland has furnished an interesting example of decadence. Since 1865 (at least) various parts of Cape Cod have shrunk greatly in population, agriculture and manufactures, and even in fishing interests; this reconstruction of industrial and social interests being, apparently, simply part of the general urban movement—a movement toward better opportunities. What prosperity or stability remains in various Cape Cod communities is largely due to foreign immigrants—especially British-Americans and Portuguese from the Azores; although the population remains, to a degree exceptional in northern states, of native stock.

Government.—Representative government goes back to 1634, and the bicameral legislature to 1644. The constitution of 1780, which still endures (the only remaining state constitution of the 18th century), was framed in the main by Samuel Adams, and as an embodiment of colonial experience and revolutionary principles, and as a model of constitution-making in the early years of independence, is of very great historical interest. It has been amended with considerable freedom (37 amendments up to 1907), but with more conservatism than has often prevailed in the constitutional reform of other states; so that the constitution of Massachusetts is not so completely in harmony with modern democratic sentiment as are the public opinion and statute law of the state. The commonwealth, for example, is still denominated “sovereign,” and education is not declared a constitutional duty of the commonwealth. One unique feature is the duty of the supreme court to give legal advice, on request, to the governor and council. Another almost equally exceptional feature is the persistence of the colonial executive council, consisting of members chosen to represent divisions of the state, who assist the governor in his executive functions. Massachusetts is also one of the few states in which the legislature meets in annual session.11Townships were represented as such in this body (called the General Court) until 1856. Religious qualifications for suffrage and office-holding were somewhat relaxed, except in the case ofRoman Catholics, after 1691.12Real toleration in public opinion grew slowly through the 18th century, removing the religious tests of voters; and a constitutional amendment in 1821 explicitly forbade such tests in the case of office-holders. Property qualifications for the suffrage and for office-holding—universal through colonial times—were abolished in the main in 1780. From 1821 to 1891 the payment of at least a poll-tax was a condition precedent to the exercise of the suffrage. An educational test (dating from 1857) is exacted for the privilege of voting, every voter being required to be able to read the constitution of the commonwealth in the English language, and to write his name. The property qualification of the governor was not abolished until 1892. In the presidential election of 1896, when an unprecedentedly large vote was cast, the number of voters registered was nearly 20% of the population, and of these nearly 82% actually voted. Massachusetts is one of the only two states in the Union in which elections for state officers are held annually. In 1888 an act was passed providing for the use in state elections of a blanket ballot, on which the names of all candidates for each office are arranged alphabetically under the heading of that office, and there is no arrangement in party columns. This was the first state law of the kind in the country. The same method of voting has been adopted in about two-thirds of the townships of the state. A limited suffrage was conferred upon women in 1879. Every female citizen having the qualifications of a male voter may vote in the city and town elections for members of the school committee.

A householder with a family may, by recording the proper declaration in a registry of deeds, hold exempt from attachment, levy on execution, and sale for the payment of debts thereafter contracted an estate of homestead, not exceeding $800 in value, in a farm or lot with buildings thereon which he lawfully possesses by lease or otherwise and occupies as his residence. The exemption does not extend, however, to the prohibition of sale for taxes, and in case the householder’s buildings are on land which he has leased those buildings are not exempt from sale or levy for the ground rent. If the householder has a wife he can mortgage or convey his estate of homestead only with her consent, and if he dies leaving a widow or minor children the homestead exemption survives until the youngest child is twenty-one years of age, or until the death or marriage of the widow, provided the widow or a child continues to occupy it.The scope of state activity has become somewhat remarkable. In addition to the usual state boards of education (1837), agriculture (1852), railroad commissioners (1869), health (1869), statistics of labour, fisheries and game, charity (1879), the dairy bureau (1891), of insanity (1898), prison, highways, insurance and banking commissions, there are also commissions on ballot-law, voting machines, civil service (1884), uniformity of legislation, gas and electric lighting corporations, conciliation and arbitration in labour disputes (1886), &c. There are efficient state boards of registration in pharmacy, dentistry and medicine. Foods and drugs have been inspected since 1882. In general it may be said that the excellence of administrative results is noteworthy. The work of the Bureau of Statistics of Labor, of the Bureau of Health, of the Board of Railroad Commissioners, and of the Board of Conciliation and Arbitration, and the progress of civil service, have been remarkable for value and efficiency. Almost all state employees are under civil service rules; the same is true of the city of Boston; and of the clerical, stenographic, prison, police, civil engineering, fire, labour-foreman, inspection and bridge tender services of all cities; and under a law (1894) by which cities and towns may on petition enlarge the application of their civil service rules. Various other public services, including even common labourers of the larger towns, are rapidly passing under civil service regulation. Veterans of the Civil War have privileges in the administration of the state service. In the settlement of labour disputes conciliatory methods were successful in the formative period, when the parties to disputes adopted customary attitudes of hostility and fought to the end unless they were reconciled by the Board to a final agreement or to an agreement to arbitrate.13In this earlier period (before 1900), thanks to the efforts of the board there was an increase in the frequency of appeal to arbitration, and settlements by compromise were often made. Afterwards the number of arbitrations by the board increased in number: from 1900 to 1908 (inclusive), of 568 controversies submitted to the board, 525 were settled by an award and 43 by an induced agreement. In the same period the mediation of the Board settled disputes affecting 5560 establishments; and in the latter half of this period labour disputes involving hostilities and of the magnitude contemplated by the statute governing the Board of Conciliation and Arbitration had almost disappeared. The laws relating to labour are full, but, as compared with those of other states, present few features calling for comment.14In 1899 eight hours were made to constitute a day’s work for all labourers employed by or for any city or town adopting the act at an annual election. Acts have been passed extending the common-law liability of employers, prohibiting the manufacture and sale of sweat-shop clothing, and authorizing cities and towns to provide free lectures and to maintain public baths, gymnasia and playgrounds. Boston has been a leader in the establishment of municipal baths. The state controls and largely maintains two beaches magnificently equipped near the city. The Massachusetts railroad commission, though preceded in point of time by that of New Hampshire of 1844, was the real beginning of modern state commissions. Its powers do not extend to direct and mandatory regulation, being supervisory and advisory only, but it can make recommendations at its discretion, appealing if necessary to the General Court; and it has had great influence and excellent results. The Torrens system of land registration was adopted in 1898, and a court created for its administration. In the case of all quasi-public corporations rigid laws exist prohibiting the issue of stock or bonds unless the par value is first paid in; prohibiting the declaration of any stock or scrip dividend, and requiring that new stock shall be offered to stockholders at not less than its market value, to be determined by the proper state officials, any shares not so subscribed for to be sold by public auction. These laws are to prevent fictitious capitalization and “stock-watering.” In the twenty years preceding 1880 60% of all sentences for crime were found traceable to liquor. In 1881 a local option law was passed, by which the granting of licences for the sale of liquor was confined to cities and towns voting at the annual election to authorize their issue. In 1888 the number of licences to be granted in municipalities voting in favour of their issue was limited to one for each 1000 inhabitants, except in Boston, where one licence may be issued for every 500 inhabitants. The vote varies from year to year, and it is not unusual for a certain number of municipalities to change from “licence” to “no licence,” and vice versa. The general result has been that centres of population, especially where the foreign element is large, usually vote for licence, while those in which native population predominates, as well as the smaller towns, usually vote for prohibition. Through a growing acquiescence in the operation of the local option law, the relative importance of the vote of the Prohibition Party has diminished. Since 1895 indeterminate sentences have been imposed on all convicts sentenced to the state prison otherwise than for life or as habitual criminals;i.e.maximum and minimum terms are established by law and on the expiration of the latter a revocable permit of liberty may be issued. Execution by electricity has been the death penalty since 1898. Stringent legislation controls prison labour.The extension of state activity presents some surprising features in view of the strength of local self-sufficiency nurtured by the old system of township government. But this form of pure democracy was in various cases long since inevitably abandoned: by Boston reluctantly in 1822, and subsequently by many other townships or cities, as growing population made action in town meeting unbearably cumbersome. In modern times state activity has encroached on the cities. Especially has the commonwealth undertaken certain noteworthy enterprises as the agent of the several municipalities in the immediate vicinity of Boston, constituting what is known as the Metropolitan District; as, for example, in bringing water thither from the Nashua River at Clinton, 40 m. from Boston, and in the development of a magnificent park system of woods, fells, river-banks and seashore, unrivalled elsewhere in the country. The commonwealth joined the city of Boston in the construction of a subway beneath the most congested portion of the city for the passage of electric cars. For the better accommodation of the increasing commerce of the port of Boston, the commonwealth bought a considerable frontage upon the harbour lines and constructed a dock capable of receiving the largest vessels, and has supplemented the work of the United States government in deepening the approaches to the wharves. It has secured as public reservations the summit and sides of Greylock (3535 ft.) in the north-west corner of the state, and of Wachusett (2108 ft.) near the centre. Since 1885 a large expenditure has been incurred in the abolition of gradecrossings of railways and highways,15and in 1894 the commonwealth began the construction and maintenance of state highways.16Since 1885, in Boston, and since 1894, in Fall River, the administration of the city police departments, including the granting of liquor licences, has been in the hands of state commissioners (one commissioner in Boston, a board in Fall River) appointed by the governor. But though in each case the result has been an improved administration, it has been generally conceded that only most exceptional circumstances can justify such interference with local self-government, and later attempts to extend the practice have failed. The referendum has been sparingly used in matters of local concern. Beginning in 1892 various townships and cities, numbering 18 in 1903, adopted municipal ownership and operation of lighting works. The gasworks have been notably more successful than the electric plants.In Massachusetts, as in New England generally, the word “town” is used, officially and colloquially, to designate a township, and during the colonial era the New England town-meeting was a notable school for education in self-government. The members of the first group of settlers in these colonies were mostly small farmers, belonged to the same church, and dwelt in a village for protection from the Indians. They adapted to these conditions some of the methods for managing local affairs with which they had been familiar in England, and called the resultant institution a town. The territorial extent of each town was determined by its grant or grants from the general court, which the towns served as agents in the management of land. A settlement or “plantation” was sometimes incorporated first as a “district” and later as a town, the difference being that the latter had the right of corporate representation in the general court, while the former had no such right. The towns elected (until 1856) the deputies to the general court, and were the administrative units for the assessment and collection of taxes, maintaining churches and schools, organizing and training the militia, preserving the peace, caring for the poor, building and repairing roads and bridges, and recording deeds, births, deaths and marriages; and to discuss questions relating to these matters as well as other matters of peculiarly local concern, to determine the amount of taxes for town purposes, and to elect officers. All the citizens were expected to attend the annual town-meeting, and such male inhabitants as were not citizens were privileged to attend and to propose and discuss measures, although they had no right to vote. Generally several villages have grown up in the same “town,” and some of the more populous “towns,” usually those in which manufacturing has become more important than farming, have been incorporated as “cities”; thus either a town or a city may now include a farming country and various small villages. Although the tendency in Massachusetts is towards chartering as cities “towns” which have a population of 12,000 or more, the democratic institution of the town-meeting persists in many large municipalities which are still technically towns.17Most “towns” hold their annual meeting in March, but some hold them in February and others in April. In the larger “towns” the officers elected at this meeting may consist of five, seven or nine selectmen, a clerk, a treasurer, three or more assessors, three or more overseers of the poor, one or more collectors of taxes, one or more auditors, one or more surveyors of highways, a road commissioner, a sewer commissioner, a board of health, one or more constables, two or more field drivers, two or more fence viewers, and a tree warden; but in the smaller “towns” the number of selectmen may be limited to three, the selectmen may assess the taxes, be overseers of the poor, and act as a board of health, and the treasurer or constable may collect the taxes. The term of all these officers may be limited to one year, or the selectmen, clerk, assessors and overseers of the poor may be elected for a term of three years, in which case a part only of the selectmen, assessors and overseers of the poor are elected each year. The selectmen have the general management of a “town’s” affairs during the interval between town-meetings. They may call special town-meetings; they appoint election officers and may appoint additional constables or public officers, and such minor officials as inspectors of milk, inspectors of buildings, gauger of measures, cullers of staves and hoops, fish warden and forester. A school committee consisting of any number of members divisible by three is chosen, one-third each year, at the annual town-meeting or at a special meeting which is held in the same month. Any “town” having a village or district within its limits that contains 1000 inhabitants or more may authorize that village or district to establish a separate organization for lighting its streets, building and maintaining sidewalks, and employing a watchman or policeman, the officers of such organization to include at least a prudential committee and a clerk. All laws relative to “towns” are applied to “cities” in so far as they are not inconsistent with general or special laws relative to the latter, and the powers of the selectmen are vested in the mayor and aldermen.

The scope of state activity has become somewhat remarkable. In addition to the usual state boards of education (1837), agriculture (1852), railroad commissioners (1869), health (1869), statistics of labour, fisheries and game, charity (1879), the dairy bureau (1891), of insanity (1898), prison, highways, insurance and banking commissions, there are also commissions on ballot-law, voting machines, civil service (1884), uniformity of legislation, gas and electric lighting corporations, conciliation and arbitration in labour disputes (1886), &c. There are efficient state boards of registration in pharmacy, dentistry and medicine. Foods and drugs have been inspected since 1882. In general it may be said that the excellence of administrative results is noteworthy. The work of the Bureau of Statistics of Labor, of the Bureau of Health, of the Board of Railroad Commissioners, and of the Board of Conciliation and Arbitration, and the progress of civil service, have been remarkable for value and efficiency. Almost all state employees are under civil service rules; the same is true of the city of Boston; and of the clerical, stenographic, prison, police, civil engineering, fire, labour-foreman, inspection and bridge tender services of all cities; and under a law (1894) by which cities and towns may on petition enlarge the application of their civil service rules. Various other public services, including even common labourers of the larger towns, are rapidly passing under civil service regulation. Veterans of the Civil War have privileges in the administration of the state service. In the settlement of labour disputes conciliatory methods were successful in the formative period, when the parties to disputes adopted customary attitudes of hostility and fought to the end unless they were reconciled by the Board to a final agreement or to an agreement to arbitrate.13In this earlier period (before 1900), thanks to the efforts of the board there was an increase in the frequency of appeal to arbitration, and settlements by compromise were often made. Afterwards the number of arbitrations by the board increased in number: from 1900 to 1908 (inclusive), of 568 controversies submitted to the board, 525 were settled by an award and 43 by an induced agreement. In the same period the mediation of the Board settled disputes affecting 5560 establishments; and in the latter half of this period labour disputes involving hostilities and of the magnitude contemplated by the statute governing the Board of Conciliation and Arbitration had almost disappeared. The laws relating to labour are full, but, as compared with those of other states, present few features calling for comment.14In 1899 eight hours were made to constitute a day’s work for all labourers employed by or for any city or town adopting the act at an annual election. Acts have been passed extending the common-law liability of employers, prohibiting the manufacture and sale of sweat-shop clothing, and authorizing cities and towns to provide free lectures and to maintain public baths, gymnasia and playgrounds. Boston has been a leader in the establishment of municipal baths. The state controls and largely maintains two beaches magnificently equipped near the city. The Massachusetts railroad commission, though preceded in point of time by that of New Hampshire of 1844, was the real beginning of modern state commissions. Its powers do not extend to direct and mandatory regulation, being supervisory and advisory only, but it can make recommendations at its discretion, appealing if necessary to the General Court; and it has had great influence and excellent results. The Torrens system of land registration was adopted in 1898, and a court created for its administration. In the case of all quasi-public corporations rigid laws exist prohibiting the issue of stock or bonds unless the par value is first paid in; prohibiting the declaration of any stock or scrip dividend, and requiring that new stock shall be offered to stockholders at not less than its market value, to be determined by the proper state officials, any shares not so subscribed for to be sold by public auction. These laws are to prevent fictitious capitalization and “stock-watering.” In the twenty years preceding 1880 60% of all sentences for crime were found traceable to liquor. In 1881 a local option law was passed, by which the granting of licences for the sale of liquor was confined to cities and towns voting at the annual election to authorize their issue. In 1888 the number of licences to be granted in municipalities voting in favour of their issue was limited to one for each 1000 inhabitants, except in Boston, where one licence may be issued for every 500 inhabitants. The vote varies from year to year, and it is not unusual for a certain number of municipalities to change from “licence” to “no licence,” and vice versa. The general result has been that centres of population, especially where the foreign element is large, usually vote for licence, while those in which native population predominates, as well as the smaller towns, usually vote for prohibition. Through a growing acquiescence in the operation of the local option law, the relative importance of the vote of the Prohibition Party has diminished. Since 1895 indeterminate sentences have been imposed on all convicts sentenced to the state prison otherwise than for life or as habitual criminals;i.e.maximum and minimum terms are established by law and on the expiration of the latter a revocable permit of liberty may be issued. Execution by electricity has been the death penalty since 1898. Stringent legislation controls prison labour.

The extension of state activity presents some surprising features in view of the strength of local self-sufficiency nurtured by the old system of township government. But this form of pure democracy was in various cases long since inevitably abandoned: by Boston reluctantly in 1822, and subsequently by many other townships or cities, as growing population made action in town meeting unbearably cumbersome. In modern times state activity has encroached on the cities. Especially has the commonwealth undertaken certain noteworthy enterprises as the agent of the several municipalities in the immediate vicinity of Boston, constituting what is known as the Metropolitan District; as, for example, in bringing water thither from the Nashua River at Clinton, 40 m. from Boston, and in the development of a magnificent park system of woods, fells, river-banks and seashore, unrivalled elsewhere in the country. The commonwealth joined the city of Boston in the construction of a subway beneath the most congested portion of the city for the passage of electric cars. For the better accommodation of the increasing commerce of the port of Boston, the commonwealth bought a considerable frontage upon the harbour lines and constructed a dock capable of receiving the largest vessels, and has supplemented the work of the United States government in deepening the approaches to the wharves. It has secured as public reservations the summit and sides of Greylock (3535 ft.) in the north-west corner of the state, and of Wachusett (2108 ft.) near the centre. Since 1885 a large expenditure has been incurred in the abolition of gradecrossings of railways and highways,15and in 1894 the commonwealth began the construction and maintenance of state highways.16

Since 1885, in Boston, and since 1894, in Fall River, the administration of the city police departments, including the granting of liquor licences, has been in the hands of state commissioners (one commissioner in Boston, a board in Fall River) appointed by the governor. But though in each case the result has been an improved administration, it has been generally conceded that only most exceptional circumstances can justify such interference with local self-government, and later attempts to extend the practice have failed. The referendum has been sparingly used in matters of local concern. Beginning in 1892 various townships and cities, numbering 18 in 1903, adopted municipal ownership and operation of lighting works. The gasworks have been notably more successful than the electric plants.

In Massachusetts, as in New England generally, the word “town” is used, officially and colloquially, to designate a township, and during the colonial era the New England town-meeting was a notable school for education in self-government. The members of the first group of settlers in these colonies were mostly small farmers, belonged to the same church, and dwelt in a village for protection from the Indians. They adapted to these conditions some of the methods for managing local affairs with which they had been familiar in England, and called the resultant institution a town. The territorial extent of each town was determined by its grant or grants from the general court, which the towns served as agents in the management of land. A settlement or “plantation” was sometimes incorporated first as a “district” and later as a town, the difference being that the latter had the right of corporate representation in the general court, while the former had no such right. The towns elected (until 1856) the deputies to the general court, and were the administrative units for the assessment and collection of taxes, maintaining churches and schools, organizing and training the militia, preserving the peace, caring for the poor, building and repairing roads and bridges, and recording deeds, births, deaths and marriages; and to discuss questions relating to these matters as well as other matters of peculiarly local concern, to determine the amount of taxes for town purposes, and to elect officers. All the citizens were expected to attend the annual town-meeting, and such male inhabitants as were not citizens were privileged to attend and to propose and discuss measures, although they had no right to vote. Generally several villages have grown up in the same “town,” and some of the more populous “towns,” usually those in which manufacturing has become more important than farming, have been incorporated as “cities”; thus either a town or a city may now include a farming country and various small villages. Although the tendency in Massachusetts is towards chartering as cities “towns” which have a population of 12,000 or more, the democratic institution of the town-meeting persists in many large municipalities which are still technically towns.17Most “towns” hold their annual meeting in March, but some hold them in February and others in April. In the larger “towns” the officers elected at this meeting may consist of five, seven or nine selectmen, a clerk, a treasurer, three or more assessors, three or more overseers of the poor, one or more collectors of taxes, one or more auditors, one or more surveyors of highways, a road commissioner, a sewer commissioner, a board of health, one or more constables, two or more field drivers, two or more fence viewers, and a tree warden; but in the smaller “towns” the number of selectmen may be limited to three, the selectmen may assess the taxes, be overseers of the poor, and act as a board of health, and the treasurer or constable may collect the taxes. The term of all these officers may be limited to one year, or the selectmen, clerk, assessors and overseers of the poor may be elected for a term of three years, in which case a part only of the selectmen, assessors and overseers of the poor are elected each year. The selectmen have the general management of a “town’s” affairs during the interval between town-meetings. They may call special town-meetings; they appoint election officers and may appoint additional constables or public officers, and such minor officials as inspectors of milk, inspectors of buildings, gauger of measures, cullers of staves and hoops, fish warden and forester. A school committee consisting of any number of members divisible by three is chosen, one-third each year, at the annual town-meeting or at a special meeting which is held in the same month. Any “town” having a village or district within its limits that contains 1000 inhabitants or more may authorize that village or district to establish a separate organization for lighting its streets, building and maintaining sidewalks, and employing a watchman or policeman, the officers of such organization to include at least a prudential committee and a clerk. All laws relative to “towns” are applied to “cities” in so far as they are not inconsistent with general or special laws relative to the latter, and the powers of the selectmen are vested in the mayor and aldermen.

Education.—For cities of above 8000 inhabitants (for which alone comparative statistics are annually available), in 1902-1903 the ratio of average attendance to school enrolment, the average number of days’ attendance of each pupil enrolled, and the value of school property per capita of pupils in average attendance were higher than in any other state; the average length of the school term was slightly exceeded in eight states; and the total cost of the schools per capita of pupils in average attendance ($39.05) was exceeded in six other states. In 1905-1906 the percentage of average attendance in the public schools to the number of children (between 5 and 15 years) in the state was 80; in Barnstable county it was 95, and in Plymouth 92; and the lowest rate of any county was 68, that of Bristol. In the same year the amount of the various school taxes and other contributions was $30.53 for each child in the average membership of the public schools, and the highest amount for each child in any county was $35.77 in Suffolk county, and in any township or city $68.01—in Lincoln. The school system is not one of marked state centralization—as contrasted,e.g.with New York. A state board of education has general control, its secretary acting as superintendent of the state system in conjunction with local superintendents and committees. Women are eligible for these positions, and among the teachers in the schools they are greatly in excess over men (more than 10 to 1), especially in lower grades. No recognition exists in the schools of race, colour or religion. The proportion of the child population that attends schools is equalled in but two or three states east of the Mississippi river. The services of Horace Mann (q.v.) as secretary of the state board (1837-1848) were productive of almost revolutionary benefits not only to Massachusetts but to the entire country. His reforms, which reached every part of the school system, were fortunately introduced just at the beginning of railway and city growth. Since 1850 truant and compulsory attendance laws (the first compulsory education law was passed in 1642) have been enforced in conjunction with laws against child labour. In 1900 the average period of schooling per inhabitant for the United States was 4.3 years, for Massachusetts 7 years. (The same year the ratio of wealth productivity was as 66 to 37.) Massachusetts stands “foremost in the Union in the universality of its provision for secondary education.”18The laws practically offer such education free to every child of the commonwealth. Illiterate persons not less than ten years of age constituted in 1900 5.9% of the population; and 0.8, 14.6, 10.7% respectively of native whites, foreign-born whites and negroes. More patents are issued, relatively, to citizens of Massachusetts than to those of any other state except Connecticut. Post office statistics indicate a similarly high average of intelligence.

The public school system includes common, high and normal schools, and various evening, industrial and truant schools. Many townships and cities maintain free evening schools. In 1894 manual training was made a part of the curriculum in all municipalities having 20,000 inhabitants. There are also many private business colleges, academic schools and college-preparatory schools. The high schools enjoy an exceptional reputation. An unusual proportion of teachers in the public schools are graduates of the state normal schools, of which the first were founded in 1839 at Lexington and Barre, the former being the first normal school of the UnitedStates.19These two schools were removed subsequently to Framingham (1853) and Westfield (1844), where they are still active; while others flourish at Bridgewater (1840), Salem (1854), Worcester (1874), Fitchburg (1895), North Adams (1897), Hyannis (1897) and Lowell (1897), that at Framingham being open to women only. There is also a state normal art school at Boston (1873) for both sexes.The commonwealth contributes to the support of textile schools in cities in which 450,000 spindles are in operation. Such schools exist (1909) in Lowell, Fall River and New Bedford. The commonwealth also maintains aboard a national ship a nautical training school (1891) for instruction in the science and practice of navigation. During the Spanish-American War of 1898 more than half of the graduates and cadets of the school enlisted in the United States service.There are several hundred private schools, whose pupils constituted in 1905-1906 15.7% of the total school-enrolment of the state. Of higher academies and college-preparatory schools there are scores. Among those for boys Phillips Academy, at Andover, the Groton school, and the Mount Hermon school are well-known examples. For girls the largest school is the Northfield Seminary at East Northfield. In Boston and in the towns in its environs are various famous schools, among them the boys’ classical school in Boston, founded in 1635, one of the oldest secondary schools in the country. The leading educational institution of the state, as it is the oldest and most famous of the country, is Harvard University (founded 1636) at Cambridge. In the extreme north-west of the state, at Williamstown, is Williams College (1793), and in the Connecticut Valley is Amherst College (1821), both of these unsectarian. Boston University (Methodist Episcopal, 1867); Tufts College (1852), a few miles from Boston in Medford, originally a Universalist school; Clark University (1889, devoted wholly to graduate instruction until 1902, when Clark College was added), at Worcester, are important institutions. Two Roman Catholic schools are maintained—Boston College (1863) and the College of the Holy Cross (1843), at Worcester. Of various institutions for the education of women, Mount Holyoke (1837) at South Hadley, Smith College (1875) at Northampton, Wellesley College (1875) at Wellesley near Boston, Radcliffe College (1879) in connexion with Harvard at Cambridge and Simmons College (1899) at Boston, are of national repute. The last emphasizes scientific instruction in domestic economy.For agricultural students the state supports a school at Amherst (1867), and Harvard University the Bussey Institution. In technological science special instruction is given—in addition to the scientific departments of the schools already mentioned—in the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (1865), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (opened in 1865). There are schools of theology at Cambridge (Protestant Episcopal), Newton (Baptist) and Waltham (New Church), as well as in connexion with Boston University (Methodist), Tufts College (Universalist) and Harvard (non-sectarian, and the affiliated Congregational Andover Theological Seminary at Cambridge). Law and medical schools are maintained in Boston and Harvard universities.

The commonwealth contributes to the support of textile schools in cities in which 450,000 spindles are in operation. Such schools exist (1909) in Lowell, Fall River and New Bedford. The commonwealth also maintains aboard a national ship a nautical training school (1891) for instruction in the science and practice of navigation. During the Spanish-American War of 1898 more than half of the graduates and cadets of the school enlisted in the United States service.

There are several hundred private schools, whose pupils constituted in 1905-1906 15.7% of the total school-enrolment of the state. Of higher academies and college-preparatory schools there are scores. Among those for boys Phillips Academy, at Andover, the Groton school, and the Mount Hermon school are well-known examples. For girls the largest school is the Northfield Seminary at East Northfield. In Boston and in the towns in its environs are various famous schools, among them the boys’ classical school in Boston, founded in 1635, one of the oldest secondary schools in the country. The leading educational institution of the state, as it is the oldest and most famous of the country, is Harvard University (founded 1636) at Cambridge. In the extreme north-west of the state, at Williamstown, is Williams College (1793), and in the Connecticut Valley is Amherst College (1821), both of these unsectarian. Boston University (Methodist Episcopal, 1867); Tufts College (1852), a few miles from Boston in Medford, originally a Universalist school; Clark University (1889, devoted wholly to graduate instruction until 1902, when Clark College was added), at Worcester, are important institutions. Two Roman Catholic schools are maintained—Boston College (1863) and the College of the Holy Cross (1843), at Worcester. Of various institutions for the education of women, Mount Holyoke (1837) at South Hadley, Smith College (1875) at Northampton, Wellesley College (1875) at Wellesley near Boston, Radcliffe College (1879) in connexion with Harvard at Cambridge and Simmons College (1899) at Boston, are of national repute. The last emphasizes scientific instruction in domestic economy.

For agricultural students the state supports a school at Amherst (1867), and Harvard University the Bussey Institution. In technological science special instruction is given—in addition to the scientific departments of the schools already mentioned—in the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (1865), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (opened in 1865). There are schools of theology at Cambridge (Protestant Episcopal), Newton (Baptist) and Waltham (New Church), as well as in connexion with Boston University (Methodist), Tufts College (Universalist) and Harvard (non-sectarian, and the affiliated Congregational Andover Theological Seminary at Cambridge). Law and medical schools are maintained in Boston and Harvard universities.

Public Institutions.—Massachusetts was in 1903, in proportion to the population, more richly provided with public collections of books than any other state: in that year she had nearly a seventh of all books in public, society and school libraries in the country, and a much larger supply of books per capita (2.56) than any other state. The rate for New York, the only state having a larger number of books in such libraries, being only 1.19. The Boston public library, exceeded in size in the United States by the library of Congress at Washington—and probably first, because of the large number of duplicates in the library of Congress—and the largest free municipal library in the world; the library of Harvard, extremely well chosen and valuable for research; the collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society (1791); the Boston Athenaeum (1807); the State Library (1826); the New England Historic Genealogical Society (1845); the Congregational Library; the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1780); and the Boston Society of Natural History (1830), all in Boston, leave it easily unrivalled, unless by Washington, as the best research centre of the country. The collections of the American Antiquarian Society (1812) at Worcester are also notable. Massachusetts led, about 1850, in the founding of town and city libraries supported by public taxes, and by 1880 had established more of such institutions than existed in all other states combined. In 1900 out of 353 towns and cities only five, representing less than half of 1%, were without free library facilities, and three of these five had association libraries charging only a small fee.

The state is very well supplied with charitable and reformatory institutions, in which noteworthy methods have been employed with success. The state institutions, each governed by a board of trustees, and all under the supervision of the state board of charity, include a state hospital at Tewksbury, for paupers (1866); a state farm at Bridgewater (1887) for paupers and petty criminals; the Lyman school for boys at Westboro, a reformatory for male criminals under fifteen years of age sentenced to imprisonment for terms less than life in connexion with which a very successful farm is maintained for the younger boys at Berlin; an industrial school for girls at Lancaster, also a reformatory school—a third reformatory school for boys was planned in 1909; a state sanatorium at Rutland for tuberculous patients (the first public hospital for such in the United States) and a hospital school at Canton for the care and instruction of crippled and deformed children. Three more hospitals for consumptives were planned in 1909. Under the supervision of the state board of insanity, and each under the government of a board of seven trustees (of whom two are women) are state hospitals for the insane at Worcester (1833), Taunton, Northampton, Danvers, Westboro and Medford, a state colony for the insane at Gardner, a state hospital for epileptics at Palmer, a state school for the feeble-minded at Waltham (governed by six trustees), a state school at Wrentham, state “hospital cottages for children” (1882) at Baldwinville (governed by five trustees), and the Foxboro state hospital for dipsomaniacs and insane. There are also semi-state institutions for the insane at Waverley, Barre, Wrentham and Baldwinville, and nineteen small private institutions, all under the supervision of the state board of insanity. Under the supervision of a board of prison commissioners, which appoints the superintendent and warden of each, are a reformatory prison for women at Sherborn (1877), a state reformatory for men at Concord (1884), a state prison at Boston (Charlestown), and a prison camp and hospital at Rutland (1905). There is a prison department at the state farm which receives misdemeanants. Other institutions receiving state aid, each governed by trustees appointed by the governor, are the Massachusetts general hospital at Boston, the Massachusetts charitable eye and ear infirmary at Boston, the Massachusetts homoeopathic hospital at Boston, the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts school for the blind at South Boston and the soldiers’ home in Massachusetts at Boston. The Horace Mann school in Boston, a public day school for the deaf, the New England industrial school for deaf mutes at Beverly and the Clarke school for the deaf at Northampton are maintained in part by the state. Finally, many private charitable corporations (about 500 in 1905) report to the state board of charity, and town and city almshouses (205 in 1904) are subject to visitation. The Perkins Institution is memorable for its association with the fame of S. G. Howe (g.v.), whose reforms in charity methods were felt through all the charitable interests of the state. The net yearly cost of support and relief from 1884 to 1904 averaged $2,136,653, exclusive of vagrancy cases (average $31,714). The whole number of paupers, besides vagrants, in 1908 was 23.02 per 1000 of state population, and the cost of relief ($5,104,255) was $1.699 for each inhabitant of the state. The number of sane paupers declined steadily and markedly from 1863 to 1904.

Finance.—Massachusetts is a very rich state, and Boston a very wealthy city. The debt of the state (especially the contingent debt, secured by sinking funds) has been steadily rising since 1888, and especially since 1896, chiefly owing to the erection of important public buildings, the construction of state highways and metropolitan park roadways, the improvement of Boston harbour, the abolition of grade crossings on railways, and the expenses incurred for the Spanish-American War of 1898.

The net direct funded debt (also secured by accumulating sinking funds) in December 1908 was $17,669,372 (3.61 millions in 1893). The average interest on this and the contingent debt ($60,428,223 in December 1908) combined was only 3.35%. The net debts of towns and cities rose in the years 1885-1908 from $63,306,213 to $163,558,325. The county debts in 1908 aggregated $6,076,867. The assessed valuation of realty in the state in 1908 was $2,799,062,707 and of personalty $1,775,073,438. No other state has given so vigorous a test of the ordinary American general-property tax, and the results have been as discouraging as elsewhere. The “dooming” process (i.e.estimation by assessors, without relief for overvaluation except for excess more than 50% above the proper valuation) was introduced in 1868 as a method of securing returns of personalty. But the most rigorous application of the doomage law has only proved its complete futility as an effort to reach unascertained corporate and personal property.20Various specialmethods are used for the taxation of banks, insurance companies, railways, tramways, trust companies and corporations, some of them noteworthy. In the case of corporations realty and machinery are taxed generally by the local authorities, and stock values by the commonwealth. The Boston stock exchange is the second of the country in the extent of the securities in which it deals. The proportion of holders of U.S. bonds among the total population is higher than that in any other state.

History.—It is possible that the coasts of Massachusetts were visited by the Northmen, and by the earliest navigators who followed Cabot, but this is only conjecture. In 1602 Bartholomew Gosnold landed at and named Cape Cod and coasted as far south as the present No-Man’s Land, which he named Martin’s or Martha’s Vineyard, a name later transferred to a neighbouring larger island. Pring and Champlain at a later date coasted along what is now Massachusetts, but the map of Champlain is hardly recognizable. The first sufficient explorations for cartographical record were made by John Smith in 1614, and his map was long the basis—particularly in its nomenclature—of later maps. Permanency of occupation, however, dates from the voyage of the “Mayflower,” which brought about a hundred men, women and children who had mostly belonged to an English sect of Separatists, originating in Yorkshire, but who had passed a period of exile for religion’s sake in Holland. In the early winter of 1620 they made the coast of Cape Cod; they had intended to make their landing farther south, within the jurisdiction of the Virginia Company, which had granted them a patent; but stress of weather prevented their doing so. Finding themselves without warrant in a region beyond their patent, and threatened with the desertion of disaffected members of their company (probably all servants or men of the “lesser” sort) unless concessions were made to these, they drew up and signed before landing a democratic compact of government which is accounted the earliest written constitution in history.21After some exploration of the coast they made a permanent landing on the 21st of December 1620 (N.S.) at Plymouth, a harbour which had already been so named by John Smith in his maps of 1614 and 1616. During the first winter nearly one-half their number died from exposure, and the relations of the survivors with their partners of the London Company, who had insisted that for seven years the plantation should be managed as a joint stock company, were unsatisfactory. However, about thirty-five new colonists arrived in 1622 and ninety-six more in 1623. The abandonment of the communal system was begun in the latter year, and with the dissolution of the partnership with the adventurers of the London Company in 1627 Plymouth became a corporate colony with its chief authority vested in the whole body of freemen convened in the General Court. Upon the death of the first governor, John Carver, in the spring of 1621, the General Court chose William Bradford as his successor, and with him was chosen one assistant. The subsequent elections were annual, and within a few years the number of assistants was increased to seven. The General Court was the legislature and the electorate; the governor and assistants were the executive and the judiciary. The whole body of freemen composed the General Court until other towns than Plymouth had been organized, the first of which were Scituate in 1636 and Duxbury in 1637, and then the representative form of government was adopted and there was a gradual differentiation between Plymouth the town and Plymouth the colony. When it had become known that the colony was within the territory of the New England Council, John Pierce, in 1621, procured from that body a grant which made the colonists its tenants. A year later Pierce surrendered this and procured another, which in effect made him proprietor of the colony, but he was twice shipwrecked and was forced to assign to the adventurers his second patent. In 1629 Governor Bradford procured from the same council a definite grant of the tract which corresponds to the south-eastern portion of the present state. But all attempts to procure a royal charter for Plymouth Colony were unsuccessful, and in 1691 it was annexed to the Colony of Massachusetts Bay under what is termed the Provincial Charter.

King James having by patent in 1620 created a Council for New England to whom he made a large grant of territory, the council in 1628 made a sub-grant, confirmed by a royal charter that passed the seals on the 4th of March 1629, to the “Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in Newe England.” There had been various minor expeditions during the few years since Smith was on the coast before this company, in the Puritan interests, had sent over John Endecott with a party in 1628 to what is now Salem. In 1630 the government of the company, with questionable right (for the charter seems evidently to have contemplated the residence of the company in England), transferred itself to their territory, and under the leadership of John Winthrop laid the foundations anew of the Massachusetts colony, when they first settled Boston in the autumn of that year. Winthrop served repeatedly, though not continuously, as governor of the colony till his death in 1649, his rejection in 1636 being due to a party of theological revolt which chose Henry Vane (afterwards Sir Henry) to the office. This was an incident in a famous episode, important rather as a symptom than in itself, namely, the Antinomian controversy, “New England’s earliest protest against formulas,” in which Vane and Ann Hutchinson took the lead in criticizing the official orthodoxy of the colony.

The magistrates successfully asserted themselves to the discomfiture of their critics (Ann Hutchinson being banished), and this was characteristic of the colony’s early history. The charter gave the company control over the admission of “freemen” (co-partners in the enterprise, and voters), “full and absolute power and authority to correct, punish and rule” subjects settling in the territory comprised in their grant, and power to “resist ... by all fitting ways and means whatever” all persons attempting the “destruction, invasion, detriment or annoyance” of the plantation. Some writers deny the company’s right under this instrument to rule as they proceeded to do; but at any rate what they did was to make the suffrage dependent on stringent religious tests, and to repress with determined zeal all theological “vagaries” and “whimsies.” Criticism of church or magistrates was not tolerated. Laws were modelled closely on the Bible. The clergy were a ruling class. The government was frankly theocratic. Said Winthrop (1637): “We see not that any should have authority to set up any other exercises besides what authority hath already set up”; and a synod at Cambridge in 1637 catalogued eighty-two “opinions, some blasphemous, others erroneous and all unsafe,” besides nine “unwholesome expressions,” all of which were consigned “to the devil of hell from whence they came.” Another synod at Cambridge in 1647 more formally established the principle of state control. The legislation against Baptists (about 1644-1678) and the persecution of the Quakers (especially 1656-1662) partook of the brutality of the time, including scourging, boring of tongues, cutting of ears and in rare cases capital punishment. It cannot be denied that men like Roger Williams and some of the persecuted Quakers, though undeniably contentious and aggressive in their conscientious dissent, showed a spirit which to-day seems sweeter in tolerance and humanity than that of the Puritans. And it seems necessary to emphasize these facts because until about 1870 it was almost unchallenged tradition to regard the men of Massachusetts Bay as seekers and champions of “religious liberty.” They left England, indeed, for liberty to discard the “poperies” of the English Church, and once in Massachusetts they even discarded far more than those“poperies.” But religious liberty in our modern sense they did not seek for themselves, nor accord to others; they abhorred it, they trampled on it, and their own lives they subjected to all the rigid restrictions to which they subjected others. They were narrow but strong; no better example can be imagined of what the French call “the defects of one’s qualities.” Their failures were small compared with those of their contemporaries in England and elsewhere in Europe, and public opinion did not long sustain violent persecution of opinion. More than once mobs freed Quaker prisoners. Also it is to be said that with the single exception of religious toleration the record of the state in devotion to human rights has been from the first a splendid one, whether in human principles of criminal law, or in the defence of the civil rights commonly declared in American constitutions. It was once generally assumed that the repression practised attained its end of securing harmony of opinion. The fact seems to be that intellectual speculation was as strong in America as in Puritan England; the assumption that the inhibition of its expression was good seems wholly gratuitous, and contrary to general convictions underlying modern freedom of speech. A safer opinion is probably that “the spiritual growth of Massachusetts withered under the shadow of dominant orthodoxy; the colony was only saved from mental atrophy by its vigorous political life” (J. A. Doyle). In literature the second half of the 17th century is a sterile waste of forbidding theology; and its life, judged by the present day, singularly sombre.

In addition to the few persons banished to Rhode Island, theological and political differences led many to emigrate thither. Others, discontented with Massachusetts autocracy and wishing, too, “to secure more room,” went to Connecticut (q.v.) where they established a bulwark against the Dutch of New York.

A witchcraft scare (at its worst in 1691-1697, though the earliest Connecticut case was in 1646-1647 and the earliest in Boston in 1648) led to another tragedy of ignorance. In all thirty-two persons were executed (according to W. F. Poole, about a thousandth part of those executed for witchcraft in the British Isles in the 16th and 17th centuries). Salem was the scene of the greatest excitement in 1691-1692.

Exceptionally honourable to the early colonists was their devotion to education (seeHarvard UniversityandBoston). Massachusetts Bay had a large learned element; it is supposed that about 1640 there was an Oxford or Cambridge graduate to every 250 persons in the colony. The earliest printing in the British-American colonies was done at Cambridge in 1639; it was not until 1674 that the authorities of the colony permitted printing, except at Cambridge. Boston and Cambridge remain leading publishing centres to-day. The first regular newspaper of Boston, theBoston Newsletter, was the pioneer of the American newspaper press.

The early history was rendered unquiet at times by wars with the Indians, the chief of which were the Pequot War in 1637, and King Philip’s War in 1675-76; and for better combining against these enemies, Massachusetts, with Connecticut, New Haven and New Plymouth, formed a confederacy in 1643, considered the prototype of the larger union of the colonies which conducted the War of American Independence (1775-83). The struggle with the Crown, which ended in independence, began at the foundation of the colony, with assumptions of power under the charter which the colonial government was always trying to maintain, and the crown was as assiduously endeavouring to counteract. After more than half a century of struggle, the crown finally annulled the charter of the colony in 1684, though not until 1686 was the old government actually supplanted on the arrival of Joseph Dudley, a native of the colony, as president of a provisional council; later, Sir Edmund Andros was sent over with a commission to unite New York and New England under his rule. The colonists had been for many years almost independent; they made their own laws, the Crown appointed natives as officials, and the colonial interpretation of the old charter had in general been allowed to stand. Massachusetts had excluded the English Book of Common Prayer, she had restricted the franchise, laid the death penalty on religious opinions, and passed various other laws repugnant to the Crown, notably to Charles II. and James II.; she had caused laws and writs to run in her own name, she had neglected to exact the oath of allegiance to the sovereign, though carefully exacting an oath of fidelity to her own government, she had protected the regicides, she had coined money with her own seal, she had blocked legal appeals to the English courts, she had not compelled the observance of the navigation acts. The revocation of the charter aroused the strongest fears of the colonists Andros speedily met determined opposition by measures undertaken relative to taxation and land titles, by efforts to secure a church for Episcopal service, and an attempt to curb the town meetings. His government was supported by a small party (largely an Anglican Church party), but was intensely unpopular with the bulk of the people; and—it is a disputed question, whether before or after news arrived of the landing in England of William of Orange—in April 1689 the citizens of Boston rose in revolution, deposed Andros, imprisoned him and re-established their old colonial form of government. Then came a struggle, carried on in England by Increase Mather as agent (1688-1692) of the colony, to secure such a form of government under a new charter as would preserve as many as possible of their old liberties. Plymouth Colony, acting through its agent in London, endeavoured to secure a separate existence by royal charter, but accepted finally union with Massachusetts when association with New York became the probable alternative. The province of Maine was also united in the new provincial charter of 1691, and Sir William Phips came over with it, commissioned as the first royal governor. As has been mentioned already, the new charter softened religious tests for office and the suffrage, and accorded “liberty of conscience” except to Roman Catholics. The old religious exclusiveness had already been greatly lessened: the clergy were less powerful, heresy had thrived under repression, Anglican churchmen had come to the colony and were borne with perforce, devotion to trade and commerce had weakened theological tests in favour of ideals of mere good order and prosperity, and a spirit of toleration had grown.

Throughout the continuance of the government under the provincial charter, there was a constant struggle between a prerogative party, headed by the royal governor, and a popular party who cherished recollections of their practical independence under the colonial charter, and who were nursing the sentiments which finally took the form of resistance in 1775. The inter-charter period, 1686-1691, is of great importance in this connexion. The popular majority kept up the feeling of hostility to the royal authority in recurrent combats in the legislative assembly over the salary to be voted to the governor; though these antagonisms were from time to time forgotten in the wars with the French and Indians. During the earl of Bellomont’s administration, New York was again united with Massachusetts under the same executive (1697-1701). The scenes of the recurrent wars were mostly distant from Massachusetts proper, either in Maine or on Canadian or Acadian territory, although some savage inroads of the Indians were now and then made on the exposed frontier towns, as, for instance, upon Deerfield in 1704 and upon Haverhill in 1708. Phips, who had succeeded in an attack on Port Royal, had ignominiously failed when he led the Massachusetts fleet against Quebec in 1690; and the later expedition of 1711 was no less a failure. The most noteworthy administration was that of William Shirley (1741-1749 and 1753-1756), who at one time was the commanding officer of the British forces in North America. He made a brilliant success of the expedition against Louisburg in 1745, William Pepperell, a Maine officer, being in immediate command. Shirley with Massachusetts troops also took part in the Oswego expedition of 1755; and Massachusetts proposed, and lent the chief assistance in the expedition of Nova Scotia in 1755 which ended in the removal of the Acadians. Her officers and troops also played an important part in the Crown Point and second Louisburg expedition (1758).

The first decided protests against the exercise of sovereign power by the crown, the first general moral and political revolt that marked the approach of the American War of Independence, took place in Massachusetts; so that the most striking events in the general history of the colonies as a whole from 1760 to 1775 are an intimate part of her annals. The beginning of the active opposition to the crown may be placed in the resistance, led by James Otis, to the issuing of writs (after 1752, Otis’s famous argument against them being made in 1760-1761) to compel citizens to assist the revenue officers; followed later by the outburst of feeling at the imposition of the Stamp Act (1765), when Massachusetts took the lead in confronting the royal power. The governors put in office at this time by the crown were not of conciliatory temperaments, and the measures instituted in parliament (seeUnited States) served to increase bitterness of feeling. Royal troops sent to Boston (several regiments, 1768) irritated the populace, who were highly excited at the time, until in an outbreak on the 5th of March 1770 a file of garrison troops shot down in self-defence a few citizens in a crowd which assailed them. This is known as the “Boston Massacre.” The merchants combined to prevent the importation of goods which by law would yield the crown a revenue; and the patriots—as the anti-prerogative party called themselves—under the lead of Samuel Adams, instituted regular communication between the different towns, and afterwards, following the initiative of Virginia, with the other colonies, through “committees of correspondence”; a method of the utmost advantage thereafter in forcing on the revolution by intensifying and unifying the resistance of the colony, and by inducing the co-operation of other colonies. In 1773 (Dec. 16) a party of citizens, disguised as Indians and instigated by popular meetings, boarded some tea-ships in the harbour of Boston, and to prevent the landing of their taxable cargoes threw them into the sea; this incident is known in history as the “Boston tea-party.” Parliament in retaliation closed the port of Boston (1774), a proceeding which only aroused more bitter feeling in the country towns and enlisted the sympathy of the other colonies. The governorship was now given to General Thomas Gage, who commanded the troops which had been sent to Boston. Everything foreboded an outbreak. Most of the families of the highest social position were averse to extreme measures; a large number were not won over and became expatriated loyalists. The popular agitators, headed by Samuel Adams—with whom John Hancock, an opulent merchant and one of the few of the richer people who deserted the crown, leagued himself—forced on the movement, which became war in April 1775, when Gage sent an expedition to Concord and Lexington to destroy military stores accumulated by the patriots and to capture Adams and Hancock, temporarily staying at Lexington. This detachment, commanded by Lord Percy, was assaulted, and returned with heavy loss. The country towns now poured their militia into Cambridge, opposite Boston; troops came from neighbouring colonies, and Artemas Ward, a Massachusetts general, was placed in command of the irregular force, which with superior numbers at once shut the royal army up in Boston. An attempt of the provincials to seize and hold a commanding hill in Charlestown brought on the battle of Bunker Hill (June 17, 1775), in which the provincials were driven from the ground, although they lost much less heavily than the royal troops. Washington, chosen by the Continental Congress to command the army, arrived in Cambridge in July 1775, and stretching his lines around Boston, forced its evacuation in March 1776. The state was not again the scene of any conflict during the war. Generals Henry Knox and Benjamin Lincoln were the most distinguished officers contributed by the state to the revolutionary army. Out of an assessment at one time upon the states of $5,000,000 for the expenses of the war, Massachusetts was charged with $820,000, the next highest being $800,000 for Virginia. Of the 231,791 troops sent by all the colonies into the field, reckoning by annual terms, Massachusetts sent 67,907, the next highest being 31,939 from Connecticut, Virginia furnishing only 26,678; and her proportion of sailors was very much greater still. In every campaign in every colony save in 1770-80 her soldiery were in absolute, and still more in relative, number greater than those of any other colony.

After the outbreak of the war a somewhat indefinite, heterogeneous provisional government was in power till a constitution was adopted in 1780, when John Hancock became the first governor. Governor James Bowdoin in 1786-1787 put down with clemency an almost bloodless insurrection in the western counties (there was strong disaffection, however, as far east as Middlesex), known as the Shays Rebellion, significant of the rife ideas of popular power, the economic distress, and the unsettled political conditions of the years of the Confederation. Daniel Shays (1747-1825), the leader, was a brave Revolutionary captain of no special personal importance. The state debt was large, taxation was heavy, and industry was unsettled; worthless paper money was in circulation, yet some men demanded more; debtors were made desperate by prosecution; the state government seemed weak, the Federal government contemptibly so; the local courts would not, or from intimidation feared to, punish the turbulent, and demagogues encouraged ideas of popular power. A convention of delegates representing the malcontents of numerous towns in Worcester county met at Worcester on the 15th of August 1786 to consider grievances, and a week later a similar convention assembled at Hatfield, Hampshire county. Encouraged by these and other conventions in order to obstruct the collection of debts and taxes, a mob prevented a session of the Court of Common Pleas and General Sessions of the Peace at Northampton on the 29th of August, and in September other mobs prevented the same court from sitting in Worcester, Middlesex and Berkshire counties. About 1000 insurgents under Shays assembled at Springfield on the 26th of September to prevent the sitting there of the Supreme Court, from which they feared indictments. To protect the court and the national arsenal at Springfield, for which the Federal government was powerless to provide a guard, Major-General William Shepard (1737-1817) ordered out the militia, called for volunteers, and supplied them with arms from the arsenal, and the court sat for three days. The Federal government now attempted to enlist recruits, ostensibly to protect the western frontier from the Indians, but actually for the suppression of the insurrection; but the plan failed from lack of funds, and the insurgents continued to interrupt the procedure of the courts. In January 1787, however, Governor Bowdoin raised an army of 4400 men and placed it under the command of Major-General Benjamin Lincoln (1733-1810). While Lincoln was at Worcester Shays planned to capture the arsenal at Springfield, but on the 25th of January Shepard’s men fired upon Shays’s followers, killing four and putting the rest to flight. Lincoln pursued them to Petersham, Worcester county, where on the 4th of February he routed them and took 150 prisoners. Subsequently the insurgents gathered in small bands in Berkshire county; but here, a league having been formed to assist the government, 84 insurgents were captured at West Stockbridge, and the insurrection practically terminated in an action at Sheffield on the 27th of February, in which the insurgents lost 2 killed and 30 wounded and the militia 2 killed and 1 wounded. Two of the insurgent leaders, Daniel Shays and Eli Parsons, escaped to Vermont soon after the rout at Petersham. Fourteen other insurgents who were tried by the Supreme Court in the spring of 1787 were found guilty of treason and sentenced to death. They were, however, held rather as hostages for the good behaviour of worse offenders who had escaped, and were pardoned in September. In February 1788 Shays and Parsons petitioned for pardon, and this was granted by the legislature in the following June. The outcome of the uprising was an encouraging test of loyalty to the commonwealth; and the insurrection is regarded as having been very potent in preparing public opinion throughout the country for the adoption of a stronger national government. The Federal Constitution was ratified by Massachusetts by only a small majority on the 6th of February 1788, after itsrejection had been at one time imminent; but Massachusetts became a strong Federalist state. Indeed, the general interest of her history in the quarter-century after the adoption of the Constitution lies mainly in her connexion with the fortunes of that great political party. Her leading politicians were out of sympathy with the conduct of national affairs (in the conduct of foreign relations, the distribution of political patronage, naval policy, the question of public debt) from 1804—when Jefferson’s party showed its complete supremacy—onward; and particularly after the passage of the Embargo Act of 1807, which caused great losses to Massachusetts commerce, and, so far from being accepted by her leaders as a proper diplomatic weapon, seemed to them designed in the interests of the Democratic party. The Federalist preference for England over France was strong in Massachusetts, and her sentiment was against the war with England of 1812-15. New England’s discontent culminated in the Hartford Convention (Dec. 1814), in which Massachusetts men predominated. The state, however, bore her full part in the war, and much of its naval success was due to her sailors.

During the interval till the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, Massachusetts held a distinguished place in national life and politics. As a state she may justly be said to have been foremost in the struggle against slavery.22She opposed the policy that led to the Mexican War in 1846, although a regiment was raised in Massachusetts by the personal exertions of Caleb Cushing. The leaders of the ultra non-political abolitionists (who opposed the formation of the Liberty party) were mainly Massachusetts men, notably W. L. Garrison and Wendell Phillips. The Federalist domination had been succeeded by Whig rule in the state; but after the death of the great Whig, Daniel Webster, in 1852, all parties disintegrated, re-aligning themselves gradually in an aggressive anti-slavery party and the temporizing Democratic party. First, for many years the Free-Soilers gained strength; then in 1855 in an extraordinary party upheaval the Know-Nothings quite broke up Democratic, Free-Soil and Whig organizations; the Free-Soilers however captured the Know-Nothing organization and directed it to their own ends; and by their junction with the anti-slavery Whigs there was formed the Republican party. To this the original Free-Soilers contributed as leaders Charles Sumner and C. F. Adams; the Know-Nothings, Henry Wilson and N. P. Banks; and later, the War Democrats, B. F. Butler—all men of mark in the history of the state. Charles Sumner, the most eminent exponent of the new party, was the state’s senator in Congress (1851-1874). The feelings which grew up, and the movements that were fostered till they rendered the Civil War inevitable, received something of the same impulse from Massachusetts which she had given a century before to the feelings and movements forerunning the War of American Independence. When the war broke out it was her troops who first received hostile fire in Baltimore, and turning their mechanical training to account opened the obstructed railroad to Washington. In the war thus begun she built, equipped and manned many vessels for the Federal navy, and furnished from 1861 to 1865 26,163 (or, including final credits, probably more than 30,000) men for the navy. During the war all but twelve small townships raised troops in excess of every call, the excess throughout the state amounting in all to more than 15,000 men; while the total recruits to the Federal army (including re-enlistments) numbered, according to the adjutant-general of the state, 159,165 men, of which less than 7000 were raised by draft.23The state, as such, and the townships spent $42,605,517.19 in the war; and private contributions of citizens are reckoned in addition at about $9,000,000, exclusive of the aid to families of soldiers, paid then and later by the state.

Since the close of the war Massachusetts has remained generally steadfast in adherence to the principles of the Republican party, and has continued to develop its resources. Navigation, which was formerly the distinctive feature of its business prosperity, has under the pressure of laws and circumstances given place to manufactures, and the development of carrying facilities on the land rather than on the sea.

In the Spanish-American War of 1898 Massachusetts furnished 11,780 soldiers and sailors, though her quota was but 7388; supplementing from her own treasury the pay accorded them by the national government.

No statement of the influence which Massachusetts has exerted upon the American people, through intellectual activity, and even through vagary, is complete without an enumeration of the names which, to Americans at least, are the signs of this influence and activity. In science the state can boast of John Winthrop, the most eminent of colonial scientists; Benjamin Thompson (Count Rumford); Nathaniel Bowditch, the translator of Laplace; Benjamin Peirce and Morse the electrician; not to include an adopted citizen in Louis Agassiz. In history, Winthrop and Bradford laid the foundations of her story in the very beginning; but the best example of the colonial period is Thomas Hutchinson, and in later days Bancroft, Sparks, Palfrey, Prescott, Motley and Parkman. In poetry, a pioneer of the modern spirit in American verse was Richard Henry Dana; and later came Bryant, Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell and Holmes. In philosophy and the science of living, Jonathan Edwards, Franklin, Channing, Emerson and Theodore Parker. In education, Horace Mann; in philanthropy, S. G. Howe. In oratory, James Otis, Fisher Ames, Josiah Quincy, junr., Webster, Choate, Everett, Sumner, Winthrop and Wendell Phillips; and, in addition, in statesmanship, Samuel Adams, John Adams and John Quincy Adams. In fiction, Hawthorne and Mrs Stowe. In law, Story, Parsons and Shaw. In scholarship, Ticknor, William M. Hunt, Horatio Greenough, W. W. Story and Thomas Ball. The “transcendental movement,” which sprang out of German affiliations and produced as one of its results the well-known community of Brook Farm (1841-1847), under the leadership of Dr George Ripley, was a Massachusetts growth, and in passing away it left, instead of traces of an organization, a sentiment and an aspiration for higher thinking which gave Emerson his following. When Massachusetts was called upon to select for Statuary Hall in the capitol at Washington two figures from the long line of her worthies, she chose as her fittest representatives John Winthrop, the type of Puritanism and state-builder, and Samuel Adams (though here the choice was difficult between Samuel Adams and John Adams) as her greatest leader in the heroic period of the War of Independence.

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