Part 18

Boston was the undisputed literary centre of America until the later decades of the 19th century, and still retains a considerable and important colony of writers and artists. Its ascendancy was identical with the long predominance of the New England literary school, who lived in Boston or in the country round about. Two Boston periodicals (one no longer so) that still hold an exceptional position in periodical literature, the _North American Review_ (1815) and the _Atlantic Monthly_ (1857), date from this period. The great majority of names in the long list of worthies of the commonwealth--writers, statesmen, orators, artists, philanthropists, reformers and scholars, are intimately connected with Boston. Among the city's daily newspapers the _Boston Herald_ (1846), the _Boston Globe_, the _Evening Transcript_ (1830), the _Advertiser_ (1813) and the _Post_ (1831) are the most important.

_Industry and Commerce._--Boston is fringed with wharves. Commercial interests are largely concentrated in East Boston. Railway connexion with Worcester, Lowell and Providence was opened in 1835; with Albany, N.Y., and thereby with various lines of interior communication, in 1841 (double track, 1868); with Fitchburg, in 1845; and in 1851 connexion was completed with the Great Lakes and Canada. In 1840 Boston was selected as the American terminus of the Cunard Line, the first regular line of trans-Atlantic steamers. The following decade was the most active of the city's history as regards the ocean carrying trade. Boston ships went to all parts of the globe. The Cunard arrangement was the first of various measures that worked for a commercial rapprochement between the New England states and Canada, culminating in the reciprocity treaty of 1854, and Boston's interests are foremost to-day in demanding a return to relations of reciprocity. Beginning about 1855 the commerce of the port greatly declined. The Cunard service has not been continuous. In 1869 there was not one vessel steaming directly for Europe; in 1900 there were 973 for foreign ports. Great improvements of the harbour were undertaken in 1902 by the United States government, looking to the creation of two broad channels 35 ft. deep. Railway rates have also been a matter of vital importance in recent years; Boston, like New York, complaining of discriminations in favour of Philadelphia, Baltimore, New Orleans and Galveston. Boston also feels the competition of Montreal and Portland; the Canadian roads being untrammelled in the matter of freight differentials. Boston is the second import port of the United States, but its exports in 1907 were less than those of Philadelphia, of Galveston, or of New Orleans. The total tonnage in foreign trade entering and leaving in 1907 was 5,148,429 tons; and in the same year 9616 coasting vessels (tonnage, 10,261,474) arrived in Boston. The value of imports and exports for 1907 were respectively $123,414,168 and $104,610,908. Fibres and vegetable grasses, wool, hides and skins, cotton, sugar, iron and steel and their manufactures, chemicals, coal, and leather and its manufactures are the leading imports; provisions, leather and its manufactures, cotton and its manufactures, breadstuffs, iron and steel and their manufactures are the leading exports. In the exportation of cattle, and of the various meat and dairy products classed as provisions, Boston is easily second to New York. It is the largest wool and the largest fish market of the United States, being in each second in the world to London only.

Manufacturing is to-day the most distinctive industry, as was commerce in colonial times. The value of all manufactured products from establishments under the "factory system" in 1900 was $162,764,523; in 1905 it was $184,351,163. Among the leading and more distinctive items were printing and publishing ($21,023,855 in 1905); sugar and molasses refining ($15,746,547 in 1900; figures not published in 1905 because of the industry being in the hands of a single owner); men's clothing (in 1900, $8,609,475, in 1905, $11,246,004); women's clothing (in 1900, $3,258,483, in 1905, $5,705,470); boots and shoes (in 1900, $3,882,655, in 1905, $5,575,927); boot and shoe cut stock (in 1905, $5,211,445); malt liquors (in 1900, $7,518,668, in 1905, $6,715,215); confectionery (in 1900, $4,455,184, in 1905, $6,210,023); tobacco products (in 1900, $3,504,603, in 1905, $4,592,698); pianos and organs ($3,670,771 in 1905); other musical instruments and materials (in 1905, $231,780); rubber and elastic goods (in 1900, $3,139,783, in 1905, $2,887,323); steam fittings and heating apparatus (in 1900, $2,876,327, in 1905, $3,354,020); bottling, furniture, &c. Art tiles and pottery are manufactured in Chelsea. Shipbuilding and allied industries early became of great importance. The Waltham watch and the Singer sewing-machine had their beginning in Boston in 1850. The making of the Chickering pianos goes back to 1823, and of Mason & Hamlin reed organs to 1854; these are to-day very important and distinctive manufactures of the city. The ready-made clothing industry began about 1830.

_Government._--Beyond a recognition of its existence in 1630, when it was renamed, Boston can show no legal incorporation before 1822; although the uncertain boundaries between the powers of colony and township prompted repeated petitions to the legislature for incorporation, beginning as early as 1650. In 1822 Boston became a city. Thus for nearly two centuries it preserved intact its old "town" government, disposing of all its affairs in the "town-meeting" of its citizens. Excellent political training such a government unquestionably offered; but it became unworkable as disparities of social condition increased, as the number of legal voters (above 7000 in 1822) became greater, and as the population ceased to be homogeneous in blood. All the citizens did not assemble; on the contrary ordinary business seldom drew out more than a hundred voters, and often a mere handful. From very early days executive officers known as "select-men," constables, clerks of markets, hog reeves, packers of meat and fish, &c., were chosen; and the select-men, particularly, gained power as the attendance of the freemen on meetings grew onerous. Interested cliques could control the business of the town-meeting in ordinary times, and boisterousness marred its democractic excellence in exciting times. Large sums were voted loosely, and expended by executive boards without any budgetary control. The whole system was full of looseness, complexity and makeshifts. But the tenacity with which it was clung to, proved that it was suited to the community; and whether helpful or harmful to, it was not inconsistent with, the continuance of growth and prosperity. Various other Massachusetts townships, as they have grown older, have been similarly compelled to abandon their old form of government. The powers of the old township were much more extensive than those of the present city of Boston, including as they did the determination of the residence of strangers, the allotment of land, the grant of citizenship, the fixing of wages and prices, of the conditions of lawsuits and even a voice in matters of peace and war. The city charter was revised in 1854, and again reconstructed in important particulars by laws of 1885 separating the executive and legislative powers, and by subsequent acts. A complete alteration of the government has indeed been effected since 1885. Boston proper is only the centre of a large metropolitan area, closely settled, with interests in large part common. This metropolitan area, within a radius of approximately 10 m. about the state house, contained in 1900 about 40% of the population of the state. In the last two decades of the 19th century the question of giving to this greater city some general government, fully consolidated or of limited powers, was a standing question of expediency. The commonwealth has four times recognized a community of metropolitan interests in creating state commissions since 1882 for the union of such interests, beginning with a metropolitan health district in that year. The metropolitan water district (1895) included in 1908 Boston and seventeen cities or townships in its environs; the metropolitan sewerage district (1889) twenty four; the park service (1893) thirty-nine. Local sentiment was firmly against complete consolidation. The creation of the state commissions, independent of the city's control, but able to commit the city indefinitely by undertaking expensive works and new debt, was resented. Independence is further curtailed by other state boards semi-independent of the city--the police commission of three members from 1885 to 1906, and in 1906 a single police commissioner, appointed by the governor, a licensing board of three members, appointed by the governor; the transit commission, &c. There are, further, county offices (Suffolk county comprises only Boston, Chelsea, Revere and Winthrop), generally independent of the city, though the latter pays practically all the bills.

A new charter went into effect in 1910. It provided for municipal elections in January; for the election of a mayor for four years; for his recall at the end of two years if a majority of the registered voters so vote in the state election in November in the second year of his term; for the summary removal for cause by the mayor of any department head or other of his appointees, for a city council of one chamber of nine members, elected at large each for three years; for nomination by petition; for a permanent finance commission appointed by the governor; for the confirmation of the mayor's appointments by the state civil service commission; for the mayor's preparation of the annual budget (in which items may be reduced but not increased by the council), and for his absolute veto of appropriations except for school use. The school committee (who serve gratuitously) appoint the superintendent and supervisors of schools. The number of members of the school-board was in 1905 reduced from twenty-four to five, elected by the city at large, and serving for one, two or three years; at the same time power was centralized in the hands of the superintendent of schools. Civil service reform principles cover the entire municipal administration. The city's work is done under an eight-hour law.

An analysis of city election returns for the decade 1890-1899 showed that the interest of the citizens was greatest in the choice of a president; then, successively, in the choice of a mayor, a governor, the determination of liquor-license questions by referendum, and the settlement of other referenda. On 21 referenda, 10 being questions of license, the ratio of actual to registered voters ranged on the latter from 57.00 to 75.38% (mean 61.15), and on other referenda from 75.63 to 33.40 (mean 61.39),--the mean for all, 64.18. But the average of two presidential votes was 85.37%; and the maxima, minima and means for mayors and governors were respectively 83.86, 74.99, 78.36 and 84.73, 61.78, 75.72. Of those who might, only some 50 to 65% actually register. Women vote for school committee-men (categories as above, 95.18, 59.62, 76.49%). On a referendum in 1895 on the expediency of granting municipal suffrage to women only 59.08% of the women who were registered voted, and probably less than 10% of those entitled to be registered.

Hospitals, asylums, refuges and homes, pauper, reformatory and penal institutions, flower missions, relief associations, and other charitable or philanthropic organizations, private and public, number several hundreds. The Associated Charities is an incorporated organization for systematizing the various charities of the city. The Massachusetts general hospital (1811-1821)--with a branch for mental and nervous diseases, McLean hospital (1816), in the township of Belmont (post-office, Waverley) about 6 m. W.N.W. of Boston; the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts school for the blind (1832), famous for its conduct by Samuel G. Howe, and for association with Laura Bridgman and Helen Keller; the Massachusetts school for idiotic and feebleminded children (1839); and the Massachusetts charitable eye and ear infirmary (1824), all receive financial aid from the commonwealth, which has representation in their management. The city hospital dates from 1864. A floating hospital for women and children in the summer months, with permanent and transient wards, has been maintained since 1894 (incorporated 1901). Boston was one of the first municipalities of the country to make provision for the separate treatment of juvenile offenders; in 1906 a juvenile court was established. A People's Palace dedicated to the work of the Salvation Army, and containing baths, gymnasium, a public hall, a library, sleeping-rooms, an employment bureau, free medical and legal bureaus, &c., was opened in 1906. Simmons College and Harvard University maintain the Boston school for social workers (1904). Beneficent social work out of the more usual type is directed by the music and bath departments of the city government. In the provision of public gymnasiums and baths (1866) Boston was the pioneer city of the country, and remains the most advanced. The beach reservations of the metropolitan park system at Revere and Nantasket, and several smaller city beaches are a special feature of this service. Benjamin Franklin, who was born and spent his boyhood in Boston, left L1000 to the city in his will; it amounted in 1905 to $403,000, and constituted a fund to be used for the good of the labouring class of the city.

Largely owing to activity in public works Boston has long been the most expensively governed of American cities. The average yearly expenditure for ten years preceding 1904 was $27,354,416, exclusive of payments on funded and floating debts. The running expenses _per-capita_ in 1900 were $35.23; more than twice the average of 86 leading cities of the country (New York, $23.92; Chicago, $11.62). Schools, police, charities, water, streets and parks are the items of heaviest cost. The cost of the public schools for the five years from 1901-1902 to 1906-1907 was $27,883,937, of which $7,057,895.42 was for new buildings; the cost of the police department was $11,387,314.66 for the six years 1902-1907; and of the water department $4,941,343.37 for the six years 1902-1907; of charities and social work a much larger sum. The remaking of the city was enormously expensive, especially the alteration of the streets after 1866, when the city received power to make such alterations and assess a part of the improvements upon abutting estates. The creation of the city water-system has also been excessively costly, and the total cost up to the 31st of January 1908 of the works remaining to the city after the creation of the metropolitan board in 1898 was about $17,000,000. The metropolitan water board--of whose expenditures Boston bears only a share--expended from 1895 to 1900 $20,693,870; and the system was planned to consume finally probably 40 millions at least. The city park system proper had cost $16,627,033 up to 1899 inclusive; and the metropolitan parks $13,679,456 up to 1907 inclusive. There are no municipal lighting-plants; but the companies upon which the city depends for its service are (with all others) subject to the control of a state commission. In 1885 a state law placed a limit on the contractable debt and upon the taxation rate of the city. Revenues were not realized adequate to its lavish undertakings, and loans were used to meet current expenses. The limits were altered subsequently, but the net debt has continued to rise. In 1822 it was $100,000; in 1850, $6,195,144; in 1886, $24,712,820; in 1904, $58,216,725; in 1907, $70,781,969 (gross debt, $104,206,706)--this included the debt of Suffolk county which in 1907 was $3,517,000. The chief objects for which the city debt was created were in 1907, in millions of dollars: highways, 24.07, parks, 16.29, drainage and sewers, 15.05, rapid transit, 13.57 and water-works, 4.53. Boston paid in 1907 36% of all state taxes, and about 33, 62, 47 and 79% respectively of the assessments for the metropolitan sewer, parks, boulevards and water services. About a third of its revenue goes for such uses or for Suffolk county expenditures over which it has but limited control. The improvement of the Back Bay and of the South Boston flats was in considerable measure forced upon the city by the commonwealth. The debt per capita is as high as the cost of current administration relatively to other cities. The average interest rate on the city obligations in 1907 was about 3.7%. The city's tax valuation in 1907 was $1,313,471,556 (in 1822, $42,140,200; in 1850, $180,000,500), of which only $242,606,856 represented personalty; although in the judgment of the city board of trade such property cannot by any possibility be inferior in value to realty.

_Population._--Up to the War of Independence the population was not only American, but it was in its ideas and standards essentially Puritan; modern liberalism, however, has introduced new standards of social life. In 1900 35.1% of the inhabitants were foreign-born, and 72.2% wholly or in part of foreign parentage. Irish, English-Canadian, Russian, Italian, English and German are the leading races. Of the foreign-born population these elements constituted respectively 35.6, 24.0, 7.6, 7.0, 6.7 and 5.3%. Large foreign colonies, like adjoining but unmixing nations, divide among themselves a large part of the city, and give to its life a cosmopolitan colour of varied speech, opinion, habits, traditions, social relations and religions. Most remarkable of all, the Roman Catholic churches, in this stronghold of exiled Puritanism where Catholics were so long under the heavy ban of law, outnumber those of any single Protestant denomination; Irish Catholics dominate the politics of the city, and Protestants and Catholics have been aligned against each other on the question of the control of the public schools. Despite, however, its heavy foreign admixture the old Americanism of the city remains strikingly predominant. The population of Boston at the end of each decennial period since 1790 was as follows:--(1790), 18,320; (1800), 24,937; (1810), 33,787; (1820), 43,298; (1830), 61,392; (1840), 93,383; (1850), 136,881; (1860), 177,840; (1870), 250,526; (1880), 362,839; (1890), 448,477; (1900), 560,892.

_History._--John Smith visited Boston Harbour in 1614, and it was explored in 1621 by a party from Plymouth. There were various attempts to settle about its borders in the following years before John Endecott in 1628 landed at Salem as governor of the colony of Massachusetts bay, within which Boston was included. In June 1630 John Winthrop's company reached Charlestown. At that time a "bookish recluse," William Blaxton (Blackstone), one of the several "old planters" scattered about the bay, had for several years been living on Boston peninsula. The location seemed one suitable for commerce and defence, and the Winthrop party chose it for their settlement. The triple summit of Beacon Hill, of which no trace remains to-day (or possibly a reference to the three hills of the then peninsula, Beacon, Copp's and Fort) led to the adoption of the name Trimountaine for the peninsula,--a name perpetuated variously in present municipal nomenclature as in Tremont; but on the 17th of September 1630, the date adopted for anniversary celebrations, it was ordered that "Trimountaine shall be called Boston," after the borough of that name in Lincolnshire, England, of which several of the leading settlers had formerly been prominent citizens.[4]

For several years it was uncertain whether Cambridge, Charlestown or Boston should be the capital of the colony, but in 1632 the General Court agreed "by general consent, that Boston is the fittest place for public meetings of any place in the Bay." It rapidly became the wealthiest and most populous. Throughout the 17th century its history is so largely that of Massachusetts generally that they are inseparable. Theological systems were largely concerned. The chief features of this epoch --the Antinomian dissensions, the Quaker and Baptist persecutions, the witchcraft delusion (four witches were executed in Boston, in 1648, 1651, 1656, 1688) &c.--are referred to in the article MASSACHUSETTS (q.v.). In 1692 the first permanent and successful printing press was established; in 1704 the first newspaper in America, the _Boston News-Letter_, which was published weekly until 1776. Puritanism steadily mellowed under many influences. By the turn of the first century bigotry was distinctly weakened. Among the marks of the second half of the 17th century was growing material prosperity, and there were those who thought their fellows unduly willing to relax church tests of fellowship when good trade was in question. There was an unpleasant Englishman who declared in 1699 that he found "Money Their God, and Large Possessions the only Heaven they Covet." Prices were low, foreign commerce was already large, business thriving; wealth gave social status; the official British class lent a lustre to society; and Boston "town" was drawing society from the "country." Of the two-score or so of families most prominent in the first century hardly one retained place in the similar list for the early years of the second. Boston was a prosperous, thrifty, English country town, one traveller thought. Another, Daniel Neal, in 1720, found Boston conversation "as polite as in most of the cities and towns in England, many of their merchants having the advantage of a free conversation with travellers; so that a gentleman from London would almost think himself at home at Boston, when he observes the number of people, their houses, their furniture, their tables, their dress and conversation, which perhaps is as splendid and showy as that of the most considerable tradesmen in London."

The population, which was almost stationary through much of the century, was about 20,000 in the years immediately before the War of Independence. At this time Boston was the most flourishing town of North America. It built ships as cheaply as any place in the world, it carried goods for other colonies, it traded--often evading British laws--with Europe, Guinea, Madagascar and above all with the West Indies. The merchant princes and social leaders of the time are painted with elaborate show of luxury in the canvases of Copley. The great English writers of Queen Anne's reign seem to have been but little known in the colony, and the local literature, though changed somewhat in character, showed but scant improvement. About the middle of the century restrictions upon the press began to disappear. At the same time questions of trade, of local politics, finally of colonial autonomy, of imperial policy, had gradually, but already long since, replaced theology in leading interest. In the years 1760-1776 Boston was the most frequently recurring and most important name in British colonial history. Sentiments of limited independence of the British government had been developing since the very beginning of the settlement (see MASSACHUSETTS), and their strength in 1689 had been strikingly exhibited in the local revolution of that year, when the royal governor, Sir Edmund Andros, and other high officials, were frightened into surrender and were imprisoned. This movement, it should be noted, was a popular rising, and not the work of a few leaders.