The Quincy granite district lies around the north-east end of the Blue Hill region, about 11 m. south of Boston. For monumental purposes this granite is classified as “medium,” “dark,” and “extra dark.” Quincy granite takes a very high polish, owing to the absence of mica and to the coarser cleavage of its hornblende and augite. The lightest of the monumental stone quarried at Quincy is called gold-leaf; it is bluish-green gray, speckled with black and light yellow brown. Another variety has small, rather widely separated cherry-red dots.

The Rockport granite is found along or near the seashore, between Rockport and Bay View, and within about three-quarters of a mile of Cape Ann. The granite is of two kinds, known commercially as “grey granite” and “green granite.” Both varieties are hard and take a very high polish.

The Becker granite (known as “Chester dark” and “Chester light”) is a muscovite-biotite granite varying from medium grey to medium bluish grey colour, and fine in texture. It is used principally for monuments.

In 1907 Massachusetts ranked sixth among the states in the value of its trap rock product ($432,604), and eighth in sandstone ($243,328). The value of the marble produced in the same year was $212,438, the state ranking fifth in the value of the total product and fourth in building-marble. Other minerals are emery, limestone and quartz. The state ranked fifth in 1906 in the total value of stone quarried ($4,333,616), and eighth in 1908 ($2,955,195). The output of lime in 1908 was 107,813 tons, valued at $566,022. Second in value to the various stones were the clay products of the state, which were valued in 1906 at $2,172,733 (of which $1,415,864 was the value of common brick) and in 1908 at $1,647,362 (of which $950,921 was the value of common brick). There are many mineral springs in the state, more than half being in Essex and Middlesex counties. The total amount of mineral waters sold in 1908 was valued at $227,907. In that year the total value of the minerals and mining products of the state was $5,925,949. Gold has been found in small quantities in Middlesex, Norfolk and Plymouth counties.

Manufactures.—Though only four states of the Union are smaller, only three exceeded Massachusetts in 1905 in the value of manufactured products (six exceeding it in population); and this despite very scant native resources of raw materials and a very limited home market. Historical priority of development, exceptionally extensive and well utilized water-power, and good transportation facilities are largely responsible for the exceptional rank of Massachusetts as a manufacturing state. Vast water-power is developed on the Merrimac at Lawrence and Lowell, and on the Connecticut at South Hadley, and to a less extent at scores of other cities on many streams and artificial ponds; many of the machines that have revolutionized industrial conditions since the beginning of the factory system have been invented by Massachusetts men; and the state contains various technical schools of great importance. In 1900 the value of manufactures was $1,035,198,989, an increase from 1890 of 16.6%; that from 1880 to 1890 having been 40.7%. In textiles—cottons, worsteds, woollens and carpets—in boots and shoes, in rubber foot-wear, in fine writing paper, and in other minor products, it is the leading state of the country. The textile industries (the making of carpets and rugs, cotton goods, cotton smallwares, dyeing and finishing textiles, felt goods, felt hats, hosiery and knit goods, shoddy, silk and silk goods, woollen goods, and worsted goods), employed 32.5% of all manufacturing wage earners in 1905, and their product ($271,369,816) was 24.1% of the total, and of this nearly one-half ($129,171,449) was in cotton goods, being 28.9% of the total output of the country, as compared with 11% for South Carolina, the nearest competitor of Massachusetts. There is a steadily increasing product of fine grade fabrics. The output of worsted goods in 1905 ($51,973,944) was more than three-tenths that of the entire country, Rhode Island being second with $44,477,596; in Massachusetts the increase in the value of this product was 28.2% between 1900 and 1905. The value of woollen goods in 1905 ($44,653,940) was more than three-tenths of the entire product for the country; and it was 44.6% more than that of 1900. The value of boots and shoes and cut stock in 1905 was $173,612,660, being 23% greater than in 1900; the value of boots and shoes in 1905 ($144,291,426) was 45.1% of the country’s output, that of New York, the second state, being only 10.7%. In this industry, as in the manufacture of cotton goods, Massachusetts has long been without serious rivalry; Brockton, Lynn, Haverhill, Marlboro and Boston, in the order named, being the principal centres. The third industry in 1905 was that of foundry and machine-shop products ($58,508,793), of which Boston and Worcester are the principal centres. Lesser interests, in the order of importance, with the product value of each in 1905, were: rubber goods ($53,133,020), tanned, curried and finished leather ($33,352,999), in the manufacture of which Massachusetts ranked second among the states; paper and wood pulp[5] ($32,012,247), in the production of which the state ranked second among the states of the Union; slaughtering and meat packing ($30,253,838); printing and publishing ($33,900,748, of which $21,020,237 was the value of newspapers and periodicals); clothing ($21,724,056); electrical machinery, apparatus and supplies ($15,882,216); lumber ($12,636,329); iron and steel, steel works and rolling-mills products ($11,947,731; less than in 1900); cordage and twine ($11,173,521), in the manufacture of which Massachusetts was second only to New York; furniture ($11,092,581); malt liquors ($11,080,944); jewelry ($10,073,595), Massachusetts ranking second to Rhode Island; confectionery ($9,317,996), in which Massachusetts was third among the states.

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Many of these industries have a history going back far into colonial times, some even dating from the first half of the 17th century. Textile products were really varied and of considerable importance before 1700. The policy of the British government towards such industries in the colonial period was in general repressive. The non-importation sentiment preceding the War of Independence fostered home manufactures considerably, and the Embargo and Non-Intercourse Acts before the war of 1812, as well as that war itself (despite the subsequent glut of British goods) had a much greater effect; for they mark the introduction of the factory system, which by 1830 was firmly established in the textile industry and was rapidly transforming other industries. Improvements were introduced much more slowly than in England, the cost of cotton machinery as late as 1826 being 50-60% greater in America. The first successful power loom in America was set up at Waltham in 1814. Carding, roving and spinning machines were constructed at Bridgewater in 1786. The first cotton mill had been established in Beverly in 1788, and the first real woollen factory at Byfield in 1794. Woolcard machinery destined to revolutionize the industry was devised by Amos Whittemore (1759-1828) in 1797; spinning jennies were in operation under water-power before 1815. Carpet-weaving was begun at Worcester in 1804. “Not a yard of fancy wool fabric had ever been woven by the power-loom in any country till done by William Crompton at the Middlesex Mills, Lowell, in 1840” (Samuel Lawrence).[6] The introduction of the remarkably complete machinery of the shoe industry was practically complete by 1865, this being the last of the great industries to come under the full dominance of machinery. At Pittsfield and at Dalton is centred the manufacture of fine writing papers, including that of paper used by the national government for bonds and paper money. Four-fifths of all loft-dried paper produced in the country from 1860-1897 was made within 15 m. of Springfield; Holyoke and South Hadley being the greatest producers. Vulcanized rubber is a Massachusetts invention. Most of the imitation jewelry of the United States is produced at Attleboro and North Attleboro, and in Providence, Rhode Island. In 1905 Boston produced 16.4% of all the manufactures of the state, and Lynn, the second city, which had been fifth in 1900, 4.9%. Some industries which have since become dead or of relatively slight magnitude were once of much greater significance, economically or socially: such as the rum-distilling connected with the colonial slave trade, and various interests concerned with shipbuilding and navigation. The packing of pork and beef formerly centred in Boston; but, while the volume of this business has not diminished, it has been greatly exceeded in the west. For many years Massachusetts controlled a vast lumber trade, drawing upon the forests of Maine, but the growth of the west changed the old channels of trade, and Boston carpenters came to make use of western timber. It was between 1840 and 1850 that the cotton manufactures of Massachusetts began to assume large proportions; and about the same time the manufacture of boots and shoes centred there. Medford ships began to be famous shortly after the beginning of the 19th century, and by 1845 that town employed one quarter of all the shipwrights in the state.

Fishing is an important industry. Drift whales were utilized in the earliest years of the colony, and shore boating for the baleen (or “right”) whale—rich in bone and in blubber yielding common oil—was an industry already regulated by various towns before 1650; but the pursuit of the sperm whale did not begin until about 1713. The former industry had died out before the War of Independence; the latter is not yet quite extinct. Nantucket and New Bedford were the centres of the whaling trade, which, for the energy and skill required and the length (three to five years when sailing vessels were employed) of the ever-widening voyages which finally took the fishermen into every quarter of the globe, contributes the most romantic chapters in the history of American commerce. At one time it gave occupation to a thousand ships, but the introduction of petroleum gradually diminished this resource of the lesser ports. The Newfoundland Bank fisheries were of greater economic importance and are still very important. Gloucester is the chief centre of the trade. The value of fishery products in 1895 was $5,703,143, and in 1905 $7,025,249; and 15,694 persons were engaged in the fisheries. Though cod is much the most important fish (in 1905 fresh cod were valued at $991,679, and salted cod at $696,928), haddock (fresh, $1,051,910; salted, $17,194), mackerel (value in 1905, including horse mackerel, $970,876), herring (fresh, $266,699; salted, $114,997), pollock ($267,927), hake ($258,438), halibut ($218,232), and many other varieties are taken in great quantities. The shell fisheries are less important than those of Maine.