Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/645

Rh MASSACHUSETTS 613 average age at death of all conditioiis was 30 18 years. In twenty years the birth-rate to 1000 persons was 26 2, the death-rate 197. Health. A board of health, lunacy, and charity supervises the public hygiene, and the institutions for the insane and paupers. By their reports of 1880 it appears that the prominent causes of death are for the ages from birth to five diarrhoea, diphtheria, pneumonia, scarlet fever, and obscure diseases of the brain and intestines ; from five to ten infectious diseases and obscure diseases of childhood; from ten to fifteen diphtheria, consumption, and typhoid fever ; from fifteen to twenty consumption and typhoid fever ; from thirty upward pneumonia and heart disease, with cancer from forty to sixty. Paralysis and apoplexy gain after forty, and after seventy the greatest portion die of old age. The twelve principal causes of fatality in all ages are placed in this order: consumption, pneumonia, diphtheria, heart disease, old age, cholera infantum, paralysis, cancer, scarlet fever, cephalitis, bronchitis, and apoplexy ; and by these disorders 60 per cent, of all deaths occur. Intermittent fever was known in the earlier his tory of the State, but in this century, before 1877, was practically unknown, except in the form of an occasional epidemic ; but since that date it has made rapid progress in the western parts. Paupers. Other tables of the same board show that in July 1880 19,318 paupers were receiving, wholly or in part, local or State support; and the same was true of about 3000 insane persons. The average number of inmates of these charitable establishments (State, city, and town) in 1880 was 7467 persons. At public and private insane asylums there were 4398 cases within the year. Immigration. The immigrants from Europe during the year ending September 30, 1880, M T ere 33,636 in number, of whom one- third were Irish, and the males in comparison with the females were as 18 to 15. A large part of this influx merely passed through the State to the west. Business and Finance; Commerce and Manufactures. Up to 1830 the commerce of the State found various outlets besides Boston; but since then this city has more and more absorbed the whole foreign trade. The whaling business still remained to other ports, and at one time gave occupation to a thousand ships. The introduction of petroleum gradually diminished this resource of the lesser ports. The packing of pork and beef was formerly centred in Boston ; but, while now a similar business tenfold as large is done, it has been greatly exceeded in the west. For many years Massachusetts con trolled a vast lumber trade, drawing upon the forests of Maine, but the growth of the west has changed the old channels of trade, and Boston carpenters now make large use of western lumber. The American trade with China and India was begun in Salem, and was next controlled in Boston, till this also was lost some years ago to New York. In commercial relations the chief port of Massachusetts attained its highest influence about forty years ago, when it was selected as the American terminus of the first steamship line (Cunard) connecting England with the United States, but Boston lost the commercial prestige, then won, by the failure of the State to develop railway communication with the west, so as to equal the development effected by other cities. 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 here, and has ever since maintained its pro minence, much more than one-half of all boots and shoes manufac tured in the country being the product of this State. Again, ice and granite became important articles of export ; and Quincy granite, from 1849, was sent to various southern ports, having an importance as a building-stone which it has hardly lost now, with the later multiplication of varieties of such stones. Medford ships began to be famed shortly after the beginning of the century, and by 1845 that town employed one quarter of all the shipwrights in the State. From 1840 to 1860 Massachusetts-built ships competed successfully for the carrying trade of the world. Before 1840 500 tons made a large ship, but after the discovery of gold in California the size of ships increased rapidly, and the lines of their models were more and more adapted to speed. The limit of size was reached in an immense clipper of 4555 tons, and the greatest speed attained in a passage from San Francisco to Boston in seventy- five days, and from San Francisco to Cork in ninety-three days. The development of steam navigation for the carrying of large cargoes has driven this fleet from the sea. Hardly 18 per cent, of the exports and imports through Massachusetts is now carried in American bottoms. The grain elevators, which pour corn in bulk into ships at Boston to-day for European markets, are the result of the first attempt at such transportation, made in 1843, when citizens of Massachusetts sent corn to starving Ireland. Coastwise steam lines, supported by Massachusetts capital, had run to Philadelphia and Baltimore for some years before the civil war broke up other less successful ones, which had connected ports f irther south. When the war and steam navigation put an end to the supremacy of Massachusetts wooden ships, much of the capital which had been employed in navigation was turned into developing railroad facilities, and coastwise steam lines. An effort to establish a European steam line failed. In 1872 the great fire in Boston, de stroying $72,000,000 worth of property, made large drains upon the capital of the State, and several years of depression in business followed, to be succeeded by an era of business prosperity still con tinuing. The imports of Boston practically of Massachusetts for 1880 were $68,649,664; the exports, $69,178,764. In 1880 322 steamships sailed from Boston for European ports. In 1880 180 steam craft were owned in Massachusetts, with a capacity of 48,917 tons. Massachusetts had in 1880 a fleet of 376 sail of cod- fishing vessels, manned by 4185 men, three quarters of all belong ing to one port, Gloucester. In mackerel catching 239 vessels arc employed. In 1882 20,117 persons were actively engaged in the fisheries, and it was estimated that 100,000 people depended on them for support. The capital invested is $14,334,450, and the product is worth $8,141,750. The total tonnage of the State in 1881 was 430,182, which gave the State rank after New York and Maine. In 1880, of 39,921 business houses, 329 failed, with liabilities at $3,336,954. A general Act of 1870, with supplements of later years, allows of the incorporation of companies under it, and in 1880 such cor porations, so organized, had $30,150,255 capital, and this was in some part money disengaged of late years from navigation and its attendant branches of trade. While the capital of the State may not have developed even yet, as it might, all that is possible for a system of railway communi cation with the west, it has fostered, and made possible, largo facilities in the States of the Mississippi valley and beyond, which may in time so enlarge the terminal facilities of the State s chief port as to make it a more important outlet for export of the produce of the west, and give it a distinction justly its due from its geo graphical position. In the working of ores the State is not prominent, Five furnace? in 1880 yielded 19,000 tons of pig iron. In wool, the Boston mar ket is the largest in the country. The State has far more spindles (4,465,290) in cotton manufacture than any other State, and not much short of half the number in the whole United States (10,921,147). She employs in this business 62,794 hands, or about one third of the entire force so employed in the United States. Massachusetts is the only State in the east, manufacturing textile fabrics, where ten hours is the operative s day; and it is reported by the State bureau of statistics that, equal grades being considered, as much is produced under her system, per man, loom, or spindle, as in States where eleven hours or more is the rule, and that the Massachusetts operative earns as much or more per day. Canadian French now constitute a considerable proportion of the factory hands. In certain departments of labour Chinese are beginning to find employment. Formerly farmers daughters of native stock were much employed in factories. Operatives of foreign birth or parentage have taken in great part their places; and those of native stock have sought other occupations, largely in the manufacturing 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,- persons of Irish, Swedish, and Scottish origin, with many from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, taking their places. Raihcays. The report of the Railroad Commissioners for 1880 shows twenty-nine street railways; capital, $6,144,000; assets, $10,173,079-84 ; total income, $3,711,37818 ; expenses, $3,003,024-87 ; length of roads, 240 miles ; miles run, 12,516,363; passengers carried, 68,631,842. Of steam railways there were 3044 miles of single track, of which 1893 were main lines ; and 27,057 Massachusetts stockholders held $78,806,559-95 capital stock of the total of $118, 788, 871 58 ; and 21,615 persons were employed. The total income of these roads was $35,140,374-77; and the dividends declared were $5,987,718-64. Total passengers carried, 45,151,152; freight carried, 17,221,567 tons. There were to passengers in 1880 nine fatal and fifteen other accidents; and one hundred and fifty-seven other persons were injured on the roads. The Hoosac Tunnel after that of Mont Ccnis the longest in the world, 5f miles in length pierces the Hoosae mountain in the north-west corner of the State, and opens a second direct railway communication with M r estern lines, that of the Boston and Albany having been long without a rival. It cost $9,000,000, the State lending its credit, and was built between 1855 and 1874. Savings Banks, &c. In 1880 the number of open accounts was 706,395 ; amount of deposits, $218,047, 922 37 (only exceeded in New York) ; amount of earnings, $11,894,710-60 ; ordinary dividends, $7,957,887-09; annual expenses, $581,274-35; number of outstanding loans (none exceeding $3000) 32,320, aggregating $34,203,951-81. The number of banks in 1880 was 164, against 22 in 1834. The number of co-operative saving fund and loan associations was 16, with $372,462 31 assets. National Eanks.Tlic report of the comptroller of the currency