The Three Earths of New England

Abstract

NEW ENGLAND'S landscape is old but hardly senile-its joints are still flexible. Whether as a hunting ground 350 years ago, a mosaic of subsistence farms and gentlemen's estates at the time of the American Revolution, or a watershed sustaining a fabric of modern industrial cities, it has performed its functions well. For each of these periods in its history New England's landscape has seemed endowed with the assets man has needed most. So much of New England is legend, so much fancy, so much fact, that these attributes often run afoul of one another. Fact it is that the cotton textile industry migrates southward at a rate so rapid that the Governor of Rhode Island declares a war against the Rebels for luring away this maiden enterprise. It is fancy to presume that such jousting will win back a lost love even if this were wise. As the legendary Merrimac of textile and shoe mills converts to metal fabrication and the manufacture of electrical goods and machine tools, the design of a more rational economic future gradually takes shape-though the conversion has its painful aspects. Bostonians cherish the memory of their port's pre-eminence in the days of clipper ships. Yet those who would be objective about industrial New England should recognize that the overshadowing growth of the Port of New York has become one of its major assets. New York has geographic advantages that Boston has not possessed since the hinterland of North America opened beyond the Hudson. New England is fortunate to be so situated that its industries can be integrated with the dynamic complex of which the Empire City is the focal point. What were the features of New England's landscape that made it singularly attractive, first to the Indians, and later to the colonists? What are the primary advantages of that landscape today?