Reflections in Bullough's Pond: Economy and Ecosystem in New England

324 Pages·2002·15.407 MB·English

by  Diana Muir

Reflections in Bullough's Pond
V
Revisiting New England: The New Regionalism
Nancy L. Gallagher, Breeding Better Vermonters: The Eugenics Project in
Vermont
Sidney V. James, The Colonial Metamorphoses in Rhode Island: A Study of
Institutions in Change
Diana Muir, Reflections in Bullough’s Pond: Economy and Ecosystem in
New England
Reflections in
B ullough's Pond
Economy and Ecosystem
in N ew England
Diana Muir
University Press of New England
Hanover and London
University Press of New England, Hanover, NH 03755
G2000 by Diana Muir
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
5 4 3 2
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING*IN'PUBLICATION DATA
Muir, Diana.
Reflections in Bullough’s Pond: economy and ecosystem in New England / Diana Muir,
p. cm.
Indudes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 0- 87451- 909-8
l Industrial revolution—New England—History. 2. New England—Industries—History.
L Title.
HC107JU1M84 2000
330.974—dc21 99-58013
This book is dedicated to
Binyamin Chaim,
Yonatan Asher, and
Avigail Fruma,
who inherit the world we have made.

C O N T E N T S
Introduction ix
i. From Time Immemorial 1
2. Improving Nature
15
3. The Economics of Extermination 22
4. Salt-Watered Prosperity
35
5. This Well-Watered Land 56
6. To the Farthest Port of the Rich East
74
7. Cobbling a Living
87
8. Why Lightning Strikes 98
9. Peddling the Future 108
10. Machines That Make Machines 119
11. Acres Geared and Drained 136
12. Spinning Cotton into Gold 156
13. Cities of Steam 169
14. The Maine Woods 189
15. Pure Waters 207
16. Fishing for Profits 222
17. Terrarium Earth 236
18. The Third Revolution 248
Epilogue 257
Notes 259
Index 297
vii

I N T R O D U C T I O N
New England is rich despite the fact that it was bom poor. These six states were
not blessed with the fabulously fertile soils of the Nile Valley, the benign climate
of France, or thé fabled silver mines of Potosi. Yankee wealth is the creation of
human hands, not of nature. Our soil is thin, our weather cold, and the mineral
resources that lie under our mountains are negligible. Yet the people who live
here are and have long been prosperous. Reflections in Bullough’s Pond asks why
this should be so, and what it means for the planet.
Any book with the word “Ecosystem” in the subtitle is under suspicion of
being a jeremiad: an unpleasant, guilt-inducing scold about our reprehen­
sible environmental profligacy admonishing us to mend our ways or else. Re­
flections in Bullough’s Pond is no jeremiad, it is a paean to the human ability to
overcome daunting odds. Over and over again people in this small corner of
the planet have faced disaster in the forms of economic collapse or resource
dearth and overcome the odds. The most remarkable tale among the series
of such triumphs that I recount in this book is the story of the Industrial
Revolution.
New England experienced an industrial revolution second in point of time
only to England itself. The most interesting aspect of Yankee industrial his­
tory is the fact that this industrial revolution, unlike all the others, was not a
mere sequel to British industrialization. Yankees, like everybody else, watched
what was going on in Lancashire and copied what they could. But industrial­
ization in New England also had indigenous roots, wellsprings of change that
flowed independently of and simultaneous with the revolution underway on
the far side of the north Atlantic. Reflections in Bullough’s Pond is an inquiry
into why the Industrial Revolution happened, why it happened here, and what
the implications of that revolution are.
Although the Industrial Revolution is at the heart of this book, it is not the
only story in Bullough’s Pond. Economic history in New England begins with
the food crisis in prehistory, a crisis that was resolved by the adaptation of ag­
riculture. Later economic crises came about when the flow of Puritan immi­
gration was cut off by the English Civil War; when eighteenth-century popu­
lation growth outran the supply of arable land; when American independence
led to economic collapse; and when the shoe and textile industries moved
south in the middle years of the twentieth century, leaving derelict mills and
ix
V
x Reflections in Bullough’s Pond
unemployed factory workers in their wake. In each case, economic collapse
was avoided by the inventive capacity of the human mind.
New England lacks such desirable raw materials as oil, coal, and iron. No
New England state leads the nation in any kind of agricultural production, not
even maple syrup. There is, however, one resource that we do have in abun­
dance. More scholarly effort has gone into the study of these six, small states
than has been devoted to any similar region of the globe. This wealth of re­
search makes a broad picture discussion of the economic and ecological history
of New England possible. To the scholars upon whose work I have drawn, I am
grateful.