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process of construction and near-construction. In 1906 the City Hall, a famous old stone structure, was practically destroyed by fire. This building is now being reconstructed for the use of the Free Public Library; it will be fire proof, will have the largest stack room in New England, and will be one of the handsomest and best equipped library buildings in buildings in the United States. From the present Library Building, used jointly as a library and for municipal offices, a new municipal administration building is being constructed, by alteration and addition. A new building for the registry of deeds is nearly finished on the square west of the new library. One block north of the new municipal building, fronting on Pleasant street, the United States government has just bought a square on which a new postoffice building will be erected Three new school-houses, two of which were completed during the past year, and one of which will be ready for use when school opens in September, have been added to the public school equipment at a cost of $200,000. Sketch plans have been accepted for a new twenty-room school building at the north end of the city, and for an addition to the Brock Avenue school-house, at the south end. Sketch plans are ready for a $500,000 high school building. A new fire station, located at the north end, costing $22,000, will be put into commission by the time this article is printed. An appropriation has been made, and plans

have been prepared for a $15.000 addition to the almshouse. This latter project may not seem to make a noise like prosperity, but it is an indication of the growth of the city.

New Bedford is a city of attractive homes, as well as a city of prosperity and cotton mills. While many of the mill workers live, temporarily, in the three and six-tenement blocks which shrewd investors are putting up, mushroom-like, at the north and south ends of the city, it is not for long, for many of them. Big families and thrift are the fashion among the mill opcratives, and after the children have passed the age at which Massachusetts law requires school attendance, they secure their school cards and go into the mills. Soon the combined family carning is sufficient to make a start toward a home; a house lot is purchased, the co-operative bank or the savings bank does the rest, and before 'ong the family of cotton mill operatives not only owns the house it lives in, but three or four others, which it rents.

The secret of New Bedford's success as a mill city may be summed up briefly: A delightful, attractive natural situation, to start with; a wise business policy, thoughtfully outlined and conservatively followed; the kind of work to attract the most-skilled operatives; and, last, the home-getting and homekeeping desire.

Does not New Bedford offer some attractions to the reader, whether he has a capital or labor to invest?

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A LITTLE ITALY ALONG THE

THE MERRIMAC

BANKS BANKS OF

How the Italian Mill Workers of Lawrence are Solving the Problem of Working in the City and Owning a Home in the Country.

A

By JOSEPH MCCARTHY

NY one who fears that the abandoned farms of New England will remain abandoned, or that the poor immigrants who find work in the great manufacturing cities of the east will all remain content to be hived in the closely-packed streets of the cities, should take a trip on the electric road that leads from Lawrence to Haverhill. There, about four miles from Lawrence, in level swales of land that slope gently to the winding Merrimac may be seen one of the answers to the question: "How can the immigrants be got out of the crowded cities?"

nomical do not hesitate to get up early enough in the morning to walk the four miles to the Lawrence mills and be inside the gates before the stroke of 6.30.

It is a most picturesque village, or collection of houses. Some of the houses are little better than unclapboarded shacks, and remind one of the sod houses that were put up and are still put up by the homesteaders in the

FIRST HOUSE BUILT BY LAWRENCE ITALIANS FOR COUNTRY RESIDENCE

For, from the electric cars can be seen, on either side of the line of the Boston & Northern, a settlement of Italians that is constantly growing, expanding and having added to it dwellings built by recent Italian immigrants.

There must be fully 1500 Italians who make their homes here the year around, while they find employment a large part of the year in the mills of Lawrence. They go back and forth to their work in the mills on the electrics, though some of the more eco

far west. They are not much bigger than goodsized dog kennels and the wonder is that any human beings could endure the rigors of a New England winter in them.

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But many of the Italian newcomers have passed a winter in these flimsy structures and have managed to save enough to build a better house for the next year. Or they have kept on adding to the old shack, putting on clapboards, shingling it, plastering it, adding an ell here and there and putting on an additional story as their families increased, until what was not even a good barn has become quite a commodious and comfortable house.

As the settlement has grown, threestory tenement houses have risen

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SECOND HOUSE AND THE FAMILY THAT OCCUPIED IT THE YEAR AROUND

here and there and several stores do a good business with their Italian customers. As they are presumably not bothered with a very high rent they probably are able to sell pretty close to cost price.

Not all of the houses are of wood. Among the Italians who have settled in this suburban "Little Italy" are quite a few expert mechanics, men who have been trained in the art of making concrete houses. Some of these concrete houses, as will be seen by the photographs, are quite ornate little affairs as well as being solid and substantial. The interior of one of them, which was visited by the writer at the invitation of the owner, was found to have about every modern comfort and convenience, with the exception of "city water." That will come in time, the proud owner asserted, and one can well believe that these ingenious and industrious Italians will find a way to have "city water" in their houses before long, even if they are miles away from the piped supply of the city of Lawrence.

When the work is dull in the mills of Lawrence, and during their spare time in the evenings and on Sundays. and holidays, these dwellers on a wornout farm put in many a laborious hour bending over the soil, digging, plowing, enriching it with various kinds of fertilizers, planting and later reaping the grain and vegetables that are dear to the heart of the transplanted Italian.

From the time the snow goes in early March, the women folk of this colony can be seen industriously bending over the land and going over it with the minute care of the intensive farmer. And their fields in early summer and until late in the fall show the good results of such intelligent care and industry they are 1 esplendent in all the greens, reds and yellows of the various vegetables and yield the most bountiful of crops. These factory-farmers, as one might call them, find a ready sale for all their surplus vegetables in the city of Lawrence. The large Italian colony that lives in that city furnishes a fine market for all the vegetables

THIRD TYPE OF HOUSE BUILT IN THE SETTLEMENT

that may be termed, distinctively, Ital

ian.

The Italian colony in Lawrence, of which these occupants of the picturesque houses along the river are offshoots, is now one of the largest in New England. There are said to be fully 6000 Italians in Lawrence now and they are being steadily added to. With the great growth of the mills in that city and the activity now evident in the mill business there are many indications that thousands of more Italians, as well as representatives of other southeastern European races will soon be added to the population.

The country settlement of part of them is a way out from the dangerous overcrowding that characterizes many cement houses. None of these factory cities. It gives them a chance to get fresh air as well as fresh vegetables and it gives many of them a stake in the country by owning a bit of land and house, or something that can be called house, on it.

That the industrious Italian will not long remain content with a shack for a dwelling is proved by the accompanying illustrations which show the rapid progress made from the first rough shelters to comfortable wooden and stone and houses were built three years ago. All of them, and there

are fully three hundred belonging to Italians, have been put up during the past two years.

In another two years they will probably have paved sidewalks running where the unploughed fields were three years ago.

From the early spring until the late fall they really have an enjoyable time compared with their fellow workers in the mills who live in the crowded tenement blocks.

A good part of their lives is passed in the open farming country, though it is so near to

the city. They can see the picturesque Merrimac flowing at the bottom of their fields. A noble panorama of nature's creation spreads out all around the horizon, taking in, in its sweep, the encircling hills of Haverhill, to the east; the uplands of North Andover, to the south, and on the west the ramparts of Prospect and Clover hills in Lawrence, that tower high enough to shut out all sight of the giant chimneys of the great manufacturing city. The view is inspiring and when clothed with summer's verdure must be refreshingly grateful to these country folk of Italy after a hot day inside the mills.

Here in the evening concerts are frequently given by orchestras made up of dwellers in these houses or of sere

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FOURTH TYPE OF HOUSE BUILT IN THE

SETTLEMENT

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A FINE OLD NEW ENGLAND HOMESTEAD, ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS OLD,
CENTER OF THE COLONY, NOW OWNED AND OCCUPIED BY PHILIP GROSSE
ONE OF THE LEADING ITALIANS OF THE SETTLEMENT

nading compatriots from Common street in Lawrence. And when a half dozen guitars get to thrumming out the strains of "Santa Lucia" and men and women by the score join in, it sounds as fine under a New Eng

land moon as ever it did across the waters of the bay of Naples.

As an example of what can be done by the immigrant worker in the mills of New England to combine country and city life in a pleasing, healthful and uplifting way, these dwellers in the "Little Italy" along the banks of the Merrimac are making a splendid success, considering the difficulties they have had to overcome and the handicap under which they started.

They give every promise that, in the course of five or ten years, many of them will be owners of large and profitably conducted farms and be a strong force in the movement that will bring the country parts of New England into sharing largely in the prosperity of the cities.

With the rapid development of communication between the farms and the

cities, such industrious and intelligent farmers as these Italians are proving to be, are destined to have no small part in what some far-sighted people believe is to be one of the greatest eras of prosperity rural New England has ever seen.

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