XIV

STUDYING OUTLYING TOWNS AND CITIES

In the highly-prized permit to pass over the Mohawk Trail from Fort Massachusetts to the Deerfield Meeting House, discriminatingly issued from Gunn Hill House in Greenfield by John A. Aiken, Chief Justice of the Superior Court of Massachusetts, it is requested that the bearer be permitted to acquaint himself regarding "the various peoples, tribes and communities" along the way. In more serious fashion the Republican gave me warrant and authority to study the "dispositions, languages, tales, songs, legends, incantations and mysteries" of the people of western Massachusetts in all the towns and cities thereof.

I was to learn that there were differences between cities and towns almost tribal as regards public spirit, methods and atmosphere. There were chiefs and lesser chiefs, live and growing places and belated ones. In some, values were more materialistic than in others, with standards accordingly. Good government was easy to achieve in given cases and difficult in others as the quality of populations differed. But everywhere was the popular sense of decency which could be appealed to in case of need with certainty of response in the end. Everywhere, too,

there were public-spirited men striving for community betterment, who persisted whatever the discouragements under which they labored. Would that I might list and give merited praise to them all, so many of them forgotten in their towns and cities with the passing of the years.

But at least it can be said in the light of knowledge and mature reflection that in western Massachusetts, as in all the United States, there has been large social improvement as well as great material advance during the last half century. Democratic government, with all its weaknesses, has been broadened and strengthened, made more quickly effective for the correction of abuses. A more helpful relationship exists between employer and employed in manufacturing establishments. Welfare work, unknown once, is becoming well-nigh universal. The health and safety requirements ordained by statute have steadily grown. Recreational provisions, including sports of almost every kind, are becoming general for the joy and enrichment of the workers. Labor has a recognition at this time undreamed of in the seventies. The horizon of the workers has been widened in many directions, and capital's sense of justice has been enlarged. In evolution lies the cure for social ills, difficult as it seems to wait for it.

In starting life one takes the day's work as it comes, and is slow to understand that he is being rooted and grounded for service. It is easy in the backward look to understand the method that was being applied by Mr. Bowles. Step by step inti

mate study was to be made of the region which the Republican served.

An early and informing experience came in writing about Turners Falls, where a remarkable industrial development was in progress. Under the lead of Colonel Alvah Crocker of Fitchburg, the Turners Falls Company had been incorporated, old river rights acquired, land bought in the town of Montague, and a manufacturing community was being developed which it was hoped would rival Holyoke and great manufacturing cities in the eastern part of the State. The Russell Cutlery Company had been drawn away from Greenfield in 1870, the Montague Paper Company and other important industries had come or were in prospect. Under the wing of Wendell T. Davis of Greenfield, treasurer of the water power company, I was introduced to Turners Falls, a creation quite as striking for that day as was to be Gary, Indiana, in a later period.

Of absorbing interest was the great upbuilding by the side of the Connecticut River, with plenty of crudities as well as of potentialities in the existing situation. It contrasted suggestively with the early fossil imprints on the sandstone rocks in the northern part of the town. But the live men of the place attracted me most,-and it would have astonished the manufacturers could they have discovered my conclusion that Cecil T. Bagnall, editor of the Turners Falls Reporter, was the most individual person among them all. Many men looked up to as business magnates were in the end to have only such permanent recognition as they got through Mr.

Bagnall's appreciative obituaries of them. Much more was he than the writer of humorous paragraphs quoted in other papers. He loved the printing art, and excelled in it, and could put a big heart and sound philosophy into serious writing when he would. Through personal touch I studied the county seats, - Northampton, Greenfield and Pittsfield. Of the three, Greenfield had best kept the pleasant distinction of the old days. The fact that she retained the town form of government may have contributed to that result. Perhaps pride of locality is best nourished by the ancient form of democratic rule. Northampton, Pittsfield and Springfield have not lost such pride, albeit it seems as if in the shire town of Franklin County there lingers more definitely the old looking up to men who represent the best the local life can show. But comparisons may try the patience of some readers, and I am playing no favorites among old and tried friends.

My first approach to Northampton was under the guidance of Doctor L. Clark Seelye in advance of the opening of Smith College. There could have been no better mentor. President Seelye showed

me over the new buildings and told of his plans and hopes for the educational departure he was to shape. He displayed enthusiasm and a quiet confidence, but by no means forecast the extent and richness of the accomplishment that was to come and which he was to lead and behold in its fullness.

I had taken that assignment very seriously, read up on woman's place in the existing educational scheme, and did my best to produce an article worthy

of the opportunity. No doubt the result was more like a magazine article than a newspaper sketch. At all events the copy went to the Chief, and after he had looked it over I ventured to ask if it were all right. "There is too much damned fine writing in it, but it will pass," he shot back, - and I got out of his room as best I could. Some day I shall look up that production and measure its imperfections.

This newspaper genius with penetrating mind and impaired digestion could be as sharp as a meat ax in his pronouncements. I am reminded of the experience of another member of the staff in reporting a reading by Mrs. Scott Siddons, whose remarkable beauty and charm some will remember. Laudation could not farther go than he carried it, and on reaching the office that day Mr. Bowles called for the author and finisher of that production. "Blank, he said, "if Jesus Christ should come to earth tomorrow morning, you have n't left us a single thing to say for him.”

But the impression must not be conveyed that the Chief was a profane man, for nothing could have been farther from the fact. Only twice in six years did I hear Mr. Bowles say "damn." The other instance was when I reported to him that a verdict against the paper had been given in the Willis Phelps libel suit, which involved the protection of the public interest. "Damn a hundred dollars; damn a cent!" he responded in righteous indignation and in the presence of an Amherst college professor. But that hundred dollars was never to be paid. The