The Coolidge examiner., 1937-10-28

7 Boston is the trade and
population center OF
rich, industrial New England.
A few minutes ride from
Faneuil Hall are more than
$500 factories and over 25, 900
stores of one kind or another.
Boston does not faunt these dis
tinctions; yet seek and you find she
has Americas largest drydock; the
worlds greatest fsh-freezing ana
storage plant. Here is center of
Americas paper. wool, textbook,
and cotton-manufactu cturing indus
tries. and the second port in Amer
lea in volume of ocean-borne pas
senger traffic.
Her deep-channeled harbor, whose
modern piers connect with rails and
| highways, is one of the most acces-
sible on the Atlantic seaboard; it
has 40 miles of berthing space and
/ deep water TO accommodate the
largest vessels.
When Boston ships" traded hard
| ware for California hides before the
| days of 40. the shoe and leather in
dustry of New England began. To-
day, a large share of all hides used
in American leather and shoe fac
tories is bought and sold inside one
square mile of old Boston. where
even in the middle of the street you
catch the acrid whiff of newly
tanned leather.
In Bombay is an old American
icehouse. 1t dates from the period,
beginning 1905, when Boston skip
pers took cargoes for sale in ia
maica, Cuba, Brazil and India. Now
high-grade electrical machines,
which include refrigerators. rank
among Boston exports.
Boston's pioneer place in the i'm
port and processing of tropical
things is still hers. She and her
neighbors make now more than a
third of all Americas rubber shoes;
the trade name of one cocoa made
here has been household word for
generations. Jute, burlap, goatskins.
heeces, bales of cotton, sisal, fruit,
sugar, coffee, all pass this way.
Ask how long skilled workers have
served in the same plants; hear
how many generations of a given
family have worked at the same
trades, and you begin to account
for the vitality of Boston industry.
Here is pride in good work, inher-
tied knowledge. genius for crafts
manship.
Made Banana a Staple Food.
John Hancock probably never saw
a banana At the Philadelphia Cen
tennial exhibition, in 1876. curious
crowds gazed in wonder at a
bunch of them. Now everybody,
from Quoddy Light to Golden Gate,
from Key West to Alaska. knows
their smell and taste
Boston's United Fruit company
makes the banana, once a rarity
wrapped in tinfoil. today a staple
American food.
Yet its greatest feat is not in
distribution, but production. About
its success in turning jungle into
rich plantations and its conquest
of tropical disease, piles of fat books
are written. All that is far from
Boston, yet it was a Boston man,
Andrew w. Preston, who conceived
these incompatible tasks. When he
began, long ago, the world banana
crop barely equaled what New York
alone now eats in few weeks!
To get bananas the company had
to raise them; so it became a vast
agricultural concern. Jungle areas
cleared and planted total thousands
of square miles.
When Minor c. Keith, of United
Fruit, started his railroad to Costa
Rica from Puerto Limon to San
Jose, a 19-year job that cost more
than 1000 lives from fever, there
was but little rail in all Central
America. Now the company owns
and operates its tracks, trucks, and
aerial tramways in a dozen tropic
regions. 1t has built towns, piers,
radio stations, hotels, harbors, hos
pitals; stores, schools, churches,
theaters, Fairgrounds; shops, ware
houses, markets; water, light, and
power plants, and workers homes
by the thousands.
Center of Fish Industry.
Besides growing bananas, it raises
meat, vegetables, and other foods
for its armies of workers, and op-
crates sugar plantations, mills, and
refneries; grows coconuts, cocoa,
and other tropical products; and
annually carries some 10000 pas
sengers on its 81 ships from Boston,
New York, Baltimore, New Orleans,
and San Francisco to 25 different
ports between Habana and Carta-
gena, Colombia.
Though Boston, remote from
grainfelds and ranches, must go far
| for bread and meat, she also covers