Excerpt from Leading Manufacturers and Merchants of Central and Western Massachusetts: Historical and Descriptive Review of the Industrial Enterprises of Worcester, Hampden, Hampshire, Berkshire, and Franklin Counties

As a record of the manufacturing and mercantile industries in the principal cities and towns of the five counties covered by the following reviews, we confidently believe it will not only accomplish much toward their encouragement, but will also bring to the attention of many thousands of business men in other and remote parts of the Union grate ful and interesting information respecting the manufactures and general trade that flourish here. If there are qualities for which these people are distinctively noted above others, they consist in the pluck, energy, and ingenuity they have exercised in conquering honorable place, name, and good fortune for themselves, commercially and socially. It is workers of this sort that have rolled it onward to its present position. The avenues opened by the inventor, the manufacturer, the merchant, have been often indeed beset by obstacles, but these have been obliged to give way to innumerable utilities of inestimable worth and value. What though personal benefit may have been in the vast majority of instances the incentive of their endeavor? Their activity, their enterprise, their persistence, their courage have wrought the manufacturing and commercial successes illustrated and described in the following pages.

The data given in them have been drawn from the most authentic sources, have been carefully collated and intelligently revised, and the utmost care has been exercised in Order that the information herein given may be relied upon as accurate.

The reader will observe that while the largest and practically leading enterprises in the general lines of business are treated at some considerable length, many smaller and less prominent concerns are also reviewed for the simple reason that each one of the latter in its own way and in its own special department has contributed its share to the general prosperity and wealth of the various commodities mentioned.

As intimated above, the circulation of this work will not be limited to those portions of Massachusetts of which it treats. It will reach to distant sections of the country, and many volumes will traverse the ocean and enter foreign manufacturing and mercantile houses, imparting to their proprietors a fund of information that cannot but prove novel and interesting.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.