Hopedale History April 1, 2012 No. 201 Factory Town Hopedale in March Undefeated – Hopedale High basketball, 1956-57 I haven’t added much to the website in the past couple of weeks, other than the basketball story, but I did make some improvements to the Wildflowers in Hopedale section, including the menu and the fifty pages it links to. Looks much better. Well, I think it does, anyway. Here’s a link to the menu. Recent deaths I receive the monthly newsletters of the Upton Historical Society and the quarterly newsletters of the Friends of Upton State Forest. If you’d like me to pass them on to you, let me know.
school building committee. Selectmen discuss possibility of hiring full-time dog officer. Freedom Street bridge closed to traffic. Bridge is deteriorating and 12-inch water main in danger. Sirloin tips, $1.88 per pound at Big D. The Simpsons cartoon first appears as a series of shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show. Geraldo Rivera investigates the problems of growing up in the 1980s in his latest news special, “Innocence Lost: The Erosion of American Childhood.” Dow Jones up 69.89 points, ending at record 2,390.34 Fifty years ago – April 1962 – Winburn Dennett retires after 44 years at Hopedale High School; 40 as principal. Community House Women’s Club hold s annual meeting at Larches. Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Gibbs held up in their home at 207 Dutcher Street. Academy Awards Best Picture – Lawrence of Arabia. Walter Cronkite, a former United Press reporter best known for hosting the CBS program You Are There, replaces Douglas Edwards as the anchorman for the CBS Evening News,. <><><><><><><><><> Here’s an article about Hopedale that was written in 1933. Factory Town Factory towns. The phrase conjures up long rows of identical homes, depressing in their monotony; shabby-faced tenements pushed too close to the streets to allow for adornment; angular cottages in straight rows on a checkerboard of streets. But the rule must go when the exception appears. Hopedale, Mass is such an exception, an oasis of comfortable cheer in a desert of shabby mill towns. The stranger may drive down the tree-shaded street into Hopedale, traverse its length, without ever suspecting that he has just passed through a company town. He will sense, without fail, that there is something different about the place. For a town of its size, the churches and schools might seem extravagantly large and well-kept. He would notice the abundance of parks, the spaciousness of playgrounds and the lawns in front of the public buildings. The bathhouse on the edge of the large pond might seem a little extravagant for a town of Hopedale’s size. He might wonder at the uniform brightness of the well-kept houses, with nowhere a shabby or neglected dwelling. But he would never guess that he had just passed through a company town. Hopedale is the different company town. It is different because its roots are thrust deep into years of honest experiment and progress. Today it is the home of the Draper Corporation, where is manufactured a large share of the looms that whirl in the mills of America. Over a century ago the sheltered valley that now enfolds the town was the scene of a social experiment. It was headed by a little group of men and women who tried to found a community on Christian socialism. Ebenezer Draper joined them. He brought with him a tiny business. His father had invented a loom temple, a device that made it possible for a weaver in Lowell to run two looms instead of one, that lifted from his shoulders some of the burden of grinding labor that was his lot. (Or at least that’s what the Draper official being interviewed evidently told the reporter. Easing the burden of the poor worker was also mentioned frequently in Draper literature after the development of the Northrop loom. Almost certainly what actually happened was that the mills using Draper machinery were able to get rid of many of their employees and the remaining ones had to work at least as hard as ever. This line of thinking can still be found. Here’s a sentence from a Wikipedia article on the Northrop loom. “The Northrop Loom relieved the weaver of much of the drudgery of her work and enabled her to run sixteen looms at once.” Ummm, yeah, if jumping from one loom to another makes for a more pleasant workday.) That business Mr. Draper gave to the community. (Well, not entirely. Ebenezer retained control of sales of the temples and invested much of the profit in Community stock. So did his brother, George, when he later joined the Community. Eventually the two owned most of the stock and in 1856 when things weren't going well, it was possible for them to bring about the end of the Community, pay its debts and take over the assets.) The community, like so many others of its kind, failed. Human frailties had proved unequal to the road these pioneers had mapped out. The Draper business had grown. In the meantime Ebenezer Draper had been joined by his brother, George. They took over the industry from the community, paying off all indebtedness. The industry grew. The whirl of spindles, the growth of the textile industry in America was reflected in the peaceful valley where factories and shops began to spread out under the shadow of the enfolding hills. But the idea of a community wherein social experiments might be carried out still dominated. Slowly the industry began to absorb the town. The community that failed to run the industry began to come under the guidance of the industry. A row of seven houses, now known as “the Seven Sisters,” stands back on a back street of the town, a reminder of the beginning of the company house plan. They stand out from their neighbors now. The Hopedale of today is not laid out in any strict geometrical pattern. The streets of the town are wide, and shaped to fit the contours of the hillsides into which it nestles. Across the pond from the bathhouse the streets are crescent shaped, curving to the outlines of the shining pond. Though most of the houses are brown-shingled they are not alike. There is individuality in their shape and location even as there is individuality in the window boxes that gleam under the trees, in the tiny lawns and the flower beds. They are homes rather than mere habitations. The Christian Science Monitor, September 26, 1933. Hopedale Community Menu Draper Menu Ezine Menu HOME . |
