Pa e lORAIN December 1978 ONE REGION'S ECONOMY: Learning History's Lessons The Run of the Mill, A Pictorial Narrative of the Expansion, Dominion, Decline and Enduring Impact of the New England Textile Industry, Steve Dunwell, 1978, 299 pp., $25.00 from: ~ " ii ... o c: ~ " ~ E o.::: David R. Godine, Publisher 306 Dartmouth St. Boston, MA 02116 Our young nation is growing up. The sad evidence of early experiments in capitalism, the booms and busts, is starting to accumulate around us. We see it in the discarded mines and fac tories, economically depressed communities and abused environments. Seldom, however, are these fragmented signs drawn together into a larger perspective that explains the economic fate of an entire region over a period of time. In chronicling the rise and fall of New England's textile industry, The Run of the Mill so exposes that first wave of the American industrial revolution from a distinctly regional point of view. Its lessons are sobering to all of us working with the concept North Grossvenordale, Connecticut, mills in 1876 . ~ .c " ...w o C :I ~ ~ E o J:: of regional economies that can be self-reliant and self-sustaining. The early development of textile mills in New England, not surprisingly, was very decen tralized: as water power was used, mills were located in hundreds of dispersed sites where small towns were built around them. With its mechanical skills and venture capital, New England came to completely dominate this new form of production. As the corporate nature of the industry evolved, so too did the oppressive character of mill work and life in mill towns; Yankees increasingly abandoned mill work to succeeding waves of immigrants, and labor had to organize to fight inhumane working conditions and inadequate pay. Eventually, the industry's own technical innovations, nologies appropriate for small scale operation with energy, capital, employment and economic performance equal to or often superior to large scale units is making such self-realint economics possible and desirable. Although more and more accurate information on the costs and performance of many of these technologies is now becoming available, we have yet to examine the interactive effect of a whole economy dominantly based upon them. And as the real costs of centralized exchange economies are becoming clearer, we are discovering the historically better fit of decentralized, locally controlled economies to the real and recently overlooked costs and benefits mentioned above. In none of these cases does self-reliance at any particular level mean slamming the door and cutting off from the rest of the world. What it does mean is tipping the balances and shifting ti1e percentages of what we take responsibility for ourselves at each level vs. what we leave to "someone else." And it means a careful determination of how different patterns of economic activity actually affect us and others. For every scale and specific region or locality, the specifics of self-reliance are different, but the concepts are similar. For a regional economy, self-reliance means such things as recycling of glass, steel, and other materials within the region rather than importing or mining new raw materials. It means the region producing the majority of its own food, providing for the majority of its own needs for furniture, building ma
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