Word: bedford
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TIME did a serious injury to New Bedford and insulted many of its residents by the story published in the June 8 issue, reporting the conviction of Mayor Edward C. Peirce on gambling conspiracy charges...
...Bedford since the Whales...
...been a disgrace for an American city to have "Irish, Portuguese, Greek and Italian" citizens . . . TIME makes no charge of the failure of these groups to abide by the laws of their adopted land; there is only the insulting inference that, because of the presence of these groups, New Bedford "is old, shabby, resigned, and tolerant of both vulgarity and venality in politics...
...drank too much and talked too boisterously at the ultra-respectable Wamsutta Club-to which he could never have been elected, but in which he automatically achieved membership as mayor. Worse, he fought with the district attorney, who finally embarrassed him by engineering a raid of New Bedford gambling joints by a small army of 121 state cops. Even then, Mayor Peirce might have got by if he had not turned, in rough and highhanded fashion, upon a police lieutenant named Alfred Figueira, who was the head of his vice squad and his chief partner in crime...
Stackpole stops his story before the petroleum boom came along to supply most of the world's need for oil. But even before that, the clouds were gathering over Nantucket. Stubborn sand bars drove captains to New Bedford and other ports; the appeal of the Gold Rush drew crewmen to California. But if the oldtime whaling man disappeared, he left a record behind him, as Author Stackpole notes, as citizen of the world, man of industry, oceanographer and as "a sea-hunter whose exploits make ... a bright page in American history...