Word: bedfords
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
While such disparity seems outrageous, it is the inevitable outcome of an historical chain of events. In the 1800s, New Bedford's whaling industry made it the wealthiest city, per capita, in the nation. As the whaling died out, the city, like most of its neighbors in the Northeast, began to focus on the tremendous textile industry. All over New England, towns like Lowell, Lawrence and Fall River sprang up around the new mills that were pumping out cotton cloth...
...half. On the inside, the Boston metropolitan area is booming. Shiny new buildings are going up everywhere, employment rates are climbing and rumor has it that crime is dropping. But on the outside of Boston's hustle and bustle, smaller cities such as Springfield, Fall River and New Bedford are struggling to survive...
Anyone who has taken the American Eagle bus from Boston's sparkling new South Station Terminal to crumbling downtown New Bedford understands the gap that exists in Massachusetts. Standing on Atlantic Avenue in downtown Boston during rush hour, life whips by as throngs of commuters cross paths with jack hammers and cement truck rebuilding Boston...
Walking down the streets of New Bedford in the early evening, one sees no such vibrancy. In place of the drills and dump trucks, the streets are lined with boarded-up shop windows and occupied by the wandering homeless and jobless...
...statistics tell the same story. From 1985 to 1994 (the last year of available data from the Massachusetts Department of Employment and Training) total employment in New Bedford fell by over 10,000 jobs; a drop of about 21 percent. Meanwhile, during the same period, total employment in Boston dropped a mere 2.5 percent, or about 14,000 jobs...