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Full-Text Articles in Economic History
The Bodwell Granite Company Store And The Community Of Vinalhaven, Maine, 1859-1919, Cynthia Burns Martin
The Bodwell Granite Company Store And The Community Of Vinalhaven, Maine, 1859-1919, Cynthia Burns Martin
Maine History
From the late 1850s to the late 1910s, Bodwelll Granite Company on Vinalhaven Island operated a Company Store from which employees could purchase a wide variety of consumer goods. In the early decades of its existence, the Company Store was generally popular with the company’s employees and the island community. Because of certain competitive advantages, and because the company was guaranteed a profit through federal contracts, the company store often had lower prices than its competitors. But by the late nineteenth century, the store’s prices were often higher than its competitors and the store became part of the growing rift …
A Company Of Shadows: Slaves And Poor Free Menial Laborers In Cumberland County, Maine, 1760 – 1775, Charles P.M. Outwin
A Company Of Shadows: Slaves And Poor Free Menial Laborers In Cumberland County, Maine, 1760 – 1775, Charles P.M. Outwin
Maine History
Although slaves and poor, free menial laborers were by no means a majority of the population in late colonial-era Maine, they represented a culturally and socioeconomically significant part of commercial society there, especially at Falmouth in Casco Bay (now Portland) and in coastal Cumberland County. This essay uncovers the lives of the Falmouth’s small slave population and its larger poor menial laborer population from 1760 up to the port city’s destruction by the British in 1775. The author was granted a Ph.D. in history from the University of Maine in 2009. He is a member of the Maine Historical Society, …
“Taking Up The Slack”: Penobscot Bay Women And The Netting Industry, Nancy Payne Alexander
“Taking Up The Slack”: Penobscot Bay Women And The Netting Industry, Nancy Payne Alexander
Maine History
Between 1860 and 1900 the economy of Penobscot Bay communities changed dramatically, from the steady growth and prosperity of their natural resource-based economy to the decline in population and a painful transition to manufacturing and service industries. Both men and women had enjoyed independence in their labor in the old economy. The new cash economy made it necessary for them to seek out new ways of supporting their families, with home manufacture, or putting out work, one way of earning an income. They remained independent from an employer’s direct supervision and earned cash payment, a change from the face-to-face economy …