The 5th Novel

[Burgess, John]

Without my history texts in front of me I tread on thinnish ice, but your 
take on the history of western Mass. and the early 19th Cent. are at some 
variance with my own.

Western Mass. was, indeed, a center of the US textiles industry, but not 
until more than 100 years after Wm. Pynchon founded Springfield.  Too, 
Springfield was not a textile town: nearby Holyoke and So. Hadley were.

Also, as part of the general British colonial pattern, the colonists were 
not permitted to make finished goods:  the colonies produced raw 
materials while the homeland produced (and sold) the finished product.  
Thus, the colonies produced pewter (which was permitted) but not fine 
silver (reserved to the UK manufacturers); iron goods more sophisticated 
than wrought by a blacksmith were equally prohibited.  Only after the War 
of Independence did a US manufacturing base develop.  Protection of those 
industries did, indeed, play some part in the War of 1812.