Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 122, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 May 1916 — Another Interesting Letter From J. P. Green, Now in Massachusetts. [ARTICLE]

Another Interesting Letter From J. P. Green, Now in Massachusetts.

Wnichendon, Mass., May 17. Dear Republican: " My stay in Philadelphia has come to an end and here I sit in the home of my sister in northern Massachusetts, just a. mile from the New Hampshire line. The rain is pelting down so that I can not get out and gives me a little time for writing. —Five" days ago I bade farewell -to the Quaker city on the Delaware and sped northeastward toward the New England hills. I am now three miles from the> nearest town and among the hills. Through the window at my elbow I can look across the valley to the east and see a range of hills five miles away. Towering above these another range ten miles away, and a little to the north still another range, that is twelve miles away; then to the northwest the top of old Mount Monadnock, sixteen miles away, looms up large. This mountain is one mile high and from its summit the city of Boston, 75 miles away, can be seen

with a good spy glass. The town of Winchendon was incorporated in the year 1764. At that time the population of the town consisted of 35 families numbering about 200 persons. Today it has a population of over 5,000. Its chief industries are wooden tub and bucket making and the manufacture of toys, chiefly wooden toys. The place where these are made is said to be the largest toy manufacturing plant in the U. S., and perhaps in the world. These two industries employ a large number of hands and consume immense quantities of lumber, chiefly white pine. To supply the demand for the pine, as soon as a piece of land has been cleared of one crop of pine it is reset with pine saplings that will be ready for the axe in about 20 or 25 years. The surrounding hills and valleys are covered with forests of pine and Breit with small clearings here and there where farming on a small scale is carried on. Farming methods, as compared with Indiana and the west are still somewhat primitive. The all prevailing stones still cover many cultivated fields, making the old hand scythe and cradle necessary to gather the hay and grain. While in some pasture fields the stones are so close together that hogs have a hard time to find rooting space. Farm products bring fair prices and the people are mostly happy and contented, and generations follow each other on many of these old homesteads. Wire fences are seldom seen and the old rail fence has disappeared. The stones are so numerous that, ,in clearing the land, they are used to build walls that mark the boundaries of fields and farms. Some of these walls, are 4 feet high and often as broad on top. So much for Winchendon and its surroundings. Please change the address on my -paper from -Philadelphia- te-27 -River Street, Woonsocket, R. 1., care Henry M. Green, as that will be my next stop.. ~ Yours truly,

J. P. GREEN.