Worcester County: Working Toward the Millennium

John R. Mullin, University of Massachusetts

Abstract

Worcester County has long been famed for its manufacturing prowess. Its Blackstone Valley was the crucible of our industrial revolution. Its main city, Worcester, was the Silicon Valley of the nineteenth century: the rise of the modern wire industry and thousands of textile machines put the city at the forefront of America's first industrial revolution. Leominster, with its "Man Behind the Foster Grants," has long promoted itself as the pioneer plastics city. Indeed, the one link among the cities and towns of this region is that they made things. Perhaps of greater interest, the region is still linked by this tradition.