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Confronting Decline: The Political Economy of Deindustrialization in Twentieth-Century New England. By David Koistinen. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2013. 346 pages. $74.95 (paperback).
Deindustrialization is the process whereby an industry becomes noncompetitive with the same industry from another region and thus declines, leading to a dramatic loss of jobs and income for all affected. Deindustrialization became noticeable in the United States in the second half of the twentieth century as mines and factories closed because they were uncompetitive with newer and more modern factories and mines in the rest of the world. The region most affected, from the Northeast to the upper Midwest, became known as the rust belt.
In this work, economic historian David Koistinen documents a far earlier but still continuing deindustrialization, that of the New England textile industry, with an emphasis on Massachusetts. He argues that responses to textile decline mirrored those in other, later industries, both in New England and in the rest of the United States. Consistently, the first response was an attempt to cut costs. When retrenchment failed, industry looked to government for bail out assistance. When all else failed, economic leaders in and out of government began seeking alternative means of economic development.
The first chapter deals with the historical development. It begins in the late eighteenth century with Samuel Slater and the early nineteenth century Lowell experiment that made New England a leading textile manufacturing region. Koistinen shows that textiles drove development of other industries in the region, from textile...