Reasonable Use: The People, the Environment, and the State, New England 1790-1930

by John T. Cumbler

This book is a study of the impact of industrialization and urbanization on the environment of New England in general and the Connecticut River Valley in particular, and of the varied public responses the impact engendered. The narrative engages the reader with biographical vignettes woven into the larger narrative and crosses several historical fields by combining industrial, urban, environmental, legal, and political history.

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[William Winn JR · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent. There is a part of new England’s environmental history that starts in colonialism and ends with industry and dams and the end of fishing. Ted Steinberg and Bill Cronan come to mind. This book however has nodded to the predecessors and forged on into how the ideas of what clean water is have changed in several phases, and looked at how the health impacts to those that made their homes by these mills. Would recommend.

[Samuel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Industrialization at the end of eighteenth century began to radically change the environment of New England. The Connecticut River Valley, which runs through four of the six New England states (Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Connecticut), in particular was transformed from a rural agricultural landscape into an industrial-commercial society with varied public responses. Environmental history has essentially become a field of study revolving around the idea that the natural world constrains human agency, but humans also shape the natural world—this involves a struggle over resources. Out of the conflicts over production and pollution grew the idea for a mediating state—protecting the commonweal in an increasingly complex society.

While John Muir advocated for wilderness protection (and received much acclaim for his efforts), a host of New Englanders—working people, industrialists, political leaders, and public health officers—were struggling with greater local problems that effected the quality of life of people not living in cabins in wilderness valleys but in in urban tenements and homes: “how to protect dwindling resources and declining quality of environmental if within a highly developed region and how to protect resources that were already compromised” (10). John T. Cumbler chronicles how urban dwellers, rather than rural people, were at the center of developing scientific and technological solutions to environmental problems caused by industrialization and urbanization. Fish hatcheries (aqua culture or artificial propagation) receives some extensive consideration. Timothy Dwight, the President of Yale University at the turn of the nineteenth century also receives some interesting discussion about his interests in Cape Cod. This is a thorough and interesting study for New Englanders or those interested in environmental history.