The Seamless Hosiery Industry of Laconia, New Hampshire

The Seamless Hosiery Industry of Laconia, New Hampshire S. NORMAN CARLS Oregon Normal School , Monmouth, Oregon The conditions and prospects for any definite economic endeavor within a region or city can be fully understood only by taking cognizance of the conditions and prospects of its' competitors. The hosiery industry of Laconia, the seamless hosiery manufacturing center of New Hampshire, declined greatly during the last decade. A comparison of basis for the industry in Laconia and in the principal areas of American seamless hosiery production, the Chattanooga district and the North Carolina Piedmont , reveals the possibilities of Laconia. There is inherent in the Laconia site neither major advantage nor impressive handicap for hosiery manufacturing. In the two large cost items of raw materials and labor it stands on a par with competitors . The New Hampshire center lacks, however, modern plants and automatic machinery For that reason it must, in-so-far as market demand does not permit expansion of plants, produce the higher quality and more specialized lines. Advantages of Laconia that encourage industrial revival are its relative proximity to the marketing center, a position permitting frequent personal contacts between manufacturers and factors, and a reputation for high quality goods. Its principal handicaps are the inefficiency of plants and equipment that commonly characterize old industrial regions, and a defeatist attitude—an attitude developed during that period when southern competing centers enjoyed decided labor cost advantages, and aggravated by style changes perplexing to long-established industrial centers . The Massachusetts-Rhode Island Boundary as an Example of a State Line's Influence on the Occupance Pattern of an Area KDWARW ULIAIAN State College of Washington, Pullman, Washington A state boundary line does have an influence on the occupance pattern ; it is a cultural impress, almost obliterated in some areas but very evident in others: with the exception of regular boundary markers, most of the rural parts of the eastern Rhode Island—Massachusetts line are not marked by even fence or property lines. In more thickly settled industrial and urban outskirt areas however, the line is very definitely marked by such items as: road endings an« surface changes reflecting differences in administration, location of factories, as well as minor vice establishments (to avoid stricter laws or higher taxes of a neighboring state) and by changes and termini of water, sewer, electricity, and other utilities which in turn influence the location of some settlement forms. Other problems of (31) ...