The Cambridge of eighteen hundred and ninety-six: a picture of the city and its industries fifty years after its incorporation
Arthur Gilman, Ed.

[147] afford to maintain his children until they are ready to practice a profession, can be sure of their receiving the best liberal and professional education given in this country, while all the time his children may live economically at home.

The establishment in Cambridge of the business of printing and binding books is historically due to the university. The first printing press in the colony belonged to Harvard College; and ever since that first press was set up the business of printing has been successfully pursued here. With the development of the national territory and the national wealth the manufacture of books has been established at many other centres; but at this moment three of the most important book presses in the country—presses in which the very best work is done—are situated in Cambridge. The business of lodging and boarding students is a considerable one in that part of the city called Old Cambridge. The university buildings do not provide chambers for even half the students; and Memorial Hall and the Foxcroft Club together cannot furnish board to more than half of the members of the Cambridge departments of the university who have no homes in Cambridge. For lodging the richer class of students large and handsome private dormitories have of late years been erected, buildings which add considerably to the valuation of the city for purposes of taxation. These buildings become more and more substantial and elegant; and it seems probable that they will be a more and more important element in the taxable property of the city. The first of these buildings was erected forty years ago by Mr. Charles C. Little, senior member of the well-known bookselling firm of Little & Brown. His example was not followed for several years; but recently at least one new private dormitory has been erected every year, and the process is still going on. Hundreds of purveyors, mechanics, porters, cooks, waiters, chambermaids, laundresses, and laborers get their livelihood from the university and its students.

It is not, however, the business interests of Cambridge which the university has done most to promote, large as have been its contributions direct and indirect to those interests. The whole character of the place as a residence has been strongly affected by the presence here for two centuries and a half of the university teachers, a group of men devoted, not to trade or manufactures, or money-making of any sort, but to the arts and sciences,