Most Wonderful Machine

This is a case study of mechanization and social change in the paper industry of Berkshire County, Massachusetts, exploring the 19th-century machinery, the paper mill owners and the workers who helped to bring the dream of the Industrial Revolution to life.

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On a visit to a Berkshire paper mill, the narrator of a Melville short story views the "wonderful" papermaking machine with awe, calling it a "miracle of inscrutable intricacy." Manifesting a similar nineteenth-century fascination with machinery, paper mill owners and workers made an industrial revolution in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, examined here by Judith McGaw.