Stifled in his job in Boston (and probably chafing at the city’s restrictive culture), a young man moves to New York, where he thinks he can find a job (and probably enjoy a less restrictive culture).
This story (and its opposite) is a familiar one for almost everyone I know in greater Boston. But while our experience of the tale dates to the late 20th and early 21st centuries, it’s an old tale that dates back to at least the early 17th century. In fact, on October 6, 1723, 17-year old Benjamin Franklin, a native of Boston, arrived in Philadelphia, where he had gone when he was unable to find a job as a printer in New York City. To mark his departure from Boston and arrival in Philadelphia, today’s #stampoftheday is one of the many that depicted Franklin. This one is a 30-cent stamp issued in 1867 that was the 100th stamp issued by the U.S. Post Office (and is one of the more valuable stamps in my late father’s stamp collection).
Born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts, Franklin apprenticed in his brother’s print shop at the age of 12. But he and his brother quarreled over a variety of issues, including the fact that Ben had been submitted many articles under the pseudonym “Mrs. Silence Dogood.” Franklin ran away to New York City but he couldn’t find a job. However, he met a man who told him that his son, a printer in Philadelphia, might be looking help. Franklin, who set off by foot, later described his arrival in that city: “I was dirty from my journey; my pockets were stuff’d out with shirts and stockings, and I knew no soul nor where to look for lodging. I was fatigued with travelling, rowing, and want of rest [and] I was very hungry.”
Franklin, bought “three great puffy rolls…and, having no room in my pockets, walk’d off with a roll under each arm, and eating the other.” He wound up giving two of the rolls to a woman and child he had met on the boat and then followed some well-dressed people into a Quaker meeting house where, “after looking round awhile and hearing nothing said…[I] fell fast asleep, and continued so till the meeting broke up, when one was kind enough to rouse me.”
Returning to walking, he asked “a young Quaker man, whose countenance I lik’d,” where he could spend the night. After steering him away from a nearby establishment that he said was “not a reputable house,” the man took him to a different establishment. While the printer he had heard about didn’t have work, he introduced Franklin to another printer who hired him, and helped him find lodging in a house where met his future wife, who was the owner’s daughter. Franklin went on to become a civic leader in Philadelphia where he founded the first subscription library in the American colonies; organized the city’s fire department; led efforts to pave, clean, and light public streets; raised money to build a hospital; and was the primary founder of the academy that became the University of Pennsylvania.
While few, if any people, can match Franklin’s accomplishments, his story is a familiar. Driven by a variety of factors, many of us have moved to new cities in search of better opportunities and more favorable lifestyles. In the spring of 1980, for example, some friends and I sat on the steps behind Wesleyan’s Olin Library and discussed where we were going to live after we graduated. While I grew up in Summit, a New Jersey suburb about 20 miles west of New York City, I didn’t want to move there. We all agreed that New York City was too much: it was too intense; it had too many residents solely focused on making money; it was too dangerous; it was too expensive; and more. Boston, we thought, was big enough to be interesting, but it felt more manageable because it was smaller, less intense, less dominated by people primarily interested in making money, and cheaper.
Four decades later, all of us are still in the region-four in Arlington and one (me) in Lexington. Via my work (which has often focused on policy and governance in greater Boston) I’ve met numerous civic leaders, who, like me, decided to leave New York (and many other locales) for Boston – often for the same reasons as me. However, a surprisingly large number originally came to Boston because of a girlfriend. Even odder, while most of those relationships didn’t last, the men all stayed here.
In the last decade, many of my friends’ now “adult” children have had conversations as they prepared for post-college life. Many moved to New York (particularly Brooklyn), in large part because they found Boston to be too small, too slow, and too parochial. But several have stayed or returned here. And of course many have gone elsewhere, to such places as Denver and the Bay Area. Through my work, I’ve also met lots of millennials who stayed in Boston or came here from elsewhere, often for many of the same reasons that brought me here (except for cheap housing).
Several years ago, when reading “1776,” a marvelous book by David McCullough, I was amused to learn that the differences that drove me to Boston and drove others to New York go back to the Republic’s earliest days. According to McCullough, after the British were forced out of Boston in March 1776, many Massachusetts soldiers, who were sent to try and protect New York from a likely British attack, were surprised by what they found. General Henry Knox, a Boston native, for example, wrote his wife that the people of New York “are magnificent: in their carriages, which are numerous, in their house furniture, which is fine, in their pride and conceit, which are inimitable, in their profaneness, which is intolerable, in their want of principle, which is prevalent, [and] in their Toryism, which is insufferable.” Not surprisingly, Knox, who later was George Washington’s Secretary of War, didn’t move to New York when he retired. Instead, he moved to Maine, where he was a successful farmer, real estate speculator and businessman.
The point is simple. As economist Charles Tiebout famously noted in the 1950s, people vote with their feet. Cities have different characteristics and, if they have the opportunity, people will move to places that offer better mixes of their desired (and possible) economic, social, educational, and recreational opportunities and options. While these shifts greatly benefit people’s new locales, there’s often a sense of loss in the places they left behind. Boston has benefitted from its many emigrants. But from Franklin to Carlton Fisk, we’ve also had our fill of talent that went elsewhere. (Babe Ruth also left, but he wasn’t a free agent; instead he was sold to the Yankees.).
Moreover, places that don’t welcome newcomers lose out. Illustratively, the Red Sox passed up chances to sign both Jackie Robinson and Willie Mays because the team’s owner and then men he hired run the club were racists. In fact, for years Boston stagnated in large part because it had a well-deserved reputation for intolerance, particularly when it came to blacks. Put simply, we all benefit when we both welcome outsiders and encourage homegrown talent.
Be well, stay safe, fight for justice, and work for peace.