Decline of the Shipping Industry

The Country of the Pointed Firs takes place some time in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. This time in U.S. history is significant to Jewett's setting in a shipping and fishing village of coastal Maine.

The heyday of Maine's economy were the years 1830 to 1860, when fishing and shipbuilding were the dominant industries, and coastal towns were centers of economic and cultural prosperity. As a result of developments in industry and changes in the economy, however, the merchant shipping industry in Maine suffered a severe decline in the years following the Civil War. Industrialization developed roughly over the course of the second half of the nineteenth century in the United States. Industry, employing masses of laborers in urban settings to perform factory work, drew from the rural areas to the cities many young people in search of work.

The fictional town...