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On October 7, 1873, Brookline, Massachusetts became the first town in the United States to reject annexation by a larger neighboring city when it voted down annexation by Boston. When its citizens voted 707-299 to keep its independence, Brookline not only stopped Boston's string of annexations, it also set an example for wealthy suburbs throughout America. The vote was a significant event in the history of American suburbs. ==The development of anti-annexationist Brookline== In 1686 a community of farmers to the west of Boston separated itself into a semi-autonomous village called Muddy River. Less than twenty years later, in 1705, the Muddy River hamlet was incorporated as an independent town called Brookline. During the 168 years between its creation and Boston's attempt to annex it in 1873, Brookline grew immensely, first as a farming community and later as a commuting town. At first, Brookline was no different from other rural towns in Massachusetts, but towards the end of the eighteenth century it became an increasingly attractive location for the wealthy Bostonian elite. This led to a great increase in Brookline's population. For example, between 1840 and 1850, the population almost doubled, going from 1,365 to 2,516. Although the town's population quickly increased during the first half of the 19th century, this sudden growth did not much change Brookline's idyllic rural makeup. The second half of the nineteenth century, however, saw Brookline develop from a purely rural town to, essentially, a residential neighborhood for wealthy Bostonians. The town had quickly changed: it no longer supplied raw materials for the city; it now supplied land for the city's elite. The property in Brookline had become too valuable for the large plots required for farming, so farmers, who only needed to visit Boston sporadically and thus did not necessarily rely on their proximity to the city, moved away from the state's economic hub. Farmland was converted into estates for affluent upper class and upper-middle-class families. The men who headed these households were often lawyers, businessmen or other highly educated professionals who had offices in Boston and thus commuted there on a daily basis. Such a wealthy population would not, however, go unsupported. A working class population had to supply the basic daily labor that sustains the way of life of the upper class. Brookline quickly developed a largely Irish working population. The Great Irish Famine of the late 1840s created a great migration of willing laborers to the United States. Many of these immigrants were settling in Massachusetts as Brookline's population quickly grew and the need for manual workers increased. A large group of Irish families settled in an area close to Brookline Village known as The Marsh. The Brookline elite worried about the influx of Irishmen into this previously rather homogeneous community. First and foremost, they worried about the impoverished shanties populated by Irish Roman Catholics, a group which suffered severe discrimination during this era. Moreover, they worried that their impoverished living conditions in a swampy district would spread disease. In the end, though, the local population had to accept that the influx of lower class families was necessary for any wealthy town's economic well-being. This contrast between the upper class American citizens and the lower class Irish immigrants was made even clearer by the lack of a middle class. Because daily transportation into Boston in the nineteenth century was too expensive for all but the wealthy, the only inhabitants of Brookline were the upper class and those who supported them, since the support class rarely needed to travel into Boston. By the late nineteenth century, forty percent of Brookline's population was Irish. Even after the Irish influx, Brookline could still be described as a homogeneous town. Now, however, there were two separate homogeneous communities instead of just one. In a few years, Brookline's social simplicity would greatly assist the anti-annexation movement. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Boston–Brookline annexation debate of 1873」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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