WPA Writers’ Program — American Guide Series2.0

“Rhode Island is a conservative State that still sticks to its early designation, ‘The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.’” So opens the preface to this guide, which delights in the paradoxes of the country’s smallest commonwealth: the first of the thirteen Colonies to declare independence of Great Britain, and the last to ratify the Federal Constitution. Here was a ‘city’ of forty-five square miles holding dozens of small villages but no metropolitan center; a city only a mile square with more than twenty-five thousand inhabitants; and a township of forty-nine square miles with a population of but four hundred and two. Though it lays claim to the title of ‘Smallest State,’ the editors argued, it holds a greater number of historic sites and points of interest than can be found in some of the largest States of the Union.

The book was the first major accomplishment of the Federal Writers’ Project for Rhode Island, and the third volume in the New England group of the American Guide Series. In his foreword, Harry L. Hopkins, the Works Progress Administration’s administrator, described the larger undertaking: a project designed first to give useful employment to needy writers and research workers, which had gradually developed the ambitious objective of presenting to the American people a comprehensive portrait of America. Because no such task had been attempted before, new methods and new tools had to be devised; the result, he wrote, was a collective work to which all the writers and research workers contributed according to their talents, the final collation and editing done by a few experienced hands in the central offices.

Louis W. Cappelli, Secretary of State and chairman of the sponsoring committee, added his own foreword. More than a conventional guide book, he wrote, this volume attempts to describe the history and heritage of Rhode Island as well as its many points of interest; it was intended not only to acquaint visitors with the real Rhode Island, but also to enlighten Rhode Islanders as to their own little State. As Secretary of State, he declared himself more than pleased that the publication was being made available to Rhode Island and to the nation.

The goal, wrote State Director Jarvis M. Morse, was to present an adequate, accurate, and interesting picture of Rhode Island, past and present, in all its complex and changing aspects. Its early settlers were probably the most varied group of religious non-conformists ever gathered in a colony, and its population racially one of the most diversified in the Union. In the background essays, local history and politics are traced from Roger Williams to Governor Robert E. Quinn; industry from William Blackstone’s apple orchard to the modern textile mills; transportation from Canonicus’ canoe to the airplane. Prepared under the editorial supervision of Joseph Gaer, Editor-in-Chief of the New England Guides, the volume gathers eighteen background chapters, seven city and town descriptions — Bristol, Newport, Pawtucket, Providence, Warwick, Westerly, and Woonsocket — and eleven mile-by-mile motor tours threading the State from Watch Hill to Block Island, closing with a chronology, a bibliography, and an index.