"Holyoke, now over a century old, has never flowered. For a brief period, perhaps from about 1878 to 1893, she gave signs of sturdy growth. Then a slow paralysis set in, and the promise was not fulfilled. Today she has far more to recommend her than a dozen other New England manufacturing cities...Nevertheless, if Holyoke is not one of New England's dreary mill towns, she is still far from realizing the hopes her founders and later comers alike had for her."