Business as Politics as Usual
 

Life Magazine, in the January 23rd 1956 issue, tells of the Boston Ropewalk.

http://cellar.org/2013/ropetrick.jpg

According to Hempology.Org, the Boston Ropewalk did final close in 1971.
I suspect there was a hefty campaign contributor willing to take over the business for a song.

btw, that Hempology link has some fascinating history of our cannabis hemp importing, mostly from Russia.

Remember when the government was almost small enough to control? Quaint.

Back then, government did not have so many wackos with an ideology demonstrated by Joseph McCarthy. Extremists never had so much power as to even undermine and threaten their own Speaker of the House. Never before did a lawmakers get elected on the rhetoric of "We want America to fail."

The most influential change has been the U.S.S.C. 2010 "Citizens United" decision
which completed the de facto and de jure control of the government to corporations,
who are now persons to whom all us underlings must defer.
.