of brick, although good building stone is to be had everywhere. The people seem to be influenced by habit in house-building at Lowell; a wooden dwelling-house was being erected where rock, which had been dug from the cellar, was obstructing its progress, and thousands of loads of stones quarried in forming a railway, were lying at not more than one hundred yards distant. Here I saw a stone arch building across a lateral branch of the canal, which was the only bridge of that material I saw - wood generally being used for their construction. Many large sized dwelling-houses and factories were in the progress of erection.

C. Home Life of the Mill Operatives, 18541

The home life of the mill operatives appears to have been exceptionally good, and it attracted the attention of English travelers, whose ideas of factory life and work were gathered from the squalid surroundings of the Manchester (England) factories.

Furnished with letters from Mr. Abbott Lawrence, I visited Lowell, famous for its factories belonging to a corporation, and for its factory girls, better known by the more elegant title of the "young ladies" of Lowell. About an hour's railway drive brought me to that phenomenon to an Englishman, a smokeless factory town canopied by an Italian sky. Here, water, pure, sparkling, and mighty in strength, from the Merrimack river, does the duty of steam-engines, driving huge wheels and turbines attached to enormous factories. To describe these is unnecessary, as they differ but little in their internal economy from those in our manufacturing districts. There are eight manufacturing corporations and thirty-five mills, which produce 2,139,000 yards of piece-goods weekly, consisting of sheetings, shirtings, drillings, and printing cloths. These are fully equal in quality to similar goods manufactured in England. Not being in the trade, the "young ladies" interested me more than the spinningjennies or looms; and, before I had gone through one mill, I was ready to admit that the difference between a Manchester factory girl and a Lowell "young lady," is great indeed. The latter is generally good-looking, often pretty, dresses fashionably, wears her hair à l'Impératrice or à la Chinoise, and takes delight in finery, and flowers, which give a gay appearance to the factory rooms. But it would be unfair to institute a comparison between the Manchester and Lowell

1 A Vacation Tour in the United States and Canada. By Charles Richard Weld (London, 1855), 50-3.

factory girl; as the former is born in that hard school where work is a life-long taskmaster, while the latter is generally the daughter or relative of a substantial farmer, who enters the mills for the purpose of gaining a little independence, and seldom remains there more than a few years. Thus the employment takes higher rank than with us, and the "young ladies" live in a manner that would greatly astonish an English factory girl. Requesting permission to see one of the Lowell boarding-houses, where the "young ladies" reside, I was directed to the establishment usually shown to visitors; but, conceiving it desirable to step aside from the beaten track, I knocked at the door of a different house. The residences of the "young ladies" are excellent, forming rows separated by wide streets, shaded by a profusion of trees, and bright with flowers. My request to be permitted to see the house did not meet with ready assent. After some parley with the servant, the mistress appeared, and made particular inquiries respecting the object of my visit, adding, it was not her custom to show her house to strangers. This made me the more desirous of gaining admission; and having succeeded in satisfying the lady I was merely a curious Englishman, she allowed me to enter, and took great pains in showing me her establishment, assuring me had she been aware of my visit she would have put her house in order. But it needed no preparation to convince me the "young ladies" are admirably provided for. A large sitting-room occupied a considerable portion of the basement floor, beyond which was the refectory; above were airy bedrooms, well furnished, containing from two to four beds. The provisions, which my conductress insisted I should taste, were excellent; and when I add the "young ladies" are waited on, and have their clothes washed, with the exception of their laces, &c., which they prefer washing themselves, it will be seen they are very comfortable. For their board and lodging they pay six dollars a month, one-sixth of which is paid by the corporation; and as their average earnings are about three and a half dollars a week, it is evident that, if not extravagant in their dress, they have it in their power to save a considerable sum yearly. But I fear, from the number of gay bonnets, parasols, and dresses which I saw in the "young ladies' " apartments, a large proportion of the weekly wages is spent on these objects. At the same time it is right to add that the strictest propriety reigns throughout their community, comprising 1870 females; and it was gratifying to hear that, although the famous Lowell Offering periodical has been discontinued, the books borrowed from the town library, for the use of which half a dollar is paid yearly,

are of a healthy literary nature. The total number of operatives at Lowell when I visited it was nearly 10,000, and their savings invested in the bank of deposit 1,104,000 dollars.

D. Hours of Labor, 18451

There was, however, a dark side to the picture presented by our English travelers. The hours of labor were long and the work arduous, and even though conditions at Lowell were better than those to be found in English mills, they merited and received the criticism of a legislative investigating committee in 1845. That part of the committee's report dealing with hours of labor is as follows:

During our short stay in Lowell, we gathered many facts, which we deem of sufficient importance to state in this report, and first, in relation to the Hours of Labor.

From Mr. Clark, the agent of the Merrimack Corporation, we obtained the following table of the time which the mills run during

the year.

Begin work. From 1st May to 31st August, at 5 o'clock. From 1st September to 30th April, as soon as they can see.

Breakfast. From 1st November to 28th February, before going to work. From 1st March to 31st of March, at 7 o'clock. From 1st April to 19th September, at seven o'clock. From 20th September to 31st October, at 7 o'clock. Return in half an hour.

Dinner. Through the year at 12 o'clock. From 1st May to 31st August, return in 45 minutes. From 1st September to 30th April, return in 30 minutes.

Quit work. From 1st May to 31st August, at 7 o'clock. From 1st September to 19th September, at dark. From 20th September to 19th March, at 7 o'clock. From 20th March to 30th April, at dark.

Lamps are never lighted on Saturday evenings. The above is the time which is kept in all the mills in Lowell, with a slight difference in the machine shop; and it makes the average daily time throughout the year, of running the mills, to be twelve hours and ten minutes.

There are four days in the year which are observed as holidays, and on which the mills are never put in motion. These are Fast Day, Fourth of July, Thanksgiving Day, and Christmas Day. These make one day more than is usually devoted to pastime in any other place in New England. The following table shows the average hours of work per day, throughout the year, in the Lowell Mills.

1 Documentary History of American Industrial Society. Edited by John R. Commons and others (Cleveland, 1910), VIII, 141-2. Printed by permission of the publishers, The Arthur H. Clark Company.

Despite the superiority of the American operatives and the relatively high wages received by them, there were agitators who professed to believe that factory conditions in the United States were far worse than they really were. The following criticism of the conditions at Lowell was published in 1846:

We have lately visited the cities of Lowell and Manchester, and have had an opportunity of examining the factory system more closely than before. We had distrusted the accounts, which we had heard from persons engaged in the Labor Reform, now beginning to agitate New England; we could scarcely credit the statements made in relation to the exhausting nature of the labor in the mills, and to the manner in which the young women, the operatives, lived in their boarding-houses, six sleeping in a room, poorly ventilated. We went through many of the mills, talked particularly to a large number of the operatives, and ate at their boarding-house, on purpose to ascertain by personal inspection the facts of the case. We assure our readers that very little information is possessed, and no correct judgments formed, by the public at large, of our factory system, which is the first germ of the Industrial or Commercial Feudalism, that is to spread over our land. . . .

In Lowell live between seven and eight thousand young women, who are generally daughters of farmers of the different States of New England; some of them are members of families that were rich the generation before. . . .

The operatives work thirteen hours a day in the summer time, and from daylight to dark in the winter. At half past four in the morning the factory bell rings, and at five the girls must be in the mills. A clerk, placed as a watch, observes those who are a few minutes behind the time, and effectual means are taken to stimulate to punctuality. This is the morning commencement of the indus

1 Documentary History of American Industrial Society. Edited by John R. Commons and others (Cleveland, 1910), VII, 132-5. Printed by permission of the publishers, The Arthur H. Clark Company.

trial discipline (should we not rather say industrial tyranny?) which is established in these Associations of this moral and Christian community. At seven the girls are allowed thirty minutes for breakfast, and at noon thirty minutes more for dinner, except during the first quarter of the year, when the time is extended to forty-five minutes. But within this time they must hurry to their boarding-houses and return to the factory, and that through the hot sun, or the rain and cold. A meal eaten under such circumstances must be quite unfavorable to digestion and health, as any medical man will inform us. At seven o'clock in the evening the factory bell sounds the close of the day's work.

Thus thirteen hours per day of close attention and monotonous labor are exacted from the young women in these manufactories. . . . So fatigued we should say, exhausted and worn out, but we wish to speak of the system in the simplest language — are numbers of the girls, that they go to bed soon after their evening meal, and endeavor by a comparatively long sleep to resuscitate their weakened frames for the toils of the coming days. When Capital has got thirteen hours of labor daily out of a being, it can get nothing more. It would be a poor speculation in an industrial point of view to own the operative; for the trouble and expense of providing for times of sickness and old age would more than counterbalance the difference between the price of wages and the expense of board and clothing. The far greater number of fortunes, accumulated by the North in comparison with the South, shows that hireling labor is more profitable for Capital than slave labor.

Now let us examine the nature of the labor itself, and the conditions under which it is performed. Enter with us into the large rooms, when the looms are at work. The largest that we saw is in the Amoskeag Mills at Manchester. It is four hundred feet long, and about seventy broad; there are five hundred looms, and twenty-one thousand spindles in it. The din and clatter of these five hundred looms under full operation, struck us on first entering as something frightful and infernal, for it seemed such an atrocious violation of one of the faculties of the human soul, the sense of hearing. After a while we became somewhat inured to it, and by speaking quite close to the ear of an operative and quite loud, we could hold a conversation, and make the inquiries we wished.

The girls attend upon an average three looms; many attend four, but this requires a very active person, and the most unremitting care. However, a great many do it. Attention to two is as much as