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Title: Loom and spindle
        or life among the early mill girls with a sketch of "the Lowell offering" and some of its contributors

Author: Harriet Jane Hanson Robinson

Author of introduction, etc.: Carroll D. Wright

Contributor: Lucy Larcom

Release date: January 19, 2024 [eBook #72757]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Company

Credits: Susan E., Fay Dunn and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LOOM AND SPINDLE ***





[Illustration: Harriet Jane Hanson at 18.]




  LOOM AND SPINDLE
  OR
  Life Among the Early Mill Girls

  WITH A SKETCH OF
  _“THE LOWELL OFFERING” AND SOME
  OF ITS CONTRIBUTORS_

  BY
  HARRIET H. ROBINSON
  AUTHOR OF “WARRINGTON PEN PORTRAITS,” “MASSACHUSETTS IN THE
  WOMAN SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT,” “THE NEW PANDORA,” ETC.

  INTRODUCTION
  BY THE
  HONORABLE CARROLL D. WRIGHT

  “_Work is a shame to none; the shame is not to be working._”--HESIOD

  NEW YORK: 46 EAST 14TH STREET
  THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY
  BOSTON: 100 PURCHASE STREET




  COPYRIGHT, 1898,
  BY THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY.


  TYPOGRAPHY BY C. J. PETERS & SON, BOSTON.

  PRESSWORK BY S. J. PARKHILL & CO.




INTRODUCTION.


Whenever the history of economic conditions in this country shall be
written, the author will express his gratitude for all works giving
the details of especial epochs and phases of industrial life. Among
them he will find no more interesting experience than that attending
the entrance of women to the industrial field. The author of “Loom
and Spindle” contributes something more than her personal experiences
at Lowell during the early years of the textile factories,--she
contributes an inside view of the workings of a new system of labor,
which had been transplanted from England, and which originated with the
application of power to spinning and weaving.

The attractions of good wages and comfortable environment were the
inducements held out by American manufacturers at Lowell to secure a
class of operatives which should bring success to their experiment.
The prejudice against mill operatives, as shown by investigations
in England, would otherwise have delayed the establishment of the
factory in America; that is, the factory as controlled by a central
power. With the attractions offered, it was natural that the women of
New England should accept situations as weavers, spinners, etc., in
the great textile works; but they brought with them their educational
and religious training; and, as they were grouped together, it was
natural also that they should continue the cultivation of their minds,
especially under the broadening influences of mental contact. It is
this aspect of the factory system to which Mrs. Robinson has addressed
herself. It was an experience in which she took part; she saw it all,
and was a part of it. She, with her associates, chief among whom were
Harriot F. Curtis, a writer who attained an enviable position, the
Currier sisters, Mrs. Chamberlain, Eliza Jane Cate, Harriet Farley, the
sculptress Margaret Foley, Lydia S. Hall, Lucy and Emmeline Larcom,
Sarah Shedd my first teacher, and others, who became well known in
literary, benevolent, and other walks in public life, gave character to
the early factory days in New England, which are usually referred to
not only as unique in their features, but for the purpose of supporting
the idea that modern conditions are not as attractive, and that there
has been a thorough deterioration not only in the people employed in
factories, but in their home-life. Something of this note is sounded
in the last chapter of this book; yet it must be recognized that the
factory system has been and is a power in civilization,--a factor in
developing it, in truth.

The factory girl of the early period was not degraded through her
employment or her surroundings. She stepped out of factory life into
professional or semi-professional occupations. She was succeeded by a
class originally beneath her, the members of which have in their turn
graduated from the factory, and stepped into higher callings. This
process has been repeated, the destiny of the factory being ever to
reach down and lift people up out of lowly into higher conditions.
This gives the surface appearance of deterioration, when the real
fact is that through the factory the lower orders, so far as mental
capacity is concerned, are being constantly elevated. The author sees
this, yet naturally cannot help regretting that the heterogeneity of
the factory population--natives coming from many lands, with differing
social ideas, with little or no training, with few opportunities for
advancement, with low earning capacity, and with varied languages--has
changed the atmosphere of the factory community. The human lives
involved are worth more in this atmosphere than they were in the
cloddish labor out of which they have risen.

“Loom and Spindle,” valuable as it is for its details of economic
history, for the inspiration which comes from studying the lives and
characters of noble women, teaches the lesson which the author and
her associates taught,--that whatever is honest in employment is in
the service of God. Their lives emphasize the fact that the modern
system of industry has exercised a wonderful influence in securing
intellectual stimulation, and in dignifying every honest calling.

  CARROLL D. WRIGHT.

  WASHINGTON, _May, 1898_.




CONTENTS.


  CHAPTER                                              PAGE

        INTRODUCTION                                    iii

  I.    LOWELL SIXTY YEARS AGO                            1

  II.   CHILD-LIFE IN THE LOWELL COTTON MILLS            25

  III.  THE LITTLE MILL-GIRL’S ALMA MATER                40

  IV.   THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE EARLY FACTORY GIRLS   60

  V.    CHARACTERISTICS (_Continued_)                    83

  VI.   _The Lowell Offering_ AND ITS WRITERS            97

  VII.  _The Lowell Offering_ (_Continued_)             109

  VIII. BRIEF BIOGRAPHIES OF SOME OF THE WRITERS FOR
          _The Lowell Offering_                         132

  IX.   THE COTTON FACTORY OF TO-DAY                    202




LOOM AND SPINDLE.




CHAPTER I.

LOWELL SIXTY YEARS AGO.

    “That wonderful city of spindles and looms,
      And thousands of factory folk.”


The life of a people or of a class is best illustrated by its domestic
scenes, or by character sketches of the men and women who form a part
of it. The historian is a species of mental photographer of the life
and times he attempts to portray; he can no more give the whole history
of events than the artist can, in detail, bring a whole city into his
picture. And so, in this record of a life that is past, I can give but
incomplete views of that long-ago faded landscape, views taken on the
spot.

It is hardly possible to do this truthfully without bringing myself
into the picture,--a solitary traveller revisiting the scenes of youth,
and seeing with young eyes a city and a people living in almost
Arcadian simplicity, at a time which, in view of the greatly changed
conditions of factory labor, may well be called a lost Eden for that
portion of our working-men and working-women.

Before 1836 the era of mechanical industry in New England had hardly
begun, the industrial life of its people was yet in its infancy, and
nearly every article in domestic use that is now made by the help
of machinery was then “done by hand.” It was, with few exceptions,
a rural population, and the material for clothing was grown on the
home-farm, and spun and woven by the women. Even in comparatively
wealthy families, the sons were sent to college in suits of homespun,
cut and made by the village seamstress, and every household was a
self-producing and self-sustaining community. “Homespun was their only
wear,” homespun their lives.

There was neither railway, steamboat, telegraph, nor telephone, and
direct communication was kept up by the lumbering stage-coach, or the
slow-toiling canal, which tracked its sinuous way from town to city,
and from State to State. The daily newspaper was almost unknown, and
the “news of the day” was usually a week or so behind the times. Money
was scarce, and most of the retail business was done by “barter”--so
many eggs for a certain quantity of sugar, or so much butter or farm
produce for tea, coffee, and other luxuries. The people had plenty to
eat, for the land, though sterile, was well cultivated; but if the
children wanted books, or a better education than the village school
could give them, the farmer seldom had the means to gratify their
wishes.

These early New Englanders lived in pastoral simplicity. They were
moral, religious, and perhaps content. They could say with truth,--

    “We are the same things that our fathers have been,
    We see the same sights that our fathers have seen,
    We drink the same stream, we feel the same sun,
    And run the same course that our fathers have run.”

Their lives had kept pace for so many years with the stage-coach and
the canal that they thought, no doubt, if they thought about it at all,
that they should crawl along in this way forever. But into this life
there came an element that was to open a new era in the activities of
the country.

This was the genius of mechanical industry, which would build the
cotton-factory, set in motion the loom and the spinning-frame, call
together an army of useful people, open wider fields of industry for
men and (which was quite as important at that time) for women also.
For hitherto woman had always been a money-_saving_, rather than a
money-earning, member of the community, and her labor could command
but small return. If she worked out as servant, or “help,” her wages
were from fifty cents to one dollar a week; if she went from house to
house by the day to spin and weave, or as tailoress, she could get but
seventy-five cents a week and her meals. As teacher her services were
not in demand, and nearly all the arts, the professions, and even the
trades and industries, were closed to her, there being, as late as
1840, only seven vocations, outside the home, into which the women of
New England had entered.[1]

    [1] These were teaching, needlework, keeping boarders, factory
        labor, type-setting, folding and stitching in book-binderies.
        According to the census of 1885 (that of 1895 is not yet
        tabulated), wherein the subject of “Woman in Industry” was
        first specialized, by Hon. Carroll D. Wright, there are 113
        industries, which, subdivided, make 17,357 separate
        occupations. Women have found employment in 4,467 of these,
        while of the 113 general branches, they are found in all but
        seven.

The Middlesex Canal was one of the earliest factors in New England
enterprise. It began its course at Charlestown Mill-pond, and ended
it at Lowell. It was completed in 1804, at the cost of $700,000, and
was the first canal in the United States to transport both passengers
and merchandise. Its charter was extinguished in 1859, in spite of
all opposition, by a decision of the Supreme Court. And thus, in less
than sixty years, this marvel of engineering skill, as it was then
considered, which was projected to last for all time, was “switched off
the track” by its successful rival, the Boston and Lowell Railroad,
and, with the stage-coach and the turnpike road became a thing of the
past.

The course of the old Middlesex Canal can still be traced, as a
cow-path or a woodland lane, and in one place, which I have always
kept in remembrance, very near the Somerville Station on the Western
Division of the Boston and Maine Railroad, can still be seen a few
decayed willows, nodding sleepily over its grass-grown channel and
ridgy paths,--a reminder of those slow times when it took a long
summer’s day to travel the twenty-eight miles from Boston to Lowell.

The Boston and Lowell Railroad, probably the first in the United
States, went into operation in 1835. I saw the first train that went
out of Lowell, and there was great excitement over the event. People
were gathered along the street near the “_deepot_,” discussing the
great wonder; and we children stayed at home from school, or ran
barefooted from our play, at the first “toot” of the whistle. As I
stood on the sidewalk, I remember hearing those who stood near me
disputing as to the probable result of this new attempt at locomotion.
“The ingine never _can_ start all them cars!” “She can, too.” “She
can’t.” “I don’t believe a word of it.” “She’ll break down and kill
everybody,” was the cry.

But the engine did start, and the train came back, and the Boston and
Lowell Railroad continued an independent line of travel for about the
same number of years as its early rival; when, by the “irony of fate,”
its individuality was merged in that of a larger and more powerful
organization,--the Boston and Maine Railroad, of which, in 1895, it
became only a section or division. But let us not regret too much this
accident of time, for who knows what will become of this enormous plant
during the next fifty years, when our railways, perhaps, may be laid in
the “unfeatured air.”

The first factory for the manufacture of cotton cloth in the United
States was erected in Beverly, Mass., in 1787, and in 1790 Samuel
Slater established the cotton industry in Pawtucket, R.I.; but the
first real effort to establish the enterprise was in Lowell, where a
large wooden building was erected at the Wamesit Falls, on the Concord
River, in 1813.

The history of Lowell, Mass., is not identical with that of other
manufacturing places in New England, and for two reasons: first,
because here were gathered together a larger number of factory people,
and among them were the first who showed any visible sign of mental
cultivation; and, second, because it was here that the practice of
what was called “The Lowell factory system” went into operation, a
practice which included the then new idea, that corporations should
have souls, and should exercise a paternal influence over the lives
of their operatives. As Dr. John O. Green of Lowell, in a letter to
Lucy Larcom, said: “The design of the control of the boarding-houses
and their inmates was one of the characteristics of the Lowell factory
system, early incorporated therein by Mr. Francis Cabot Lowell and his
brother-in-law, Patrick T. Jackson, who are entitled to all the credit
of the acknowledged superiority of our early operatives.”

Cotton-mills had also been started in Waltham, Mass., where the first
power-loom went into operation in 1814; but, for lack of water-power,
these could be carried on to a limited extent only. It was therefore
resolved, by gentlemen interested, that the “plant” should be moved
elsewhere, and water privileges were sought in Maine, New Hampshire,
and in Massachusetts. Finally, Pawtucket Falls, on the Merrimack River,
was selected, as a possible site where a large manufacturing town could
be built up. Here land was bought, and the place, formerly a part of
Chelmsford, set off in 1826, was named Lowell, after Francis Cabot
Lowell, who, through his improvements, was practically the inventor of
the power-loom, and the originator of the cotton-cloth manufacture as
now carried on in America.

Kirk Boott, the agent of the first corporation, (as the mills,
boarding-houses,--the whole plant was called), was a great potentate
in the early history of Lowell, and exercised almost absolute power
over the mill-people. Though not an Englishman, he had been educated
in England, had imbibed the autocratic ideas of the mill-owners of
the mother country, and many stories were told of his tyranny, or his
“peculiarities,” long after he ceased to be a resident.

Of his connection with the early history of Lowell, it is stated that,
before the water-power was discovered there, he went as agent of the
purchasers, to Gardiner, Me., and tried to buy of R. H. Gardiner,
Esq., the great water privilege belonging to his estate. Mr. Gardiner
would not sell, but was willing to lease it. Kirk Boott would not
agree to this, or Lowell might now have been on the Kennebec in Maine.
Then he came to Chelmsford, and saw the great Merrimack River and its
possibilities, and set himself shrewdly to work to buy land on its
banks, including the water-power. He represented to the simple farmers
that he was going to raise fruit and wool, and they, knowing nothing of
“mill privileges,” believed him, and sold the greatest water-power in
New England for almost nothing. When they discovered his real design
in buying the land, and the chance for making money that they had
lost, they were angry enough. A song was made about it, and sung by
everybody. It began thus:--

    There came a young man from the old countree,
    The Merrimack River he happened to see,
    What a capital place for mills, quoth he,
      Ri-toot, ri-noot, ri-toot, ri-noot, riumpty, ri-tooten-a.

The next verse told how he swindled the farmers by inducing them to
_sell_ the water-power for nothing:--

    And then these farmers so cute,
    They _gave_ all their lands and timber to Boott,
      Ri-toot, ri-noot, etc.

He was not popular, and the boys were so afraid of him that they would
not go near him willingly, for many of them had known what it was to
have his riding-whip come down on their backs. There is one still
living who remembers how it felt. This old boy remembers that one
Fourth of July Kirk Boott raised the English and American flags over
his house, with the Stars and Stripes _under_ the English colors; he
would not change them at the suggestion of an indignant mob who had
gathered, and they did it for him. Kirk Boott’s house and garden were
located on the spot where the Boott Corporation now stands. The house
was a very fine mansion and stood near the river, and the garden was a
wonder to everybody, fruit and flowers were brought to such perfection.
So he did fulfil his promise after a sort to the former owners of
the land, for he raised fruit on some of it, and the wool he raised,
metaphorically, and pulled (as the song intimated) over the eyes of the
deluded farmers.

The Merrimack Manufacturing Company was incorporated in 1822, a
factory was built, and the first cotton cloth was made in 1823. It
was coarse in texture,--the kind that might be used to “shoot pease
through,”--though it was not sleazy, but thick and firm, something like
thin sail-cloth, and it costs “two and threepence” (thirty-seven and
one-half cents) a yard.

The first calico printing done in Lowell was on the Merrimack
Corporation, and the prints were of very poor texture and color. The
groundwork was madder, and there was a white spot in it for a figure;
it cost about thirty cents a yard. This madder-color was the product of
an extensive cowyard in the vicinity of the print-works, and the prints
were “warranted not to fade.”

I had a gown of this material, and it proved a garb of humiliation,
for the white spots washed out, cloth and all, leaving me covered with
eyelet-holes. This so amused my witty brother that, whenever I wore it,
he accused me of being more “holy than righteous.” Dyers and calico
printers were soon sent for from England, and a long low block on the
Merrimack Corporation was built for their accommodation and called the
“English Row.” When they arrived from the old country they were not
satisfied with the wages, which were not according to the agreement,
and they would not go to work, but left the town with their families
in a large wagon with a band of music. Terms were made with them,
however, and they returned, and established in Lowell the art of calico
printing.

The “Print Works” was a great mystery in its early days. It had its
secrets, and it was said that no stranger was allowed to enter certain
rooms, for fear that the art would be stolen. The first enduring color
in print was an indigo blue. This was the groundwork, and a minute
white spot sprinkled over it made the goods lively and pretty. It
wore like “iron,” and its success was the first step toward the high
standard in the market once held by the “Merrimack Print.”

Before 1840, the foreign element in the factory population was almost
an unknown quantity. The first immigrants to come to Lowell were from
England. The Irishman soon followed; but not for many years did
the Frenchman, Italian, and German come to take possession of the
cotton-mills. The English were of the artisan class, but the Irish came
as “hewers of wood and drawers of water.” The first Irishwomen to work
in the Lowell mills were usually scrubbers and waste-pickers. They
were always good-natured, and when excited used their own language;
the little mill-children learned many of the words (which all seemed
to be joined together like compound words), and these mites would
often answer back, in true Hibernian fashion. These women, as a rule,
wore peasant cloaks, red or blue, made with hoods and several capes,
in summer (as they told the children), to “kape cool,” and in winter
to “kape warrum.” They were not intemperate, nor “bitterly poor.”
They earned good wages, and they and their children, especially their
children, very soon adapted themselves to their changed conditions of
life, and became as “good as anybody.”

To show the close connection in family descent of the artisan and the
artist, at least in the line of color, it may be said here that a
grandson of one of the first blue-dyers in this country is one of the
finest American marine painters, and exhibited pictures at the World’s
Columbian Exposition of 1893.

In 1832 the factory population of Lowell was divided into four classes.
The agents of the corporations were the aristocrats, not because of
their wealth, but on account of the office they held, which was one of
great responsibility, requiring, as it did, not only some knowledge of
business, but also a certain tact in managing, or utilizing the great
number of operatives so as to secure the best return for their labor.
The agent was also something of an autocrat, and there was no appeal
from his decision in matters affecting the industrial interests of
those who were employed on his corporation.

The agents usually lived in large houses, not too near the
boarding-houses, surrounded by beautiful gardens which seemed like
Paradise to some of the home-sick girls, who, as they came from their
work in the noisy mill, could look with longing eyes into the sometimes
open gate in the high fence, and be reminded afresh of their pleasant
country homes. And a glimpse of one handsome woman, the wife of an
agent, reading by an astral lamp in the early evening, has always been
remembered by one young girl, who looked forward to the time when she,
too, might have a parlor of her own, lighted by an astral lamp!

The second class were the overseers, a sort of gentry, ambitious
mill-hands who had worked up from the lowest grade of factory labor;
and they usually lived in the end-tenements of the blocks, the short
connected rows of houses in which the operatives were boarded. However,
on one corporation, at least, there was a block devoted exclusively to
the overseers, and one of the wives, who had been a factory girl, put
on so many airs that the wittiest of her former work-mates fastened the
name of “Puckersville” to the whole block where the overseers lived.
It was related of one of these quondam factory girls, that, with some
friends, she once re-visited the room in which she used to work, and,
to show her genteel friends her ignorance of her old surroundings, she
turned to the overseer, who was with the party, and pointing to some
wheels and pulleys over her head, she said, “What’s them things up
there?”

The third class were the operatives, and were all spoken of as “girls”
or “men;” and the “girls,” either as a whole, or in part, are the
subject of this volume.

The fourth class, lords of the spade and the shovel, by whose constant
labor the building of the great factories was made possible, and whose
children soon became valuable operatives, lived at first on what was
called the “Acre,” a locality near the present site of the North
Grammar schoolhouse. Here, clustered around a small stone Catholic
Church, were hundreds of little shanties, in which they dwelt with
their wives and numerous children. Among them were sometimes found
disorder and riot, for they had brought with them from the _ould
counthrey_ their feuds and quarrels, and the “Bloody Fardowners” and
the “Corkonians” were torn by intestinal strife. The boys of both these
factions agreed in fighting the “damned Yankee boys,” who represented
to them both sides of the feud on occasion; and I have seen many a
pitched battle fought, all the way from the Tremont Corporation (then
an open field) to the North Grammar schoolhouse, before we girls could
be allowed to pursue our way in peace.

We were obliged to go to school with our champions, the boys, for we
did not dare to go alone. These “Acreites” respected one or two of us
from our relationship to the “bullies,” as some of the fighting leaders
of our boys were called; and when caught alone by Acreites coming home
from school, we have been in terror of our lives, till we heard some
of them say, in a language used by all sides, air-o-there owes-o-gose
e-o-the ooly-o-boos’ ister-o-see. (There goes the bully’s sister.) This
language was called Hog Latin by the boys; but it is found in one of
George Borrows’ books, as a specimen of the Rommany or gypsy language.
These fights were not confined to the boys on each side; after
mill-hours the men joined in the fray, and evenings that should have
been better employed were spent in carrying on this senseless warfare.
The authorities interfered, and prevented these raids of the Acreites
upon the school-children, and the warfare was kept within their own
domain. It lasted after this for more than ten years, and was ended by
the “bloody battle” of Suffolk Bridge, in which a young boy was killed.

The agents were paid only fair salaries, the overseers generally two
dollars a day, and the help all earned good wages. By this it will be
seen that there were no very rich persons in Lowell, nor were there any
“suffering poor,” since every man, woman, and child, (over ten years
of age) could get work, and was paid according to the work each was
capable of doing.

The richest young lady of my time was the daughter of a deceased
mill-owner; her income, it was said, was six hundred dollars a year!
And many of the factory girls made from six to ten dollars a week! out
of this, to be sure, they paid their board, which was one dollar and
twenty-five cents a week.[2]

    [2] In addition to this, the corporation paid twenty-five cents
        a week to the boarding-house keeper, for each operative. But
        this sum was soon withdrawn, the girls were obliged to pay it
        themselves, and this was one of the grievances which caused
        the first strike among the Lowell factory operatives.

By this it will be seen that there could not have been much aristocracy
of wealth; but (as in most manufacturing cities to-day), there was a
class feeling, which divided the people, though not their interests.
For, as has been said, the corporation guarded well the interests of
its employees; and as the mill-hands looked to the factories for their
support, they worked as one man (and one woman) to help increase the
growing prosperity of the city, which had given to them a new and
permanent means of earning a livelihood.

The history of Lowell gives a good illustration of the influence
of woman, as an independent class, upon the growth of a town or a
community.

As early as 1836, ten years after its incorporation, Lowell began to
show what the early mill girls and boys could do towards the material
prosperity of a great city. It numbered over 17,000 inhabitants,--an
increase of over 15,000 during that time.

In 1848 over one-half of the depositors in the Lowell Institution for
Savings were mill-girls, and over one-third of the whole sum deposited
belonged to them,--in round numbers, $101,992; and the new-made city
showed unmistakable signs of becoming, what it was afterwards called,
the “Manchester of America.” But the money of the operatives alone
could not have so increased the growth and social importance of a city
or a locality. It was the result, as well, of the successful operation
of the early factory system, managed by men who were wise enough to
consider the physical, moral, and mental needs of those who were the
source of their wealth.

Free co-educational schools were established in Lowell as early as
1830-1832, and a rule was made by the several corporations that every
child under fourteen should attend them three months in the year.

Master Hills taught the North Grammar School, after it occupied its
present site. I remember him in 1835; and I pause when I think of this
teacher, and wonder if, in some other sphere, he remembers whipping a
little girl to overcome her persistent denials of an accusation made
against her, thereby forcing her to tell a lie. She was accused by one
of her schoolmates of taking a one cent multiplication table from her
desk, and tearing it in two. For this slight offence, he, a strong man,
unheeding her denials of the charge, with a heavy strap, struck with
his whole strength on the tender palm of the little hand of a child of
scarcely ten years. He punished her till she could not see, for pain
and terror, and then she gave in, _whipped into a lie_, and said she
did it.

The punishment over she staggered to her seat, thinking that at last
it was all over. But the end was not yet, for she had to learn by this
early experience that one is but the beginning of a sum, and that she
must tell many lies and keep on telling them, in order to maintain her
position. Her little schoolmates said, “Why did you not say sooner
that you did it, and save yourself all that whipping?” She could not
tell them the truth, for they would not believe her. Her dear mother
said, “If you wanted another multiplication table, why did you not ask
me for one?” But she could not even confess the truth to her. Her good
aunt accosted her with, “You sinner! do you not know what becomes of
liars?” She could not justify herself to avert _that_ awful fate, and
so she went on throwing out lie after lie (a heavy ballast), to save
herself and to maintain her standing as a liar, till she was heartily
sick of the whole matter, and wished that she had stuck to the truth,
even if the master had killed her.

I have known Master Hills to go secretly behind a boy, who was playing
at his desk, and strike him with a heavy strap across the back.
Whipping was an every-day occurrence, and was done before all the
children during school hours. A boy was made to lie across a chair,
and was whipped in that position--not always through his clothing. Let
us charitably hope that this cruel treatment of children was the fault
of the times and of the arbitrary rule that was thought necessary to
govern a community in those days. The day of children’s rights had not
yet dawned.

Master Jacob Graves followed Mr. Hills, and he was the first teacher
that I remember who used moral suasion, and instilled into our minds
what honor among children meant. He taught us to be truthful for
truth’s sake, his rule was mild and pleasant, he never punished with
the rod, and his kind, remonstrating voice was more powerful than any
whipping. In later life, many of his scholars sorrowed with him in his
misfortunes, and now his memory lives in their hearts, a tender and
pleasant recollection.

The first church edifice built in Lowell was St. Anne’s. It was built
under Kirk Boott’s reign; and, without regard to the difference of the
religious opinions of the operatives, the Episcopal form of service
was adopted. Every operative on the Merrimack corporation was obliged
to pay thirty-seven and a half cents a month toward the support of
this church. This was considered unjust by the help, many of whom were
“dissenters,” and they complained so loudly at the extortion, which was
not in the contract, that the tax was soon discontinued.

The Freewill Baptist Church was built largely of money belonging to
over one hundred factory girls, who were induced by Elder Thurston’s
promises of large interest to draw their money from the savings-bank,
and place it in his hands. These credulous operatives did not even
receive the interest of their money, but, believing in him as an elder
of the church, they were persuaded, even a second time, to let him have
their savings. This building has had a curious and eventful history,
“from grave to gay, from lively to severe.” According to Mr. Cowley’s
history of Lowell, nothing had succeeded in it; and, to a believer in
retributive justice, it would seem as if even the building deserved to
be under a ban till those hard earnings were restored. The money wasted
there represents so much of lost opportunity of education, lost means
of comfort and maintenance, lost ability to keep or help the dear ones
at home.

Early in the history of Lowell, Universalism became popular, and a
large congregation, mostly young people, were soon gathered. This quite
frightened those of certain other sects, and their ministers preached
openly against the new doctrine; discussions and controversies were
rife, and whether there was a hell or not, was the chief topic of the
day among the factory people. That there was not was, of course, the
more agreeable, and, with the fearless ones, the more popular side.
There was a very benighted idea in the minds of many as to what this
new religion really was, and “Infidel,” and “Atheist,” were the names
applied by other denominations. Doctrinal feeling was strong, and
young people who went with the “awful Universalists” received no favor
from the other sects. The Unitarians also came under the ban, but the
Universalists were the more condemned; and the good work they tried
to do was hindered in more than one direction by this unchristian
persecution.

As a matter of local history, it may be well to add here, that in
its earlier days Lowell furnished quite a number of distinguished
men. Among its physicians may be mentioned Dr. Elisha Bartlett,
who was widely known as a man of scientific culture and of many
accomplishments; the Daltons, father and sons, later of Boston; and
Dr. Gilman Kimball, the celebrated surgeon. Lieutenant-Governor
Huntington also practised medicine there, as did Dr. John O. Greene,
the antiquary. Wendell Phillips was in a law-office, and John Nesmith,
manufacturer, was lieutenant-governor during a part of Governor
Andrew’s term of office. In Freesoil days John G. Whittier edited a
paper there, and John H. Warland and H. Hastings Weld were in the same
profession. Colonel William Schouler began editorial life in Lowell,
assisted by William S. Robinson (“Warrington”), who went from Concord,
Mass., in 1842. Mr. Robinson also published _The Lowell American_,
one of the first Freesoil papers, from 1849 to 1854. William Worthen,
of the firm of D. Appleton & Co. of New York, was formerly of Lowell,
a Worthen being one of the founders of the city. Warren Colburn of
“Colburn’s Sequel,” the mathematician, was agent of the Merrimack
Mills. John P. Robinson, who was so severely lampooned by the poet
Lowell (“John P. Robinson, he”), moved to Lowell from Dover early in
life. The Hon. Gustavus Vasa Fox, once Assistant Secretary of the Navy,
lived with his mother on the Tremont Corporation. Major-General B. F.
Butler was one of its most widely known citizens. Henry F. Durant, the
founder of Wellesley College, studied law in the office of his father,
William Smith, and Major-General N. P. Banks was bobbin-boy, and
afterward editor there. The late Rev. W. H. Cudworth, and J. W. Hanson,
D.D., now of Chicago, were cousins and Lowell boys, and were both
chaplains of Massachusetts regiments during the Civil War. James McNeil
Whistler, the painter, was born in Lowell, in 1834.

Lowell has never been a book-publishing place; but it is a curious fact
that the first American edition of Hayward’s translation of “Faust” was
published there in 1840 by Daniel Bixby, afterward of New York.




CHAPTER II.

CHILD-LIFE IN THE LOWELL COTTON-MILLS.


In attempting to describe the life and times of the early mill-girls,
it has seemed best for me to write my story in the first person; not so
much because my own experience is of importance, as that it is, in some
respects, typical of that of many others who lived and worked with me.

Our home was in Boston, in Leverett Court, now Cotting Street, where
I was born the year the corner-stone was laid for the Bunker Hill
Monument, as my mother told me always to remember. We lived there until
I was nearly seven years of age, and, although so young, I can remember
very vividly scenes and incidents which took place at that time. We
lived under the shadow of the old jail (near where Wall Street now
runs), and we children used to hear conversation, not meant for small
ears, between the prisoners and the persons in the court who came there
to see them.

All the land on which the North Union Station now stands, with the
railway lines connected with it, and also the site of many of the
streets, particularly Lowell Street, was then a part of the Mill-pond,
or was reclaimed from the Bay. The tide came in at the foot of Leverett
Court, and we could look across the water and see the sailing vessels
coming and going. There the down-east wood-coasters landed their
freight; many a time I have gone “chipping” there, and once a generous
young skipper offered me a stick of wood, which I did not dare to take.

In 1831, under the shadow of a great sorrow, which had made her four
children fatherless,--the oldest but seven years of age,--my mother
was left to struggle alone; and, although she tried hard to earn bread
enough to fill our hungry mouths, she could not do it, even with the
help of kind friends. And so it happened that one of her more wealthy
neighbors, who had looked with longing eyes on the one little daughter
of the family, offered to adopt me. But my mother, who had had a hard
experience in her youth in living amongst strangers, said, “No; while
I have one meal of victuals a day, I will not part with my children.”
I always remembered this speech because of the word “victuals,” and I
wondered for a long time what this good old Bible word meant.

My father was a carpenter, and some of his fellow-workmen helped my
mother to open a little shop, where she sold small stores, candy,
kindling-wood, and so on, but there was no great income from this, and
we soon became poorer than ever. Dear me! I can see the small shop now,
with its jars of striped candy, its loaves of bread, the room at the
back where we all lived, and my oldest brother (now a “D.D.”) sawing
the kindling-wood which we sold to the neighbors.

That was a hard, cold winter; and for warmth’s sake my mother and her
four children all slept in one bed, two at the foot and three at the
head,--but her richer neighbor could not get the little daughter; and,
contrary to all the modern notions about hygiene, we were a healthful
and a robust brood. We all, except the baby, went to school every day,
and Saturday afternoons I went to a charity school to learn to sew.
My mother had never complained of her poverty in our hearing, and I
had accepted the conditions of my life with a child’s trust, knowing
nothing of the relative difference between poverty and riches. And so
I went to the sewing-school, like any other little girl who was taking
lessons in sewing and not as a “charity child;” until a certain day
when something was said by one of the teachers, about me, as a “poor
little girl,”--a thoughtless remark, no doubt, such as may be said
to-day in “charity schools.” When I went home I told my mother that the
teacher said I was _poor_, and she replied in her sententious manner,
“You need not go there again.”

Shortly after this my mother’s widowed sister, Mrs. Angeline Cudworth,
who kept a factory boarding-house in Lowell, advised her to come to
that city. She secured a house for her, and my mother, with her little
brood and her few household belongings, started for the new factory
town.

We went by the canal-boat, The Governor Sullivan, and a long and
tiresome day it was to the weary mother and her four active children,
though the children often varied the scene by walking on the tow-path
under the Lombardy poplars, riding on the gates when the locks were
swung open, or buying glasses of water at the stopping-places along the
route.

When we reached Lowell, we were carried at once to my aunt’s house,
whose generous spirit had well provided for her hungry relations;
and we children were led into her kitchen, where, on the longest and
whitest of tables, lay, oh, so many loaves of bread!

After our feast of loaves we walked with our mother to the Tremont
Corporation, where we were to live, and at the old No. 5 (which imprint
is still legible over the door), in the first block of tenements then
built, I began my life among factory people. My mother kept forty
boarders, most of them men, mill-hands, and she did all her housework,
with what help her children could give her between schools; for we
all, even the baby three years old, were kept at school. My part in
the housework was to wash the dishes, and I was obliged to stand on a
cricket in order to reach the sink!

My mother’s boarders were many of them young men, and usually farmers’
sons. They were almost invariably of good character and behavior,
and it was a continual pleasure for me and my brothers to associate
with them. I was treated like a little sister, never hearing a word
or seeing a look to remind me that I was not of the same sex as my
brothers. I played checkers with them, sometimes “beating,” and took
part in their conversation, and it never came into my mind that they
were not the same as so many “girls.” A good object-lesson for one who
was in the future to maintain, by voice and pen, her belief in the
equality of the sexes!

I had been to school constantly until I was about ten years of age,
when my mother, feeling obliged to have help in her work besides what
I could give, and also needing the money which I could earn, allowed
me, at my urgent request (for I wanted to earn _money_ like the other
little girls), to go to work in the mill. I worked first in the
spinning-room as a “doffer.” The doffers were the very youngest girls,
whose work was to doff, or take off, the full bobbins, and replace them
with the empty ones.

I can see myself now, racing down the alley, between the
spinning-frames, carrying in front of me a bobbin-box bigger than I
was. These mites had to be very swift in their movements, so as not
to keep the spinning-frames stopped long, and they worked only about
fifteen minutes in every hour. The rest of the time was their own, and
when the overseer was kind they were allowed to read, knit, or even to
go outside the mill-yard to play.

Some of us learned to embroider in crewels, and I still have a lamb
worked on cloth, a relic of those early days, when I was first taught
to improve my time in the good old New England fashion. When not
doffing, we were often allowed to go home, for a time, and thus we
were able to help our mothers in their housework. We were paid two
dollars a week; and how proud I was when my turn came to stand up on
the bobbin-box, and write my name in the paymaster’s book, and how
indignant I was when he asked me if I could “write.” “Of course I can,”
said I, and he smiled as he looked down on me.

The working-hours of all the girls extended from five o’clock in the
morning until seven in the evening, with one-half hour for breakfast
and for dinner. Even the doffers were forced to be on duty nearly
fourteen hours a day, and this was the greatest hardship in the lives
of these children. For it was not until 1842 that the hours of labor
for children under twelve years of age were limited to ten per day;
but the “ten-hour law” itself was not passed until long after some of
these little doffers were old enough to appear before the legislative
committee on the subject, and plead, by their presence, for a reduction
of the hours of labor.

I do not recall any particular hardship connected with this life,
except getting up so early in the morning, and to this habit, I never
was, and never shall be, reconciled, for it has taken nearly a lifetime
for me to make up the sleep lost at that early age. But in every other
respect it was a pleasant life. We were not hurried any more than was
for our good, and no more work was required of us than we were able
easily to do.

Most of us children lived at home, and we were well fed, drinking both
tea and coffee, and eating substantial meals (besides luncheons) three
times a day. We had very happy hours with the older girls, many of
whom treated us like babies, or talked in a motherly way, and so had a
good influence over us. And in the long winter evenings, when we could
not run home between the doffings, we gathered in groups and told each
other stories, and sung the old-time songs our mothers had sung, such
as “Barbara Allen,” “Lord Lovell,” “Captain Kid,” “Hull’s Victory,” and
sometimes a hymn.

Among the ghost stories I remember some that would delight the hearts
of the “Society for Psychical Research.” The more imaginative ones told
of what they had read in fairy books, or related tales of old castles
and distressed maidens; and the scene of their adventures was sometimes
laid among the foundation stones of the new mill, just building.

And we told each other of our little hopes and desires, and what we
meant to do when we grew up. For we had our aspirations; and one of us,
who danced the “shawl dance,” as she

called it, in the spinning-room alley, for the amusement of her
admiring companions, discussed seriously with another little girl
the scheme of their running away together, and joining the circus.
Fortunately, there was a grain of good sense lurking in the mind of
this gay little lassie, with the thought of the mother at home, and the
scheme was not carried out.

There was another little girl, whose mother was suffering with
consumption, and who went out of the mill almost every forenoon, to buy
and cook oysters, which she brought in hot, for her mother’s luncheon.
The mother soon went to her rest, and the little daughter, after
tasting the first bitter experience of life, followed her. Dear Lizzie
Osborne! little sister of my child-soul, such friendship as ours is not
often repeated in after life! Many pathetic stories might be told of
these little fatherless mill-children, who worked near their mothers,
and who went hand in hand with them to and from the mill.

I cannot tell how it happened that some of us knew about the English
factory children, who, it was said, were treated so badly, and were
even whipped by their cruel overseers. But we did know of it, and used
to sing, to a doleful little tune, some verses called, “The Factory
Girl’s Last Day.” I do not remember it well enough to quote it as
written, but have refreshed my memory by reading it lately in Robert
Dale Owen’s writings:--


“THE FACTORY GIRL’S LAST DAY.

    “’Twas on a winter morning,
      The weather wet and wild,
    Two hours before the dawning
      The father roused his child,
    Her daily morsel bringing,
      The darksome room he paced,
    And cried, ‘The bell is ringing--
      My hapless darling, haste!’

       ·    ·    ·    ·    ·    ·

    The overlooker met her
      As to her frame she crept;
    And with his thong he beat her,
      And cursed her when she wept.
    It seemed as she grew weaker,
      The threads the oftener broke,
    The rapid wheels ran quicker,
      And heavier fell the stroke.”

The song goes on to tell the sad story of her death while her “pitying
comrades” were carrying her home to die, and ends:--

    “That night a chariot passed her,
      While on the ground she lay;
    The daughters of her master,
      An evening visit pay.
    Their tender hearts were sighing,
      As negroes’ wrongs were told,
    While the white slave was dying
      Who gained her father’s gold.”

In contrast with this sad picture, we thought of ourselves as well
off, in our cosey corner of the mill, enjoying ourselves in our own
way, with our good mothers and our warm suppers awaiting us when the
going-out bell should ring.

Holidays came when repairs to the great mill-wheel were going on, or
some late spring freshet caused the shutting down of the mill; these
were well improved. With what freedom we enjoyed those happy times! My
summer play-house was the woodshed, which my mother always had well
filled; how orderly and with what precision the logs were sawed and
piled with the smooth ends outwards! The catacombs of Paris reminded
me of my old playhouse. And here, in my castle of sawed wood, was
my vacation retreat, where, with my only and beloved wooden doll, I
lunched on slices of apple cut in shape so as to represent what I
called “German half-moon cakes.” I piled up my bits of crockery with
sticks of cinnamon to represent candy, and many other semblances of
things, drawn from my mother’s housekeeping stores.

The yard which led to the shed was always green, and here many
half-holiday duties were performed. We children were expected to
scour all the knives and forks used by the forty men-boarders, and my
brothers often bought themselves off by giving me some trifle, and I
was left alone to do the whole. And what a pile of knives and forks it
was! But it was no task, for did I not have the open yard to work in,
with the sky over me, and the green grass to stand on, as I scrubbed
away at my “stent”? I don’t know why I did not think such long tasks a
burden, nor of my work in the mill as drudgery. Perhaps it was because
I _expected_ to do my part towards helping my mother to get our living,
and had never heard her complain of the hardships of her life.

On other afternoons I went to walk with a playmate, who, like myself,
was full of romantic dreams, along the banks of the Merrimack River,
where the Indians had still their tents, or on Sundays, to see the “new
converts” baptized. These baptizings in the river were very common, as
the tanks in the churches were not considered _apostolic_ by the early
Baptists of Lowell.

Sometimes we rambled by the “race-way” or mill-race, which carried the
water into the flume of the mill, along whose inclining sides grew wild
roses, and the “rock-loving columbine;” and we used to listen to see if
we could hear the blue-bells ring,--this was long before either of us
had read a line of poetry.

The North Grammar school building stood at the base of a hilly ridge
of rocks, down which we coasted in winter, and where in summer, after
school-hours, we had a little cave, where we sometimes hid, and played
that we were robbers; and together we rehearsed the dramatic scenes
in “Alonzo and Melissa,” “The Children of the Abbey,” or the “Three
Spaniards;” we were turned out of doors with Amanda, we exclaimed
“Heavens!” with Melissa, and when night came on we fled from our
play-house pursued by the dreadful apparition of old Don Padilla
through the dark windings of those old rocks, towards our commonplace
home. “Ah!” as some writer has said, “if one could only add the fine
imagination of those early days to the knowledge and experience of
later years, what books might not be written!”

Our home amusements were very original. We had no toys, except a few
homemade articles or devices of our own. I had but a single doll,
a wooden-jointed thing, with red cheeks and staring black eyes.
Playing-cards were tabooed, but my elder brother (the incipient D.D.),
who had somehow learned the game of high-low-jack, set about making a
pack. The cards were cut out of thick yellow pasteboard, the spots and
figures were made in ink, and, to disguise their real character, the
names of the suits were changed. Instead of hearts, diamonds, spades,
and clubs, they were called charity, love, benevolence, and faith. The
pasteboard was so thick that all together the cards made a pile at
least two or three feet high, and they had to be shuffled in sections!
He taught my second brother and me the game of high-low-jack; and,
with delightful secrecy, as often as we could steal away, we played in
the attic, keeping the cards hidden, between whiles, in an old hair
trunk. In playing the game we got along very well with the names of the
face-cards,--the “queen of charity,” the “king of love,” and so on; but
the “ten-spot of faith,” and particularly the “two-spot of benevolence”
(we had never heard of the “deuce”) was too much for our sense of
humor, and almost spoiled the “rigor of the game.”

I was a “little doffer” until I became old enough to earn more money;
then I tended a spinning-frame for a little while; and after that I
learned, on the Merrimack corporation, to be a drawing-in girl, which
was considered one of the most desirable employments, as about only
a dozen girls were needed in each mill. We drew in, one by one, the
threads of the warp, through the harness and the reed, and so made the
beams ready for the weaver’s loom. I still have the two hooks I used
so long, companions of many a dreaming hour, and preserve them as the
“badge of all my tribe” of drawing-in girls.

It may be well to add that, although so many changes have been made
in mill-work, during the last fifty years, by the introduction of
machinery, this part of it still continues to be done by hand, and
the drawing-in girl--I saw her last winter, as in my time--still sits
on her high stool, and with her little hook patiently draws in the
thousands of threads, one by one.




CHAPTER III.

THE LITTLE MILL-GIRL’S ALMA MATER.


The education of a child is an all-around process, and he or she owes
only a part of it to school or college training. The child to whom
neither college nor school is open must find his whole education
in his surroundings, and in the life he is forced to lead. As the
cotton-factory was the means of the early schooling of so large a
number of men and women, who, without the opportunity thus afforded,
could not have been mentally so well developed, I love to call it their
_Alma Mater_. For, without this incentive to labor, this chance to earn
extra money and to use it in their own way, their influence on the
times, and also, to a certain extent, on modern civilization, would
certainly have been lost.

I had been to school quite constantly until I was nearly eleven years
of age, and then, after going into the mill, I went to some of the
evening schools that had been established, and which were always well
filled with those who desired to improve their scant education, or to
supplement what they had learned in the village school or academy. Here
might often be seen a little girl puzzling over her sums in Colburn’s
Arithmetic, and at her side another “girl” of fifty poring over her
lesson in Pierpont’s National Reader.

Some of these schools were devoted to special studies. I went to
a geography school, where the lessons were repeated in unison in
a monotonous sing-song tone, like this: “Lake Winni_peg_! Lake
Winni_peg_! Lake Titi_caca_! Lake Titi_caca_! _Mem_phre_ma_gog!
_Mem_phre_ma_gog!” and also to a school where those who fancied they
had thoughts were taught by Newman’s Rhetoric to express them in
writing. In this school, the relative position of the subject and the
predicate was not always well taught by the master; but never to mix
a metaphor or to confuse a simile was a lesson he firmly fixed in the
minds of his pupils.

As a result of this particular training, I may say here, that, while
I do not often mix metaphors, I am to this day almost as ignorant of
what is called “grammar” as Dean Swift, who, when he went up to answer
for his degree, said he “could not tell a subject from a predicate;” or
even James Whitcomb Riley, who said he “would not know a nominative if
he should meet it on the street.”

The best practical lesson in the proper use of at least one grammatical
sentence was given to me by my elder brother (not two years older than
I) one day, when I said, “I done it.” “You done it!” said he, taking me
by the shoulder and looking me severely in the face; “Don’t you ever
let me hear you say _I done it_ again, unless you can use _have_ or
_had_ before it.” I also went to singing-school, and became a member
of the church choir, and in this way learned many beautiful hymns that
made a lasting impression on the serious part of my nature.

The discipline our work brought us was of great value. We were obliged
to be in the mill at just such a minute, in every hour, in order to
doff our full bobbins and replace them with empty ones. We went to our
meals and returned at the same hour every day. We worked and played at
regular intervals, and thus our hands became deft, our fingers nimble,
our feet swift, and we were taught daily habits of regularity and of
industry; it was, in fact, a sort of manual training or industrial
school.

Some of us were fond of reading, and we read all the books we could
borrow. One of my mother’s boarders, a farmer’s daughter from “the
State of Maine,” had come to Lowell to work, for the express purpose of
getting books, usually novels, to read, that she could not find in her
native place. She read from two to four volumes a week; and we children
used to get them from the circulating library, and return them, for
her. In exchange for this, she allowed us to read her books, while she
was at work in the mill; and what a scurrying there used to be home
from school, to get the first chance at the new book!

It was as good as a fortune to us, and all for six and a quarter cents
a week! In this way I read the novels of Richardson, Madame D’Arblay,
Fielding, Smollett, Cooper, Scott, Captain Marryatt, and many another
old book not included in Mr. Ruskin’s list of “one hundred good books.”
Passing through the alembic of a child’s pure mind, I am not now
conscious that the reading of the doubtful ones did me any lasting
harm. But I should add that I do not advise such indiscriminate reading
among young people, and there is no need of it, since now there are so
many good books, easy of access, which have not the faults of those I
was obliged to read. Then, there was no choice. To-day, the best of
reading, for children and young people, can be found everywhere.

“Lalla Rookh” was the first poem I ever read, and it awoke in me,
not only a love of poetry, but also a desire to try my own hand at
verse-making.

And so the process of education went on, and I, with many another
“little doffer,” had more than one chance to nibble at the root
of knowledge. I had been to school for three months in each year,
until I was about thirteen years old, when my mother, who was now a
little better able to do without my earnings, sent me to the Lowell
High School regularly for two years, adding her constant injunction,
“Improve your mind, try and be somebody.” There I was taught a little
of everything, including French and Latin; and I may say here that my
“little learning,” in French at least, proved “a dangerous thing,”
as I had reason to know some years later, when I tried to speak my
book-French in Paris, for it might as well have been Choctaw, when used
as a means of oral communication with the natives of that fascinating
city.

The Lowell high school, in about 1840, was kept in a wooden building
over a butcher’s shop, but soon afterwards the new high school, still
in use, was provided, and it was co-educational. How well I remember
some of the boys and girls, and I recall them with pleasure if not
with affection. I could name them now, and have noted with pride their
success in life. A few are so high above the rest that one would be
surprised to know that they received the principal part of their school
education in that little high school room over the butcher’s shop.

I left the high school when fifteen years of age, my school education
completed; though after that I took private lessons in German, drawing,
and dancing! About this time my elder brother and I made up our minds
that our mother had worked hard long enough, and we prevailed on her
to give up keeping boarders. This she did, and while she remained in
Lowell we supported the home by our earnings. I was obliged to have
my breakfast before daylight in the winter. My mother prepared it
over night, and while I was cooking and eating it I read such books
as Stevens’s “Travels” in Yucatan and in Mexico, Tasso’s “Jerusalem
Delivered,” and “Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life.” My elder brother
was the clerk in the counting-room of the Tremont Corporation, and
the agent, Mr. Charles L. Tilden,--whom I thank, wherever he may
be,--allowed him to carry home at night, or over Sunday, any book
that might be left on his (the agent’s) desk; by this means I read
many a beloved volume of poetry, late into the night and on Sunday.
Longfellow, in particular, I learned almost by heart, and so retentive
is the young memory that I can repeat, even now, whole poems.

I read and studied also at my work; and as this was done by the job,
or beam, if I chose to have a book in my lap, and glance at it at
intervals, or even write a bit, nothing was lost to the “corporation.”

Lucy Larcom, in her “New England Girlhood,” speaks of the windows in
the mill on whose sides were pasted newspaper clippings, which she
calls “window gems.” It was very common for the spinners and weavers
to do this, as they were not allowed to read books openly in the
mill; but they brought their favorite “pieces” of poetry, hymns, and
extracts, and pasted them up over their looms or frames, so that they
could glance at them, and commit them to memory. We little girls were
fond of reading these clippings, and no doubt they were an incentive to
our thoughts as well as to those of the older girls, who went to “The
Improvement Circle,” and wrote compositions.

A year or two after this I attempted poetry, and my verses began to
appear in the newspapers, in one or two Annuals, and later in _The
Lowell Offering_.

In 1846 I wrote some verses which were published in the _Lowell
Journal_, and these caused me to make the acquaintance of the
sub-editor of that paper, who afterwards became my life companion.
I speak of this here because, in my early married life, I found the
exact help that I needed for continued education,--the leisure to read
good books, sent to my husband for review, in the quiet of my secluded
home. For I had neither the gowns to wear nor the disposition to go
into society, and as my companion was not willing to go without me, in
the long evenings, when the children were in bed and I was busy making
“auld claes look amaist as good as new,” he read aloud to me countless
books on abstruse political and general subjects, which I never should
have thought of reading for myself.

These are the “books that have helped me.” In fact, of all the books
I have read, I remember but very few that have not helped me. Thus I
had the companionship of a mind more mature, wiser, and less prone to
unrealities than my own; and if it seems to the reader that my story is
that of one of the more fortunate ones among the working-girls of my
time, it is because of this needed help, which I received almost at the
beginning of my womanhood. And for this, as well as for those early
days of poverty and toil, I am devoutly and reverently thankful.

The religious experience of a young person oftentimes forms a large
part of the early education or development; and mine is peculiar, since
I am one of the very few persons, in this country at least, who have
been excommunicated from a Protestant church. And I cannot speak of
this event without showing the strong sectarian tendencies of the time.

As late as 1843-1845 Puritan orthodoxy still held sway over nearly the
whole of New England; and the gloomy doctrines of Jonathan Edwards,
now called his “philosophy,” held a mighty grasp on the minds of the
people, all other denominations being frowned upon. The Episcopal
church was considered “little better than the Catholic,” and the
Universalists and the Unitarians were treated with even less tolerance
by the “Evangelicals” than any sect outside these denominations is
treated to-day. The charge against the Unitarians was that they did
not believe _all_ of the Bible, and that they preached “mere morality
rather than religion.”

My mother, who had sat under the preaching of the Rev. Paul Dean, in
Boston, had early drifted away from her hereditary church and its
beliefs; but she had always sent her children to the Congregational
church and Sunday-school, not wishing, perhaps, to run the same risk
for their souls that she was willing to take for her own, thus keeping
us on the “safe side,” as it was called, with regard to our eternal
salvation. Consequently, we were well taught in the belief of a literal
devil, in a lake of brimstone and fire, and in the “wrath of a just
God.”

The terrors of an imaginative child’s mind, into which these monstrous
doctrines were poured, can hardly be described, and their lasting
effect need not be dwelt upon. It was natural that young people who
had minds of their own should be attracted to the new doctrine of a
Father’s love, as well as to the ministers who preached it; and thus
in a short time the mill girls and boys made a large part of the
congregation of those “unbelieving” sects which had come to disturb the
“ancient solitary reign” of primitive New England orthodoxy.

I used often to wish that I could go to the Episcopal Sunday-school,
because their little girls were not afraid of the devil, were allowed
to dance, and had so much nicer books in their Sunday-school library.
“Little Henry and his Bearer,” and “The Lady of the Manor,” in which
was the story of “The Beautiful Estelle,” were lent to me; and the
last-named was a delight and an inspiration. But the little “orthodox”
girls were not allowed to read even religious novels; and one of my
work-mates, whose name would surprise the reader, and who afterwards
outgrew such prejudices, took me to task for buying a paper copy of
Scott’s “Redgauntlet,” saying, “Why, Hattie, do you not know that it is
a _novel_?”

We had frequent discussions among ourselves on the different texts of
the Bible, and debated such questions as, “Is it a sin to read novels?”
“Is it right to read secular books on Sunday?” or, “Is it wicked to
play cards or checkers?” By this it will be seen that we were made
more familiar with the form, than with the spirit or the teaching, of
Christianity.

In the spring of 1840 there was a great revival in Lowell, and some of
the little girls held prayer-meetings, after school, at each other’s
houses, and many of them “experienced religion.” I went sometimes to
these meetings, and one night, when I was walking home by starlight,
for the days were still short, one of the older girls said to me, “Are
you happy?” “Do you love Jesus?” “Do you want to be saved?”--“Why,
yes,” I answered. “Then you have experienced religion,” said the girl;
“you are converted.” I was startled at the idea, but did not know
how to deny it, and I went home in an exalted state of feeling; and,
as I looked into the depths of the heavens above me, there came to my
youthful mind the first glimmer of thought on spiritual themes.

It was an awakening, but not a conversion, for I had been converted
_from_ nothing _to_ nothing. I was at once claimed as a “young
convert,” went to the church prayer-meeting, told my “experience”
as directed, and was put on probation for admission to the church.
Meanwhile, I had been advised not to ask my mother’s consent to this
step, because she was a Universalist, and might object. But I did
not follow this advice; and when I told her of my desire, she simply
answered, “If you think it will make you any happier, do so, but I do
not believe you will be satisfied.” I have always been very thankful to
my mother for giving me this freedom in my young life,--

    “Not to be followed hourly, watched and noosed,”--

this chance in such an important matter to learn to think and to act
for myself. In fact, she always carried out this principle, and never
to my recollection coerced her children on any important point, but
taught them to “see for themselves.”

When the day came for me to be admitted into the church, I, with many
other little girls, was sprinkled; and, when I stood up to repeat the
creed, I can truly say that I knew no more what were the doctrines to
which I was expected to subscribe, than I did about the Copernican
System or the Differential Calculus. And I might have said, with the
disciples at Ephesus, I “have not so much as heard whether there be
any Holy Ghost.” For, although I had been regularly to church and to
Sunday-school, I had never seen the Articles of Belief, nor had I been
instructed concerning the doctrines, or the sacredness of the vow I
was about to take upon me. Nor, from the frequent backsliding among
the young converts, do I think my case was a singular one, although,
so far as I know, I was the only one who _backslid_ enough to be
excommunicated.

And later, when I was requested to subscribe to the Articles of Belief,
I found I could not accept them, particularly a certain part, which
related to the day of judgment and what would follow thereafter. I have
reviewed this document, and am able to quote the exact words which were
a stumbling-block to me. “We believe ... that at the day of judgment
the state of all will be unalterably fixed, and that the punishment of
the wicked and the happiness of the righteous will be endless.”

When the service was over, I went home, feeling as if I had done
something wrong. I thought of my mother, whom my church people called
an “unbeliever;” of my dear little brother who had been drowned, and
whose soul might be LOST, and I was most unhappy. In fact, so serious
was I for many days, that no doubt my church friends thought me a most
promising young convert.

Indeed I was converted, but not in the way they supposed; for I had
begun to think on religious subjects, and the more I thought the less I
believed in the doctrines of the church to which I belonged. Doubts of
the goodness of God filled my mind, and unbelief in the Father’s love
and compassion darkened my young life. What a conversion! The beginning
of long years of doubt and of struggle in search of spiritual truths.

After a time I went no more to my church meetings, and began to
attend those of the Universalists; but, though strongly urged, as a
“come-outer,” to join that body, I did not do so, being fearful of
subscribing to a belief whose mysteries I could neither understand nor
explain.

Hearing that I was attending the meetings of another denomination, my
church appointed three persons, at least one of whom was a deacon,
to labor with me. They came to our house one evening, and, while my
mother and I sat at our sewing, they plied me with questions relating
to my duty as a church member, and arguments concerning the articles
of belief; these I did not know how to answer, but my mother, who had
had some experience in “religious” disputes, gave text for text, and I
remember that, although I trembled at her boldness, I thought she had
the best of it.

Meanwhile, I sat silent, with downcast eyes, and when they threatened
me with excommunication if I did not go to the church meetings, and
“fulfil my covenant,” I mustered up courage to say, with shaking
voice, “I do not believe; I cannot go to your church, even if you do
excommunicate me.”

When my Universalist friends heard of this threat of excommunication,
they urged the preparation of a letter to the church, giving my reasons
for non-attendance; and this was published in a Lowell newspaper,
July 30, 1842. In this letter, which my elder brother helped me to
prepare,--in fact, I believe wrote the most of it,--several arguments
against the Articles of Belief are given; and the letter closes with
a request to “my brothers and sisters,” to erase my name from “your
church books rather than to follow your usual course, common in cases
similar to my own, to excommunicate the heretic.”

This request was not heeded, and shortly after a committee of three was
“then appointed to take farther steps;” and this committee reported
that they had “visited and admonished” me without success; and in
November, 1842, the following vote was passed, and is recorded in the
church book:--

  “_Nov. 21, 1842._

 _Whereas_, it appears that Miss Harriet Hanson has violated her
 covenant with this church,--first, by repeated and regular absence
 from the ordinances of the gospel, second, by embracing sentiments
 deemed by this church heretical; and _whereas_, measures have been
 taken to reclaim her, but ineffectual; therefore,

 _Voted_, that we withdraw our fellowship from the said Miss Hanson
 until she shall give satisfactory evidence of repentance.”

And thus, at seventeen years of age, I was excommunicated from the
church of my ancestors, and for no fault, no sin, no crime, but simply
because I could not subscribe conscientiously to doctrines which I did
not comprehend. I relate this phase of my youthful experience here in
detail, because it serves to show the methods which were then in use
to cast out or dispose of those members who could not subscribe to the
doctrines of the dominant church of New England.

For some time after this, I was quite in disgrace with some of my
work-mates, and was called a “heretic” and a “child of perdition”
by my church friends. But, as I did not agree, even in this, with
their opinions, but went my “ain gait,” it followed that, although I
remained for a time something of a heretic, I was not an unbeliever in
sacred things nor did I prove to be a “child of perdition.” But this
experience made me very unhappy, and gave me a distaste for religious
reading and thinking, and for many years the Bible was a sealed book
to me, until I came to see in the Book, not the letter of dogma,
but rather the spirit of truth and of revelation. This experience
also repressed the humorous side of my nature, which is every one’s
birthright, and made me for a time a sort of youthful cynic; and I
allowed myself to feel a certain contempt for those of my work-mates
who, though they could not give clear reason for their belief, still
remained faithful to their “covenant.”

There were two or three little incidents connected with this episode
in my life that may be of interest. A little later, when I thought of
applying for the position of teaching in a public school, I was advised
by a well-meaning friend not to attempt it, “for,” the friend added,
“you will not succeed, for how can a Universalist _pray_ in her school?”

Several years after my excommunication, when I had come to observe
that religion and “mere morality” do not always go together, I had
a final interview with one of the deacons who had labored with me.
He was an overseer in the room where I worked, and I had noticed his
familiar manner with some of the girls, who did not like it any better
than I did; and one day, when his behavior was unusually offensive, I
determined to speak to him about it.

I called him to my drawing-in frame, where I was sitting at work, and
said to him something like this: “I have hard work to believe that
_you_ are one of those deacons who came to labor with a young girl
about belonging to your church. I don’t think you set the example of
good works you then preached to me.” He gave me a look, but did not
answer; and shortly after, as I might have expected, I received an
“honorable discharge” from his room.

But let me acknowledge one far-reaching benefit that resulted from my
being admitted to the Orthodox church, a benefit which came to me in
the summer of 1895. Because of my baptism, administered so long ago, I
was enabled to officiate as god-mother to my grandchild and namesake,
in Pueblo, Colorado,--one among the first of the little girls born on
a political equality with the little boys of that enlightened State,
born, as one may say, with the ballot in her hand! And to any reader
who has an interest in the final result of my religious experience, I
may add, that, as late as 1898, I became a communicant of the Episcopal
Church.

When the time came for me to become engaged to the man of my choice,
having always believed in the old-fashioned idea that there should
be no secrets between persons about to marry, I told him, among my
other shortcomings, as the most serious of all, the story of my
excommunication. To my great surprise, he laughed heartily, derided the
whole affair, and wondered at the serious view I had always taken of
it; and later he enjoyed saying to some of his gentlemen friends, as
if it were a good joke, “Did you know my wife had been excommunicated
from the church?”

And I too, long since have learned, that no creed--

                      “Can fix our doom,
    Nor stay the eternal Love from His intent,
    While Hope remaining bears her verdant bloom.”




CHAPTER IV.

THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE EARLY FACTORY GIRLS.


When I look back into the factory life of fifty or sixty years ago, I
do not see what is called “a class” of young men and women going to and
from their daily work, like so many ants that cannot be distinguished
one from another; I see them as individuals, with personalities of
their own. This one has about her the atmosphere of her early home.
That one is impelled by a strong and noble purpose. The other,--what
she is, has been an influence for good to me and to all womankind.

Yet they were a class of factory operatives, and were spoken of (as the
same class is spoken of now) as a set of persons who earned their daily
bread, whose condition was fixed, and who must continue to spin and
to weave to the end of their natural existence. Nothing but this was
expected of them, and they were not supposed to be capable of social
or mental improvement. That they could be educated and developed into
something more than mere work-people, was an idea that had not yet
entered the public mind. So little does one class of persons really
know about the thoughts and aspirations of another! It was the good
fortune of these early mill-girls to teach the people of that time that
this sort of labor is not degrading; that the operative is not only
“capable of virtue,” but also capable of self-cultivation.

At the time the Lowell cotton-mills were started, the factory girl was
the lowest among women. In England, and in France particularly, great
injustice had been done to her real character; she was represented
as subjected to influences that could not fail to destroy her purity
and self-respect. In the eyes of her overseer she was but a brute, a
slave, to be beaten, pinched, and pushed about. It was to overcome this
prejudice that such high wages had been offered to women that they
might be induced to become mill-girls, in spite of the opprobrium that
still clung to this “degrading occupation.” At first only a few came;
for, though tempted by the high wages to be regularly paid in “cash,”
there were many who still preferred to go on working at some more
_genteel_ employment at seventy-five cents a week and their board.

But in a short time the prejudice against factory labor wore away, and
the Lowell mills became filled with blooming and energetic New England
women. They were naturally intelligent, had mother-wit, and fell easily
into the ways of their new life. They soon began to associate with
those who formed the community in which they had come to live, and were
invited to their houses. They went to the same church, and sometimes
married into some of the best families. Or if they returned to their
secluded homes again, instead of being looked down upon as “factory
girls” by the squire’s or the lawyer’s family, they were more often
welcomed as coming from the metropolis, bringing new fashions, new
books, and new ideas with them.

In 1831 Lowell was little more than a factory village. Several
corporations were started, and the cotton-mills belonging to them were
building. Help was in great demand; and stories were told all over the
country of the new factory town, and the high wages that were offered
to all classes of work-people,--stories that reached the ears of
mechanics’ and farmers’ sons, and gave new life to lonely and dependent
women in distant towns and farmhouses. Into this Yankee El Dorado,
these needy people began to pour by the various modes of travel known
to those slow old days. The stage-coach and the canal-boat came every
day, always filled with new recruits for this army of useful people.
The mechanic and machinist came, each with his home-made chest of
tools, and oftentimes his wife and little ones. The widow came with her
little flock and her scanty housekeeping goods to open a boarding-house
or variety store, and so provided a home for her fatherless children.
Many farmers’ daughters came to earn money to complete their wedding
outfit, or buy the bride’s share of housekeeping articles.

Women with past histories came, to hide their griefs and their
identity, and to earn an honest living in the “sweat of their brow.”
Single young men came, full of hope and life, to get money for an
education, or to lift the mortgage from the home-farm. Troops of young
girls came by stages and baggage-wagons, men often being employed to go
to other States and to Canada, to collect them at so much a head, and
deliver them at the factories.

A very curious sight these country girls presented to young eyes
accustomed to a more modern style of things. When the large covered
baggage-wagon arrived in front of a block on the corporation, they
would descend from it, dressed in various and outlandish fashions,
and with their arms brimful of bandboxes containing all their worldly
goods. On each of these was sewed a card, on which one could read the
old-fashioned New England name of the owner. And sorrowful enough
they looked, even to the fun-loving child who has lived to tell the
story; for they had all left their pleasant country homes to try their
fortunes in a great manufacturing town, and they were homesick even
before they landed at the doors of their boarding-houses. Years after,
this scene dwelt in my memory; and whenever anyone said anything about
being homesick, there rose before me the picture of a young girl with
a sorrowful face and a big tear in each eye, clambering down the steps
at the rear of a great covered wagon, holding fast to a cloth-covered
bandbox, drawn up at the top with a string, on which was sewed a paper
bearing the name of Plumy Clay!

Some of these girls brought diminutive hair trunks covered with the
skin of calves, spotted in dun and white, even as when they did skip
and play in daisy-blooming meads. And when several of them were set
together in front of one of the blocks, they looked like their living
counterparts, reposing at noontide in the adjacent field. One of this
kind of trunks has been handed down to me as an heirloom. The hair is
worn off in patches; it cannot be invigorated, and it is now become a
hairless heirloom. Within its hide-bound sides are safely stowed away
the love-letters of a past generation,--love-letters that agitated
the hearts of the grandparents of to-day; and I wonder that their
resistless ardor has not long ago burst its wrinkled sides. It is
relegated to distant attics, with its ancient crony, “ye bandbox,” to
enjoy an honored and well-earned repose.

Ah me! when some of us, its contemporaries, are also past our
usefulness, gone clean out of fashion, may we also be as resigned, yea,
as willing, to be laid quietly on some attic shelf!

These country girls had queer names, which added to the singularity of
their appearance. Samantha, Triphena, Plumy, Kezia, Aseneth, Elgardy,
Leafy, Ruhamah, Lovey, Almaretta, Sarepta, and Florilla were among them.

Their dialect was also very peculiar. On the broken English and Scotch
of their ancestors was ingrafted the nasal Yankee twang; so that many
of them, when they had just come _daown_, spoke a language almost
unintelligible. But the severe discipline and ridicule which met them
was as good as a school education, and they were soon taught the “city
way of speaking.”

Their dress was also peculiar, and was of the plainest of homespun,
cut in such an old-fashioned style that each young girl looked as if
she had borrowed her grandmother’s gown. Their only head-covering was
a shawl, which was pinned under the chin; but after the first pay-day,
a “shaker” (or “scooter”) sunbonnet usually replaced this primitive
head-gear of their rural life.

But the early factory girls were not all country girls. There were
others also, who had been taught that “work is no disgrace.” There were
some who came to Lowell solely on account of the social or literary
advantages to be found there. They lived in secluded parts of New
England, where books were scarce, and there was no cultivated society.
They had comfortable homes, and did not perhaps need the _money_ they
would earn; but they longed to see this new “City of Spindles,” of
which they had heard so much from their neighbors and friends, who had
gone there to work.

And the fame of the circulating libraries, that were soon opened, drew
them and kept them there, when no other inducement would have been
sufficient.

The laws relating to women were such, that a husband could claim his
wife wherever he found her, and also the children she was trying to
shield from his influence; and I have seen more than one poor woman
skulk behind her loom or her frame when visitors were approaching the
end of the aisle where she worked. Some of these were known under
assumed names, to prevent their husbands from trusteeing their wages.
It was a very common thing for a male person of a certain kind to
do this, thus depriving his wife of _all_ her wages, perhaps, month
after month. The wages of minor children could be trusteed, unless
the children (being fourteen years of age) were given their time.
Women’s wages were also trusteed for the debts of their husbands, and
children’s for the debts of their parents.

As an instance, my mother had some financial difficulties when I was
fifteen years old, and to save herself and me from annoyance, she gave
me my time. The document reads as follows:--

 “Be it known that I, Harriet Hanson, of Lowell, in consideration that
 my minor daughter Harriet J. has taken upon herself the whole burden
 of her own support, and has undertaken and agreed to maintain herself
 henceforward without expense to me, do hereby release and quitclaim
 unto her all profits and wages which she may hereafter earn or acquire
 by her skill or labor in any occupation,--and do hereby disclaim
 all right to collect or interfere with the same. And I do give and
 release unto her the absolute control and disposal of her own time
 according to her own discretion, without interference from me. It
 being understood that I am not to be chargeable hereafter with any
 expense on her account.

  (Signed) HARRIET HANSON.

  _July 2, 1840._”

It must be remembered that at this date woman had no property rights. A
widow could be left without her share of her husband’s (or the family)
property, a legal “incumbrance” to his estate. A father could make his
will without reference to his daughter’s share of the inheritance. He
usually left her a home on the farm as long as she remained single. A
woman was not supposed to be capable of spending her own or of using
other people’s money. In Massachusetts, before 1840, a woman could not
legally be treasurer of her own sewing-society, unless some man were
responsible for her.

The law took no cognizance of woman as a money-spender. She was a ward,
an appendage, a relict. Thus it happened, that if a woman did not
choose to marry, or, when left a widow, to re-marry, she had no choice
but to enter one of the few employments open to her, or to become a
burden on the charity of some relative.

In almost every New England home could be found one or more of these
women, sometimes welcome, more often unwelcome, and leading joyless,
and in many instances unsatisfactory, lives. The cotton-factory was a
great opening to these lonely and dependent women. From a condition
approaching pauperism they were at once placed above want; they could
earn money, and spend it as they pleased; and could gratify their
tastes and desires without restraint, and without rendering an account
to anybody. At last they had found a place in the universe; they were
no longer obliged to finish out their faded lives mere burdens to male
relatives. Even the _time_ of these women was their own, on Sundays and
in the evening after the day’s work was done. For the first time in
this country woman’s labor had a money value. She had become not only
an earner and a producer, but also a spender of money, a recognized
factor in the political economy of her time. And thus a long upward
step in our material civilization was taken; woman had begun to earn
and hold her own money, and through its aid had learned to think and to
act for herself.

Among the older women who sought this new employment were very many
lonely and dependent ones, such as used to be mentioned in old wills
as “incumbrances” and “relicts,” and to whom a chance of earning money
was indeed a new revelation. How well I remember some of these solitary
ones! As a child of eleven years, I often made fun of them--for
children do not see the pathetic side of human life--and imitated their
limp carriage and inelastic gait. I can see them now, even after sixty
years, just as they looked,--depressed, modest, mincing, hardly daring
to look one in the face, so shy and sylvan had been their lives. But
after the first pay-day came, and they felt the jingle of silver in
their pockets, and had begun to feel its mercurial influence, their
bowed heads were lifted, their necks seemed braced with steel, they
looked you in the face, sang blithely among their looms or frames, and
walked with elastic step to and from their work. And when Sunday came,
homespun was no longer their only wear; and how sedately gay in their
new attire they walked to church, and how proudly they dropped their
silver fourpences into the contribution-box! It seemed as if a great
hope impelled them,--the harbinger of the new era that was about to
dawn for them and for all women-kind.

In passing, let me not forget to pay a tribute, also, to those noble
single and widowed women, who are “set solitary in families,” but
whose presence cements the domestic fabric, and whose influence is
unseen and oftentimes unappreciated, until they are taken away and the
integral part of the old home-life begins to crumble.

Except in rare instances, the rights of the early mill-girls were
secure. They were subject to no extortion, if they did extra work
they were always paid in full, and their own account of labor done by
the piece was always accepted. They kept the figures, and were paid
accordingly. This was notably the case with the weavers and drawing-in
girls. Though the hours of labor were long, they were not over-worked;
they were obliged to tend no more looms and frames than they could
easily take care of, and they had plenty of time to sit and rest. I
have known a girl to sit idle twenty or thirty minutes at a time. They
were not driven, and their work-a-day life was made easy. They were
treated with consideration by their employers, and there was a feeling
of respectful equality between them. The most favored of the girls
were sometimes invited to the houses of the dignitaries of the mills,
showing that the line of social division was not rigidly maintained.

Their life in the factory was made pleasant to them. In those
days there was no need of advocating the doctrine of the proper
relation between employer and employed. _Help was too valuable to be
ill-treated._ If these early agents, or overseers, had been disposed
to exercise undue authority, or to establish unjust or arbitrary laws,
the high character of the operatives, and the fact that women employees
were scarce would have prevented it. A certain agent of one of the
first corporations in Lowell (an old sea-captain) said to one of his
boarding-house keepers, “I should like to rule my help as I used to
rule my sailors, but so many of them are women I do not dare to do it.”

The knowledge of the antecedents of these operatives was the safeguard
of their liberties. The majority of them were as well born as their
“overlookers,” if not better; and they were also far better educated.

The agents and overseers were usually married men, with families of
growing sons and daughters. They were members, and sometimes deacons,
of the church, and teachers in the same Sunday-school with the girls
employed under them. They were generally of good morals and temperate
habits, and often exercised a good influence over their help. The
feeling that the agents and overseers were interested in their welfare
caused the girls, in turn, to feel an interest in the work for which
their employers were responsible. The conscientious among them took
as much pride in spinning a smooth thread, drawing in a perfect web,
or in making good cloth, as they would have done if the material had
been for their own wearing. And thus was practised, long before it was
preached, that principle of true political economy,--the just relation,
the mutual interest, that ought to exist between employers and employed.

Those of the mill-girls who had homes generally worked from eight to
ten months in the year; the rest of the time was spent with parents or
friends. A few taught school during the summer months.

When we left the mill, or changed our place of work from one
corporation to another, we were given an “honorable discharge.” Mine,
of which I am still quite proud, is dated the year of my marriage, and
is as follows:--

 “HARRIET J. HANSON has been employed in the Boott Cotton Mills, in a
 dressing-room, twenty-five months, and is honorably discharged.

  (Signed) J. F. TROTT.

  LOWELL, _July 25, 1848_.”

The chief characteristics of the early mill-girls may be briefly
mentioned, as showing the material of which this new community of
working-women was composed. Concerning their personal appearance, I
am able to quote from a magazine article written by the poet John G.
Whittier, then a resident of Lowell. He thus describes,--


“THE FACTORY GIRLS OF LOWELL.

 “Acres of girlhood, beauty reckoned by the square rod,--or miles by
 long measure! the young, the graceful, the gay,--the flowers gathered
 from a thousand hillsides and green valleys of New England, fair
 unveiled Nuns of Industry, Sisters of Thrift, and are ye not also
 Sisters of Charity dispensing comfort and hope and happiness around
 many a hearthstone of your native hills, making sad faces cheerful,
 and hallowing age and poverty with the sunshine of your youth and
 love! Who shall sneer at your calling? Who shall count your vocation
 otherwise than noble and ennobling?”

Of their literary and studious habits, Professor A. P. Peabody, of
Harvard University, gives his opinion in an article written not long
ago in the _Atlantic Monthly_. He says, “During the palmy days of _The
Lowell Offering_ I used every winter to lecture for the Lowell Lyceum.
Not amusement, but instruction, was then the lecturer’s aim.... The
Lowell Hall was always crowded, and four-fifths of the audience were
factory-girls. When the lecturer entered, almost every girl had a book
in her hand, and was intent upon it. When he rose, the book was laid
aside, and paper and pencil taken instead; and there were very few who
did not carry home full notes of what they had heard. I have never seen
anywhere so assiduous note-taking. No, not even in a college class, ...
as in that assembly of young women, laboring for their subsistence.”

To introduce a more practical side of their character I will quote an
extract from a letter received not long ago from a gentleman in the
Detroit Public Library, which says, “The factory-girls went to Lowell
from the hills of Vermont when I was a boy, numbers of them from every
town in my county (Windsor); and it was considered something of a
distinction to have worked for ‘the corporation,’ and brought home some
hard cash, which in many and many cases went to help lift a mortgage on
the farm, or to buy something needed for the comfort of the old folks,
or to send a younger brother or sister to the Academy. I knew several
of these girls who brought home purses from Lowell which looked big in
those days, and I recall one who is still living in my native town of
Pomfret.”

It may be added here, that the majority of the mill-girls made just
as good use of their money, so newly earned, and of whose value they
had hitherto known so little. They were necessarily industrious. They
were also frugal and saving. It was their custom on the first day of
every month, after paying their board-bill ($1.25 a week), to put their
wages in the savings-bank. There the money stayed, on interest, until
they withdrew it, to carry home or to use for a special purpose. It is
easy to see how much good this sum would do in a rural community where
money, as a means of exchange, had been scarce. Into the barren homes
many of them had left it went like a quiet stream, carrying with it
beauty and refreshment. The mortgage was lifted from the homestead; the
farmhouse was painted; the barn rebuilt; modern improvements (including
Mrs. Child’s “Frugal Housewife”--the first American cook-book) were
introduced into the mother’s kitchen, and books and newspapers began to
ornament the sitting-room table.

Some of the mill-girls helped maintain widowed mothers, or drunken,
incompetent, or invalid fathers. Many of them educated the younger
children of the family, and young men were sent to college with the
money furnished by the untiring industry of their women relatives.

Indeed, the most prevailing incentive to our labor was to secure the
means of education for some _male_ member of the family. To make a
_gentleman_ of a brother or a son, to give him a college education, was
the dominant thought in the minds of a great many of these provident
mill-girls. I have known more than one to give every cent of her wages,
month after month, to her brother, that he might get the education
necessary to enter some profession. I have known a mother to work
years in this way for her boy. I have known women to educate by their
earnings young men who were not sons or relatives. There are men now
living who were helped to an education by the wages of the early
mill-girls.

In speaking of this subject, Mr. Thomas Wentworth Higginson says,--

 “I think it was the late President Walker who told me that in his
 judgment one-quarter of the men in Harvard College were being carried
 through by the special self-denial and sacrifices of women. I cannot
 answer for the ratio; but I can testify to having been an instance of
 this myself, and to having known a never-ending series of such cases
 of self-devotion.”

Lowell, in this respect, was indeed a remarkable town, and it might be
said of it, as of Thrums in “Auld Licht Idyls,” “There are scores and
scores of houses in it that have sent their sons to college (by what a
struggle), some to make their way to the front in their professions,
and others, perhaps, despite their broadcloth, never to be a patch upon
their parents.”

The early mill-girls were religious by nature and by Puritan
inheritance, true daughters of those men and women who, as some one has
said, “were as devoted to education as they were to religion;” for they
planted the church and the schoolhouse side by side. On entering the
mill, each one was obliged to sign a “regulation paper” which required
her to attend regularly some place of public worship. They were of many
denominations. In one boarding-house that I knew, there were girls
belonging to eight different religious sects.

In 1843, there were in Lowell fourteen regularly organized religious
societies. Ten of these constituted a “Sabbath School Union,” which
consisted of over five thousand scholars and teachers; three-fourths of
the scholars, and a large proportion of the teachers, were mill-girls.
Once a year, every Fourth of July, this “Sabbath School Union,” each
section, or division, under its own sectarian banner, marched in
procession to the grove on Chapel Hill, where a picnic was held,
with lemonade, and long speeches by the ministers of the different
churches,--speeches which the little boys and girls did not seem to
think were made to be listened to.

The mill-girls went regularly to meeting and “Sabbath-school;” and
every Sunday the streets of Lowell were alive with neatly dressed young
women, going or returning therefrom. Their fine appearance on “the
Sabbath” was often spoken of by strangers visiting Lowell.

Dr. Scoresby, in his “American Factories and their Operatives,” (with
selections from _The Lowell Offering_,) holds up the Lowell mill-girls
to their sister operatives of Bradford, England, as an example of
neatness and good behavior. Indeed, it was a pretty sight to see so
many wide-awake young girls in the bloom of life, clad in their holiday
dresses,--

    “Whose delicate feet to the Temple of God,
    Seemed to move as if wings had carried them there.”

The morals of these girls were uniformly good. The regulation paper,
before spoken of, required each one to be of good moral character; and
if any one proved to be disreputable, she was very soon turned out
of the mill. Their standard of behavior was high, and the majority
kept aloof from those who were suspected of wrong-doing. They had,
perhaps, less temptation than the working-girls of to-day, since
they were not required to dress beyond their means, and comfortable
homes were provided by their employers, where they could board
cheaply. Their surroundings were pure, and the whole atmosphere of
their boarding-houses was as refined as that of their own homes. They
expected men to treat them with courtesy; they looked forward to
becoming the wives of good men. Their attitude was that of the German
_Fräulein_, who said, “Treat every maiden with respect, for you do not
know whose _wife_ she will be.”

But there were exceptions to the general rule,--just enough to prove
the doctrine of averages; there were girls who came to the mill to work
whom no one knew anything about, but they did not stay long, the life
there being “too clean for them.”

The health of the girls was good. The regularity and simplicity of
their lives, and the plain and substantial food provided for them, kept
them free from illness. From their Puritan ancestry they had inherited
sound bodies and a fair share of endurance. Fevers and similar diseases
were rare among them; they had no time to pet small ailments; the
boarding-house mother was often both nurse and doctor, and so the
physician’s fee was saved. It may be said that, at that time, there was
but one _pathy_ and no “faith cures” nor any “science” to be supported
by the many diseases “that flesh is heir to.”

By reading the weekly newspapers the girls became interested in public
events; they knew all about the Mexican war, and the anti-slavery cause
had its adherents among them. Lectures on the doctrine of Fourier were
read, or listened to, but none of them were “carried away” with the
idea of spending their lives in large “phalansteries,” as they seemed
too much like cotton-factories to be models for their own future
housekeeping.

The Brook Farm experiment was familiar to some of them; but the fault
of this scheme was apparent to the practical ones who foresaw that a
few would have to do all the manual labor and that an undue share would
naturally fall to those who had already contracted the working-habit.

Mrs. Amelia Bloomer, one of the early pioneers of the dress-reform
movement, found followers in Lowell; and parlor meetings were held at
some of the boarding-houses to discuss the feasibility of this great
revolution in the style of woman’s dress. _The Lowell Journal_ of 1850
states that on the Fourth of July a party of “Bloomerites” walked
in the procession through the public streets, and _The London Punch_
embellished its pages with a neat cartoon, a fashion-plate showing the
different styles of the Bloomer costume. This first attempt at a reform
in woman’s dress was ridiculed out of existence by “public opinion;”
but from it has been evolved the modern bicycle costume, now worn by
women cyclers.

It seems to have been the fashion of the mill-girls to appear in
procession on all public occasions. Mr. Cowley, in his “History of
Lowell,” speaks of President Jackson’s visit to that city in 1833. He
says: “On the day the President came, all the lady operatives turned
out to meet him. They walked in procession, like troops of liveried
angels clothed in white [with green-fringed parasols], with cannons
booming, drums beating, banners flying, handkerchiefs waving, etc. The
old hero was not more moved by the bullets that whistled round him
in the battle of New Orleans than by the exhilarating spectacle here
presented, and remarked, ‘They are very pretty women, by the Eternal!’”




CHAPTER V.

CHARACTERISTICS (CONTINUED).


One of the first strikes of cotton-factory operatives that ever took
place in this country was that in Lowell, in October, 1836. When it
was announced that the wages were to be cut down, great indignation
was felt, and it was decided to strike, _en masse_. This was done.
The mills were shut down, and the girls went in procession from their
several corporations to the “grove” on Chapel Hill, and listened to
“incendiary” speeches from early labor reformers.

One of the girls stood on a pump, and gave vent to the feelings of her
companions in a neat speech, declaring that it was their duty to resist
all attempts at cutting down the wages. This was the first time a woman
had spoken in public in Lowell, and the event caused surprise and
consternation among her audience.

Cutting down the wages was not their only grievance, nor the only cause
of this strike. Hitherto the corporations had paid twenty-five cents a
week towards the board of each operative, and now it was their purpose
to have the girls pay the sum; and this, in addition to the cut in the
wages, would make a difference of at least one dollar a week. It was
estimated that as many as twelve or fifteen hundred girls turned out,
and walked in procession through the streets. They had neither flags
nor music, but sang songs, a favorite (but rather inappropriate) one
being a parody on “I won’t be a nun.”

    “Oh! isn’t it a pity, such a pretty girl as I--
    Should be sent to the factory to pine away and die?
              Oh! I cannot be a slave,
              I will not be a slave,
              For I’m so fond of liberty
              That I cannot be a slave.”

My own recollection of this first strike (or “turn out” as it was
called) is very vivid. I worked in a lower room, where I had heard the
proposed strike fully, if not vehemently, discussed; I had been an
ardent listener to what was said against this attempt at “oppression”
on the part of the corporation, and naturally I took sides with the
strikers. When the day came on which the girls were to turn out, those
in the upper rooms started first, and so many of them left that our
mill was at once shut down. Then, when the girls in my room stood
irresolute, uncertain what to do, asking each other, “Would you?” or
“Shall we turn out?” and not one of them having the courage to lead
off, I, who began to think they would not go out, after all their talk,
became impatient, and started on ahead, saying, with childish bravado,
“I don’t care what you do, _I_ am going to turn out, whether any one
else does or not;” and I marched out, and was followed by the others.

As I looked back at the long line that followed me, I was more proud
than I have ever been since at any success I may have achieved, and
more proud than I shall ever be again until my own beloved State gives
to its women citizens the right of suffrage.

The agent of the corporation where I then worked took some small
revenges on the supposed ringleaders; on the principle of sending the
weaker to the wall, my mother was turned away from her boarding-house,
that functionary saying, “Mrs. Hanson, you could not prevent the older
girls from turning out, but your daughter is a child, and _her_ you
could control.”

It is hardly necessary to say that so far as results were concerned
this strike did no good. The dissatisfaction of the operatives
subsided, or burned itself out, and though the authorities did not
accede to their demands, the majority returned to their work, and the
corporation went on cutting down the wages.

And after a time, as the wages became more and more reduced, the best
portion of the girls left and went to their homes, or to the other
employments that were fast opening to women, until there were very few
of the old guard left; and thus the _status_ of the factory population
of New England gradually became what we know it to be to-day.

Some of us took part in a political campaign, for the first time, in
1840, when William H. Harrison, the first Whig President, was elected;
we went to the political meetings, sat in the gallery, heard speeches
against Van Buren and the Democratic party, and helped sing the great
campaign song beginning:--

    “Oh have you heard the news of late?”

the refrain of which was:

    “Tippecanoe and Tyler too,
    Oh with them we’ll beat little Van, Van,
      Van is a used-up man.”

And we named our sunbonnets “log-cabins,” and set our teacups (we
drank from saucers then) in little glass tea-plates, with log-cabins
impressed on the bottom. The part the Lowell mill-girls took in these
and similar events serves to show how wide-awake and up to date many of
these middle-century working-women were.

Among the _fads_ of those days may be mentioned those of the
“water-cure” and the “Grahamite.” The former was a theory of doctoring
by means of cold water, used as packs, daily baths, and immoderate
drinks. Quite a number of us adopted this practice, and one at least
has not even yet wholly abandoned it.

Several members of my mother’s family adopted “Professor” Graham’s
regimen, and for a few months we ate no meat, nor, as he said,
“anything that had life in it.” It was claimed that this would
regenerate the race; that by following a certain line of diet, a person
would live longer, do better work, and be able to endure any hardship,
in fact, that not what we were, but what we ate, would be the making of
us. Two young men, whom I knew, made their boasts that they had “walked
from Boston to Lowell on an apple.”

We ate fruit, vegetables, and unleavened or whole-wheat bread, baked
in little round pats (“bullets,” my mother called them), and without
butter; there were no _relishes_. I soon got tired of the feeling of
“goneness” this diet gave me; I found that although I might eat a pint
of mashed potato, and the same quantity of squash, it was as if I had
not dined, and I gave up the experiment. But my elder brother, who
had carried to the extremest extreme this “potato gospel,” as Carlyle
called it, induced my mother to make his Thanksgiving squash-pie after
a receipt of his own. The crust was made of Indian meal and water, and
the filling was of squash, water, and sugar! And he ate it, and called
it good. But I thought then, and still think, that his enjoyment of the
eating was in the principle rather than in the pie.

A few of the girls were interested in phrenology; and we had our heads
examined by Professor Fowler, who, if not the first, was the chief
exponent of this theory in Lowell. He went about into all the schools,
examining children’s heads. Mine, he said, “lacked veneration;” and
this I supposed was an awful thing, because my teacher looked so
reproachfully at me when the professor said it.

A few were interested in Mesmerism; and those of us who had the
power to make ourselves _en rapport_ with others tried experiments
on “subjects,” and sometimes held meetings in the evening for that
purpose.

The life in the boarding-houses was very agreeable. These houses
belonged to the corporation, and were usually kept by widows (mothers
of mill-girls), who were often the friends and advisers of their
boarders.

Among these may be mentioned the mothers of Lucy Larcom; the Hon.
Gustavus Vasa Fox, once Assistant Secretary of the Navy; John W.
Hanson, D.D.; the Rev. W. H. Cudworth; Major General B. F. Butler; and
several others.

Each house was a village or community of itself. There fifty or sixty
young women from different parts of New England met and lived together.
When not at their work, by natural selection they sat in groups in
their chambers, or in a corner of the large dining-room, busy at some
agreeable employment; or they wrote letters, read, studied, or sewed,
for, as a rule, they were their own seamstresses and dressmakers.

It is refreshing to remember their simplicity of dress; they wore no
ruffles and very few ornaments. It is true that some of them had gold
watches and gold pencils, but they were worn only on grand occasions;
as a rule, the early mill-girls were not of that class that is said
to be “always suffering for a breast-pin.” Though their dress was
so simple and so plain, yet it was so tasteful that they were often
accused of looking like ladies; the complaint was sometimes made that
no one could tell the difference in _church_ between the factory-girls
and the daughters of some of the first families in the city.

Mrs. Sarah J. Hale, in _The Lady’s Book_, in 1842, speaking of the
impossibility of considering dress a mark of distinction, says: “Many
of the factory-girls wear gold watches and an imitation at least of all
the ornaments which grace the daughters of our most opulent citizens.”

The boarding-houses were considered so attractive that strangers, by
invitation, often came to look in upon them, and see for themselves how
the mill-girls lived. Dickens, in his “American Notes,” speaks with
surprise of their home life. He says, “There is a piano in a great
many of the boarding-houses, and nearly all the young ladies subscribe
to circulating libraries.” There was a feeling of _esprit de corps_
among these households; any advantage secured to one of the number was
usually shared by others belonging to her set or group. Books were
exchanged, letters from home were read, and “pieces,” intended for the
Improvement Circle, were presented for friendly criticism.

There was always a best room in the boarding-house, to entertain
callers in; but if any of the girls had a regular gentleman caller, a
special evening was set apart each week to receive him. This room was
furnished with a carpet, sometimes with a piano, as Dickens says, and
with the best furniture, including oftentimes the relics of household
treasures left of the old-time gentility of the house-mother.

This mutual acquaintanceship was of great advantage. They discussed the
books they read, debated religious and social questions, compared their
thoughts and experiences, and advised and helped one another. And so
their mental growth went on, and they soon became educated far beyond
what their mothers or their grandmothers could have been. The girls
also stood by one another in the mills; when one wanted to be absent
half a day, two or three others would tend an extra loom or frame
apiece, so that the absent one might not lose her pay. At this time the
mule and spinning-jenny had not been introduced; two or three looms, or
spinning-frames, were as much as one girl was required to tend, more
than that being considered “double work.”

The inmates of what may be called these literary households were
omniverous readers of books, and were also subscribers to the few
magazines and literary newspapers; and it was their habit, after
reading their copies, to send them by mail or stage-coach to their
widely scattered homes, where they were read all over a village or a
neighborhood; and thus was current literature introduced into by and
lonely places.

From an article in _The Lowell Offering_, (“Our Household,” signed
H. T.,) I am able to quote a sketch of one factory boarding-house
interior. The author said, “In our house there are eleven boarders,
and in all thirteen members of the family. I will class them according
to their religious tenets as follows: Calvinist Baptist, Unitarian,
Congregational, Catholic, Episcopalian, and Mormonite, one each;
Universalist and Methodist, two each; Christian Baptist, three. Their
reading is from the following sources: They receive regularly fifteen
newspapers and periodicals; these are, the _Boston Daily Times_, the
_Herald of Freedom_, the _Signs of the Times_, and the _Christian
Herald_, two copies each; the _Christian Register_, _Vox Populi_,
_Literary Souvenir_, _Boston Pilot_, _Young Catholic’s Friend_,
_Star of Bethlehem_, and _The Lowell Offering_, three copies each. A
magazine, one copy. We also borrow regularly the _Non-Resistant_, the
_Liberator_, the _Lady’s Book_, the _Ladies’ Pearl_, and the _Ladies’
Companion_. We have also in the house what perhaps cannot be found
anywhere else in the city of Lowell,--a Mormon Bible.”

The “magazine” mentioned may have been _The Dial_, that exponent of
New England Transcendentalism, of which _The Offering_ was the humble
contemporary. The writer adds to her article: “Nothwithstanding the
divers faiths embraced among us, we live in much harmony, and seldom is
difference of opinion the cause of dissensions among us.”

Novels were not very popular with us, as we inclined more to historical
writings and to poetry. But such books as “Charlotte Temple,” “Eliza
Wharton,” “Maria Monk,” “The Arabian Nights,” “The Mysteries of
Udolpho,” “Abellino, the Bravo of Venice,” or “The Castle of Otranto,”
were sometimes taken from the circulating library, read with delight,
and secretly lent from one young girl to another.

Our religious reading was confined to the Bible, Baxter’s “Saints’
Rest,” “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” “The Religious Courtship,” “The Widow
Directed,” and Sunday-school books.

It was fortunate for us that we were obliged to read good books, such
as histories, the English classics, and the very few American novels
that were then in existence. Cheap editions of Scott were but just
publishing; “Pickwick,” in serial numbers, soon followed; Frederika
Bremer was hardly translated; Lydia Maria Child was beginning to
write; Harriet Beecher Stowe was busy in her nursery, and the great
American novel was not written,--nor yet the small one, which was
indeed a blessing!

There were many representative women among us who did not voice
their thoughts in writing, and whose names are not on the list of
the contributers to _The Offering_. This was but one phase of their
development, as many of them have exerted a widespread influence in
other directions. They graduated from the cotton-factory, carrying with
them the results of their manual training; and they have done their
little part towards performing the useful labor of life. Into whatever
vocation they entered they made practical use of the habits of industry
and perseverance learned during those early years, and they have
exemplified them in their stirring and fruitful lives.

In order to show how far the influence of individual effort may
extend, it will be well to mention the after-fate of some of them. One
became an artist of note, another a poet of more than local fame, a
third an inventor, and several were among the pioneers in Florida, in
Kansas, and in other Western States. A limited number married those
who were afterwards doctors of divinity, major-generals, and members
of Congress; and these, in more than one instance, had been their
work-mates in the factory.

And in later years, when, through the death of the bread-winner, the
pecuniary support of those dependent on him fell to their lot, some
of these factory-girls carried on business, entered the trades, or
went to college and thereby were enabled to practise in some of the
professions. They thus resumed their old-time habit of supporting the
helpless ones, and educating the children of the family.

These women were all self-made in the truest sense; and it is well
to mention their success in life, that others, who now earn their
living at what is called “ungenteel” employments, may see that what
one does is not of so much importance as what one is. I do not know
why it should not be just as commendable for a woman who has risen
to have been once a factory-girl, as it is for an ex-governor or a
major-general to have been a “bobbin-boy.” A woman ought to be as proud
of being self-made as a man; not proud in a boasting way, but proud
enough to assert the fact in her life and in her works.

All these of whom I speak are widely scattered. I hear of them in the
far West, in the South, and in foreign countries, even so far away as
the Himalaya Mountains. But wherever they may be, I know that they
will join with me in saying that the discipline of their youth helped
to make them what they are; and that the cotton-factory was to them the
means of education, their preparatory school, in which they learned the
alphabet of their life-work.

Such is the brief story of the life of every-day working-girls; such as
it was then, so it might be to-day. Undoubtedly there might have been
another side to this picture, but I give the side I knew best,--the
bright side!




CHAPTER VI.

_THE LOWELL OFFERING_ AND ITS WRITERS.


One of the most curious phases in the life of New England, and one
that must always puzzle the historian of its literature, is its sudden
intellectual blossoming half a century ago.

[Illustration:

LOWELL OFFERING

December, 1845.

_Is Saul also among the prophets._


A REPOSITORY OF ORIGINAL ARTICLES, WRITTEN BY “FACTORY GIRLS.”

LOWELL: MISSES CURTIS & FARLEY. BOSTON: JORDAN & WILEY, 121 Washington
street. 1845.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1845, in the Clerk’s
Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.]

Emerson says, “The children of New England between 1820 and 1840 were
born with knives in their brains;” and this would seem to be true,
since during or very near that time, were born the majority of those
writers and thinkers whose lives have been so recently and so nobly
rounded out,--Emerson, Bryant, Longfellow, Lowell, Whittier, John
Pierpont,--they whose influence cannot be overestimated in bringing an
ideal element into our hitherto prosaic New England life.

The seeds of this intellectual growth came suddenly, as if blown
from some far-off cultured land, and were sown broadcast. Some found
a resting-place in this little corner of New England, where were
gathered together these daughters of Puritan ancestors, and they,
too, feeling the intellectual impetus, were impelled to put in writing
their own crude thoughts. Their desire for self-improvement had been
to some extent gratified, and they now began to feel the benefit of
the educational advantages which had been opened to them. As in “Mary
Barton,” they “threw the shuttle with increasing sound, although
Newton’s ‘Principia’ lay open before them, to be snatched at in
work-hours, but revelled over at meal-time or at night.”

And the “literary” girls among us would often be seen writing on
scraps of paper which we hid “between whiles” in the waste-boxes upon
which we sat while waiting for the looms or frames to need attention.
Some of these studious ones kept note-books, with abstracts of their
reading and studies, or jotted down what they were pleased to call
their “thoughts.” It was natural that such a thoughtful life should
bear fruit, and this leads me to speak of _The Lowell Offering_, a
publication which was the natural outgrowth of the mental habit of the
early mill-girls, for many of the pieces that were printed there were
thought out amid the hum of the wheels, while the skilful fingers and
well-trained eyes of the writers tended the loom or the frame.

The idea of organization for literary and educational purposes was
first proposed in 1837 by Miss Harriot F. Curtis, perhaps the most
progressive of all the mill-girls. She with her immediate associates
conceived the idea of forming a little society for mental improvement.
In _The Lowell Offering_ of January, 1845, is the following account of
its formation written by Miss Maria Currier.


“IMPROVEMENT CIRCLE.

 “In one of the corporations [the Lawrence] of this city, about eight
 years ago, might have been seen, on a summer evening, a company of
 four or five young females, who through the day had labored at their
 several employments in some one of the factories connected with the
 corporation. Perhaps they were not ambitious above others of their
 sex.... But wishing to improve the talents which God had given them,
 they proposed the formation of a society for mutual improvement. An
 evening was appointed for the proposed purpose; and having invited
 a few others to join them, they met at the time appointed.... A
 president, vice-president, and secretary were chosen; a constitution
 was drafted, and by-laws formed, to which each of the members affixed
 her name.... At length a circle on a more extensive scale was formed
 by a gentleman of this city, and a plan conceived of bringing before
 the world the productions of inexperienced females; of showing
 that intellect and intelligence might be found even among factory
 operatives. It was then that _The Offering_ was published; and many of
 those who were present at the first meeting of our Improvement Circle
 were contributors to its pages.”

At the first meeting, Miss Curtis delivered a stirring address, in
which she stated the object and scope of the organization, and the
urgent need that existed for all working-women to make an effort to
improve their minds.

The club met fortnightly, and each member contributed articles in
prose and verse, which were read at the meetings, and subjected to the
criticism of those present.

In answer to a letter of enquiry, Miss Curtis writes: “I do not
remember who composed the first circle, not even the names of the
officers; but I think Emmeline Larcom was secretary. Farther than
that I can only say, I was not anything. I never would hold any
office,--office brings trammels. I believe I wrote and read the address
of which Maria speaks. Louisa and Maria Currier, Emmeline Larcom,
Harriet Lees, and possibly Ann Carter were there.... If you want to
know whose brain conceived the idea, I suspect it was I. I was always
daring; the other five were modest and retiring.” And thus was formed
the first woman’s literary club in this country,--a remote first cause
of the hundreds which now make up the General Federation of Women’s
Clubs, since it bears the same relation to that flourishing institution
as the native crab does to the grafted tree. Some of these early club,
or improvement circle women either are, or have been, members of
similar organizations in the localities in which they live, and have
done their best to incorporate into the constitution of the modern
woman’s club the idea of “improving the talents God has given them.”
And if they have continued to live up to this doctrine, no doubt they
have attained, if not to all they may have desired, at least to all
they were capable of achieving, according to their limitations.

It may be well to mention here that Improvement Circles continued to
be formed, and that in 1843 there were at least five in different
parts of the city. I attended one in 1845, connected with _The Lowell
Offering_. It met in the publication office, on Central Street, and was
well filled with factory operatives, some of whom had brought their
contributions, and waited to hear them read, with quaking hearts and
conscious faces. Harriet Farley presided, and from a pile of manuscript
on the table before her selected such contributions as she thought the
most worthy of a public reading. Among these, as I remember, were the
chapters of a novel by Miss Curtis, one of Lucy Larcom’s prose poems,
and some “pieces of poetry.” Included in these pieces were some verses
in which the wind was described as playing havoc with nature to such an
extent that--

    “It took the tall trees by the hair,
    And as with besoms swept the air.”

This tremendous breeze, or simile, caused a good deal of mirth among
the younger contributors, who had never heard of “The World-Soul,” nor
read Emerson’s line--

    “To the green-haired forest free,”

nor Longfellow’s “The Building of the Ship,” where he speaks of the
pine-trees as--

    “Shorn of their streaming hair.”

Nor yet Wordsworth’s sonnet:--

    “While trees, dim seen, in frenzied numbers tear
    The lingering remnant of their yellow hair.”

This was my only appearance at the Circle, as I had hitherto been
deterred from going by the knowledge that those who went were expected
to bring a written contribution to be read there. Shortly after this,
Miss Farley (one of the editors) invited me to send something to
the magazine, and I complied; but I was not an early or a constant
contributor.

In 1839, the Rev. Abel C. Thomas and the Rev. Thomas B. Thayer, pastors
of the First and Second Universalist Churches in Lowell, established
improvement circles composed of the young people belonging to their
respective parishes. These meetings were largely made up of young men
and women who worked in the mill. They were often asked to speak;
but as they persistently declined, they were invited to write what
they desired to say, and send it, to be read anonymously at the next
meeting. Many of the young women complied with this request, and these
written communications were so numerous that they very soon became
the sole entertainment of what Mr. Thomas called “these intellectual
banquets.”

A selection from the articles read at these meetings was published by
Mr. Thomas in pamphlet form, under the title, “_The Lowell Offering_,
a Repository of Original Articles written by Females employed in the
Mills.” Mr. Thomas’s own account of his part in establishing the
magazine will be found in chapter seven. The first series, of four
numbers, was issued from October, 1840, to March, 1841; and there
was such a demand for copies, that a new series began, _The Lowell
Offering_ proper, a monthly magazine of thirty-two pages, which was
issued regularly by its projector from that time until October, 1842,
when it passed into the hands of Miss Harriot F. Curtis and Miss
Harriet Farley, both operatives in the Lowell mills.

Under their joint editorship it was published, the first year by
William Schouler, but after that by these ladies themselves, who were
editors, publishers, and proprietors, until December, 1845, when, with
the end of Volume V. Miss Curtis retired from the magazine, and _The
Lowell Offering_ ceased to exist.

But in September, 1847, Miss Farley resumed the publication of
the magazine and issued one copy under the title _The New England
Offering_; and all those who were or had been factory operatives were
invited to contribute to its pages.

This magazine was re-issued in 1848, from April to December, continued
through 1849, and until March, 1850, when it was discontinued for want
of means, and perhaps new contributors. Miss Farley was the editor,
publisher, and proprietor of _The New England Offering_.

There are about seven volumes of the magazines in all,--five of _The
Lowell Offering_, and two of _The New England Offering_, including the
first four numbers in 1840, and the odd numbers of 1847 and 1850.

The prospectus of _The Lowell Offering_, as issued by its women-editors
in 1845, is as follows:--


  THE
  LOWELL OFFERING,
  WRITTEN, EDITED, AND PUBLISHED
  BY FEMALE OPERATIVES.

 Our magazine is the only one which America has produced, of which
 no other country has produced the like. _The Offering_ is _prima
 facie_ evidence, not only of the American “factory-girls,” but of the
 intelligence of the mass of our country. And it is in the intelligence
 of the mass that the permanency of our republican institutions depends.

 And our last appeal is to those who should support us, if for no
 other reason but their interest in “the cultivation of humanity,”
 and the maintenance of _true_ democracy. There is little but this of
 which we, as a people, can be proud. Other nations can look upon the
 relics of a glory come and gone--upon their magnificent ruins--upon
 worn-out institutions, not only tolerated, but hallowed because they
 are old--upon the splendors of costly pageant--upon the tokens of a
 wealth, which has increased for ages--but we can take pride in these.
 We have other and better things. Let us look upon our “free suffrage,”
 our Lyceums, our Common Schools, our Mechanics’ Literary Associations,
 the Periodical of our Laboring Females; upon all that is indigenous to
 our Republic, and say, with the spirit of the Roman Cornelia, These,
 these are our jewels.

 TERMS: One dollar per year in advance. POSTAGE: 100 miles and under,
 1½ cents. Over 100, 2½ cents.

 Published at Lowell, Mass., monthly, by

  MISSES CURTIS & FARLEY.

In order to combat the prejudice which then existed against “female”
editors and publishers, it was thought best (as Mr. Thomas had advised)
that the enterprise should be indorsed by some of the leading men of
the city; and in the original document, now before me, these gentlemen
said:--

 “We wish herewith to express most cheerfully our confidence in their
 talents and moral worth, and our cordial approbation of the worthy
 enterprise in which they are engaged.... We wish only to witness
 to all to whom this may come, that Miss Harriet Farley and Miss
 Harriot Curtis are worthy of entire confidence, and are deserving
 for themselves and for their enterprise the hearty support and
 encouragement of every lover of his country, of every philanthropic
 citizen. We shall always rejoice to hear of their success.

  (Signed by)

  SAMUEL LAWRENCE,        JOHN CLARKE,
  BENJ. F. FRENCH,        HOMER BARTLETT,
  J. W. WARREN,           WILLIAM SCHOULER,
  WILLIAM BUTTERFIELD,    JACOB ROBBINS,
  JOHN AVERY,             GEORGE MOTLEY,
  ALEXANDER WRIGHT,       WILLIAM SPENCER,
  JOHN WRIGHT.

  LOWELL, _Nov. 25, 1843_”

It may be well to record the fact, that at this date, according to the
_Lowell Journal_, there were only three women editors in this country
besides Miss Curtis and Miss Farley. These were Cornelia W. Walter of
the _Boston Transcript_, Mrs. Green of the _Fall River Wampanoag_, and
Lydia Maria Child of _The Anti-Slavery Standard_.

In an editorial notice of all these women editors, the _Journal_ says,
“_The Anti-Slavery Standard_, edited by Lydia Maria Child, is one of
the best papers in the country.... We do not doubt that the women will
have a good influence in this new sphere, as they do in everything
else;” and continuing, “_The Lowell Offering_ must be made the
instrument of great good. In glancing at its contents and reflecting
upon the origin of its articles, our respect for woman and her saving
and regenerating power is increased a thousand fold.”

In order to keep the continuity of the literary history of the early
working-girls, it is well to speak of a contemporary publication called
_The Operatives’ Magazine_, published in Lowell by “an association
of females,” and edited by Lydia S. Hall and Abby A. Goddard, both
factory-girls. The leading editorial stated that “The magazine will
contain original articles on religious and literary subjects,” and
added that “those which inculcate the doctrines of the Bible as
understood by evangelical Christians, without their peculiarities, will
be admitted.” Contributions were solicited from “operatives of both
sexes.”

This magazine was published in 1841-1842, when it was merged in
_The Lowell Offering_. Lucy Larcom and her sister Emmeline were
contributors, during its existence, to _The Operatives’ Magazine_,
which may account for the fact that Lucy Larcom did not write for
_The Lowell Offering_ (with the exception of some verses in the first
series) while it was under the control of Mr. Thomas; but she became a
constant contributor after that date, both to _The Lowell Offering_ and
to _The New England Offering_.




CHAPTER VII.

_THE LOWELL OFFERING_ (CONTINUED).


_The Lowell Offering_ was a small, thin magazine of about thirty pages,
with one column to the page. The price of the first number was six and
a quarter cents. Its title-page was plain, with a motto from Gray; the
verse beginning:--

    “Full many a gem of purest ray serene.”

This motto was used for two years, when another was adopted:--

    “Is Saul also among the prophets?”

In January, 1845, the magazine had on its outside cover a vignette, a
young girl simply dressed, with feet visible and sleeves rolled up. She
had a book in one hand, and her shawl and bonnet were thrown over her
arm. She was represented as standing in a very sentimental attitude,
contemplating a beehive at her right hand. This vignette was adopted,
as the editor said, “To represent the New England schoolgirl, of which
our factories are made up, standing near a beehive, emblem of industry
and intelligence, and in the background the Yankee schoolhouse, church,
and factory.” The motto was:--

    “The worm on the earth
    May look up to the star.”

This rather abject sentiment was not suited to the independent spirit
of most of the contributors, who did not feel a bit like worms; and in
the February number it was changed to one from Bunyan:--

    “And do you think the words of your book are certainly true?
      “Yea, verily.”

The magazine finally died, however, under its favorite motto:--

    “Is Saul also among the prophets?”

The title-page, or outside cover, was copyrighted in 1845.

_The Lowell Offering_ was welcomed with pleased surprise. It found
subscribers all over the country. _The North American Review_, whose
literary _dictum_ was more autocratic than it is to-day, indorsed it,
and expressed a fair opinion of its literary merit.

The editor, John G. Palfrey, said:--

 “Many of the articles are such as to satisfy the reader at once, that
 if he has only taken up _The Offering_ as a phenomenon, and not as
 what may bear criticism and reward perusal, he has but to own his
 error, and dismiss his condescension as soon as may be.”

Charles Dickens, in his “American Notes,” says:--

 “They have got up among themselves a periodical, called _The Lowell
 Offering_, whereof I brought away from Lowell four hundred good
 solid pages, which I have read from beginning to end. Of the merits
 of _The Lowell Offering_, as a literary production, I will only
 observe--putting out of sight the fact of the articles having been
 written by these girls after the arduous hours of the day--that it
 will compare advantageously with a great many English annuals.”

Harriet Martineau prompted a fine review of it in the London
_Athenæum_, and a selection from Volumes I. and II. was published under
her direction, called “Mind Among the Spindles.”

This book was issued first in London, in 1844, and republished in
Boston in 1845, with an introduction by the English editor, Mr.
Knight. In a letter to this gentleman, Miss Martineau said, “I had
the opportunity of observing the invigorating effect of ‘Mind among
the Spindles,’ in a life of labor. Twice the wages and half the
toil would not have made the girls I saw happy and healthy, without
that cultivation of mind which afforded them perpetual support,
entertainment, and motive for activity. They were not highly educated;
but they had pleasure in books and lectures, in correspondence with
home, and had their minds so open to fresh ideas as to be drawn off
from thoughts of themselves and their own concerns.”

English friends were particularly kind in their expressions of
approval. One said, “_The Lowell Offering_ is probably exciting more
attention in England than any other American publication. It is talked
of in the political, as well as in the literary world.... It has given
rise to a new idea, that there may be mind among the spindles.... The
book is a stubborn fact.”

President Felton of Harvard University, while in Paris attending a
course of lectures on English Literature by Philarète Chastles, heard
an entire lecture on the history and literary merits of _The Lowell
Offering_.

Thiers, the French historian, carried a volume into the Chamber of
Deputies, to show what working-women in a republic could do.

George Sand (Madame Dudevant) thought it a great and wonderful thing
that the American mill-girls should write and edit a magazine of their
own.

_Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal_ gave _The Offering_ a rather
_back-handed_ compliment, which is quoted to show the old-time
prejudice against _female_ writers. It said,--

 “Constrained to speak candidly, we have found amongst the pieces few
 which would have any chance of admission into a British periodical
 above the humblest class; yet it must also be admitted, that even
 where there is no positive attraction, there is nothing irreconcilable
 with good taste; and some of the articles, the verse as well as the
 prose, would appear as respectable efforts for females of any rank in
 life.”

It may be said that at one time the fame of _The Lowell Offering_
caused the mill-girls to be considered very desirable for wives;
and that young men came from near and far to pick and choose for
themselves, and generally with good success. No doubt these young men
thought that, if a young woman had the writing talent, rare in those
days, she naturally would have other rare talents towards the making
of a good wife; and I can say that my own knowledge, added to recent
inquiries, confirms this belief.

The fact was often disputed that a “factory-girl” could write for or
edit a magazine, since she had hitherto been considered little better
than the loom or frame she tended. Inquiries on the subject came to the
editors from different parts of the country, and questions like the
following were often put to them: “Do the factory-girls really _write_
the articles published in _The Offering_?” or, “Do you print them just
as they are sent?” or, “Do you revise or rewrite them?”

In the preface to the first volume, Mr. Thomas answered these
questions. He says, “The articles are all written by factory-girls, and
_we do not_ revise or re-write them. We have taken less liberty with
them than editors usually take with other than the most inexperienced
writers.” He adds, “Communications much amended in process of training
the writers were rigidly excluded from print; and such articles only
were published as had been written by females employed in the mills.”
He continues, “and thus was published not only the first work written
by factory-girls, but also the first magazine or journal written
exclusively by women in all the world.”

The contributions to _The Offering_ were on a great variety of
subjects. There were allegories, poems, conversations on physiology,
astronomy, and other scientific subjects, dissertations on poetry,
and on the beauties of nature, didactic pieces on highly moral and
religious subjects, translations from French and Latin, stories of
factory and other life, sketches of local New England history, and
sometimes the chapters of a novel. Miss Curtis, in 1840, wrote an
article on “Woman’s Rights,” in which were so many familiar arguments
in favor of the equality of the sexes, that it might have been the
production of the pen of almost any modern advocate of woman’s rights;
but there was this difference, that the writer, though she felt
sure of her ground, was too timid to maintain it against the world,
and towards the end throws out the query, “whether public life is,
after all, woman’s most appropriate and congenial sphere?” It is a
curious coincidence, that at this date the English and the American
Anti-Slavery Associations were at the point of division on this very
question.

There is a certain flavor in all _The Lowell Offering_ writings, both
in prose and verse, which reminds one of the books read by the authors,
and the models they followed in their compositions. The poetry savors
of Mrs. Sigourney, Mrs. Hemans, Miss Landon, Mrs. Barbauld, Milton,
Pope, Cowper, and Hannah More. Byron’s sardonic vein is copied by one
or two of the most independent minds among them. The prose models of
writing were _The Spectator_, the English classics, “Miss Sedgwick’s
Letters,” “The Vicar of Wakefield,” and Lydia Maria Child’s writings.

Though the literary character of these writings may not rise to
the present standard of such productions, yet at that season of
intellectual dearth they must have had a certain influence on
contemporary literature; and viewed by the critical eye of a later
date, it is found that the selections from _The Lowell Offering_ will
compare quite favorably with those in the “Ladies’ annuals” of the same
date, as, for instance, _The Lady’s Repository_, _The Rose of Sharon_,
_The Lily of the Valley_, _Gems of Beauty_, _The Opal_, and other like
literary curiosities, of which _The Lowell Offering_ may well be ranked
as one, and with which, no doubt, it will hold its place in the history
of American publications.

These factory-girl writers did not confine their talents within the
pages of their own publication. Many of them wrote for the literary
newspapers and magazines. One sometimes filled the poet’s corner
in _Zion’s Herald_ and in the _Saturday Evening Gazette_; another
took that envied place in _The Ladies’ Casket_; a third sent poetic
effusions to _The Lowell Courier and Journal_.

These authors represent what may be called the poetic element of
factory-life. They were the ideal mill-girls, full of hopes, desires,
aspirations; poets of the loom, spinners of verse, artists of
factory-life.

_The Lowell Offering_ did a good work, not only among the operatives
themselves, but among the rural population from which they had been
drawn. It was almost the only magazine that reached their secluded
homes, where it was lent from house to house, read and re-read,
and thus set the women to thinking, and added its little leaven of
progressive thought to the times in which it lived. Its influence
or its memory is not by any means forgotten; and if a newspaper or
magazine which had so brief an existence is so well remembered after at
least fifty years, when the novelty of such a publication is all worn
away, it shows that it must have had some vitality, something in it
worthy of preservation.

It was considered good Sunday reading. A friend told me recently that
as a child she used to watch for its coming, and how much she liked
it, because her father, a clergyman, allowed her to read it on Sunday;
and on that day it was placed on the table with the Bible, while other
secular reading-matter was excluded. Another has said that she used to
get the themes for her “compositions” out of the pages of _The Lowell
Offering_.

The names of _The Lowell Offering_ writers, so far as I have been
able to gather them, are as follows: Sarah G. Bagley, Josephine L.
Baker, Lucy Ann Baker, Caroline Bean, Adeline Bradley, Fidelia O.
Brown, M. Bryant, Alice Ann Carter, Joanna Carroll, Eliza J. Cate,
Betsey Chamberlain, L. A. Choate, Kate Clapp, Louisa Currier, Maria
Currier, Lura Currier, Harriot F. Curtis, Catherine Dodge, M. A. Dodge,
Harriet Farley, Margaret F. Foley, A. M. Fosdick, Abby A. Goddard, M.
R. Green, Lydia S. Hall, Jane B. Hamilton, Harriet Jane Hanson, Eliza
Rice Holbrook, Eliza W. Jennings, Hannah Johnson, E. Kidder, Miss Lane,
Emmeline Larcom, Lucy Larcom, L. E. Leavitt, Harriet Lees, Mary A.
Leonard, Sarah E. Martin, Mary J. McAffee, E. D. Perver, E. S. Pope,
Nancy R. Rainey, Sarah Shedd, Ellen L. Smith, Ellen M. Smith, Laura
Spaulding, Mary Ann Spaulding, Emmeline Sprague, S. W. Stewart, Laura
Tay, Rebecca C. Thompson, Abby D. Turner, Elizabeth E. Turner, Jane S.
Welch, Caroline H. Whitney, A. E. Wilson, Adeline H. Winship, and Sabra
Wright, fifty-seven in all.

Most of the writers signed fictitious names, such as Ella, Adelaide,
Dorcas, Aramantha, Stella, Kate, Oriana, Ruth Rover, Ione, Dolly
Dindle, Grace Gayfeather, and many others.

In 1848 seven books had been published, written by contributors to _The
Lowell Offering_. These were “Lights and Shadows of Factory Life,” and
“Rural Scenes in New England,” by Eliza Jane Cate; “Kate in Search of
a Husband,” “Jessie’s Flirtations,” and “S. S. Philosophy,” by Harriot
F. Curtis; “Domestic Sketches” by Abby A. Goddard, and “Shells from the
Strand of the Sea of Genius” by Harriet Farley.

Not many of the lesser lights continued to write after their
contributions were no longer in demand for _The Offering_. But there
were a few who had written for the pure love of it, and who, in spite
of their other duties, and a restricted life, still clung “to the
dreams of their youth,” and kept up the writing habit, even beyond the
verge of the allotted threescore years and ten.

There is hardly a complete set of _The Lowell Offering_ in existence. I
have Miss Larcom’s copies, which, added to my own, the result of many
years of collecting, in the shape of gifts, make as complete a set as I
have been able to find. The 1847 copy I never heard of outside my own
collection. Mr. L. L. Libbie of Boston has nearly a full set, with a
rare collection of bibliology relating to the magazine.

The volumes in the State Library are neither perfect nor consecutively
bound. A set of _The Lowell Offering_, complete to 1847, was sent
by the mayor of Lowell to the mayor of Paris, “all neatly bound and
lettered.”

There are odd volumes, no doubt, in libraries or in private
collections, but they are not complete enough to give an adequate
idea of the magazine; and unless such a book as this were written, an
historical record of what is now considered a most interesting phase
in the history of early factory labor would not be preserved. I may
add to this, that the Lowell Public Library contains the first five
volumes, which are _The Lowell Offering_ proper. In closing this brief
sketch of _The Lowell Offering_, it may be well to quote Mr. Thomas’s
letter, written to the _Vox Populi_, Lowell, in answer to a request for
information with regard to his connection with the magazine.

 _Dear Sir_,--Your letter of December 9th, 1872, solicits me to
 furnish, in some detail, the facts, as I now remember them, respecting
 the origin and early history of _The Lowell Offering_, the writers for
 it, etc.

 It would seem, by your epistle, that you have seen, and perhaps
 own, the second and later series of the unique publication, but
 that you question whether a copy of the first four numbers is in
 existence--indicating, I judge, that you have sought for them in vain.

 I am happy to inform you that your apprehension of total loss is
 “ruled out” by my possession of two complete sets of those first four
 numbers, lacking only the printed cover of Number One. You will not
 be surprised that my sons, to whom they belong, are unwilling to part
 with these memorials of their father’s brief residence in Lowell; but
 I hope that your earnest antiquarian call will awaken a response among
 the hidden or forgotten things of some one of your many readers.

 Meanwhile I will endeavor to make a compact statement of what
 you desire, with no more of personality than is necessary to an
 intelligible narrative.

 Number 1 of _The Lowell Offering_ was published in October, 1840. No.
 2 was issued in December following. No. 3 appeared in February, 1841,
 and No. 4 in March. Printed by A. Watson, 15 Central Street. Each
 number consisted of sixteen pages small quarto, double columns, in
 small pica solid, and was sold at retail for six and one-fourth cents.
 I have forgotten how many copies were printed. The third and fourth
 pages of a plain cover were devoted to advertisements of less than an
 average of one inch brevier, and in this way we managed to ‘make both
 ends meet.’

 In No. 2 appeared the following note, the words in brackets being here
 inserted in the way of explanation.

 “A social meeting, denominated Improvement Circle, was established in
 this city about a twelve-month since [by the Rev. A. C. Thomas, pastor
 of the Second Universalist Church]. At the sessions of this Circle,
 which have been holden one evening in a fortnight, communications
 (previously received by the gentleman in charge) have been read, the
 names of the writers not being announced. The largest range of subject
 has been allowed: fiction and fact, poetry and prose, science and
 letters, religion and morals; and in composition the style has been
 humorous or otherwise, according to the various taste or talent of
 the writers. The reading of these articles has constituted the sole
 entertainment of the meetings of the Circle. The interest thus excited
 has given a remarkable impulse to the intellectual energies of our
 population.

 “At a social meeting for divine worship connected with one of our
 societies (First Universalist Church, the Rev. T. B. Thayer, pastor),
 communications, chiefly of a religious character, have been read,
 during several years past. The alternate weekly session of this
 Conference was appropriated mainly to communications, and denominated
 Improvement Circle, soon after the institution of the one above
 mentioned, and the interest has thereby been greatly increased.

 “A selection from the budgets of articles furnished to these Circles,
 together with a few communications derived from other sources,
 constitutes _The Lowell Offering_, whereof the two gentlemen in charge
 of the meetings aforesaid are the editors.

 “We have been thus particular, partly to gratify the curiosity of
 our readers, and partly to call attention to the advantage of such
 social institutions for improvement in knowledge, and in the art
 of composition. The meetings being free to all who are disposed to
 attend, they may be likened to so many intellectual banquets, the
 writers furnishing the feast of reason, while all present participate
 in the flow of soul.”

 Confessedly there was little novelty in the organization and conduct
 of these Circles, excepting perhaps that the leaders took special
 pains in private interviews, and by informal hints and criticisms at
 the gatherings, to awaken and foster a desire for improvement. But the
 honorable presentation to the world, in print, of a class of people
 usually considered ignorant and degraded, was certainly a new thing
 under the sun.

 In the number of _The Offering_ for November, 1842, which was after
 my removal from New England, Miss Harriet Farley, who was then in
 editorial charge, published her personal knowledge of the origin,
 etc., as follows:--

 “The gentlemen were at liberty to contribute to the Circle, but they
 were of no great assistance. Those who were not engaged in the mills
 were also contributors, but it was soon found that the principal
 interest of the meetings depended upon _the factory-girls_.

 ... “There were at length so many articles of a promiscuous character,
 that it was thought they might form a pleasing variety in a little
 book.... To tell the truth, we did not really believe that it would
 ever come into being. We did not believe our articles would do to
 print--that they were good enough to be put in a book. But there was
 _one_ who thought otherwise.... Then a periodical was spoken of, and
 it was even suggested that _we_ should edit it. _We_ the editor! The
 idea was very awful. _We_ should as soon have thought of building a
 meeting-house! We shrank so sensitively from the proposal that it was
 not urged, and the projector of the work became its editor.

 “We shall never forget our throb of pleasure when we first saw _The
 Lowell Offering_ in a tangible form, with its bright yellow cover, nor
 our flutterings of delight as we perused its pages. True, we had seen
 or heard the articles before, but they seemed so much better in print!
 They appeared to be as good as anybody’s writings. They sounded as if
 written by people who never worked at all.

 “_The Offering_ was well received by the public, or at least would
 have been if people had not been so confused and perplexed and
 mystified and unbelieving.

 “The first number was an experiment, and a successful one. The
 second, third, and fourth appeared at irregular intervals; and then
 it was thought best that it should be permanently established.
 Hitherto it had been sold singly, or given away, and there had been
 no subscription list. With the fifth number commenced a new series,
 different in form and materially improved in outward appearance.”

 The new series was a monthly of thirty-two pages, large octavo, in
 long primer, leaded, with embellishments of wood engravings, chiefly
 of churches in Lowell, also pages of music, the whole put up in neat
 printed covers.

 Communications much amended in the process of training the writers
 were rigidly excluded from print, and such articles only were
 published as had been written by females employed in the mills. One
 article only was afterwards challenged as a plagiarism. A few of the
 contributions from the first needed only the usual corrections to fit
 them for the press; the contributors, besides possessing rare native
 talent, having had the advantages of a New England common-school
 education.

 Mostly the writers chose to appear anonymously, not subscribing even
 their initials; and I am not at liberty to reveal their names, even
 if I could remember and designate them all. I have, however, already
 mentioned Miss Harriet Farley, and may add that she was a daughter
 of the Rev. Stephen Farley, an aged Unitarian clergyman residing in
 Amesbury, Mass., a man richer in faith and life than in dimes and
 dollars. She left home, and worked steadily in the mills at Lowell,
 that she might help a brother through college. I have no hesitation in
 naming her as a sample of extraordinary genius. She greatly enriched
 the Circle which was in my charge, and was foremost in every issue of
 _The Offering_ for several years.

 Miss Lydia S. Hall was another contributor whose productions aided
 largely in the celebrity of _The Offering_, especially in the line of
 poetry. “The Tomb of Washington,” “Lowell, a parody on Hohenlinden,”
 “No,” and a number of other poetical articles of singular merit,
 stamped this “Adelaide” as a remarkable writer.

 Mrs. Betsey Chamberlain, a widow who worked in the mills for the
 support and education of her two children, was a constant Circle
 helper, and vitalized many pages of _The Offering_ by humorous
 incidents and the wit of sound common sense.

 Miss Harriot Curtis, who held a dashing pen, left the mills for a
 season to attend to a sick friend in Troy. At the date of her return,
 the contents of the second volume of _The Offering_ had already been
 made up, whereupon, by my encouragement (suggestion, I believe)
 she wrote a novelette entitled “Kate in Search of a Husband,” the
 manuscript of which I sold in her behalf to J. Winchester, a New
 York publisher, who issued large editions of it. A year or two later
 she was associated with Miss Farley as editor and proprietor of _The
 Offering_. Several “Chapters on the National Sciences” were written
 by a factory-girl (Eliza J. Cate) in Manchester, N. H. She afterwards
 wrote “Lights and Shadows of Factory Life,” also “Rural Life in New
 England,” both of which I sold to Winchester in her behalf.

 Miss Harriet Lees, S. G. B., E. E. T., H. J., A. B., and many others,
 are pleasantly in my memory as cordial aids; these memoranda, as you
 will perceive, reaching beyond the first four numbers, concerning
 which you make special inquiry.

 On the second page of the cover of Number 4, issued March 4, 1841,
 an endeavor to establish _The Offering_ permanently was announced.
 “Be the number large or small who are disposed to patronize the
 undertaking, we have concluded to hazard the experiment for one year,”
 the labor and responsibility being wholly my own.

 If my ecclesiastical connections had been of the popular order,
 there could have been no doubt of success; but I was well known as a
 Universalist. Sectarian hostility, in that day, was of a sort which
 would not be tolerated now; and I had to combat the falsehood that
 _The Offering_ was a Universalist publication.

 _The Operatives’ Magazine_ was issued as a rival, or competitor; and
 only the superior talent of the contributors to the original work
 kept it in the ascendant of repute and circulation. I am happy, too,
 to remember that the most influential laymen in the city indorsed my
 enterprise, as will appear by the following card:--


        LOWELL, _March 7, 1841_.

      The undersigned have seen the numbers of _The Lowell
      Offering_ already issued. Believing the work calculated to
      do good, and understanding that it is to be permanently
      established by means of a subscription list, we take pleasure
      in recommending it to the patronage of the public generally,
      and to persons connected with the manufacturing establishment
      especially.

        Elisha Huntington.    J. P. Jewett.
        Samuel Lawrence.      Samuel W. Stickney.
        Elisha Bartlett.      Daniel Mowe.
        J. W. Warren.         S. D. York.
        Gilman Kimball.       William Grey.
        Robert Means.         Moody Currier.
        B. F. French.         C. Appleton.
        J. C. Dalton.         John Nesmith.
        John W. Graves.       George Mansfield.
        Homer Bartlett.       George Brownell.
        Charles L. Tilden.    James G. Carney.
        John Aiken.           W. O. Bartlett.
        Alexander Wright.     A. D. Dearborne.
        George Motley.        Hiram Parker.
        John Avery.           Nathaniel Thurston.
        William Spencer.      Eliphalet Case.
        William Livingston.   J. G. Abbott.
        J. W. Scribner.       John Clark.

 Those of your readers who have memories of the Lowell of thirty
 years ago, will observe that the names of all (or nearly all) the
 superintendents of the corporations are in this list, and that it
 includes a liberal representation of other dignitaries in the city,
 excepting only the clergy. One of these is indeed in the record;
 but he shortly afterward wished to have his signature cancelled, for
 the reason that he had placed it there without due consideration!
 Whereupon Mr. Case, who passed the paper around, gave indefinite time
 for consideration to all of the rest of the clergy, each having the
 benefit of a doubt to begin with. I must not, however, fail to mention
 that the Rev. Henry A. Miles, of the Unitarian Church, was steadfastly
 a friend of _The Offering_ from first to last.

 I have thus endeavored to answer your inquiries, and will add a few
 incidents.

 In January, 1842, Samuel Lawrence introduced me to Charles Dickens,
 who was at that time on a tour of inspection in Lowell. In a brief
 interview, I gave him assurance that all the articles in _The
 Offering_ were written by the class known as factory-girls. I
 afterward sent him a bound copy of the first volume, new series, which
 he noticed at some length in “American Notes for General Circulation,”
 the following being an extract:--

 “They have got up among themselves a periodical called _The Lowell
 Offering_ ... whereof I brought away from Lowell four hundred good
 solid pages, which I have read from beginning to end.... Of the
 merits of _The Lowell Offering_ as a literary production, I will only
 observe, putting entirely out of sight the fact of the articles having
 been written by these girls after the arduous labors of the day, that
 it will compare advantageously with a great many English annuals.”

 A volume entitled “Mind among the Spindles,” being a selection from
 _The Offering_, was published in England under the auspices, I
 believe, of Harriet Martineau. She, at all events, was the prompter
 of a fine review in _The London Athenæum_. This was early in 1843.
 The compliment was acknowledged by the present of an elegantly bound
 copy of the first and second volumes of the new series, with the
 inscription:--

  “HARRIET MARTINEAU,
  FROM
  HARRIET FARLEY, HARRIOT CURTIS, AND
  HARRIET LEES.”

 The distinguished authoress said in reply: “It is welcome as a token
 of kindness and for its own value, and above all as a proof of
 sympathy between you and me, in regard to that great subject, the
 true honor and interests of our sex.” She might truly have claimed,
 in addition, not only that _The Offering_ was the first work written
 entirely by factory-girls, but the first magazine or journal written
 exclusively by women, in all the world.

 My administration as editor and publisher ceased with the close of the
 second volume, the numbers of which, as ‘copy’ was abundant, having
 been pushed to completion in advance of regular monthly issues.

 And now, after the lapse of more than thirty years of varied
 experience, I send salutations of grace, mercy, and peace to all,
 being yet in the flesh, who wished well to that undertaking, and
 helped it, while I here record happy memories of the friends who have
 passed behind the veil.

  Truly yours,
  ABEL C. THOMAS.
  TACONY, PHILAD., _Dec. 29th, 1872_.

Although the magazine under its women editors was a continued success,
still, to Mr. Thomas, as its projector and first editor, must be given
the credit of bringing before the public these productions; and too
much honor cannot be awarded to him for believing in the capabilities
of the young people under his charge, and for utilizing the talent
which he found. But for his Improvement Circle _The Lowell Offering_
might never have been heard of; and its writers, if this impetus had
not been given to their talents, would never have thought themselves
capable of any success in this direction. To improve and cultivate the
mind was the injunction urged by this good man upon the working men and
women of his time.

The fact that Mr. Thomas was the grandson of a noted Quaker preacher
(Abel Thomas) probably accounts for his inheritance of the idea, first
promulgated in this country by that sect, that women have the right
and the ability to express their thoughts, both in speaking and in
writing; and he found in Lowell a good field for the application of
this principle.

Although a Universalist minister, he was very fond of the Quaker manner
of speech, and used the “thee” and “thou” to the end of his life. He
was an eloquent and convincing preacher, and consecrated his whole
life to the work of disseminating the doctrines of his denomination.
He married the daughter of Judge Strange Palmer, of Pottsville, Penn.,
and M. Louise Thomas is well known as taking a prominent part in many
social and philanthropic reforms; it is to her that I am indebted for
the privilege of quoting her husband’s letter.

Mr. Thomas died Sept. 28, 1880; but he had lived to rejoice in the
result of his enterprise, though he had little thought, perhaps, of
what would be the outcome of his efforts to encourage the young people
of his church and community. He was a model publisher, since, as two at
least of his writers testify, he shared the pecuniary profits of his
magazine with its contributors.




CHAPTER VIII.

BRIEF BIOGRAPHIES OF SOME OF THE WRITERS FOR _THE LOWELL OFFERING_.


It remains for me to give, so far as I have been able to glean
them, the life-stories of a few of the most important of these
mill-girl writers, some of them brief indeed, others perhaps of wider
significance, but all telling a tale of honest toil and earnest
aspiration. I begin with Miss Curtis, as senior editor of the magazine.


HARRIOT F. CURTIS,

_Editor of the Lowell Offering._

Among all the writers, Miss Curtis stands out as the pioneer and
reformatory spirit. She was fearless in her convictions; she wrote in
advocacy of the anti-slavery cause when the real agitation had hardly
begun, and in behalf of woman’s right to “equal pay for equal labor,”
five years before the first woman suffrage convention was held in this
country.

She organized the first known woman’s club, and was one of the four
women editors of her time. She was the novelist _par excellence_ of
_The Offering_, and had a bold and dashing pen that would have made
her fortune in these days of women reporters and interviewers. But she
was so startlingly original in her speech and in her writings, that
it “made talk,” as Samantha Allen says, so different was she from the
established idea of what a “female” should be.

But she was self-centred, and bore with Christian philosophy as well as
with pagan silence and stoicism, “the slings and arrows” of those who
could not understand her brave and courageous nature.

Her mind was intensely masculine; but her life had all the limitations
by which the women of her time were bound, and these prevented her from
doing the work for which she was best fitted, and from leading that
life of freedom from care which is so necessary to the best literary
work.

Through her grandmother, Abigail Stratton (Curtis), Harriot could claim
direct descent from Miles Standish.

She was born Sept. 16, 1813, in Kellyvale (now Lowell), Vt., a little
post hamlet on the Missisquoi River, completely surrounded by mountain
peaks. The lonely and isolated life she was obliged to lead was very
distasteful to her, and she early made up her mind to leave her home
and seek more congenial surroundings elsewhere. Her father’s means were
limited; and after exhausting what education could be obtained in the
narrow circle in which she lived, she determined to go to Lowell to
work in the factory, and thus earn the money necessary for a year’s
study at some private school or academy.

Previous to her connection with _The Offering_, Miss Curtis wrote
many tales and sketches, and also “Kate in Search of a Husband,” one
of the first of the “popular novels” in this country. Her novel, “The
Smugglers,” was begun in _The Offering_ of November, 1843.

Her connection with _The Offering_ lasted three years; and during the
last two, besides contributing and editing, she also assumed that
part of the business management which necessitated her travelling
and canvassing for subscribers; in fact, as she said, she was “the
travelling-agent for the firm, and went roaming about the country in
search of patrons.”

By this means, she not only helped to place the magazine on a paying
basis, but made the acquaintance of many distinguished persons. It
was chiefly by the efforts of Miss Curtis at this time that _The
Lowell Offering_ achieved an almost world-wide fame. When at home she
resumed her employment in the mill, as harness-knitter on the Lawrence
corporation.

Mr. Thomas, in response to a letter from her asking advice with regard
to the business affairs of the magazine, replies:--

 “Make your terms cash. You will do well to keep constantly in
 remembrance that your prosperity almost entirely depends on your
 individual exertions. Puffing, advertising, scolding, will do little
 or nothing. _Male_ agents will do little or nothing; but if you go as
 females, with suitable brief papers signed by _eminent men_, to show
 that you are not impostors, you will do well.... Be careful to guard
 against the possibility of suspicion. This you can readily accomplish
 by certificates from Saml. Lawrence, John Clark, and a few other
 Lowellites, countersigned (if convenient) by the governor, Daniel
 Webster, etc.”

In her valedictory at the close of Volume V., Miss Curtis announces
that she severs her connection with _The Offering_ for reasons
“entirely of a personal nature,” and as a parting benison adds:
“Friends, Patrons, and Foes (if we have any), may God bless you all
with every perfect gift!”

Although her connection with _The Offering_ was severed at this date,
Miss Curtis remained in Lowell until called away by the illness of
her mother. She continued her literary labors for a time, and was
a correspondent of several newspapers. Harriot was the friend and
correspondent of such men as John Neal, Horace Greeley, Nathaniel P.
Willis, and others well known in literary and public life.

She had a taste for politics and wrote intelligently on questions that
women were not supposed to understand. She contributed to the _New
York Tribune_ articles so clear and so caustic, that readers who did
not share the common delusion that “H. G.” wrote everything in Horace
Greeley’s paper, thought they must have been written by a _man_!

She was the friend and correspondent of “Warrington” (William S.
Robinson), and when he was editor of the _Boston Daily Republican_, she
made a prediction worthy of a male political prophet. In a letter dated
May 4, 1848, she writes:--

 _Friend R._,--Probably no doubt exists but _some_ self-sacrificing
 patriot may be found to accept the office of Chief Magistrate....
 But who shall be the Whig candidate for this self-sacrifice, seems
 the most prominent question. A few days since I met Horace Greeley,
 and, as in duty bound, pronounced to him my _prophecy_ of who _could
 not_ be a successful candidate, although, out of the numerous
 aspirants for the Whig nomination, I could not prophecy who would
 be successful.... Will you give the public my assurance that _Henry
 Clay cannot be President of the United States_. I don’t care who the
 Democratic nominee may be; I don’t care how divided that party may be
 in action, nor how great may be the unanimity and enthusiasm of the
 Whigs; but I repeat, Henry Clay cannot be President....

I now enter upon the most painful part of her story, and I do it with
a heavy heart; but I feel obliged to tell it, because it illustrates
so well the lives which so many “solitary” women were then forced to
lead,--lives of poverty, of self-abnegation, and of unselfishness. And
in reading, in her letters to me, the sad record of her struggles, I
can truly say, that never in all my life of over seventy years have I
known of one so cruelly compelled by circumstances to hide the talent
which “God had given her,” that she might become the angel of mercy to
her suffering and needy relatives.

In the heyday of her literary career, she left the work for which she
was the best fitted, to take the sole charge of her blind and aged
mother, who lived until 1858, “having suffered all that mortal could
suffer.” Harriot was her constant attendant day and night, vainly
trying, in the mean while, to get some literary work to do at her home
to help eke out the narrow income of the family.

Extracts from her letters written to my husband and myself will give
some idea of her struggles to obtain remunerative employment.

  SUNNY HILL, DRACUT, _Jan. 7, 1849_.

 _Dear, dear Friends_,--Your kind letter reached me on Friday; and
 if you could imagine the “heaps” of good it did me, you would favor
 me often with such medicine. Nobody writes to me nowadays, and I am
 left to my despair and desolation.... Oh dear! what a world this is
 for poor old maids! but I trust _you_ find it quite comfortable and
 Paradise-like for brides and bridegrooms, God bless them all! and more
 especially you young ones.... I wish you would show me how I could
 “earn” anything by writing. I cannot find my way only to write a book,
 be months about it, and then get a whole $100 for it. That don’t pay
 enough for wear and tear of temper.

Later, in 1860, she writes from the family home in St. Albans, Vt.

 “Under present circumstances I do not think I could write a leader. I
 do not know of anything until it is a week or ten days’ old, and my
 only connection with the living world is the _Tribune_. I thank you
 with all my heart for your kind offer about going to New York, but it
 would be useless. Greeley’s introduction to Bonner would not do any
 good. If I could attract notice, kick up a small tempest, I should
 feel sure of an invitation from Mr. Bonner. But without some notoriety
 that _has_ created comment, the angel Gabriel could not get into the
 _Ledger_. Without intellectual contact, out of the world, I have grown
 rusty. A great care, an increasing anxiety, and most painful sympathy
 for the suffering, have narrowed my thoughts.... If I could get a
 little good luck--something to feel pleased about--I think I could
 wake up to anything.... I could not earn a dollar _here_ to save my
 life. Greeley would say, “Yes, you could: there is the needle; that is
 useful and wanted, though not half paid.” Mr. Greeley does not know
 that even the resource of the “poor shirtmaker” is denied me. I have
 lost the use of my thimble finger from one of those awful things, a
 felon; and it is misshapen, bent, and stiffened. I assure you, I have
 had a _womanly_ experience.... You see, I am ‘off the track.’”

After 1860 she ceased trying to secure either fame or money by her
literary talents; and thereafter, for almost thirty years, she
continued to be the nurse and companion of the remaining invalids of
the family, thinking, as she always had done, more of their comfort
than she did of the loss of fortune and fame.

If she had devoted all her energies to the development of her talent as
a novelist, she might have earned a livelihood, and been a continued
success,--enough so, at least, to find a place in some of the many
volumes of American biography. But she had the conviction that one has
no moral right to live for one’s self alone; and so she gave her all,
and spent her life, in the service of those who needed her help. And
though often despondent, and almost despairing, she never lost faith in
God, nor in his fatherly care over the most afflicted of his children.

I first knew Miss Curtis in about 1844, when she and Miss Farley lived
in what was then Dracut, in a little house embowered in roses, which
they had named “Shady Nook.” The house was a sort of literary centre
to those who had become interested in _The Lowell Offering_ and its
writers; and there were many who came from places both near and far to
call on the editors, and meet the “girls” who by their pens had made
themselves quite noted.

But I did not see much of her until 1848, when we became the firm
friends and correspondents that we remained until the end of her life.
As I remember her at that time, she was of medium height, rather
inclined to stoutness, with small, white, well-shaped hands, brown
hair, large blue eyes, a small nose, full red lips, white teeth well
divided, and a head--well, more than a match for most of the women, if
not the men, of her set.

Miss Curtis had many offers of marriage; but she thought it wrong for a
woman to marry for a “home,” or unless she loved the man with a “love
more enduring than life and stronger than death;” and as she did not
meet such a man, she could not enter into her ideal marriage. But the
friendships she made were warm and lasting, and the friends with whom
she was associated have in these pages given their loving tribute to
her characteristics and her capabilities.

Miss Curtis’s literary efforts may be summed up as follows: first,
“Kate in Search of a Husband, a novel by a Lady Chrysalis,” published
by J. Winchester, New York, and twice in after years by unknown
publishers. The authorship of this novel was claimed by one male
writer, and another wrote a counterpart, called “Philip in Search of a
Wife.”

“Kate” was followed by “The Smugglers,” the scene of which was laid in
her native town, and “Truth’s Pilgrimage, His Wanderings in America
and in Other Lands,” an allegory. Both of these books were published
in continued numbers in _The Offering_, and the first-named was
copyrighted by a Boston firm in 1844, but was not published.

Her last novel, “Jessie’s Flirtations,” was published first by George
Munro in 1846 and afterwards by the Harpers; and it still holds its
place in their “Library of Select Novels.” “S. S. Philosophy,” her last
published book, is full of pithy paragraphs, containing (as her friend
“Warrington” said in the _Lowell Journal_) “much that is sensible,
sound, and salutary, as well as some considerable that is saucy and
sarcastic.” She was for three years co-editor of _The Lowell Offering_;
in 1854-1855 she was associate editor of the _Vox Populi_, a Lowell
newspaper; and she also wrote for many leading journals, notably _The
New York Tribune_, _The Lowell Journal_, _The Lowell American_, and N.
P. Willis’s _Home Journal_ (N.Y.).

Her _nom de plume_, “Mina Myrtle,” first used by her in the newspapers
in 1847, became well known; it was afterwards appropriated by another
author as “Minnie” Myrtle. (See Wheeler’s “Dictionary of the Noted
Names of Fiction.”)

During her last years Miss Curtis lived on a small farm in Needham,
Mass., with her invalid niece, and was cared for and supported by her
nephew, George H. Caldwell, brevetted lieutenant-colonel for gallant
and meritorious service at Gettysburg, the Battle of the Wilderness,
and before Petersburg.

Miss Curtis died in October, 1889, at the age of seventy-six, leaving
the invalid niece, who had been her charge for so many years; but her
affection for her “Aunt Harriot” was so strong that she died of “no
seeming disease” a few weeks after her distinguished relative.


THE CURRIER SISTERS.

These were four sisters, named Louisa, Maria, Lura, and Marcia, and at
least three of them wrote for _The Offering_.

They were the daughters of Mr. John Currier of Wentworth, N.H., and
members of Mr. Thomas’s congregation and of his Improvement Circle.
Maria has put on record an authentic account of the first Improvement
Circle (quoted elsewhere); but Lura deserves the most extended mention,
from the fact that she, as Mrs. Whitney, was the prime mover in
establishing a free library in the town of Haverhill, N.H. Mrs. Whitney
died before I had thought to write to her for information; but I am
able to quote extracts from the following letter, written by her to
Mrs. E. E. T. Sawyer, her early work-mate and lifelong friend, on Jan.
19, 1885.

 “I think I have told you about the library that I had the honor of
 starting here about four and a half years ago. Now we are talking
 about a new library building; and I think we have made a great start,
 as one man has given us fifteen hundred dollars towards it.... As far
 as our library is concerned, I have accomplished what no one else in
 this place has done before, and I feel amply repaid in the perusal of
 some of the interesting volumes contained therein.”

Mrs. Whitney died April 4, 1889.


ELIZA JANE CATE.

Miss Cate was the eldest daughter of Captain Jonathan Cate, who
commanded a company in the war of 1812. She was born in Sanbornton,
N.H., in 1812, and soon achieved good rank as a pure, unaffected, and
attractive writer. She was most prolific with her pen, and wrote on a
large variety of subjects. Her admirers called her “the Edgeworth of
New England.”

Her contributions to _The Offering_, notably “Susy L----’s Diary,”
“Lights and Shadows of Factory Life,” and “Chapters on the Natural
Sciences,” were widely read and commended. Her signature was usually
“D.” She was a contributor to _Peterson’s_, over the signature of “By
the Author of Susy L----’s Diary,” and wrote for _Sartain’s_ and other
magazines.

Her obituary notice, copied from the newspapers, said:--

 “Miss Cate was the author of at least eight books, three of which were
 issued by the Baptist Publication Society of Philadelphia, and two
 by J. Winchester of New York. She was a corresponding member of the
 New Hampshire Historical Society. She died in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., in
 1884. Miss Cate was retiring in her manner, but was of a genial and
 confiding nature; and in her character, as well as in her writings,
 were blended moral purity with the Christian graces.”


MRS. BETSEY CHAMBERLAIN.

Mrs. Chamberlain was the most original, the most prolific, and the most
noted of all the early story-writers. Her writings were characterized,
as Mr. Thomas says, “by humorous incidents and sound common sense,”
as is shown by her setting forth of certain utopian schemes of right
living.

Mrs. Chamberlain was a widow, and came to Lowell with three children
from some “community” (probably the Shakers), where she had not been
contented. She had inherited Indian blood, and was proud of it. She had
long, straight black hair, and walked very erect, with great freedom of
movement. One of her sons was afterwards connected with the _New York
Tribune_.


HARRIET FARLEY,

_Editor of The Lowell Offering and afterwards of the New England
Offering._

From her autobiography, published in Mrs. S. J. Hale’s book, “The
Woman’s Record,” about 1848, I am so fortunate as to be able to quote
Miss Farley’s own words with regard to some of the events of her
early life before and during the time of her connection with both the
_Lowell_ and the _New England Offering_. Miss Farley says:--

 “My father is a Congregational minister, and at the time of my
 birth was settled in the beautiful town of Claremont, N.H.... My
 mother was descended from the Moodys, somewhat famous in New England
 history. One of them was the eccentric Father Moody. Another [his
 son] was Handkerchief Moody, who wore so many years ‘the Minister’s
 Veil.’... My father was of the genuine New Hampshire stock, from a
 pious, industrious, agricultural people; his brothers being deacons,
 and some of his sisters married to deacons.... His grandmother was
 eminent for her medical knowledge and skill, and had as much practice
 as is usually given to a country doctor. His mother was a woman of
 fine character, who exerted herself and sacrificed much to secure
 his liberal education.... I was the sixth of ten children, and until
 fourteen had not that health which promises continued life.... At
 fourteen years of age I commenced exertions to assist in my own
 maintenance, and have at times followed the various avocations of New
 England girls. I have plaited palm-leaf straw, bound shoes, taught
 school, and worked at tailoring, besides my labors as a weaver in the
 factory, which suited me better than any other. After my father’s
 removal to the little town of Atkinson, N.H., he combined the labors
 of preceptor of one of the two oldest academies of the State with his
 parochial duties; and here, among a simple but intelligent people,
 I spent those years which give tone to the female character.... I
 learned something of French, drawing, ornamental needlework, and the
 usual accomplishments; for it was the design of my friends to make me
 a teacher,--a profession for which I had an instinctive dislike. But
 my own feelings were not consulted.... This was undoubtedly wholesome
 discipline; but it was carried to a degree that was painful, and
 drove me from my home. I came to Lowell, determined that, if I had
 my own living to obtain, I would get it in my own way; that I would
 read, think, and _write when I could_, without restraint; that if I
 did well I would have the credit of it, if ill, my friends should be
 relieved from the stigma. I endeavored to reconcile them to my lot
 by a devotion of all my spare earnings to them and their interests.
 I made good wages; I dressed economically; I assisted in the liberal
 education of one brother, and endeavored to be the guardian angel
 to a lovely sister.... It was something so new to me to be praised
 and encouraged to write that I was at first overwhelmed by it, ...
 and it was with great reluctance that I consented to edit [_The
 Lowell Offering_], and was quite as unwilling at first to assist in
 publishing. But circumstances seem to have compelled me forward as a
 business woman, and I have endeavored to _do my duty_. I am now the
 proprietor of _The New England Offering_. I do all the publishing,
 editing, canvassing; and as it is bound at my office, I can, in a
 hurry, help fold, cut covers, stitch, etc. I have a little girl to
 assist me in the folding, stitching, etc.; the rest, after it comes
 from the printer’s hand, is all my own work. I employ no agents, and
 depend upon no one for assistance. My edition is four thousand. These
 details, I trust, are not tedious. I have given them because I thought
 there was nothing remarkable about _The Offering_ but its source and
 the mode in which it was conducted.”

Of her connection with Mr. Thomas’s Improvement Circle and _The Lowell
Offering_, Miss Farley has said to a friend: “The Circle met in the
Sunday-school rooms, and they were not only filled, but crowded. There
was a box placed at the entrance, so that, if preferred, the writers
could be anonymous; and sometimes topics were suggested. It seemed
almost like an insult when Mr. Thomas first offered payment for these
little mental efforts of our leisure hours.

‘I can understand this feeling,’ he said. ‘I was brought up a Quaker,
and my grandfather never took pay for preaching. The first money that
was ever placed in my hands for this service seemed to burn into my
palms.’ There was a little pile, all in gold, left for our share of
the profits of the first series.

“When I first took the editorial position, I left my regular place to
be what is called a ‘spare hand.’ This gave leisure for what I had to
do, and there never was any difficulty about contributions. A large
bundle of manuscripts left by Mr. Thomas was never resorted to but when
some short paper was wanted to fill out a vacant space.

“In the printing-office were Messrs. Hale, Stearns, Taylor, Brown, and
others, always respectful, kind, and obliging. In the outer office
was Mr. W. S. Robinson, afterwards known as ‘Warrington.’ These men
would soon have discovered if there had been false pretences about the
writers for the magazine.”

In 1847 Miss Farley published a selection from her writings in _The
Offering_, with other material, entitled “Shells from the Strand of
the Sea of Genius;” she is most fully represented in “Mind Among the
Spindles.” In 1880 she published a volume of Christmas stories.

Miss Farley married Mr. Dunlevy, an inventor, and they had one child,
Inez, who married Mr. George Kyle, a humorous writer and comedian, and
died in 1890. Mrs. Dunlevy was living in New York in 1898.


MARGARET F. FOLEY.

    That broad-browed delicate girl will carve at Rome
    Faces in marble, classic as her own.

                                       _An Idyl of Work._

From Miss Foley’s letters to Lucy Larcom, and the tender recollections
of some of her early and lifelong friends, I am able to piece out a
short sketch of this pioneer sculptress.

Margaret Foley was born in Canada, but while she was quite young the
family moved to the States. When her father died he left some property,
and she was educated fully up to the standard of the young women of her
day. She taught school, and at one time was preceptress of Westport
Academy. While there she boarded in Lowell, and on Saturday afternoons
she taught classes in drawing and painting, and among her pupils was
Lucy Larcom. She always had a piece of clay or a cameo in some stage of
advancement, upon which she worked in spare moments.

While at Westport Academy she modelled a bust of Dr. Gilman Kimball, a
distinguished surgeon of Lowell. She began her artistic life without
any teaching, by carving small figures in wood, or modelling busts in
chalk; and she often gave these as prizes to her pupils.

She went into the factory to work, that she might share the advantages
of the society of other girls who were fond of reading and study, and
also that she could enable herself to begin her career as a sculptor.

She did not herself consider that her life in the Lowell factory had
any great part in her career, although there is not much doubt that
she first conceived the idea of chiselling her thought on the surface
of the “smooth-lipped shell” amid the hum of the machinery in the
cotton-mill.

She worked a year on the Merrimack corporation; her poems for _The
Offering_ are written from there, and signed M. F. F. She then went to
Boston, where she opened a studio. While in Boston she suffered great
privations, and earned but a scanty support in carving portraits and
ideal heads in cameo; but she worked on hopefully, doing some excellent
likenesses, cameos, medallions, and a few busts; among these, one of
cabinet size, of Theodore Parker.

Her cameo-cutting was said to be unsurpassed. After seven years of this
life, by the aid of kind friends, the wish of her heart was gratified,
and she sailed for Rome, where she began to work in larger material,
and to make life-size medallion portraits with much success and profit.

She found warm friends there,--Harriet Hosmer, Mrs. Jameson, Mr. and
Mrs. S. C. Hall, W. W. Story, and, best of all, William and Mary Howitt.

From “Mary Howitt, an Autobiography,” by her daughter, London, 1889,
I am able to give a slight glimpse of the last years of Margaret
Foley’s life. Mrs. Howitt first speaks of her in 1871, as “the gifted,
generous-hearted New England sculptress.” In June of that year she
went with the Howitts to the Tyrol, where, on setting up housekeeping
together, Mrs. Howitt says,--

“Margaret Foley, a born carpenter and inventor, set to work and made us
all sorts of capital contrivances.” She spent several summers at Meran,
a residence for invalids, celebrated for its grape-cure. In 1877 she
was taken with a stroke of paralysis, the root of the malady being an
affection of the spinal cord, was carried from Rome to Meran, and after
several months of great suffering she died there, Dec. 7, 1877.

During her illness, says Mrs. Howitt, her physician “ordered us to
write to any near friends or relatives she might have, and that, if she
had any affairs to settle, it might be done; but dear Peggy had made
her will, and we were among her nearest friends.”

The friendship of the Howitts for Margaret Foley was very warm and
tender; and she found in their true hearts and in their home that rest
and refreshment her loving spirit craved, and that true sympathy for
her work which is so necessary for the struggling artist.

I first saw Miss Foley in Rome while I was there with my husband in
1874. We had sent her a letter of introduction from Lucy Larcom with
a note, and were invited to take tea with her at 53 Via Margutta, her
home. She received us in a most cordial New England manner; we were to
have visited her studio the next day, but the sudden illness prevented,
and we never saw her again. She was then at work on her “Fountain,” and
spoke of the figures around it as “my children.”

In personal appearance she was very attractive. Of a medium-sized,
lithe figure, with small, unusually strong hands, a high, broad
forehead, which, in connection with her refined features, gave her the
stamp of intellectual power, a luxuriant quantity of soft brown hair,
the longest and thickest I ever saw, merry blue eyes, and a head as
classic and a skin as white as her own beautiful marbles.

Miss Foley’s principal sculptures may be classified in the following
order: Among her medallions are Theodore Parker, Charles Sumner,
Longfellow, Bryant, William and Mary Howitt, Mrs. S. C. Hall, and
perhaps others, said to be “full of purity and grace.”

Her ideal productions are Jeremiah, a colossal bust; Pasquiccia; The
Fountain; The Young Trumpeter; The Timid Bather; Excelsior; The Head of
Joshua; Little Orpheus; Cleopatra; Viola; The Flower Girl; Boy and Cid,
a life-sized group; The Baby Piper (Little Pan); and doubtless many
others which have not come to my notice.

No adequate biography has yet been written of Miss Foley, although it
is said that the daughter of Mary Howitt has contemplated such a work.
This would certainly be of value, not only as showing how exceptional
talent, (if not actual genius), can assert itself in spite of all
limitations, but also as a tribute to a rare and aerial personality.


LYDIA S. HALL.

This writer was _the_ poet, _par excellence_, of the early volumes of
_The Offering_; as Lucy Larcom said, “She was regarded as one of the
best writers of verse while I was in Lowell.”

“The Tomb of Washington,” first printed in No. 1 of the first series
of _The Offering_, was thought to be a wonderful production, and was
widely copied. She also wrote for that publication “Old Ironsides,” a
poem widely read and quoted. She left Lowell before 1848, and went as
a missionary to the Choctaw Indians, travelling on horseback a greater
part of the way, across the unsettled region.

From letters received from Mrs. Harvey Jones, of Compton, Cal., I am
able to gather up a few scattered threads in the eventful life of this
pioneer Indian missionary.

Mrs. Jones says:--

 “_My dear Mrs. Robinson_,--I was associated in missionary work among
 the Choctaw Indians with Miss Lydia S. Hall. We were together five
 years, and I learned to regard her as a dear friend; but in some way I
 have lost all trace of her. Our relations in the missionary work were
 very pleasant. She was some years my senior, and her riper experience
 and judgment were invaluable to me. Her work in the Indian Seminary
 was thorough, and she was regarded as the Choctaw’s friend. Of her
 literary work I know but little. She wrote occasionally for different
 periodicals. Her contributions to Woodworth’s ‘Youth’s Cabinet’ I have
 specially in mind.... Since I lost trace of her, I came across a poem
 in the _Christian Union_, entitled ‘Our Elder Brother.’ It was very
 rich and tender. It was signed ‘L. S. H. G.’ I did not then know of
 her marriage; but I said to myself, ‘That sounds like Miss Hall.’...
 Her nature was intense and positive, she had high ideals, and she
 could not always be patient towards what she considered wrong. Hers
 was a checkered life, from infancy to age. She was born in 1818.”

In “border-ruffian” days Miss Hall lived in Kansas, and was an owner
of considerable real estate. She lived on the line of emigration, was
hostess of a sort of “Wayside Inn,” and was sometimes obliged to keep
the peace among the lawless men who infested that part of the country.
She would have no quarrelling, drinking, nor gambling on her premises.
She was well able to enforce these regulations, being a woman of great
courage and most commanding presence.

From a newspaper article some years ago, of which I did not preserve
the date, I quote the following:--


“A LOWELL FACTORY-GIRL UNITED STATES TREASURER.

 “Miss Lydia S. Hall, who is now acting U. S. Treasurer in the
 absence of the male chief, was once a Lowell factory-girl, and was a
 contributor to _The Lowell Offering_.... Meeting with some misfortune
 with regard to titles of property, she went to Washington, and has a
 clerkship in the Treasury Department since, being also engaged in
 studying law in order to enable her to secure her property rights in
 Kansas.... She is a lady of great versatility of talent, and would
 fill a higher position than the one she now occupies with credit.”

Miss Hall’s letters to Lucy Larcom would have thrown much light on
her stirring and eventful life, but these were destroyed before I had
thought to ask for them. Her married name was Graffam, but whether she
is alive or dead, I do not know.


HARRIET JANE HANSON.

WRITTEN BY LUCY LARCOM.[3]

    [3] Miss Larcom prepared this sketch for another purpose, two years
        before she died; and it is substantially the same, with the
        addition of a few details, which she suggested and permitted me
        to supply.

In these days, when woman’s place in the community, as well as in the
family, is coming to be acknowledged; when her abilities in every
direction find use and scope; when the labor of her hands, head, and
heart is everywhere abundantly honored,--it is well for our younger
toilers to see what has been accomplished by those who grew up under
circumstances more difficult than those by which they are surrounded.
Labor has always been honorable for everybody in our steady-going
New England life, but it was not as easy for a young woman to put her
mental machinery into working order forty years ago as it is now. Her
ambition for the education of her higher faculties was, however, all
the greater for the check that was put upon it by the necessities of a
longer day’s toil and the smaller compensation of the older time. It is
one of the wholesome laws of our nature that we value most that which
we most persistently strive after through obstacles and hindrances.

The author of “The New Pandora” is an illustration of what has been
done by one such woman, the development of whose mind began as a child
in the Lowell cotton-mills. The book is commended by reviewers as an
admirably written composition, a beautiful and successful dramatic poem
of woman, the result of ripe years of thought.

Mrs. Robinson’s maiden name was Harriet Jane Hanson, and she is by
“long descent” of good New England parentage. Her father, William
Hanson, was descended from the ancestor who first settled in Dover,
N.H.--one of a long line of English Quakers. He was a carpenter, and
learned his trade of Peter Cudworth, on Merrimac Street in Boston.

Her mother, Harriet Browne, was of Scotch and English descent, her
paternal ancestor, in this country, being Nicholas Browne,--always
spelled with an _e_,--who was a member of the Great and General Court
of Massachusetts from Lynn in 1641, and afterwards from Reading, in
1655-1656, and 1661.

Her great-grandfather, William Browne, of Cambridge, in 1705 sold
sixty acres of upland and swamp to Thomas Brattle, Esq., of Boston,
Treasurer of the society known as “The President and Fellows of Harvard
University;” and on this land many of the Harvard College buildings now
stand. He was a soldier in the French and Indian war in Canada.

Miss Hanson’s grandfather, Seth Ingersoll Browne, was a
non-commissioned captain at the battle of Bunker Hill; and the old
“King’s arm” he carried on that decisive day is still in the possession
of one of his grandsons. He was one of the “Mohawks” who helped to
throw the tea into Boston Harbor; and his name is written in marble,
among his companions of “The Boston Tea Party,” in Hope Cemetery,
Worcester, Mass. He is buried in the Granary Burying-ground, in Boston.

Harriet Hanson was born in Boston, Mass., Feb. 8, 1825, and in
1832 removed with her widowed mother and her three brothers to
Lowell, where they lived for some years on one of the manufacturing
“corporations.” Her first attempt at writing for the press was made
while she was yet an operative in the Lowell mills, in the “annuals”
and newspapers of the time. She was also a contributor to _The Lowell
Offering_, and was on intimate terms with its editors and contributors.

In 1848 she was married to William S. Robinson, journalist and
parliamentarian, who, as “Warrington,” became well known as the war
correspondent in the _Springfield Republican_, the _New York Tribune_,
the _New York Evening Post_, and in other newspapers. He was also the
author of “Warrington’s Manual of Parliamentary Law.” Mr. Robinson
died March 11, 1876. Their children are Harriette Lucy (married Sidney
D. Shattuck of Malden, Mass.), Elizabeth Osborne (married George S.
Abbott of Waterbury, Conn.), William Elbridge (died young), and Edward
Warrington (married Mary E. Robinson of Denver, Col.).

[Illustration: Harriet H. Robinson at 28.]

Mrs. Robinson is deeply interested in all the movements which tend to
the advancement of women, and uses her pen and her voice freely in
their behalf. She was the first woman to speak before the Select
Committee on Woman Suffrage in Congress, and has spoken for the cause
before the legislature of her own State, where she is not only a
citizen, but a _voter_ as far as the law allows.

The woman’s club movement has always had her firm support; she assisted
at the formation of The General Federation of Women’s Clubs in 1890,
and was a member of its first advisory board; she is a Daughter of the
American Revolution, and a member of the N. E. Historic Genealogical
Society.

Mrs. Robinson’s first published book was “Warrington Pen Portraits,” a
memoir of her husband, with selections from his writings. She has also
written “Massachusetts in the Woman-Suffrage Movement,” and “Captain
Mary Miller,” a drama.

But her best literary achievement in book form is her latest, “The New
Pandora,” a poem of which any writer might well be proud. There are
passages of exquisitely clear-cut poetry in the drama, and gleams of
true poetic aspiration lighting up the homely toil of the woman who
knows herself not of earthly lineage.

The “Chorus of Ills” beginning their flight is a strong chant, as
classical in its strain as some of Shelley’s in his imaginative dramas.
Indeed, the whole poem is so classically thought out and shaped as to
be lifted quite above what is popular in style, and is for that reason
less likely to attract the attention it deserves.

Pandora naturally has at first no love for the rude mate to whom she
has been assigned, and it is the death of their little child that
brings their hearts together in a real human affection. The loss of
this little first-born woman child makes a moan of tenderest pathos
through the whole poem, and is a most motherly touch, rarely found in
poetry; and the feeling colors the whole book. The poem is pervaded
with the sacredness of the domestic affections. The style is strong and
clear, and one feels, in reading it, a subtle spiritual fragrance, the
beauty, the holiness, the immortality, of human love.

Perhaps her “Pandora” breathes the very truest aspiration of many
a heart among that far-away throng of industrious, onward-looking
maidens:--

    “But this I ask, that I may be allowed by thee
    To do one single thing to make my kind more good,
    More happy, for that I have lived.”

All working-women have reason for strengthening themselves by study
and thought, seeing that such a poem as “The New Pandora” is the
heart-and-brain product of one who grew up as a working-girl.

[Illustration: Harriet H. Robinson, at 68.]

To the writer of this brief notice it is pleasant to recall the time
when the author of this beautiful poem and herself were children
together, school companions and workmates; when an atmosphere of poetry
hung over the busy city by the Merrimack, and when its green borders
burst into bloom with girlish dreams and aspirations.

Mrs. Robinson celebrated her seventieth anniversary Feb. 8, 1895, at
her home in Malden, Massachusetts.


EMMELINE LARCOM.

In Lucy Larcom’s touching poem, “My Childhood’s Enchantress,” will be
found a loving tribute to this mother-sister, to whom she owed so much
in her youth and all through her life. It was she who first taught Lucy
the use of the pen, and encouraged and helped her in all her literary
efforts. She was the oldest own sister of Lucy, is the “Emelie” in
the “New England Girlhood,” and to her Lucy wrote almost her first,
certainly her first _printed_, letter, in 1834, just after their mother
had moved to Lowell. This is from her autobiography, printed in _The
Lowell Offering_. She says:--

 “_Dear Sister_,--We have got a sink in our front entry. We live in a
 three-story brick block, with fourteen doors in it. There is a canal
 close by. But no more of this. We arrived safe after our fatiguing
 journey. We are in good health, and hope you enjoy the same blessing.”

In writing of her to me, Lucy says:--

 “I was transplanted quite early in my childhood, and grew through
 girlhood and womanhood under her care. The ten or twelve years of
 my residence there were certainly very important years to me. My
 natural bent towards literature was more encouraged and developed at
 Lowell than it would probably have been elsewhere; and I have always
 called the place a home in remembrance.... We were often writing to
 each other, and there never was any break to our affection since my
 childhood. I think she was almost a perfect woman.”

I remember Emmeline as a motherly young woman whom the rest of us
looked up to, as one much superior to ourselves; and, in recalling her
influence over her younger companions, I think she must have done a
great deal towards inciting them to learn to think on earnest subjects,
and to express their thoughts in writing. She was tall and stately,
with curling hair, and was much prettier than Lucy; she had a face
full of sunshine, and, like Lucy, the bluest of blue eyes. She was
conspicuous among the group of the original writers for _The Lowell
Offering_, as well as _The Operatives’ Magazine_.

She was an enthusiastic student, reading abstruse books in the
intervals of mill-work, and so becoming familiar with mental and moral
science; or she would study mathematical problems, of which she usually
had one or two pinned up before her, to occupy her thoughts at her
daily toil. The Rev. Amos Blanchard, a very scholarly man, said of her
that she was the most intellectual woman in his church, of which she
was also one of the most faithful and self-sacrificing members, giving
herself unreservedly to all good works.

She married the Rev. George Spaulding, and with her husband and her
sister Lucy went, in 1846, to Illinois, and spent the greater part of
her life there, as a clergyman’s wife, useful, happy, and beloved.

She did not write much after her marriage, and, as she said, would not
consider herself an “authoress” at all. She died in Newcastle, Cal.,
July 17, 1892, leaving her husband, one son, and three daughters. The
manner of her death was most enviable. As Lucy wrote me, “she made
herself ready for church, but it was heaven for her instead.”

At my request Lucy wrote to Emmeline, not long before her death, asking
for her recollections of _The Lowell Offering_ times; and she replied
as follows:--

  NEWCASTLE, CAL., _May 27, 1892_.

 _Dear Sister Lucy_,--I have been stirring up my treacherous old
 memory, hoping to respond to the request of Mrs. Robinson for accurate
 items in regard to the “Improvement Circle of our girlhood.”... I am
 very sure indeed that I was an interested and original promoter of
 it. It seems to me that Harriot Curtis might have suggested it. She
 was the most intellectual person in my circle of acquaintance at that
 time. We worked in the same room, and near each other, long before
 the Improvement Circle had an existence.... She was a mental stimulus
 to me, and we freely discussed all subjects that came to hand. I
 think ... that Louisa and Maria Currier, who were Universalists, and
 Laura and Mary Ann Spaulding, who were Baptists, were among the first
 members. If I recollect rightly, also Abby Goddard and Lydia Hall....
 We had essays and discussions. I was not present at the meeting at
 Mr. Currier’s. I think Mr. Thomas was invited there, and the “Circle”
 was probably invited to meet at the Universalist vestry. The first
 _Offering_ made its appearance soon after.

 I had “A Sister’s Tomb” and an article commencing, “Oh, you have no
 soul,” and one other, in the first series.

 I did not attend any of the meetings at the Universalist vestry, so
 am unable to say who suggested _The Offering_. I should think it
 very likely that Mr. Thomas might have been the one to do so. But the
 writers had been developed before he knew them. I am quite sure he
 was much interested in it. I remember that he complimented my verses
 as the gem of the number.... It was very soon after this that some of
 us began another Circle-meeting in the vestry of the Congregational
 church; and out of that grew _The Operatives’ Magazine_.... I think,
 as you do, that very much has been made of what was to us a mere
 recreation, and the most natural thing in the world for a circle of
 wide-awake, earnest girls to do.... Nearly sixty years have passed
 since those days; but they are pleasant to remember, and I suspect
 they held the prophecies of many a pleasant future, of which it might
 be interesting to know the fulfilment. I did think I should be able to
 do better, and perhaps write a page for Mrs. Robinson; but you see how
 I have _not_ succeeded.... Here endeth, with love,

  BIG OLD SISTER EMMELINE.


LUCY LARCOM.

A part of this sketch of Miss Larcom was written by me not long before
her death, and submitted to her for her approval. The additions made
are extracts from her letters, with my own personal reminiscences.

In response to my letter asking her approval of what I had prepared,
Miss Larcom wrote:--

 “I approve the sketch, and appreciate your way of writing it, though
 I dont often encourage living obituary notices of myself. What they
 call ‘fame’ amounts to so little. But some things about us in it may
 help others to know.... I am not ambitious to appear in any book; but
 if I am to be ‘written up,’ would much rather it would be done by a
 friend.... I told in ‘A New England Girlhood’ all I care to tell about
 my early life. You know something more of me, and you are at liberty
 to say what you choose. I have tried to make my life count for good
 to others, and to make my verses an expression of what I am trying to
 _live_. You once wrote something about me in _The Independent_ that
 was fresh and natural. Why not utilize that? I have done nothing worth
 speaking of in a literary sense, but I love to write, and I suppose I
 shall go on trying to express myself in this way always, The material
 fact that I have never earned more than enough with my pen than to
 meet, with difficulty, the necessary expenses of living, does not in
 the least discourage me, or make me willing to write the trash that
 ‘pays.’ That is where I am now on the literary question, and that is
 where I am content to remain.”

It was in that early poetic atmosphere when our American bards first
began to teach the young people of the time to love poetry for poetry’s
sake, that Lucy Larcom received the first incentive to her life-work.

Lucy Larcom was born in one of the earliest settled coast towns in the
state, Beverly, Mass., March 5, 1824. Her father, Benjamin Larcom, was
a sea-captain; he died when she was a child, and her widowed mother,
taking with her Lucy and two or three others of her younger children,
then removed to Lowell. The year 1835 found her in one of the Lowell
grammar schools, where her education went on until it became necessary
for her to earn her living, which she began to do very early as an
operative in a cotton-factory.

In her “Idyl of Work” the mill-life is truthfully portrayed, with the
scenery, characteristics, style of life, thought, and aspirations
peculiar to New England womanhood of that period.

In writing to me of this book, in 1875, she says, “What do you think
of that name for a reminiscence of Lowell life? Of course you won’t
like it as poetry; and there is not so very much truth in it, except
in general outlines of the way of living. I had to write my remembered
impressions, and everybody had different ones. The story, such as it
is, is manufactured, of course; for I didn’t want any personalities, so
I haven’t even got myself in, that I know of.”...

But it is very easy to detect, in her loving descriptions, many of her
young companions, who shared with her the simplicity of those days
of toil; and in following with her the career of some of those bright
spirits, and watching their success in their varied pathways through
life, it is very pleasant for me to be able to corroborate what she has
said.

Riches have fallen to the lot of some of those young girls, and to
others a degree of distinction in various situations and occupations;
but have they not, from their better surroundings, ever looked back,
as she does, to those dear old simple days, so full of health and
endeavor, so free from care, as among the happiest of their lives?
Then, ignorance of the world was bliss, and hope and aspiration reigned
supreme.

My first recollection of Lucy Larcom is as a precocious writer of
verses in _The Lowell Casket_, where the editor, Mr. George Brown,
in his notice of them, said, “They were written by a young lady
of thirteen, who was beyond a doubt inspired by the _Nurses_,”--a
misprint, of course, for “Muses;” although the author was so young,
that the mistake was not so far wrong.

This, however, was not her first attempt at verse-making, since she
began to write while a child of seven or eight years, in the attic
of her early home in Beverly. The title of these first verses was
“A Thunder Storm,” and they were read with wonder by her admiring
brothers and sisters.

Two pictures of her in that early factory-life remain in my memory. By
the Merrimack River, whose romantic banks she loved to describe, on a
bridge which crossed a narrow part of the stream, I once passed her, a
tall and bonnie young girl, with her head in the clouds. After a little
nod of recognition, as I looked up at her,--for, although she was only
a year older than I, she was much larger and more mature,--she went on.
But to me she seemed so grand, so full of thought, that, with girlish
admiration for one who had written _verses_, I forgot my errand,
turned, stood still, and thoughtfully watched her out of sight.

Miss Larcom’s first work as a Lowell operative was in a spinning-room
on the Lawrence corporation where her mother lived. At first she was
a “doffer,” with the other little girls; after that she tended a
spinning-frame, and then worked in the dressing-room beside “pleasant
windows looking towards the river.” After this she “graduated” into
the cloth-room, and it was here that I saw my second picture of her.
The cloth-room was considered by some of the mill-girls a rather
aristocratic working-place because of its fewer hours of confinement,
its cleanliness, and the absence of machinery. In this room the cloth,
after it had been finished and cut into thirty or forty yard pieces
in the weaving-room, was measured on hooks, one yard apart, until the
length of each piece was told off. I used often to run in and see her
at her work; and to my imaginative eyes she was like a Sibyl I had read
of, as with waving arms she told off the yards of cloth in measured
rhythm, and it seemed to be verses, and not cloth, that lay heaped up
behind her.

The last two years of her Lowell life (which covered in all a period
of about ten years), were spent in the same room; the latter part of
the time she was the book-keeper, and recorded the number of pieces and
bales. Here she pursued her studies, and in intervals of leisure some
text-book usually lay open on her desk, awaiting a spare moment.

Lucy Larcom’s first contribution to _The Lowell Offering_, “My Burial
Place” (written at sixteen), was published in No. 4 of the first
series, and was sent to the editor by her sister Emmeline, while
Lucy was on a visit to Beverly. With this exception, she was not a
contributor to the magazine while it was under Mr. Thomas’s editorship.
During that time she wrote for _The Operatives’ Magazine_, which
was published under the supervision of her pastor, the Rev. Amos
Blanchard, and which contained only articles written by the young
ladies who were members of an Improvement Circle connected with his
parish.

It may be said here that, whatever sectarian feeling there may have
been between these rival publications, it was not shared by the girls
themselves, at least not by Lucy Larcom. She simply and naturally
followed the lead of her pastor. After the “orthodox” magazine stopped,
and Miss Curtis and Miss Farley took charge of _The Offering_, Lucy
became one of the corps of writers; and many of her verses and essays,
both grave and gay, can be found in its bound volumes. Her first
contribution to Volume Third, “The River,” a poem, appeared in October,
1843. She wrote letters from “Looking Glass Prairie,” Illinois; and
many of her “prose poems,” published afterwards as “Similitudes,”
with several early poems, including a different version of “The Lady
Arabella,” first appeared in _The Lowell Offering_.

Our friendship began when we were little girls in “pantalets,” when we
were “doffers” together in the cotton-mill, and was continued to the
end of her life. She also became my husband’s friend; and during his
lifetime she was our frequent guest, and was always “Aunt Lucy” to
our children. Mr. Robinson had great faith in her possibilities as a
writer, and he published her verses in his newspaper long before they
found admittance into the magazines.

It was through him, while he was the reader (or “stopper”) for _The
Atlantic Monthly_, during Mr. Lowell’s editorship, that “The Rose
Enthroned” was brought to the notice of the poet, and afterwards
admitted into the pages of the magazine. In a letter to Mr. Robinson,
Miss Larcom says of this poem: “‘The Rose Enthroned’ was written in
1860, and published in June, 1861, through your mediation, you know.”

I should be glad to quote freely from her letters, they are so full of
friendship and of loving kindness, but must refrain, and give extracts
from those only which relate to her personal history.

In a letter written to me at Concord, Mass., in 1857, she says:--

 “I was very glad to hear from you, and was particularly interested in
 your account of the sewing-society [anti-slavery] at R. W. E----’s.
 Didn’t it seem funny to go a-gossiping to the house of the Seer? I
 don’t wonder at your expecting the parrot to talk ‘transcendentally.’
 Did the tea and toast smack of Hymettus? and was there any
 apple-_sass_ from those veritable sops-o’-wine? Attic salt came in as
 a matter of course. Well, it’s a fine thing to be on visiting terms
 at Olympus. I should like to see the philosopher again. I don’t think
 I should be afraid of him now.... Sometimes I like philosophers, and
 sometimes I don’t. The thing is to _live_. Beautiful theories don’t
 make any of us do that, but the real breath of life from the Infinite
 Good, which every soul must have for itself, or, fool or philosopher,
 he is dead as a heap of sand.... I should like to see the hills where
 huckleberries grow, and the Pond. There never were hills so still and
 balmy as those.”...

During the war her letters breathe the spirit of “A Loyal Woman’s
No!” and show, to one that can read between the lines, that she had a
personal interest in saying _No_ to a lover who seemed to her to be
disloyal to his country.

Although a strong abolitionist, and a believer in the political
rights of man, regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of
servitude,” she did not see the justice of woman’s claim to equal
rights with man. In answer to a letter asking for her help in the
suffrage cause, written in 1870, she says:--

 “You know I am way behind the times, am not even a ‘suffrage woman’
 yet, though I haven’t the least objection to the rest of the women’s
 having it. Don’t you see, I’m constitutionally on the fence.... I
 hope your enthusiastic believers will succeed; and if the suffrage
 comes, as it will, I hope it will be a blessing to everybody. All the
 people I know and respect seem to be in the movement, and still ‘I
 don’t see it.’...

Later, in 1888, she writes:--

 “I am for human rights for woman. I never did believe in man’s claim
 to dictate to her. But I want to work for her elevation in my own way,
 so that when she does vote, it will not be a failure. I cannot ‘Club,’
 myself. I am an obstinate old Independent.... Men are chivalrous, you
 know. Do you suppose we women shall be so towards them, by and by, in
 the women’s millenium? Dear me! I like the old slavish bonds, and am
 perfectly willing men should rule the world yet, heathenish old maid
 that I am. Now, here I am perplexed with _two_ calls to the meeting to
 consider the matter of women’s voting, about which I have never made
 up my mind, and can’t! If I were a property woman, I might.”...

In writing of her volume of poetical works, published in 1868, Miss
Larcom says,--

 “I shall send a volume to your other self and you, (how are we to use
 adjectives in the Women’s Rights speech?), not by way of throwing a
 sop to Cerberus, but because of old friendship, and because I value
 your candid opinion _and_ Warrington’s very highly. I am a little
 more afraid of you than of him,--I remember Gail Hamilton and the
 wringing-machine. Don’t pillory me in a paragraph, will you? nor
 inspire the pen masculine with a _bon mot_ at my expense.”

At Miss Larcom’s particular request I have refrained from saying more
than is necessary of her as a writer for _The Offering_. On her last
visit to me, in 1892, while speaking of the material to be used in this
book, she asked me not to say too much about her, because, as she said,
she was “tired of being always cited as _the_ representative of _The
Offering_ writers, when there were others who wrote and did quite as
much, or more, for the magazine than I did.”

Miss Larcom is correct here. Her fame was achieved long after she
ceased to be a mill-girl; and there were several others, as the
sketches will show, who were as good writers, and much better known
than herself, when she left the factory. And it is very thoughtful
of her to speak a good word for those hitherto forgotten authors, by
declining to be made a sort of composite portrait, as representing the
best and brightest among them.

In one of her letters she says,--

 “Don’t you think it is getting a little tiresome, this _posing_ as
 factory-girls of the olden time? It is very much like politicians
 boasting of carrying their dinners in a tin pail in their youth. What
 if they did?... I am proud to be a working-woman, as I always have
 been; but that special occupation was temporary, and not the business
 of our lives, we all knew, girls as we were.”...

 “I sent you a copy of my ‘New England Girlhood,’ for old time’s sake.
 Did you receive it? You could write a more entertaining one. Why don’t
 you write a novel? I wish you would write up _The Offering_ time, and
 sketch Harriot Curtis in it. She was unique.”

Miss Larcom’s writings, all told, never yielded her income enough to
live on, even in her modest way. In speaking of this matter in a letter
written in February 1891, she says,--

 “‘A New England Girlhood’ has as yet brought me only about two hundred
 dollars. How can writers live by writing?”

She was therefore obliged to supplement her literary labors by
teaching. She was very prudent in her manner of living, and never,
from childhood, really had a home of her own. Towards the last of her
life she found herself much cramped for means to secure that rest her
tired brain so much needed; and this made the gifts received from her
publisher and from her dearly loved Wheaton Seminary pupils, most
welcome, and enabled her, during her last illness, to feel a relief
from pecuniary anxiety.

If Miss Larcom had not been exceptionally fortunate, not only in her
temperament but in her surroundings,--hampered as she was all through
her life by want of pecuniary means,--she could not have developed her
writing talent so well. She had the rare gift of finding and keeping
the right kind of friends, in her own family as well as outside, and
these supplied to her life that practical (though not pecuniary) help
she so much needed. So her days were free from household and other
cares, and when relieved from her duties as teacher, or as editor, her
time was free to use in her own chosen way.

In this, her life differed from that of many women writers, who,
whether married or not, often have exacting cares which interrupt and
hinder the expression of their written thoughts. Miss Larcom did not
have that hindrance; and she had the chance through most of her life to
carry out her idea, as she expressed it, of “developing the utmost that
is in me.” She had no family or domestic cares, and her children were
all “dream children.”

Miss Larcom might have married, once when she was quite young, and
again later; but for reasons of her own she declined,--reasons, the
validity of which, in one instance at least, I did not see. I have been
asked if Mr. Whittier and Miss Larcom were never more than friends.
I can truly answer, no. Miss Larcom was the intimate friend of
Elizabeth Whittier, the poet’s sister, who, as she said, “was lovely in
character, and had fine poetic taste.”

She often visited their home, and after the death of the sister the
friendship with the brother continued. Miss Larcom was Mr. Whittier’s
assistant in compiling the books of selections which bear his name, and
did a great deal of the actual work in collecting material; they were
true friends.

In a letter written shortly after his death, she says,--

 “I have not spoken of Mr. Whittier going away. You will know that
 it is a real sorrow to me, and yet a joy that he has entered into a
 larger life.... This imperfect existence of ours _can be_ but the
 shadow of the true life; in that, there is no death.”...

One of her last letters to me was written from Boston a few weeks
before her death, and is as follows:--

 _Dear H._,--I have been here nearly a month, but have hardly been out
 at all. I have never been so much of an invalid, and I don’t like
 it. I suppose I have been steadily “running down,” the last year or
 so, but have gone on just as if I were well. Now I am brought to a
 stop, and am told that I must never do any more hard work. Lack of
 strength is what I feel most. They tell me that if I will really
 rest, brain and body, I may yet accomplish a good deal before I
 die. I do not feel as if I had got through yet; but who knows? I am
 trying to realize that it does not make much difference what part of
 the universe we are in, provided we are on the right track upward.
 Somehow I feel nearer Emmeline and Mr. Whittier,--as if we knew each
 other better now than before they went away. I should like to leave my
 life and work here just when I can go on with what is waiting for me
 elsewhere. But there is a Master of life who takes care of all that.

  Ever truly yours,
  LUCY LARCOM.

Of her religious life, it may be said that in her early childhood Lucy
became a communicant of the Congregational church; but in later years,
as her mind broadened, she became deeply imbued with a sense of the
divine fatherhood of God, and the impossibility that He would leave one
of the souls that He had made to perish eternally, or, as she says, to
quote from her “Biography,” “After probing my heart, I find that it
utterly refuses to believe that there is any corner in God’s universe
where hope never comes, ... where love is not brooding, and seeking to
penetrate the darkest abyss.”

In 1879 she first listened to Phillips Brooks, and his preaching to
her “was the living realization of her own thought.” She did not give
up her Puritanism, but thought she saw, in the belief and service of
his church, a new way of finding the right path towards the end of her
journey in search of the truth. As she wrote, “It is not _the_ church,
but only one way of entering Christ’s church.” Her religious faith was
not so much changed as deepened by this departure from some of the
old-time beliefs; for, in writing of the matter to me, she said, “I
count the faith of my whole life as one.”

Miss Larcom partook of the Holy Communion in Trinity Church, Boston,
Easter, 1887, and was confirmed March 20, 1890. By this service,
she said, her “heart was fixed,” and she could think of herself as
“avowedly in the visible church.” It was after her connection with the
Episcopal Church that Miss Larcom wrote her most important religious
books, and these embody much of her own thought in matters concerning
the deepest spiritual life.

“Similitudes,” a collection of prose poems, was published in 1853;
and during the remaining years of her life she published and compiled
fourteen books in prose and verse. Her last book, “The Unseen Friend,”
was published in 1893. The above list does not include the two volumes
of poetical selections compiled by herself and Mr. Whittier.

A complete edition of “Larcom’s Poems” was published by Houghton,
Mifflin, and Co., in the Household edition of the poets, in 1884. In
writing of this, Miss Larcom, with characteristic modesty, said, “The
idea of my being ranked with other American poets.”

She was also editor of _Our Young Folks_ from about 1865 to 1872.

Although it is probable that Miss Larcom’s fame was achieved as
an author of verse, yet she was the best satisfied with her prose
productions. As she once said to me, “Essay writing would be my choice,
rather than any other form of expression.”

It is probable that her name will be the longest remembered by her
best-known lyric, “Hannah Binding Shoes;” but this was by no means her
favorite, nor would she desire to be remembered by it alone, nor to
have it considered as one of the best of her poems. And yet it contains
the deep pathos and the tragedy that is in the lives of many solitary
women, and as long as such exist, the story of “Poor Lone Hannah” will
be read and remembered.

“Hannah Binding Shoes” was written shortly after Miss Larcom’s return
from Illinois, when the great contrast between the rugged seacoast, so
familiar to her early years, and the “boundlessness of commonplace,”
of the level country she had just left, impressed her most vividly.
One summer afternoon, in riding through Marblehead, a face at a
window riveted her attention, and haunted her for weeks. Meanwhile,
the refrain of the lyric, with its peculiar meter, and the face,
continually chased each other through her mind, until, to get rid of
their importunate presence, she one day sat down, and imprisoned them
together in “immortal verse.”

Another poem which takes high rank is “The Rose Enthroned,” her
earliest contribution to the _Atlantic Monthly_, which, in the absence
of signature, was attributed to Emerson. Also, “A Loyal Woman’s No,” a
patriotic lyric that attracted great attention during our Civil War.

It is such poems as these, with her religious writings and her
“Childhood Songs,” that will make Lucy Larcom’s name remembered. And
thousands of earnest working-women will thank her for all that she has
written, and go on their way refreshed and encouraged by her success
and the fulfilment of her aspirations.

In personal appearance Miss Larcom was tall and stately; her hair was
wavy and of a light brown color. Her eyes were of a lovely smiling
blue, and her whole face was lit by the charm of them. And who that
has heard it can forget her musical laugh, so attractive that even
strangers would turn and listen to it, or lose the memory of her
beautiful smile, so radiant, so illuminating, that lasted even to the
end of her life and that left its lingering gleam on her face after it
was cold in death, then to be transplanted to that other life because
it was a part of her own immortal self!

Her whole atmosphere was full of a benignant interest in those with
whom she came into personal relations. She lived up to her profession,
both in religion and in ethics, and was a bright example of what a
woman can become, who believes that this life is but the beginning of
the next, and who takes the higher law for her inspiration and her
guide.

She died April 17, 1893, and is buried in Beverly, Mass., her native
place. There, by the seashore, where the salt breezes--

    “Chase the white sails o’er the sea,”

and linger lovingly over her grave, her tired body finds its earthly
resting-place.

Farewell, old friend and work-mate, but not forever; I too have the
conviction, the faith, that this is not all of life, but that sometime,
somewhere, we shall take up these broken threads, and go on with our
appointed work “on the right track upward.”


SARAH SHEDD.

Miss Shedd may be called the philanthropist, _par excellence_, of the
early mill-girls. Her whole life was one of self-sacrifice. Her early
years were devoted to earning money for the support or the education
of members of the family; and at its close she bequeathed the sum of
$2,500 for the establishment of the free library in her native town of
Washington, N.H.

Her parents were in narrow circumstances; but they had endowed her with
a good mind, and had given her a fair education, which was supplemented
by tuition under Mary Lyon, of Holyoke Seminary, one of the first women
preceptors of her time. She had a great desire to further continue
her education, but was obliged to do it unaided. She began to teach a
summer school when fifteen years of age, and worked in the cotton-mill
in the winter, and thus was enabled to help her family, as well as to
gratify her taste for reading and study.

In early life she educated a brother; and later she nearly supported
him, and also assumed the whole expense of her aged mother’s
maintenance. And yet, in spite of these large drains upon her
resources, she saved, solely from her own money, enough to start the
library which bears her name, that her townspeople might enjoy the
advantages she had so much desired. The Hon. Carroll D. Wright, United
States Commissioner of Labor, was one of her pupils, and he delivered
the address at the dedication of The Shedd Free Public Library, in
1882, speaking thus in praise of his well-beloved teacher:--

 “The first school I ever attended was kept by her, in the front room
 of the store opposite the post-office. Her genial smile won the hearts
 of the children.... We longed for her coming, regretted her going. She
 wandered with us over the hills and fields, gave us instruction from
 her heart and mind, as well as from the books we used.... Her genial
 disposition lighted the pathway of many a boy and girl, and gave them
 glimpses of a mind and soul, which in themselves make her memory as
 fragrant as spring flowers.”

Miss Shedd was not a prolific writer, and her contributions for _The
Offering_ were always of a serious nature. She spent no money on fine
clothes nor ornaments; I remember her as a tall, spare, stooping woman,
most plainly dressed in calico. We younger ones did not understand
her, and were awed by her silence and reserve. But later some of us
came to recognize her character as that of one studious, gentle, and
self-sacrificing. She remains in my mind as one of the “solitary” among
us. She died in Washington, N.H., April 5, 1867.

It is one of the coincidents of history, that, at about the same time
Miss Shedd’s money was given towards founding this library, another
native of the same little town, Mr. Luman T. Jefts, who had also worked
his way up and earned every cent of his money, should supplement Miss
Shedd’s gift by adding a sum large enough to erect a suitable library
building to contain the books bought by her bequest.

And thus their names are linked together by their grateful townsmen,
not only as benefactors of their kind, but also as two earnest
and sincere persons who have struggled with adversity and narrow
surroundings, have conquered, and fulfilled their cherished aim in life.


ELIZABETH EMERSON TURNER.

The subject of this sketch is one of the few of the early mill-girls
who are still living; my acquaintance with her has been kept up since
early girlhood, and our correspondence has been almost uninterrupted.
She married Mr. Charles B. Sawyer, of Chicago, who died in 1896. Mrs.
Sawyer has always retained her interest in the old factory days, and
was and is proud of her connection with _The Lowell Offering_. In our
letters, the prospect of publishing a book containing the material I
had collected was often discussed; and she expressed her sympathy with
the enterprise, saying,--

 “I wish you would take up such a work as you allude to, in justice
 to those most interested, and to that class of girls in the Lowell
 mills. You are the one best fitted to do them full credit. I think the
 book would meet with a good sale, as labor is now becoming once more
 honorable and respectable.... We will see if our _Lowell Offering_
 cannot be made to live for many, _many_ years to come; and be an
 object-lesson to the mill-girls of the present day.”

Lizzie Turner was born in Lyme, N.H., Aug. 27, 1822. Her father, Jacob
Turner, Esq., was a descendant in the sixth generation from Humphrey
Turner, who came from England, and settled in Plymouth, Mass. He was
for twenty years a justice of the peace in Lyme, and for two years a
member of the New Hampshire Legislature. He lost his health before
he reached middle life, and about the same time lost nearly all of
his property by signing a note for a friend, who ran away to Canada,
leaving him to pay the debt. In order to do this he sold his farm; and
after paying the sum required, he had just five hundred dollars left.
With this he went to Lowell, in 1833, where so many families who had
lost their bread-winner had preceded him, and where the mother and
children could assist in supporting the home. Mrs. Turner opened a
boarding-house for operatives; her children, as fast as they were old
enough, went to work in the mill; and thus the invalid father was well
taken care of for the rest of his life.

Lizzie went into the mill to work at eleven years of age. Her
school-days ended at fourteen, when she was just fitted for the high
school, having worked at least two-thirds of the time in the factory;
and after this her time and strength were needed to help support the
family. She was one of the very earliest of the writers for _The
Offering_, and she continued to be a contributor until Mr. Thomas
ceased to be the editor. Her early recollections are very valuable, and
all through these pages I have made free use of what information she
has given me. She was just eighteen when she began her contributions;
and her own account of her connection with the magazine and of its
inception, will be of interest here. She says:--

 “The whole plan of his Circle and _Offering_ originated with Brother
 Thomas. I remember his saying one evening, after the reading of
 our papers, that there were many of the articles well worthy of
 publication, and that he should publish them in a magazine, to ‘show
 what factory-girls could do.’... I must tell you that I had never
 attempted writing anything but letters till Brother Thomas insisted
 that I _must_ write something for the Circle, so that almost my first
 essays in composition were those articles.”

Miss Turner was one of the paid contributors; she bought herself a
mahogany bureau with some of this money, and that article of furniture
she cherishes among her choicest possessions, as a most valuable
memento of the old _Lowell Offering_.

I remember Lizzie Turner, when a young girl, as an intellectual factor
among the contributors to _The Offering_, and also as a prominent
worker in the Universalist Church. She was sprightly, vivacious,
and universally popular. She was tall and graceful, had dark-brown
hair, and star-bright eyes, which now, although she is a grandmother,
have lost very little of their lustre, nor is her kindly and smiling
expression diminished.

To illustrate the simplicity of dress of the mill-girls, before spoken
of, and also to show how little thought they had of rivalling or of
outdoing each other in matter of adornment, I venture to give the
following as related to me by Mrs. Sawyer:--

 “There were ten of us girl friends (the majority of whom wrote for
 _The Offering_) who one summer had each a purple satin cape for
 street wear. These were trimmed with black lace; and this, with a
 small-figured, light Merrimack print (or calico), constituted our
 walking costume. We had nothing better for Sunday wear; and as we
 walked along, sometimes all together, I am sure that it never occurred
 to one of us that we were not as well-dressed as any lady we met.”

During the Civil War, Mrs. Sawyer was one of the most efficient among
the many women in Chicago who worked for the soldiers and the country,
and she has devoted much time and thought to the woman suffrage cause.
She is a voter and an active member of The Illinois Woman’s Alliance,
of the Illinois Woman’s Press Association, and of the Chicago Woman’s
Club.

Her sister, Abby D. Turner, was also one of the earliest writers for
_The Offering_; her first contribution was written when she was sixteen
years of age. She was married while in her teens to Mr. John Caryl.
She has been a widow many years, and has been entirely devoted to her
children and grandchildren.


CLEMENTINE AVERILL.

Among the “girl graduates” from the New England cotton-mill, there is
one who, although not a writer for _The Offering_, yet deserves to be
included in a book like this. This is Clementine Averill.

There was often doubt thrown upon the accounts of the superior mental,
moral, and physical condition of the Lowell factory-girl; and at one
time (in 1850) a Senator of the United States, named Clemens (of
Alabama, I think), stated in Congress that “the Southern slaves were
better off than the Northern operatives.” Miss Averill, then at work in
the Lowell mill, answered this person’s allegation in a letter to the
New York _Tribune_, as follows:--


LETTER FROM A FACTORY-GIRL TO SENATOR CLEMENS.

Communicated for _The Weekly Tribune_.

 LOWELL, _March 6, 1850_.

 _Mr. Clemens_,--Sir, in some of the late papers I have read several
 questions which you asked concerning the New England operatives. They
 have been well answered perhaps, but enough has not yet been said, and
 I deem it proper that the operatives should answer for themselves.

 1st, You wish to know what pay we have. I will speak only for the
 girls, and think I am stating it very low when I say that we average
 two dollars a week beside our board. Hundreds of girls in these mills
 clear from three to five dollars a week, while others, who have not
 been here long, and are not used to the work, make less than two
 dollars. If my wages are ever reduced lower than that, I shall seek
 employment elsewhere.

 2d, Children are never taken from their parents and put into the mill.
 What an idea! No person has a right to take a child from its parents,
 whether they be black or white, bond or free, unless there is danger
 of the child’s suffering harm by remaining with its parents. Girls
 come here from the country of their own free will, because they can
 earn more money, and because they wish to see and know more of the
 world.

 3d, One manufacturer will employ laborers dismissed by another if they
 bring a regular discharge and have given two weeks’ notice previous to
 leaving.

 4th, We never work more than twelve and a half hours a day; the
 majority would not be willing to work less, if their earnings were
 less, as they only intend working a few years, and they wish to make
 all they can while here, for they have only one object in view.

 5th, When operatives are sick they select their own physician, and
 usually have money enough laid by to supply all their wants. If they
 are sick long, and have not money enough, those who have give to them
 freely; for let me tell you, there is warm-hearted charity here, as
 well as hard work and economy.

 6th, I have inquired, but have not ascertained that one person ever
 went from a factory to a poor-house in this city.

 7th, Any person can see us, who wishes to, by calling for us at
 the counting-room, or after hours of labor by calling at our
 boarding-places.

 8th, The factory girls generally marry, and their husbands are
 expected to care for them when old. There are some, however, who do
 not marry, but such often have hundreds and thousands of dollars at
 interest; if you do not believe it, come and examine the bank-books
 and railroad stocks for yourself.

 9th, We have as much and as good food as we want. We usually have warm
 biscuit, or nice toast and pie, with good bread and butter, coffee and
 tea, for breakfast; for dinner, meat and potatoes, with vegetables,
 tomatoes, and pickles, pudding or pie, with bread, butter, coffee
 and tea; for supper we have nice bread or warm biscuit, with some
 kind of sauce, cake, pie, and tea. But these questions seem to relate
 merely to our animal wants. We have all that is necessary for the
 health and comfort of the body, if that is all; and the richest person
 needs no more. But is the body all? Have we no minds to improve, no
 hearts to purify? Truly, to provide for our physical wants is our
 first great duty, in order that our mental faculties may be fully
 developed. If we had no higher nature than the animal, life would
 not be worth possessing; but we have Godlike faculties to cultivate
 and expand, without limit and without end. What is the object of our
 existence, if it is not to glorify God? and how shall we glorify him
 but by striving to be like him, aiming at the perfection of our whole
 nature, and aiding all within our influence in their onward progress
 to perfection? Do you think we would come here and toil early and
 late with no other object in view than the gratification of mere
 animal propensities? No, we would not try to live; and this is wherein
 consists the insult, both in your questions and in your remarks in
 the Senate; as though to provide for the body was all we had to live
 for, as though we had no immortal minds to train for usefulness and a
 glorious existence.

 Let us see whether the “Southern slaves are better off than the
 Northern operatives.” As I have said, we have all that is necessary
 for health and comfort. Do the slaves have more? It is in the power of
 every young girl who comes here to work, if she has good health and no
 one but herself to provide for, to acquire every accomplishment, and
 get as good an education as any lady in the country. Have the slaves
 that privilege? By giving two weeks’ notice we can leave when we
 please, visit our friends, attend any school, or travel for pleasure
 or information. Some of us have visited the White Mountains, Niagara
 Falls, and the city of Washington; have talked with the President,
 and visited the tomb of him who was greatest and best. Would that
 our present rulers had a portion of the same spirit which animated
 him; then would misrule and oppression cease, and the gathering storm
 pass harmless by. Can the slaves leave when they please, and go
 where they please? are they allowed to attend school, or travel for
 pleasure, and sit at the same table with any gentleman or lady? Some
 of the operatives of this city have been teachers in institutions of
 learning in your own State. Why do your people send here for teachers
 if your slaves are better off than they? Shame on the man who would
 stand up in the Senate of the United States, and say that the slaves
 at the South are better off than the operatives of New England; such
 a man is not fit for any office in a free country. Are we torn from
 our friends and kindred, sold and driven about like cattle, chained
 and whipped, and not allowed to speak one word in self-defence? We
 can appeal to the laws for redress, while the slaves cannot.... And
 now, Mr. Clemens, I would most earnestly invite you, Mr. Foote, and
 all other Southern men who want to know anything about us, to come
 and see us. We will treat you with all the politeness in our power. I
 should be pleased to see you at my boarding-place, No. 61 Kirk Street,
 Boott Corporation. In closing, I must say that I pity not only the
 slave, but the slave-owner. I pity him for his want of principle, for
 his hardness of heart and wrong education. May God, in his infinite
 mercy, convince all pro-slavery men of the great sin of holding their
 fellow-men in bondage! May he turn their hearts from cruelty and
 oppression to the love of himself and all mankind! Please excuse me
 for omitting the “Hon.” before your name. I cannot apply titles where
 they are not deserved.

  CLEMENTINE AVERILL.

Miss Averill had many letters of congratulation upon this letter,
from different parts of the country; and among them was one from the
celebrated Quaker philanthropist, Isaac T. Hopper, who indorsed her
words, as follows:--

  NEW YORK, 3d mo., 19th, 1850.

 _My much esteemed friend, Clementine Averill_,--I call thee so on
 the strength of thy letter of the 6th inst., addressed to Senator
 Clemens, which I have read in the _Tribune_ of this morning with
 much satisfaction. I ought to apologize for thus intruding upon thy
 attention, being an entire stranger; but really I experienced so much
 gratification on reading it that I could not resist the inclination
 I felt to tell thee how much I was pleased with it. The information
 it contained, though perhaps not very gratifying to the advocates of
 slavery, may be useful, as it so clearly exhibits the wide difference
 there is between liberty and slavery, and it shows the ignorance of
 the Southern people as to the condition of the Northern operatives.
 I think Senator Clemens must have been greatly surprised in reading
 thy letter, not only at its statement of facts, but at the talent
 displayed by a “factory-girl” in answering his questions. Some years
 ago I attended a meeting appointed at Lowell by a minister of the
 Society of Friends, at which it was said there were about three
 hundred “factory-girls;” and I have often expressed the satisfaction
 I felt in observing their independent and happy countenances
 and modest and correct deportment. I saw nothing like gloom or
 despondency. Indeed, I think in a general way they would not suffer
 by a comparison with the daughters of the Southern slaveholders. I
 believe it would be found, that, for refinement, intelligence, and
 for any qualification that is requisite to constitute an agreeable
 companion, the “factory-girls” are not inferior to any class of women
 in the South, notwithstanding the slurs that are often flung at them.
 It is surely true, that as the benign spirit of the gospel pervades
 the minds of men, slavery will be seen in its true character, and be
 finally abolished from every community professing Christianity. I
 would not limit the mercy of our beneficent Creator, but I am free
 to confess that I am unable to see what claim a slaveholder can have
 to the name of Christian. Avarice and an undue love of the world
 blinds the eyes and hardens the hearts of many. The speech of Daniel
 Webster, from whom the friends of liberty had a right to expect much,
 has disappointed them, and has not pleased his pro-slavery coadjutors.
 He has manifested himself to be a _timeserver_, a character not
 very desirable. If he had possessed as much Christian principle and
 independence of mind as thy letter exhibits, he would have given
 utterance to sentiments that would have gained him the applause of the
 wise and good, and have been a lasting honor to himself. “With the
 talents of an angel a man may make himself a fool.” The subject of
 slavery is not new to me. I have been instrumental in rescuing from
 the hand of the oppressor some hundreds, and now in my declining years
 I can look back upon those labors with unmingled satisfaction. I don’t
 know how to express my views of slavery better than in the language of
 John Wesley, “It is the sum of all villanies.”

 I am, with sincere regard,

  Thy friend,
  ISAAC T. HOPPER.

I am indebted to Miss Averill’s sister, Mrs. A. L. O. Stone of
Cleveland, Ohio, for the means of communicating with her, and of
obtaining some account of her life. Miss Averill’s letter is as
follows:--

  “VALRICO, FLA., _Mar. 15, 1893_.

 _Dear Mrs. Robinson_,-- ... I do not remember the date of my first
 entrance into the City of Spindles, but think it must have been
 in 1828; and it was the summer of 1830 that I was baptized in the
 Concord River, at the age of fifteen, and joined the First Baptist
 Church. I was born at Mt. Vernon, N.H., in the year 1815; so now I am
 seventy-eight.

 About my Florida life, I must first tell the motive.

 As you are aware, after the war, many were out of employment; and it
 was a great question, what should be done with them. I could see no
 better way than co-operative homes. Therefore, with two others, I
 started out to find a place, and set an example. I thought of some
 other places, but was much interested in Florida, having just read
 its history, and also my friends wished to come here. And, indeed,
 they did come before I was quite ready. A month later I came alone,
 December, 1877, just at Christmas time, and found the people here
 celebrating the day by firing guns. At Tampa I found one of my friends
 who had already selected land, and wished me to take an adjoining
 quarter-section. Had to come out from Tampa twelve miles to examine
 the land before I could enter my claim, then returned to register,
 and move my baggage out to a deserted log cabin in an old field by
 the side of the woods. The cabin had no floor but the bare ground, no
 window, and but one door. I spread a carpet of pine straw, and slept
 well.”

She spent the winter in her forlorn log cabin, but in the spring she
had a kitchen and bedroom, and soon after a split board floor. She
“planted two hundred orange-trees, and cared for them two years.” She
made a living by “keeping transient boarders, by washing, needlework,
baking bread and cakes to sell, and keeping house for various persons.”

When her health began to fail, she made an agreement with one of her
neighbors, Mr. Green, “to take care of me as long as I lived for half
of my land; so the deed was made out and recorded, and I have only
sixty acres for the industrial home.” Later she writes:--

 “I have never, for a moment, given up the idea of having an industrial
 home and school here sometime.

 It is a pleasant location, having a small pond all under my control,
 with beautiful pine and oak trees all around it, and green slope
 down to the water. It is only ten minutes’ walk to the station and
 post-office, and most of the way on my land. I gave right of way for a
 railroad through one corner, and yesterday gave one acre for a Baptist
 church.

 I want a co-operative home here, established by homeless people who
 are willing to form a _Mutual Aid_ Society. Then I can deed my land to
 the society, for a perpetual home here, as long as human beings need a
 home on this earth.

 Perhaps you know some persons who might wish to join this home. If you
 do, please put me in communication with them, and they can ask all the
 questions they wish, and I will answer.

 This station is fourteen miles east of Tampa, on the Florida Central
 and Peninsula Railroad.

  Truly your friend,
  CLEMENTINE AVERILL.”




CHAPTER IX.

THE COTTON-FACTORY OF TO-DAY.

    God has not gone to some distant star;
    He’s in the mill where the toilers are.

    ANNA J. GRANNIS.

I should not feel that the whole purpose of this book had been
fulfilled unless I added a word in behalf of the factory population of
to-day.

It will probably be said that the life I have described cannot be
repeated, and that the modern factory operative is not capable of such
development. If this is a fact, there must be some reason for it.
The factory of to-day might and ought to be as much of a school to
those who work there as was the factory of fifty or sixty years ago.
If the mental status of these modern operatives is different, then
the opportunities of development should be adapted correspondingly to
their needs. The same results, perhaps, cannot be reached, because the
children of New England ancestry had inherited germs of intellectual
life. But is it not also possible that the children of the land of
Dante, of Thomas Moore, of Racine, and of Goethe may be something
more than mere clods? I do not despair of any class of artisans or
operatives, because I believe that there is in them all some germ of
mental vigor, some higher idea of living, waiting for a chance to grow;
and the same encouragement on the part of employers, the same desire to
lift them to a higher level, would soon show of what the present class
of operatives is capable.

What these poor people need is time, and a great deal of help, before
it can be decided what either they or their descendants can make of
themselves. Before an infallible decision can be given, there must be,
perhaps, two or three generations of growth under free institutions,
and under employers who think of something besides coining the bodies
and souls of their employees into dollars and cents.

No one can grow mentally, who has not time to read or to think, and
whose life is a constant struggle to get enough food and clothing for
himself and his family. Our working-people have their intellectual
freedom, as well as the wage-question, to fight for, just as the
ancestors of the early factory-operatives fought for their social
and constitutional liberty. They will carry on the warfare in their
own way; and if employers are wise they will try to do something
practical to prevent strikes, riots, and labor-unions, which are the
working-man’s weapons of defence, and so to “lock the door before the
horse is stolen.”

Not long ago I was invited to speak to a company of the Lowell
mill-girls, and to tell them something about my early life as a member
of the guild. I was doubly willing to do this, as I was desirous of
forming some estimate of the status of these successors of the early
mill-girls.

About two hundred of them assembled in the pleasant parlors of the
People’s Club, and listened attentively to my story. When it was over,
a few of them gathered around, and asked me many questions. In turn I
questioned them,--about their work, their hours of labor, their wages,
and their means of improvement. When I urged them to occupy their spare
time in reading and study, they seemed to understand the necessity of
it, but answered sadly: “We will try; but we work so hard, we tend so
much machinery, and we are so tired.” It was plainly to be seen that
these operatives did not go to their labor with the jubilant feeling
that the old mill-girls used to have; that their work was drudgery,
done without aim and purpose; that they took little interest in it
beyond the thought that it was the means of earning their daily bread.
There was a tired hopelessness about them that I am sure was not often
seen among the early mill-girls, and they had an underfed, prematurely
old look.

The hours of labor are now less, it is true; but the operatives are
obliged to do a far greater amount of work in a given time. They tend
so many looms and frames that they have no time to think. They are
always on the jump; and so have no opportunity to improve themselves.
They are too weary to read good books, and too overworked to digest
what they have read. The souls of many of these mill-girls seemed
starved, and looked from their hungry eyes as if searching for mental
food.

Why are they not fed? The means of education are not wanting. Public
libraries are provided, and they have more leisure to read than the
mill-girls of forty years ago. But they do not seem to know how to
improve it. Their leisure only gives them the more time to be idle
in; more time to waste in the streets, or in reading cheap novels and
stories. It might almost be said that they are worse off than if they
had longer hours, or did not know how to read, unless they can use
to better advantage their extra time, or have the means of suitable
education provided for them.

Let it not be understood that I would take from the operative or the
artisan one of the chances of education. But I would have them taught
how to use wisely those privileges, forced, we might almost say, on
them and on their children. I would also have them taught how inwardly
to digest what they are made to learn. The tools are given them; but
as they are not taught how to use them, these prove but an additional
weapon of defence against employers, and make them more discontented,
and ready to listen to the political demagogue, or the so-called labor
reformer. Then strikes ensue, which usually end, as the first Lowell
one did, for the time being at least, in the success of the employer,
rather than of the employee.

The solution of the labor problem is not in strikes, but, as another
has said, in “bringing the question down to its simplest form, a
practical carrying out of the golden rule; by the employer elevating
the working-man in his own esteem by fair dealing, courteous treatment,
and a constant appeal to his better side; and, on the other hand, in
the working-man himself by the absence of malingering, by honest work,
and a desire to further his employer’s interests; and finally, to
cement the two, a fair distribution of profits.” “Not what we give, but
what we share,” is a good motto for the employers. Treat your employees
as _you_ would be treated, if, by the “accident of birth,” loss of
employment, or hard luck, _you_ were in their condition. Treat them as
if they, too, had something of God in them, and, like yourselves, were
also His children. This is the philosophy of the labor question.

The factory population of New England is made up largely of
American-born children of foreign parentage,--two-thirds it is
estimated; as a rule, they are not under the strict control of the
church of their parents, and they are too apt to adopt the vices and
follies, rather than the good habits, of our people. It is vital to
the interests of the whole community, that they should be kept under
good moral influences; that they should have the sympathy, the help,
of employers. They need better homes than they find in too many of our
factory towns and cities, and a better social atmosphere, that they may
be lifted out of their mental squalor into a higher state of thought
and of feeling.

The modern system of overcrowding the mill-people is to be especially
deprecated. In the old time, not more than two or three beds were put
into one large bedroom, which was used only as a bedroom; but not long
ago, according to an article in the _Springfield Republican_ on “How
Mill-People Live,” it appears that Mr. H. R. Walker, agent of the
Chicopee Board of Health, in his official report to the board, states
that he found “twelve persons living and sleeping in a suite of two
rooms, and sixteen persons living and sleeping in a tenement of four
rooms.” And in another block, owned by a “wealthy gentleman in that
city,” he found that “thirty-eight rooms were occupied by ninety-seven
men, women, and children.” Under such conditions, how can young people
be brought up virtuously?

These are examples of overcrowding which I hope are not followed to
any extent by the better class of manufacturing corporations; although
there is reason to fear that overcrowding is getting to be the rule,
rather than the exception.

The cotton-factories themselves are not so agreeable nor so healthful
to work in as they used to be. Once they were light, well ventilated,
and moderately heated; each factory-building stood detached, with
pleasant sunlit windows, cheerful views, and fresh air from all points
of the compass. But these buildings are now usually made into a solid
mass by connecting “annexes,” and often form a hollow square, so that
at least one-half of the operatives can have no outlook except upon
brick walls, and no fresh air but that which circulates within this
confined space.

A year or two ago I revisited the dressing-room where I used to work,
and found the heat so intense that I could hardly breathe; and the
men who were working there (there were no women in the room) wore the
scantiest of clothing, and were covered with perspiration.

The drying of the beams is done by hot air, though sometimes fans
are added; the windows and doors are kept shut, except in very fine
weather; and this makes an atmosphere unfit to breathe. My old
overseer, who had had charge of one room for over forty years, told me
that some time ago he had been obliged to change his occupation in the
mill on account of the intense heat consequent on the introduction of
this new method of drying the beams.

Nor are the houses kept clean and in repair as they used to be. In
Lowell, when I last walked among the “blocks” where I lived as a child,
I found them in a most dilapidated condition,--houses going to decay,
broken sidewalks, and filthy streets; and contrasting their appearance
with that of the “corporation” as I remember it, I felt as if I were
revisiting the ruins of an industry once clean and prosperous. Would
that I could say one word that would lead stockholders to see that it
is not from out of such surroundings that the best dividends can be
secured!

To one who has watched with sad interest the gradual decline of
the cotton-factory industry in New England, and has marked the
deterioration of its operatives, it has often seemed as if something
might be done to restore this great factor in our national prosperity
to its early influence and importance. Many schemes have been advanced
by political economists, but, thus far, they have borne no fruit, and
at this present writing, the Massachusetts Legislature itself has
placed the whole subject in the hands of the Committee on Labor, who
are to report on the several items submitted to its decision. While
I would not venture here to discuss the various points on which this
committee is to report, I cannot forbear calling attention to the first
section, which relates to the “Dingley Tariff.”

This section enquires, substantially, whether the Dingley tariff has
had any influence in producing the present stagnation of the New
England cotton industry. As a help to the solution of this question, or
a suggestion at least, I will venture to quote from an article in the
report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor, on “The Age
of Factory Establishments,” where it is stated that “Quite one-half of
the whole product of the State is made by manufactories which were in
existence before 1860, and most of these establishments were founded
in the industrial period following the beginning of the reduction of
the tariff of 1828; and it can be said, with truth, that the great
manufacturing industry of Massachusetts was planted in low-tariff
times.”

If this statement is correct, of which there can be no doubt, it has
a significance worthy of attention, when we see the downward movement
of the cotton industry under the present high-tariff. It was these
“low-tariff times” that enabled working-people to buy goods that would
last, which they cannot do in these days of “home production” shoddy,
protected, as it is, by the Dingley tariff. And, without entering into
the discussion, it would seem that a low tariff is certainly desirable
for working-people, at least, since it enables them to get the best
there is for their money, whether it be of foreign or domestic
manufacture. An able writer has said: “The great trouble with the New
England mills now is, that the people want a better class of goods
which can compete with other textile products.” This is certainly true,
as applied to the buyer. A person of limited means can better afford to
buy goods of foreign manufacture, no matter how high the tariff is. For
woollens we look to England; for silks, to Lyons or Zurich; and lighter
material must be of French manufacture. And the dealer says to you,
as the best recommendation for the goods you wish to purchase, “It is
_English_, or it is _French_ goods, that I am showing you.”

As for cheap American prints, who prefers to buy them nowadays?
Certainly no woman who remembers with affection the good, pretty,
durable, and _washable_ old Merrimack print,--the old-time calico,
that, when partly worn out, would still do for gowns and “tiers”
for the children, or for comforters for the family beds. Gentlemen!
mill-owners and managers! give us as good material as that we can buy
of English and French manufacture, and we will wear no more dress-goods
that are not of “home production,” and will cheerfully pay you whatever
price you may ask for them. This can certainly be done, with all your
inventive genius, and you need no longer fear either foreign or
Southern competition.

One more suggestion. It has often seemed that one great cause of the
decline of the cotton industry is to be found in the change in the
character of the operatives themselves. But could not some inducement
be offered to call to this industry a better class of operatives, or to
elevate a part of them towards the status of the old-time mill-girls?
The factory-operatives of to-day are more like those of England, whom
I have described, when the cotton manufacture first began in America.
Then, mill-owners and stockholders knew that the daughters of New
England would not become mill-girls under existing conditions, and
unless they were sure of good wages and of being treated like human
beings. This assurance was given; and the consequence was that they
flocked from their homes, and so helped to build up an industry that
was to give the first great impetus to the coming prosperity of the
whole country. Could not this experiment be tried anew? There must
be--there are--thousands of young women, all over New England, working
for almost a pittance in stores and workshops, some of them twelve
hours a day, subject to temptations that would never reach them in the
cotton-factory,--women and girls who have no homes, who would gladly
go to the factories, if a comfortable home, short hours, sure work, and
steady wages were assured to them. Let the best of them work by the
job or piece, as far as possible; for this shows, more than any other
“reform in labor,” where the best class of operatives can be found, and
the best result of their work can be secured. Why not try these or some
better experiments, and so uplift gradually the status of the modern
factory-operative?

These suggestions regarding a better class of goods and a better class
of operatives, if carried out, will involve sacrifice for a time on
the part of the mill-owners and stockholders. But it is certainly
better to sacrifice even a great deal than it is to lose all; and
there seems to be danger of this if something radical and far-reaching
cannot soon be done to improve the present condition of our New England
cotton-factories and their operatives.

It is claimed that the factory is not a “philanthropic institution,”
and that corporations are not responsible for the well-being of those
they employ. But until Boards of Health and Factory Inspectors can
succeed in reforming the abuses which exist among the mill-people, who
but the corporation ought to be held responsible for the unwholesome
surroundings and the hard life which is undermining the vitality and
poisoning the blood of so large a portion of our working-people?

“Labor is worship,” says the poet. Labor is _education_, is the
teaching of the wise political economist. If factory-labor is not
a means of education to the operative of to-day, it is because the
employer does not do his duty. It is because he treats his work-people
like machines, and forgets that they are struggling, hoping, despairing
human beings. It is because, as he becomes rich, he cares less and less
for the well-being of his poor, and, beyond paying them their weekly
wages, has no thought of their wants or their needs.

The manufacturing corporation, except in comparatively few instances,
no longer represents a protecting care, a parental influence, over its
operatives. It is too often a soulless organization; and its members
forget that they are morally responsible for the souls and bodies, as
well as for the wages, of those whose labor is the source of their
wealth. Is it not time that more of these Christian men and women, who
gather their riches from the factories of the country, should begin to
reflect that they do not discharge their whole duty to their employees
when they see that the monthly wages are paid; that they are also
responsible for the unlovely surroundings, for the barren and hopeless
lives, and for the moral and physical deterioration of them and their
children?

The cotton-factory gave the first impetus towards uplifting the social
status of the working-men and the working-women of New England, if not
of the whole country. It should not be a cause of its decadence, as it
certainly is in danger of becoming unless corporations can be induced
to seriously consider whether it is better to degrade those who work
for them to a level with the same class in foreign countries, or, to
mix a little conscience with their capital, and so try to bring back,
into the life of the factory-operative of to-day, this “lost Eden”
which I have tried to describe.




Transcriber’s Note


Illustrations have been moved to be near the text they illustrate.

Variant spelling, and inconsistent hyphenation have been retained.

The one apparently mispelt word that has been changed is on page 12,
where “imigrants” has been changed to “immigrants”.

Quotation marks are not used consistently, they have mainly been left
as printed, with the exception of:
  Page 73 - the closing quotation mark has been removed from the end of
    the paragraph before the signature of the honorable discharge;
  Page 106 - a closing quotation mark has been added after “Lowell,
    _Nov. 25, 1843_”;
  Page 129 - the closing quotation mark has been removed from the very
    end of the letter;
  Page 193 - an opening quotation mark has been added at the start of
    Miss Averill’s letter;

Punctuation in the Table of Contents has been made consistent.

Occasionally a character did not print completely, or a word was
duplicated across the end of a printed line. These have been corrected
silently.

The copy of the book from which is transcribed here was the author’s
own. It is unclear whether the captions handwritten on the photographs
were printed in the book or handwritten later by the author.





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