BEFORE leaving Boston, I devoted one day to an excursion to
Lowell. I assign a separate chapter to this visit; not because I am about to
describe it at any great length, but because I remember it as a thing by itself,
and am desirous that my readers should do the same.
I made acquaintance with an American railroad, on this occasion, for the
first time. As these works are pretty much alike all through the States, their
general characteristics are easily described.
There are no first and second class carriages as with us; but there is a
gentleman's car and a ladies' car: the main distinction between which is that in
the first, everybody smokes; and in the second, nobody does. As a black man
never travels with a white one, there is also a negro car; which is a great,
blundering, clumsy chest, such as Gulliver put to sea in, from the kingdom of
Brobdingnag. There is a great deal of jolting, a great deal of noise, a great
deal of wall, not much window, a locomotive engine, a shriek, and a bell.
The cars are like shabby omnibuses, but larger: holding thirty, forty, fifty,
people. The seats, instead of stretching from end to end, are placed crosswise.
Each seat holds two persons. There is a long row of them on each side of the
caravan, a narrow passage up the middle, and a door at both ends. In the centre
of the carriage there is usually a stove, fed with charcoal or anthracite coal;
which is for the most part red-hot. It is insufferably close; and you see the
hot air fluttering between yourself and any other object you may happen to look
at, like the ghost of smoke.
In the ladies' car, there are a great many gentlemen who have ladies with
them. There are also a great many ladies who have nobody with them: for any lady
may travel alone, from one end of the United States to the other, and be certain
of the most courteous and considerate treatment everywhere. The conductor or
check-taker, or guard, or whatever he may be, wears no uniform. He walks up and
down the car, and in and out of it, as his fancy dictates; leans against the
door with his hands in his pockets and stares at you, if you chance to be a
stranger; or enters into conversation with the passengers about him. A great
many newspapers are pulled out, and a few of them are read. Everybody talks to
you, or to anybody else who hits his fancy. If you are an Englishman, he expects
that that railroad is pretty much like an English railroad. If you say 'No,' he
says 'Yes?' (interrogatively), and asks in what respect they differ. You
enumerate the heads of difference, one by one, and he says 'Yes?' (still
interrogatively) to each. Then he guesses that you don't travel faster in
England; and on your replying that you do, says 'Yes?' again (still
interrogatively), and it is quite evident, don't believe it. After a long pause
he remarks, partly to you, and partly to the knob on the top of his stick, that
'Yankees are reckoned to be considerable of a go-ahead people too;' upon which
YOU say 'Yes,' and then HE says 'Yes' again (affirmatively this time); and upon
your looking out of window, tells you that behind that hill, and some three
miles from the next station, there is a clever town in a smart lo-ca-tion, where
he expects you have concluded to stop. Your answer in the negative naturally
leads to more questions in reference to your intended route (always pronounced
rout); and wherever you are going, you invariably learn that you can't get there
without immense difficulty and danger, and that all the great sights are
somewhere else.
If a lady take a fancy to any male passenger's seat, the gentleman who
accompanies her gives him notice of the fact, and he immediately vacates it with
great politeness. Politics are much discussed, so are banks, so is cotton. Quiet
people avoid the question of the Presidency, for there will be a new election in
three years and a half, and party feeling runs very high: the great
constitutional feature of this institution being, that directly the acrimony of
the last election is over, the acrimony of the next one begins; which is an
unspeakable comfort to all strong politicians and true lovers of their country:
that is to say, to ninety-nine men and boys out of every ninety-nine and a
quarter.
Except when a branch road joins the main one, there is seldom more than one
track of rails; so that the road is very narrow, and the view, where there is a
deep cutting, by no means extensive. When there is not, the character of the
scenery is always the same. Mile after mile of stunted trees: some hewn down by
the axe, some blown down by the wind, some half fallen and resting on their
neighbours, many mere logs half hidden in the swamp, others mouldered away to
spongy chips. The very soil of the earth is made up of minute fragments such as
these; each pool of stagnant water has its crust of vegetable rottenness; on
every side there are the boughs, and trunks, and stumps of trees, in every
possible stage of decay, decomposition, and neglect. Now you emerge for a few
brief minutes on an open country, glittering with some bright lake or pool,
broad as many an English river, but so small here that it scarcely has a name;
now catch hasty glimpses of a distant town, with its clean white houses and
their cool piazzas, its prim New England church and school-house; when
whir-r-r-r! almost before you have seen them, comes the same dark screen: the
stunted trees, the stumps, the logs, the stagnant water - all so like the last
that you seem to have been transported back again by magic.
The train calls at stations in the woods, where the wild impossibility of
anybody having the smallest reason to get out, is only to be equalled by the
apparently desperate hopelessness of there being anybody to get in. It rushes
across the turnpike road, where there is no gate, no policeman, no signal:
nothing but a rough wooden arch, on which is painted 'WHEN THE BELL RINGS, LOOK
OUT FOR THE LOCOMOTIVE.' On it whirls headlong, dives through the woods again,
emerges in the light, clatters over frail arches, rumbles upon the heavy ground,
shoots beneath a wooden bridge which intercepts the light for a second like a
wink, suddenly awakens all the slumbering echoes in the main street of a large
town, and dashes on haphazard, pell-mell, neck-or-nothing, down the middle of
the road. There - with mechanics working at their trades, and people leaning
from their doors and windows, and boys flying kites and playing marbles, and men
smoking, and women talking, and children crawling, and pigs burrowing, and
unaccustomed horses plunging and rearing, close to the very rails - there - on,
on, on - tears the mad dragon of an engine with its train of cars; scattering in
all directions a shower of burning sparks from its wood fire; screeching,
hissing, yelling, panting; until at last the thirsty monster stops beneath a
covered way to drink, the people cluster round, and you have time to breathe
again.
I was met at the station at Lowell by a gentleman intimately connected with
the management of the factories there; and gladly putting myself under his
guidance, drove off at once to that quarter of the town in which the works, the
object of my visit, were situated. Although only just of age - for if my
recollection serve me, it has been a manufacturing town barely one-and-twenty
years - Lowell is a large, populous, thriving place. Those indications of its
youth which first attract the eye, give it a quaintness and oddity of character
which, to a visitor from the old country, is amusing enough. It was a very dirty
winter's day, and nothing in the whole town looked old to me, except the mud,
which in some parts was almost knee-deep, and might have been deposited there,
on the subsiding of the waters after the Deluge. In one place, there was a new
wooden church, which, having no steeple, and being yet unpainted, looked like an
enormous packing-case without any direction upon it. In another there was a
large hotel, whose walls and colonnades were so crisp, and thin, and slight,
that it had exactly the appearance of being built with cards. I was careful not
to draw my breath as we passed, and trembled when I saw a workman come out upon
the roof, lest with one thoughtless stamp of his foot he should crush the
structure beneath him, and bring it rattling down. The very river that moves the
machinery in the mills (for they are all worked by water power), seems to
acquire a new character from the fresh buildings of bright red brick and painted
wood among which it takes its course; and to be as light- headed, thoughtless,
and brisk a young river, in its murmurings and tumblings, as one would desire to
see. One would swear that every 'Bakery,' 'Grocery,' and 'Bookbindery,' and
other kind of store, took its shutters down for the first time, and started in
business yesterday. The golden pestles and mortars fixed as signs upon the
sun-blind frames outside the Druggists', appear to have been just turned out of
the United States' Mint; and when I saw a baby of some week or ten days old in a
woman's arms at a street corner, I found myself unconsciously wondering where it
came from: never supposing for an instant that it could have been born in such a
young town as that.
There are several factories in Lowell, each of which belongs to what we
should term a Company of Proprietors, but what they call in America a
Corporation. I went over several of these; such as a woollen factory, a carpet
factory, and a cotton factory: examined them in every part; and saw them in
their ordinary working aspect, with no preparation of any kind, or departure
from their ordinary everyday proceedings. I may add that I am well acquainted
with our manufacturing towns in England, and have visited many mills in
Manchester and elsewhere in the same manner.
I happened to arrive at the first factory just as the dinner hour was over,
and the girls were returning to their work; indeed the stairs of the mill were
thronged with them as I ascended. They were all well dressed, but not to my
thinking above their condition; for I like to see the humbler classes of society
careful of their dress and appearance, and even, if they please, decorated with
such little trinkets as come within the compass of their means. Supposing it
confined within reasonable limits, I would always encourage this kind of pride,
as a worthy element of self- respect, in any person I employed; and should no
more be deterred from doing so, because some wretched female referred her fall
to a love of dress, than I would allow my construction of the real intent and
meaning of the Sabbath to be influenced by any warning to the well-disposed,
founded on his backslidings on that particular day, which might emanate from the
rather doubtful authority of a murderer in Newgate.
These girls, as I have said, were all well dressed: and that phrase
necessarily includes extreme cleanliness. They had serviceable bonnets, good
warm cloaks, and shawls; and were not above clogs and pattens. Moreover, there
were places in the mill in which they could deposit these things without injury;
and there were conveniences for washing. They were healthy in appearance, many
of them remarkably so, and had the manners and deportment of young women: not of
degraded brutes of burden. If I had seen in one of those mills (but I did not,
though I looked for something of this kind with a sharp eye), the most lisping,
mincing, affected, and ridiculous young creature that my imagination could
suggest, I should have thought of the careless, moping, slatternly, degraded,
dull reverse (I HAVE seen that), and should have been still well pleased to look
upon her.
The rooms in which they worked, were as well ordered as themselves. In the
windows of some, there were green plants, which were trained to shade the glass;
in all, there was as much fresh air, cleanliness, and comfort, as the nature of
the occupation would possibly admit of. Out of so large a number of females,
many of whom were only then just verging upon womanhood, it may be reasonably
supposed that some were delicate and fragile in appearance: no doubt there were.
But I solemnly declare, that from all the crowd I saw in the different factories
that day, I cannot recall or separate one young face that gave me a painful
impression; not one young girl whom, assuming it to be a matter of necessity
that she should gain her daily bread by the labour of her hands, I would have
removed from those works if I had had the power.
They reside in various boarding-houses near at hand. The owners of the mills
are particularly careful to allow no persons to enter upon the possession of
these houses, whose characters have not undergone the most searching and
thorough inquiry. Any complaint that is made against them, by the boarders, or
by any one else, is fully investigated; and if good ground of complaint be shown
to exist against them, they are removed, and their occupation is handed over to
some more deserving person. There are a few children employed in these
factories, but not many. The laws of the State forbid their working more than
nine months in the year, and require that they be educated during the other
three. For this purpose there are schools in Lowell; and there are churches and
chapels of various persuasions, in which the young women may observe that form
of worship in which they have been educated.
At some distance from the factories, and on the highest and pleasantest
ground in the neighbourhood, stands their hospital, or boarding-house for the
sick: it is the best house in those parts, and was built by an eminent merchant
for his own residence. Like that institution at Boston, which I have before
described, it is not parcelled out into wards, but is divided into convenient
chambers, each of which has all the comforts of a very comfortable home. The
principal medical attendant resides under the same roof; and were the patients
members of his own family, they could not be better cared for, or attended with
greater gentleness and consideration. The weekly charge in this establishment
for each female patient is three dollars, or twelve shillings English; but no
girl employed by any of the corporations is ever excluded for want of the means
of payment. That they do not very often want the means, may be gathered from the
fact, that in July, 1841, no fewer than nine hundred and seventy-eight of these
girls were depositors in the Lowell Savings Bank: the amount of whose joint
savings was estimated at one hundred thousand dollars, or twenty thousand
English pounds.
I am now going to state three facts, which will startle a large class of
readers on this side of the Atlantic, very much.
Firstly, there is a joint-stock piano in a great many of the boarding-houses.
Secondly, nearly all these young ladies subscribe to circulating libraries.
Thirdly, they have got up among themselves a periodical called THE LOWELL
OFFERING, 'A repository of original articles, written exclusively by females
actively employed in the mills,' - which is duly printed, published, and sold;
and whereof I brought away from Lowell four hundred good solid pages, which I
have read from beginning to end.
The large class of readers, startled by these facts, will exclaim, with one
voice, 'How very preposterous!' On my deferentially inquiring why, they will
answer, 'These things are above their station.' In reply to that objection, I
would beg to ask what their station is.
It is their station to work. And they DO work. They labour in these mills,
upon an average, twelve hours a day, which is unquestionably work, and pretty
tight work too. Perhaps it is above their station to indulge in such amusements,
on any terms. Are we quite sure that we in England have not formed our ideas of
the 'station' of working people, from accustoming ourselves to the contemplation
of that class as they are, and not as they might be? I think that if we examine
our own feelings, we shall find that the pianos, and the circulating libraries,
and even the Lowell Offering, startle us by their novelty, and not by their
bearing upon any abstract question of right or wrong.
For myself, I know no station in which, the occupation of to-day cheerfully
done and the occupation of to-morrow cheerfully looked to, any one of these
pursuits is not most humanising and laudable. I know no station which is
rendered more endurable to the person in it, or more safe to the person out of
it, by having ignorance for its associate. I know no station which has a right
to monopolise the means of mutual instruction, improvement, and rational
entertainment; or which has ever continued to be a station very long, after
seeking to do so.
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 labours of the day, that it will
compare advantageously with a great many English Annuals. It is pleasant to find
that many of its Tales are of the Mills and of those who work in them; that they
inculcate habits of self-denial and contentment, and teach good doctrines of
enlarged benevolence. A strong feeling for the beauties of nature, as displayed
in the solitudes the writers have left at home, breathes through its pages like
wholesome village air; and though a circulating library is a favourable school
for the study of such topics, it has very scant allusion to fine clothes, fine
marriages, fine houses, or fine life. Some persons might object to the papers
being signed occasionally with rather fine names, but this is an American
fashion. One of the provinces of the state legislature of Massachusetts is to
alter ugly names into pretty ones, as the children improve upon the tastes of
their parents. These changes costing little or nothing, scores of Mary Annes are
solemnly converted into Bevelinas every session.
It is said that on the occasion of a visit from General Jackson or General
Harrison to this town (I forget which, but it is not to the purpose), he walked
through three miles and a half of these young ladies all dressed out with
parasols and silk stockings. But as I am not aware that any worse consequence
ensued, than a sudden looking-up of all the parasols and silk stockings in the
market; and perhaps the bankruptcy of some speculative New Englander who bought
them all up at any price, in expectation of a demand that never came; I set no
great store by the circumstance.
In this brief account of Lowell, and inadequate expression of the
gratification it yielded me, and cannot fail to afford to any foreigner to whom
the condition of such people at home is a subject of interest and anxious
speculation, I have carefully abstained from drawing a comparison between these
factories and those of our own land. Many of the circumstances whose strong
influence has been at work for years in our manufacturing towns have not arisen
here; and there is no manufacturing population in Lowell, so to speak: for these
girls (often the daughters of small farmers) come from other States, remain a
few years in the mills, and then go home for good.
The contrast would be a strong one, for it would be between the Good and
Evil, the living light and deepest shadow. I abstain from it, because I deem it
just to do so. But I only the more earnestly adjure all those whose eyes may
rest on these pages, to pause and reflect upon the difference between this town
and those great haunts of desperate misery: to call to mind, if they can in the
midst of party strife and squabble, the efforts that must be made to purge them
of their suffering and danger: and last, and foremost, to remember how the
precious Time is rushing by.
I returned at night by the same railroad and in the same kind of car. One of
the passengers being exceedingly anxious to expound at great length to my
companion (not to me, of course) the true principles on which books of travel in
America should be written by Englishmen, I feigned to fall asleep. But glancing
all the way out at window from the corners of my eyes, I found abundance of
entertainment for the rest of the ride in watching the effects of the wood fire,
which had been invisible in the morning but were now brought out in full relief
by the darkness: for we were travelling in a whirlwind of bright sparks, which
showered about us like a storm of fiery snow.
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