Any Boarders Who Do Not Attend Divine
Worship Are To Be Reported To The Managers.
The yards and walks
are to be kept clean, and snow removed at once; and the inmates
must be vaccinated, etc.
Etc. etc. It is expressly stated by the
Hamilton Company - and I believe by all the companies - that no one
shall be employed who is habitually absent from public worship on
Sunday, or who is known to be guilty of immorality, it is stated
that the average wages of the women are two dollars, or eight
shillings, a week, besides their board. I found when I was there
that from three dollars to three and a half a week were paid to the
women, of which they paid one dollar and twenty-five cents for
their board. As this would not fully cover the expense of their
keep, twenty-five cents a week for each was also paid to the
boarding-house keepers by the mill agents. This substantially came
to the same thing, as it left the two dollars a week, or eight
shillings, with the girls over and above their cost of living. The
board included washing, lights, food, bed, and attendance - leaving
a surplus of eight shillings a week for clothes and saving. Now
let me ask any one acquainted with Manchester and its operatives,
whether that is not Utopia realized. Factory girls, for whom every
comfort of life is secured, with 21l. a year over for saving and
dress! One sees the failing, however, at a moment. It is Utopia.
Any Lady Bountiful can tutor three or four peasants and make them
luxuriously comfortable. But no Lady Bountiful can give luxurious
comfort to half a dozen parishes. Lowell is now nearly forty years
old, and contains but 40,000 inhabitants. From the very nature of
its corporations it cannot spread itself. Chicago, which has grown
out of nothing in a much shorter period, and which has no
factories, has now 120,000 inhabitants. Lowell is a very wonderful
place and shows what philanthropy can do; but I fear it also shows
what philanthropy cannot do.
There are, however, other establishments, conducted on the same
principle as those at Lowell, which have had the same amount, or
rather the same sort of success. Lawrence is now a town of about
15,000 inhabitants, and Manchester of about 24,000, if I remember
rightly; and at those places the mills are also owned by
corporations and conducted as are those at Lowell. But it seems to
me that as New England takes her place in the world as a great
mannfacturing country - which place she undoubtedly will take sooner
or later - she must abandon the hot-house method of providing for
her operatives with which she has commenced her work. In the first
place, Lowell is not open as a manufacturing town to the
capitalists even of New England at large. Stock may, I presume, be
bought in the corporations, but no interloper can establish a mill
there. It is a close manufacturing community, bolstered up on all
sides, and has none of that capacity for providing employment for a
thickly growing population which belongs to such places as
Manchester and Leeds. That it should under its present system have
been made in any degree profitable reflects great credit on the
managers; but the profit does reach an amount which in America can
be considered as remunerative. The total capital invested by the
twelve corporations is thirteen million and a half of dollars, or
about two million seven hundred thousand pounds. In only one of
the corporations, that of the Merrimack Company, does the profit
amount to twelve per cent. In one, that of the Booth Company, it
falls below seven per cent. The average profit of the various
establishments is something below nine per cent. I am of course
speaking of Lowell as it was previous to the war. American
capitalists are not, as a rule, contented with so low a rate of
interest as this.
The States in these matters have had a great advantage over
England. They have been able to begin at the beginning.
Manufactories have grown up among us as our cities grew - from the
necessities and chances of the times. When labor was wanted it was
obtained in the ordinary way; and so when houses were built they
were built in the ordinary way. We had not the experience, and the
results either for good or bad, of other nations to guide us. The
Americans, in seeing and resolving to adopt our commercial
successes, have resolved also, if possible, to avoid the evils
which have attended those successes. It would be very desirable
that all our factory girls should read and write, wear clean
clothes, have decent beds, and eat hot meat every day. But that is
now impossible. Gradually, with very up-hill work, but still I
trust with sure work, much will be done to improve their position
and render their life respectable; but in England we can have no
Lowells. In our thickly populated island any commercial Utopia is
out of the question. Nor can, as I think, Lowell be taken as a
type of the future manufacturing towns of New England. When New
England employs millions in her factories instead of thousands - the
hands employed at Lowell, when the mills are at full work, are
about 11,000 - she must cease to provide for them their beds and
meals, their church-going proprieties and orderly modes of life.
In such an attempt she has all the experience of the world against
her. But nevertheless I think she will have done much good. The
tone which she will have given will not altogether lose its
influence. Employment in a factory is now considered reputable by
a farmer and his children, and this idea will remain. Factory work
is regarded as more respectable than domestic service, and this
prestige will not wear itself altogether out.
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