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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