Lowell less discontented than elsewhere? It is in part because the able
men who founded the place bestowed some thought upon the welfare of the
human beings whom they were about to summon to the spot. They did not,
it is true, bestow thought enough; but they _thought_ of it, and they
made some provision for proper and pleasant life in their proposed town.
Mr. Appleton, who many years ago took the trouble to record these
circumstances, mentions that the probable effect of this new kind of
industry upon the character of the people was most attentively
considered by the founders. In Europe, as most of them had personally
seen, the operatives were unintelligent and immoral, made so by fifteen
or sixteen hours' labor a day, and a beer-shop on every corner. They
caused suitable boarding-houses to be built, which were placed under the
charge of women known to be competent and respectable. Land was assigned
and money subscribed for schools, for churches, for a hospital.
Systematic care was taken to keep away immoral persons, and rules were
established, some of which carried the supervision of morals and manners
perhaps too far. The consequence was that the daughters of farmers,
young women well educated and well-bred, came from all quarters, and
found the factory life something more than endurable.
But for one thing they would have found it salutary and agreeable. The
plague of factory life is the extreme monotony of the employment, and
this is aggravated in some mills by high temperature and imperfect
ventilation. At that time the laws of health were so little understood
that few persons saw any hardship in young girls standing on their feet
thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, and even sixteen hours a day! It was
considered a triumph when the working-day was reduced to thirteen hours.
Thirty years ago, after prodigious agitation, the day was fixed at
eleven hours. That was too much. It has now been reduced to ten hours;
but it is yet to be shown that a woman of average strength and stamina
can work in a cotton mill ten hours a day for years at a stretch,
without deteriorating in body, in mind, or in character.
During the first years the girls would come from the country, work in
the mill a few months, or two or three years, and then return to their
country homes. Thus the injury was less ruinous than it might have been.
The high character of the Lowell operatives was much spoken of in the
early day. Some of the boarding-houses contained pianos upon which the
boarders played in the evening, and there was a magazine called the
"Lowell Offering," to which they contributed all the articles. These
things seemed so astonishing that Charles Dickens, when he was first in
the United States, in 1842, visited Lowell to behold the marvels for
himself. How changed the world in forty years! Few persons now living
can remember even the cars of forty years ago, when there were but a few
hundred miles of railroad in the United States.
The train which conveyed the great novelist from Boston to Lowell
consisted of three cars, a gentlemen's car in which smoking was allowed,
a ladies' car in which no one smoked, and "a negro car," which the
author describes as a "great, blundering, clumsy chest, such as Gulliver
put to sea in from the kingdom of Brobdingnag." Where is now the negro
car? It is gone to rejoin its elder brother, the negro pew. The white
people's cars he describes as "large, shabby omnibuses," with a red-hot
stove in the middle, and the air insufferably close.
He happened to arrive at his first factory in Lowell just as the dinner
hour was over, and the girls were trooping up the stairs as he himself
ascended. How strange his comments now appear to us! If we read them by
the light of to-day, we find them patronizing and snobbish; but at that
day they were far in advance of the feelings and opinions of the
comfortable class. He observed that the girls were all well-dressed,
extremely clean, with serviceable bonnets, good warm cloaks and shawls,
and their feet well protected both against wet and cold. He felt it
necessary, as he was writing for English readers, to _apologize_ for
their pleasant appearance.
"To my thinking," he remarks, "they were not dressed 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."
He alluded to the "Lowell Offering," a monthly magazine, "written,
edited, and published," as its cover informed the public, "by female
operatives employed in the mills." Mr. Dickens praised this magazine in
an extremely ingenious manner. He could not claim that the literature of
the work was of a very high order, because that would not have been
true. He said:--
"Its merits will compare advantageously with a great many English
Annuals."
That is really an exquisite touch of satire. He went on to say:--
"Many of its tales 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.... It
has very scant allusion to fine clothes, fine marriages, fine houses, or
fine life."
I am so happy as to possess a number of the "Lowell Offering," for
August, 1844. It begins with a pretty little story called "A Flower
Dream," which confirms Mr. Dickens's remarks. There are two or three
amiable pieces of poetry, a very moral article upon "Napoleon at St.
Helena," one upon the tyranny of fashion, in which young ladies are
advised to "lay aside all glittering ornaments, all expensive
trappings," and to present instead the charms of a cultivated mind and
good disposition. There is one article in the number which Mr. Dickens
would have enjoyed for its own sake. It is "A Letter from Susan;" Susan
being a "mill girl," as she honestly calls herself. She describes the
life of the girls in the mill and in the boarding-house. She gives an
excellent character both to her companions and to the overseers, one of
whom had lately given her a bouquet from his own garden; and the mills
themselves, she remarks, were surrounded with green lawns kept fresh all
the summer by irrigation, with beds of flowers to relieve their
monotony.
According to Susan, the mills themselves were pleasant places, the rooms
being "high, very light, kept nicely whitewashed, and extremely neat,
with many plants in the window-seats, and white cotton curtains to the
windows."
"Then," says Susan, "the girls dress so neatly, and are so pretty. The
mill girls are the prettiest in the city. You wonder how they can keep
so neat. Why not? There are no restrictions as to the number of pieces
to be washed in the boarding-houses. You say you do not see how we can
have so many conveniences and comforts at the price we pay for board.
You must remember that the boarding-houses belong to the company, and
are let to the tenants far below the usual city rents."
Much has changed in Lowell since that day, and it is probable that few
mill girls would now describe their life as favorably as Susan did in
1844. Nevertheless, the present generation of operatives derive much
good from the thoughtful and patriotic care of the founders. More
requires to be done. A large public park should be laid out in each of
those great centres of industry. The abodes of the operatives in many
instances are greatly in need of improvement. There is need of half-day
schools for children who are obliged to assist their parents. Wherever
it is possible, there should be attached to every house a piece of
ground for a garden. The saying of the old philosopher is as true now as
it was in the simple old times when it was uttered: "The way to have
good servants is to be a good master."
ROBERT OWEN,
COTTON-MANUFACTURER.
The agitation of labor questions recalls attention to Robert Owen, who
spent a great fortune and a long life in endeavoring to show workingmen
how to improve their condition by coöperation. A more benevolent spirit
never animated a human form than his; his very failures were more
creditable than some of the successes which history vaunts.
At the age of ten years, Robert Owen, the son of a Welsh saddler,
arrived in London, consigned to the care of an elder brother, to push
his fortune. His school-days were over, and there was nothing for him
but hard work in some lowly occupation. At the end of six weeks he found
a situation as shop-boy in a dry-goods store at Stamford, in the east of
England; wages, for the first year, his board and lodging; for the
second year, eight pounds in addition; and a gradual increase
thereafter. In this employment he remained four years, and then,
although very happily situated, he made up his mind to return to London
to push his fortune more rapidly.
Being large and forward for his age, a handsome, prompt, active,
engaging youth, he soon obtained a situation in a dry-goods store on old
London Bridge, at a salary of twenty-five pounds a year and his board.
But he had to work unreasonably hard, often being obliged to sit up half
the night putting away the goods, and sometimes going to bed so tired
that he could hardly crawl up stairs. All the clerks had to be in the
store ready for business at eight in the morning. This was about the
year 1786, when men were accustomed to have their hair elaborately
arranged.
"Boy as I was," he once wrote, "I had to wait my turn for the
hair-dresser to powder and pomatum and curl my hair--two large curls on
each side and a stiff pigtail. And until this was all nicely done no one
thought of presenting himself behind the counter."
The lad endured this painful servitude for six months, at the end of
which he found a better situation in Manchester, the seat of the rising
cotton trade, and there he remained until he was nearly nineteen. He
appeared to have had no "wild oats" to sow, being at all times highly
valued by his employers, and acquiring in their service habits of
careful industry, punctuality, and orderliness. He must have been a
young man both of extraordinary virtues and more extraordinary
abilities; for when he was but nineteen, one of his masters offered to
take him as an equal partner, to furnish all the capital, and leave him
the whole business in a few years. There was also an agreeable niece in
the family, whose affections he had gained without knowing it.
"If I had accepted," he says, "I should most likely have married the
niece, and lived and died a rich Stamford linen-draper."
I doubt it. I do not believe that the best shop in Christendom could
have held him long. When he declined this offer he was already in
business for himself manufacturing cotton machinery. This business was a
failure, his partner proving incompetent; and he abandoned the
enterprise in a few months, taking, as his share of the stock, three
cotton-spinning machines. With these he began business for himself as a
cotton spinner, hiring three men to work his machines, while he
superintended the establishment. He made about thirty dollars a week
profit, and was going along at this rate, not ill satisfied with his
lot, when he read one morning in the paper an advertisement for a
factory manager. He applied for the place in person.
"You are too young," said the advertiser.
"They used to object to me on that score four or five years ago," was
his reply, "but I did not expect to have it brought up now."
"Why, what age are you?"
"I shall be twenty in May next."
"How often do you get drunk in the week?"
"I never," said Owen, blushing, "was drunk in my life."
"What salary do you ask?"
"Three hundred (pounds) a year."
"Three hundred a year! Why, I have had I don't know how many after the
place here this morning, and all their askings together would not come
up to what you want."
"Whatever others may ask, I cannot take less. I am making three hundred
a year by my own business."
He got the place. A few days after, this lad of twenty, who had never so
much as entered a large factory in his life, was installed manager of an
establishment which employed five hundred people. He conducted himself
with consummate prudence and skill. For the first six weeks he went
about the building grave, silent, and watchful, using his eyes much and
his tongue little, answering questions very briefly, and giving no
positive directions. When evening came, and the hands were dismissed, he
studied the machinery, the product, and all the secrets of the business.
In six weeks he was a competent master, and every one felt that he was a
competent master. Of large frame, noble countenance, and sympathizing
disposition, he won affection, as well as confidence and respect. In six
months there was not a better-managed mill in Manchester.
Now began his connection with America, a country to which, by and by,
he was to give three valuable sons. While managing this mill he bought
the first two bales of American Sea Island cotton ever imported into
England, and he advanced one hundred and seventy pounds to Robert
Fulton, his fellow-boarder, to help him with his inventions. I cannot
relate all the steps by which he made his way, while still a very young
man, to the ownership of a village of cotton mills in Scotland, and to a
union with the daughter of David Dale, a famous Scotch manufacturer and
philanthropist of that day. He was but twenty-nine years of age when he
found himself at the head of a great community of cotton spinners at New
Lanark in Scotland.
Here he set on foot the most liberal and far-reaching plans for the
benefit of the working people and their children. He built commodious
and beautiful school-rooms, in which the children were taught better, in
some respects, than the sons of the nobility were taught at Eton or
Harrow. Besides the usual branches, he had the little sons and daughters
of the people drilled regularly in singing, dancing, military exercises,
and polite demeanor. He made one great mistake, due rather to the
ignorance of the age than his own: he over-taught the children--the
commonest and fatalest of errors to new-born zeal. But his efforts
generally for the improvement of the people were wonderfully successful.
"For twenty-nine years," as he once wrote to Lord Brougham, "we did
without the necessity for magistrates or lawyers; without a single
legal punishment; without any known poors' rates; without intemperance
or religious animosities. We reduced the hours of labor, well educated
all the children from infancy, greatly improved the condition of the
adults, and cleared upward of three hundred thousand pounds profit."
Having won this great success, he fell into an error to which strong,
self-educated men are peculiarly liable,--_he judged other people by
himself_. He thought that men in general, if they would only try, could
do as well for themselves and others as he had. He thought there could
be a New Lanark without a Robert Owen. Accustomed all his life to easy
success, he was not aware how exceptional a person he was, and he did
not perceive that the happiness of the people who worked for him was due
as much to his authority as a master as to his benevolence as a man. The
consequence was that he devoted the rest of his life to going about the
world telling people how much better they would be off if they would
stop competing with one another, and act together for their common good.
Why have one hundred kitchens, one hundred ovens, and one hundred cooks,
when the work done in them could be better done in one kitchen, with one
oven, by five cooks? This was one question that he asked.
Here is the steam engine, he would say, doing as much work in Great
Britain as the labor power of two worlds as populous as ours could do
without it. Yet the mass of the people find life more difficult than it
was centuries ago. How is this? Such questions Robert Owen pondered day
and night, and the results he reached were three in number:--
1. The steam engine necessitates radical changes in the structure of
society.
2. Coöperation should take the place of competition.
3. Civilized people should no longer live in cities and separate homes,
but in communities of fifteen hundred or two thousand persons each, who
should own houses and lands in common, and labor for the benefit of the
whole.
In spreading abroad these opinions he spent forty of the best years of
his life, and the greater part of a princely income. At first, and for a
considerable time, such was the magnetism of his presence, and the
contagion of his zeal, that his efforts commanded the sympathy, and even
the approval, of the ruling classes of England,--the nobility and
clergy. But in the full tide of his career as a reformer he deliberately
placed himself in opposition to religion. At a public meeting in London
he declared in his bland, impressive way, without the least heat or
ill-nature, that all the religions of the world, whether ancient or
modern, Christian or pagan, were erroneous and hurtful.
Need I say that from that moment the influential classes, almost to a
man, dropped him? One of the few who did not was the Duke of Kent, the
father of Queen Victoria. He remained a steadfast friend to Owen as long
as he lived. Mr. Owen founded a community on his own system. Its failure
was speedy and complete, as all experiments must be which are undertaken
ages too soon. He came to America and repeated the experiment. That also
failed in a remarkably short period. Associated with him in this
undertaking was his son, Robert Dale Owen, who has since spent a long
and honorable life among us.
Returning to England, Mr. Owen continued to labor in the dissemination
of his ideas until the year 1858, when he died at the age of
eighty-seven.
Mr. Holyoake, author of "The History of Cooperation in England,"
attributes to the teaching of Robert Owen the general establishment in
Great Britain of coöperative stores, which have been successful. As time
goes on it is probable that other parts of his system, may become
available; and, perhaps, in the course of time, it may become possible
for men to live an associated life in communities such as he suggested.
But they will never do it until they can get Robert Owens at their head,
and learn to submit loyally and proudly to the just discipline essential
to success where a large number of persons work together.
JOHN SMEDLEY,
STOCKING-MANUFACTURER.
I wonder men in a factory town should ever have the courage to strike;
it brings such woe and desolation upon them all. The first few days, the
cessation from labor may be a relief and a pleasure to a large number--a
holiday, although a dull and tedious holiday, like a Sunday without any
of the alleviations of Sunday--Sunday without Sunday clothes, Sunday
bells, Sunday church, Sunday walks and visits. A painful silence reigns
in the town. People discover that the factory bell calling them to work,
though often unwelcome, was not a hundredth part as disagreeable as the
silence that now prevails. The huge mills stand gaunt and dead; there is
no noise of machinery, no puff of steam, no faces at the windows.
By the end of the first week the novelty has passed, and the money of
some of the improvident families is running low. All are upon short
allowance, the problem being to prolong life at the minimum of expense.
The man goes without his meat, the mother without her tea, the children
without the trifling, inexpensive luxuries with which parental fondness
usually treated them. Before the end of the second week a good many are
hungry, and the workers begin to pine for employment. Their muscles are
as hungry for exercise as their stomachs are for food. The provision
dealers are more and more cautious about giving credit. The bank
accounts, representing months or years of self-denying economy, begin to
lessen rapidly, and careful fathers see that the bulwarks which they
have painfully thrown up to defend their children against the wolf are
crumbling away a hundred times faster than they were constructed. If the
strike lasts a month, one half the population suffers every hour, and
suffers more in mind than in body. Anxiety gnaws the soul. Men go about
pale, gloomy, and despairing; women sit at home suffering even more
acutely; until at last the situation becomes absolutely intolerable; and
the strikers are fortunate indeed if they secure a small portion of the
advance which they claimed.
Terrible as all this is, I am afraid we must admit that to just such
miseries, sometimes rashly encountered, often heroically endured, the
workingman owes a great part of the improvement in his condition which
has taken place during the last seventy-five years. A strike is like
war. It should be the last resort. It should never be undertaken except
after long deliberation, and when every possible effort has been made to
secure justice by other means. In many instances it is better to submit
to a certain degree of injustice than resort to a means of redress which
brings most suffering upon the least guilty.
Does the reader know how the industrial classes were treated in former
times? Mr. George Adcroft, president of an important coöperative
organization in England, began life as a coal miner. He has recently
given to Mr. Holyoake, author of the "History of Coöperation," some
information about the habits and treatment of English miners only forty
years ago:--
"They worked absolutely naked, and their daughters worked by their side.
He and others were commonly compelled to work sixteen hours a day; and,
from week's end to week's end, they never washed either hands or face.
One Saturday night (he was then a lad of fifteen) he and others had
worked till midnight, when there were still wagons at the pit's mouth.
They had at last refused to work any later. The foreman told the
employer, who waited till they were drawn up to the mouth, and beat them
with a stout whip as they came to the surface."
So reports Mr. Holyoake, who could produce, if necessary, from the
records of parliamentary investigations, many a ream of similar
testimony. In truth, workingmen were scarcely regarded--nay, they were
_not_ regarded--as members of the human family. We find proof of this in
the ancient laws of every country in Europe. In the reign of Edward VI.
there was a law against idle workmen which shows how they were regarded.
Any laboring man or servant loitering or living idly for the space of
three days could be branded on the breast with the latter V (vagabond)
and sentenced to be the slave of the person who arrested him for two
years; and that person could "give him bread, water, or small drink, and
refuse him meat, and cause him to work by beating, chaining, or
otherwise." If he should run away from this treatment, he could be
branded on the face with a hot iron with the letter S, and was to be the
slave of his master for life.
Nor does there appear to have been any radical improvement in the
condition of the workingman until within the memory of men now alive.
When Robert Owen made his celebrated journey in 1815 among the factory
towns of Great Britain, for the purpose of collecting evidence about the
employment of children in factories, he gathered facts which his son,
who traveled with him, speaks of as being too terrible for belief.
"As a rule," says that son (Robert Dale Owen), "we found children of ten
years old worked regularly fourteen hours a day, with but half an hour's
interval for dinner, which was eaten in the factory.... Some mills were
run fifteen, and in exceptional cases sixteen hours a day, with a single
set of hands; and they did not scruple to employ children of both sexes
from the age of eight.... Most of the overseers carried stout leather
thongs, and we frequently saw even the youngest children severely
beaten."