A mortgaged homestead, or to pay the way
Through classic years at some academy;
More commonly to lay a dowry by
For future housekeeping.”[1]
The intention of Mr. Francis Cabot Lowell and Mr. Nathan Appleton, when they conceived the idea of establishing the mills, was to provide conditions of living for operatives, as different as possible from the Old World ideals of factory labor. They wisely decided to regard the mental and religious education of the girls as of first importance, and those who followed these plans aimed to secure young women of intelligence from the surrounding towns, and stimulate them to seek improvement in their leisure hours.
Besides the free Grammar School there were innumerable night schools; and most of the churches provided, by means of “Social Circles,” opportunities for improvement. So in Lowell there was a wide-awake set of girls working for their daily bread, with a true idea of the dignity of labor, and with the determination to make the most of themselves. They reasoned thus, as Miss Larcom expressed it: “That the manufacture of cloth should, as a branch of feminine industry, ever have suffered a shadow of discredit, will doubtless appear to future generations a most ridiculous barbarism. To prepare the clothing of the world seems to have been regarded as womanly work in all ages. The spindle and the distaff, the picturesque accompaniments of many an ancient legend—of Penelope, of Lucretia, of the Fatal Sisters themselves—have, to be sure, changed somewhat in their modern adaptation to the machinery which robes the human millions; but they are, in effect, the same instruments, used to supply the same need, at whatever period of the world’s history.”
A few facts will show the character of these girls. One of the ministers was asked how many teachers he thought he could furnish from among the working-girls. He replied, “About five hundred.” A lecturer in the Lowell Lyceum stated that four fifths of his audience were factory girls, that when he entered the hall most of the girls were reading from books, and when he began his lecture every one seemed to be taking notes. Charles Dickens, after his visit to Lowell in 1842, wrote: “I solemnly declare that from all the crowd I saw in the different factories, I cannot recall one 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 labor of her hands, I would have removed if I had the power.”
Mrs. Larcom kept a boarding-house for the operatives, and Lucy was thrown in close association with these strong young women. She had access to the little accumulation of books that one of them had made,—Maria Edgeworth’s “Helen,” Thomas à Kempis, Bunyan’s “Holy War,” Locke “On the Understanding,” and “Paradise Lost.” This formed good reading for a girl of ten.
Lucy’s sister Emeline started in the boarding-house two or three little fortnightly papers, to which the girls contributed. Each ran a troubled existence of a few months, and then gave place to its successor, bearing a new name. “The Casket,” for a time, held their jewels of thought; then “The Bouquet” gathered their full-blown ideas into a more pretentious collection. The most permanent of these literary productions was one that started with the intention of being very profound,—it was called “The Diving Bell.” The significance of the name was carefully set forth in the first number:—
“Our Diving Bell shall deep descend,