Communications much amended in the process of training the writers were rigidly excluded from print, and such articles only were published as had been written by females employed in the mills. One article only was afterwards challenged as a plagiarism. A few of the contributions from the first needed only the usual corrections to fit them for the press; the contributors, besides possessing rare native talent, having had the advantages of a New England common-school education.
Mostly the writers chose to appear anonymously, not subscribing even their initials; and I am not at liberty to reveal their names, even if I could remember and designate them all. I have, however, already mentioned Miss Harriet Farley, and may add that she was a daughter of the Rev. Stephen Farley, an aged Unitarian clergyman residing in Amesbury, Mass., a man richer in faith and life than in dimes and dollars. She left home, and worked steadily in the mills at Lowell, that she might help a brother through college. I have no hesitation in naming her as a sample of extraordinary genius. She greatly enriched the Circle which was in my charge, and was foremost in every issue of The Offering for several years.
Miss Lydia S. Hall was another contributor whose productions aided largely in the celebrity of The Offering, especially in the line of poetry. “The Tomb of Washington,” “Lowell, a parody on Hohenlinden,” “No,” and a number of other poetical articles of singular merit, stamped this “Adelaide” as a remarkable writer.
Mrs. Betsey Chamberlain, a widow who worked in the mills for the support and education of her two children, was a constant Circle helper, and vitalized many pages of The Offering by humorous incidents and the wit of sound common sense.
Miss Harriot Curtis, who held a dashing pen, left the mills for a season to attend to a sick friend in Troy. At the date of her return, the contents of the second volume of The Offering had already been made up, whereupon, by my encouragement (suggestion, I believe) she wrote a novelette entitled “Kate in Search of a Husband,” the manuscript of which I sold in her behalf to J. Winchester, a New York publisher, who issued large editions of it. A year or two later she was associated with Miss Farley as editor and proprietor of The Offering. Several “Chapters on the National Sciences” were written by a factory-girl (Eliza J. Cate) in Manchester, N. H. She afterwards wrote “Lights and Shadows of Factory Life,” also “Rural Life in New England,” both of which I sold to Winchester in her behalf.
Miss Harriet Lees, S. G. B., E. E. T., H. J., A. B., and many others, are pleasantly in my memory as cordial aids; these memoranda, as you will perceive, reaching beyond the first four numbers, concerning which you make special inquiry.
On the second page of the cover of Number 4, issued March 4, 1841, an endeavor to establish The Offering permanently was announced. “Be the number large or small who are disposed to patronize the undertaking, we have concluded to hazard the experiment for one year,” the labor and responsibility being wholly my own.
If my ecclesiastical connections had been of the popular order, there could have been no doubt of success; but I was well known as a Universalist. Sectarian hostility, in that day, was of a sort which would not be tolerated now; and I had to combat the falsehood that The Offering was a Universalist publication.
The Operatives’ Magazine was issued as a rival, or competitor; and only the superior talent of the contributors to the original work kept it in the ascendant of repute and circulation. I am happy, too, to remember that the most influential laymen in the city indorsed my enterprise, as will appear by the following card:—
Lowell, March 7, 1841.