THE FACTORY GIRLS OF LOWELL.
Boston, June 22, 1834.
War, the last argument of kings and people, war, in which they put forth their strength with pride, is not, however, the greatest exhibition of human power. A field of battle may excite terror or a feverish enthusiasm, pity or horror; but human strength applied to create is more imposing, than human strength employed in slaughter and destruction. The pyramids or the colossal temples of Thebes, the Coliseum or Saint Peter's of Rome, reveal a higher grandeur than a field of battle covered with desolation and death, were it strown with three hundred thousand bodies, as in those two great fights in which our fathers, under Meroveus and Charles Martel, presented a barrier to the career of the barbarians, and saved the Western world from the encroachments of the East. The power of man, like that of God, is not less visible in small things than in great. There is nothing in the physical order of things of which our race has a better right to boast, than of the mechanical inventions, by means of which man holds in check the irregular vigour, or brings forth the hidden energies, of nature. By the aid of mechanical contrivances, this poor weak creature, reaching out his hands over the immensity of nature, takes possession of the rivers, of the winds of heaven, of the tides of the ocean. By them, he drags forth from the secret bowels of the earth their hidden stores of fuel and of metals, and masters the subterranean waters, which there dispute his dominion. By them, he turns each drop of water into a reservoir of steam,[AB] that is, into a magazine of power, and thus he changes the globe, in comparison with which he seems an atom, into a laborious, untiring, submissive slave, performing the heaviest tasks under the eye of its master. Is there any thing which gives a higher idea of the power of man, than the steam-engine under the form in which it is applied to produce motion on railroads? It is more than a machine, it is almost a living being; it moves, it runs like a courser at the top of his speed; more than this, it breathes; the steam which issues at regular periods from the pipes, and is condensed into a white cloud, resembles the quick breathing of a racehorse. A steam-engine has a complete respiratory apparatus, which acts like our own by expansion and compression; it wants only a system of circulation to live.
One evening, while in Virginia, I was looking at a distant locomotive engine, approaching along the Petersburg and Roanoke railroad, one of the fine works of which Mr Robinson, the engineer, yet a young man, has executed so many in Virginia and Pennsylvania. The engine came on at its usual rate of speed, through a narrow clearing cut for the road in one of the primitive forests, formerly the domain of the great king Powhatan and his copper-coloured warriors.[AC] The chimney threw out thousands of sparks from its wide, funnel-shaped top; although yet at a distance, the noise of the quick breathing of the pipes was distinctly heard. In the darkness, in so wild a place, in the bosom of a vast wilderness and the midst of a profound silence, it was necessary either to be acquainted with mechanics, or to be imbued with the incredulity of the age, not to believe this flying, panting, flaming machine, a winged dragon vomiting forth fire. A short time since some Brahmins, the fathers of ancient science, seeing a steamboat stem the current of the sacred Ganges, really believed that it was some strange animal, recently discovered by the English in some distant region.
In our modern societies the improvements of machinery have given us manufactures, which promise to be a source of inexhaustible prosperity and well-being to mankind.
The English manufactories alone yield about eight hundred million yards of cotton stuffs annually, or about one yard for each inhabitant of the globe. If it were required to produce this amount of cloth without machinery, by, the fingers alone, it is probable that each of us would hardly be able to card, spin, and weave his yard a year, so that the whole time of the whole human race would be occupied by a task, which, by the aid of machinery, is accomplished by five hundred thousand arms in Great Britain. From this fact we may conclude, that when the manufacturing system shall be well regulated and completely organised, a moderate amount of labour by a small part of the human race, will be sufficient to produce all the physical comforts for the whole. There can be no doubt, that it will be so, some day or another; but this beautiful order of things is yet remote. The manufacturing system is a novelty, it is expanding and maturing itself, (see Note 15), and as it ripens, it certainly will improve; the staunchest pessimists cannot deny this, yet we should expose ourselves to the most cruel disappointments, if we imagined that the progress of improvement can be otherwise than slow, step by step. There are seven-leagued boots in fairy-tales, but none in history. Meanwhile the manufacturing system temporarily involves the most disastrous consequences, which it would be useless to enumerate here. Who has not sounded its depths with terror? Who has not wept over it? It is the canker of England, a canker so inveterate, that one is sometimes tempted to think, that all the ability displayed of late years by the British statesmen in attempts at domestic reform, will prove a dead loss.
The introduction of the manufacturing system into a new country, under the empire of very different circumstances, is an event worthy of the closest attention. No sooner was I recovered from the sort of giddiness with which I was seized at the sight of this extemporaneous town, hardly had I taken time to touch it, to make sure that it was not a pasteboard town, like those which Potemkin erected for Catherine along the road to Byzantium, when I set myself to inquire, how far the creation of manufactures in this country, had given rise to the same dangers in regard to the welfare and morals of the working class, and in regard to the security of the rich and of public order, as in Europe; and through the polite attention of the agents of the two principal companies (the Merrimack and the Lawrence), I was able to satisfy my curiosity. The cotton manufacture alone employs six thousand persons in Lowell; of this number nearly five thousand are young women from 17 to 24 years of age, the daughters of farmers from the different New England States, and particularly from Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont; they are here remote from their families, and under their own control. On seeing them pass through the streets in the morning and evening and at their meal-hours, neatly dressed; on finding their scarfs, and shawls, and green silk hoods which they wear as a shelter from the sun and dust (for Lowell is not yet paved), hanging up in the factories amidst the flowers and shrubs, which they cultivate, I said to myself, this, then, is not like Manchester; and when I was informed of the rate of their wages, I understood that it was not at all like Manchester. The following are the average weekly wages paid by the Merrimack corporation last May.
| For picking and carding, | 3.00 | Dolls. |
| 3.10 | ||
| 2.78 | ||
| For spinning, | 3.00 | |
| For weaving, | 3.10 | |
| 3.12 | ||
| For warping and sizing, | 3.45 | |
| 4.00 | ||
| In the cloth-room (measuring and folding), | 3.12 |
These numbers are averages; the wages of the more skilful hands amounting to five, and sometimes nearly six dollars. Note that last March, in consequence of the crisis occasioned by the President's quarrel with the Bank, there was a general reduction of from 30 to 40 cents a week. You know how much smaller are the wages of women than of men;[AD] there are few women in Europe, out of a few great cities, who can earn more than 20 cents a day or one dollar a week. It must also be remembered, that, in the United States the necessaries of life are not only much cheaper than in England, but even than in France, so that a great many of these girls can save a dollar or a dollar and a half a week. After spending four years in the factories, they may have a little fortune of 250 or 300 dollars, when they often quit work and marry.[AE]