[AC] This railroad was constructed for 60 miles through a vast forest of oak and pine, the few houses now found along the line having been erected since the execution of the work.
[AD] The wages of a mere labourer in the factories at Lowell are from 5 to 6 dollars a week; of a man who has a trade, as a smith, dyer, 8 to 10 dollars, of the engravers of patterns on the printing cylinders, 17 or 18 dollars.
[AE] Out of one thousand females in the Lawrence mills, only eleven are married women, and nineteen widows.
[AF] Mr H. C. Carey, in his Essay on Wages (p. 89), quotes the following letter from the director of one of the factories in Lowell. "There have been in our establishment only three cases of illicit connexions, and in all three instances the parties were married immediately, several months before the birth of the child, so that in fact we have had no case of actual bastardy." Mr Carey adds, that he was informed that there had been no such case at Dover, where there is a very large manufactory. Although I do not believe that such an exemplary degree of purity prevails in all the manufacturing districts, yet I am convinced that the morale of the manufacturing operatives are in harmony with those of the rest of the population.
[AG] The company gets only 4 per cent. on the capital invested in the boarding-houses, while the average rate of dividends on the manufacturing stock is from 5 to 6 per cent. semi-annually.
[AH] In the United States, the theatres are generally closed on Sunday, out of respect for the rules of the Sabbath; the only exception to this custom is among the French population of Louisiana. In New England, religious scruples on this point are carried farther than elsewhere; thus in Boston, a by-law of the city prescribes the shutting up of the theatres on Saturday evening, because, according to some precisians, the Sabbath begins at sunset on that day.
[LETTER XIII.]
THE BANK.—SLAVERY.
Elmington, (Va.) Aug. 24, 1834.
The elections of members of the House of Representatives will take place in New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, the principal States in the Union, next October and November. Although the members then returned will not take their seats until the session which begins in December, 1835, yet great importance is attached to the results of these elections, even in respect to the approaching session of Congress. On both sides preparations are making with the greatest activity; both parties have chosen their text. As the harangues against an aristocracy of money have aroused the prejudices of the labouring classes, who form the majority of electors, against the Bank, the watchword of the Opposition is no longer ostensibly the Bank. But it says to the electors, referring to the late acts of the President directed against the Bank, and the doctrines which on this occasion he has put forth in his messages; "The executive power is guilty of gross usurpation; hasten to the rescue of the constitution from its monstrous encroachments. It is no longer a question about the bank; but our liberties, bought by the blood of our fathers, are at stake, and an audacious soldier, surrounded by a train of servile place-men, has dared to trifle with our dearest rights." This is certainly the best ground for the Opposition to take; for General Jackson, in the affair of the Bank, as in most other circumstances of his life, has cared little for forms. He has gone straight forward to his object, without stopping to consider where he was placing his foot.