INTRODUCTION, BY THE ENGLISH EDITOR.
In the American state of Massachusetts, one of the New England states, which was colonized by the stern Puritans who were driven from our country by civil and religious persecution, has sprung up within the last thirty years the largest manufacturing town of the vast republic. Lowell is situated not a great distance from Boston, at the confluence of the rivers Merrimac and Concord. The falls of these rivers here afford a natural moving power for machinery; and at the latter end of the year 1813 a small cotton manufacture was here set up, where the sound of labor had not been heard before. The original adventure was not a prosperous one. But in 1826 the works were bought by a company or corporation; and from that time Lowell has gone on so rapidly increasing that it is now held to be "the greatest manufacturing city in America." According to Mr. Buckingham, there are now ten companies occupying or working thirty mills, and giving employment to more than 10,000 operatives, of whom 7,000 are females. The situation of the female population is, for the most part, a peculiar one. Unlike the greater number of the young women in our English factories, they are not brought up to the labor of the mills, amongst parents who are also workers in factories. They come from a distance; many of them remain only a limited time; and they live in boarding houses expressly provided for their accommodation. Miss Martineau, in her "Society in America," explains the cause not only of the large proportion of females in the Lowell mills, but also of their coming from distant parts in search of employment: "Manufactures can to a considerable degree be carried on by the labor of women; and there is a great number of unemployed women in New England, from the circumstance that the young men of that region wander away in search of a settlement on the land, and after being settled find wives in the south and west." Again, she says, "Many of the girls are in the factories because they have too much pride for domestic service."
In October, 1840, appeared the first number of a periodical work entitled "The Lowell Offering." The publication arose out of the meetings of an association of young women called "The Mutual Improvement Society." It has continued at intervals of a month or six weeks, and the first volume was completed in December, 1841. A second volume was concluded in 1842. The work was under the direction of an editor, who gives his name at the end of the second volume,—Abel C. Thomas. The duties which this gentleman performed are thus stated by him in the preface to the first volume:—
"The two most important questions which may be suggested shall receive due attention.
"1st. Are all the articles, in good faith and exclusively the productions of females employed in the mills? We reply, unhesitatingly and without reserve, that they are, the verses set to music excepted. We speak from personal acquaintance with all the writers, excepting four; and in relation to the latter (whose articles do not occupy eight pages in the aggregate) we had satisfactory proof that they were employed in the mills.
"2d. Have not the articles been materially amended by the exercise of the editorial prerogative? We answer, they have not. We have taken less liberty with the articles than editors usually take with the productions of other than the most experienced writers. Our corrections and additions have been so slight as to be unworthy of special note."
Of the merits of the compositions contained in these volumes their editor speaks with a modest confidence, in which he is fully borne out by the opinions of others:—
"In estimating the talent of the writers for the 'Offering,' the fact should be remembered, that they are actively employed in the mills for more than twelve hours out of every twenty-four. The evening, after eight o'clock, affords their only opportunity for composition; and whoever will consider the sympathy between mind and body, must be sensible that a day of constant manual employment, even though the labor be not excessive, must in some measure unfit the individual for the full development of mental power. Yet the articles in this volume ask no unusual indulgence from the critics—for, in the language of 'The North American Quarterly Review,'—'many of the articles are such as satisfy the reader at once, that if he has only taken up the "Offering" as a phenomenon, and not as what may bear criticism and reward perusal, he has but to own his error, and dismiss his condescension, as soon as may be.'"
The two volumes thus completed in 1842 were lent to us by a lady whose well-earned literary reputation gave us the assurance that she would not bestow her praise upon a work whose merit merely consisted in the remarkable circumstance that it was written by young women, not highly educated, during the short leisure afforded by their daily laborious employments. She told us that we should find in those volumes some things which might be read with pleasure and improvement. And yet we must honestly confess that we looked at the perusal of these closely-printed eight hundred pages as something of a task. We felt that all literary productions, and indeed all works of art, should, in a great degree, be judged without reference to the condition of the producer. When we take up the poems of Burns, we never think that he was a ploughman and an exciseman; but we have a painful remembrance of having read a large quarto volume of verses by Ann Yearsly, who was patronized in her day by Horace Walpole and Hannah More, and to have felt only the conviction that the milkwoman of Bristol, for such was their authoress, had better have limited her learning to the score and the tally. But it was a duty to read the "Lowell Offering." The day that saw us begin the first paper was witness to our continued reading till night found us busy at the last page, not for a duty, but a real pleasure.