Study of a New England Factory Town

THE place has about fifty thousand inhabitants. It has one great industrial occupation, the making of cotton cloth of various kinds. There are more than forty mills used for this manufacture, — great buildings, some of them hundreds of feet in length, and six stories high; most of them are of granite, but a few are of brick. They do not occupy any particular region in the city, but are found in nearly every part of it, — in the central squares and principal business streets, and even in those in which the most substantial and elegant dwellings are situated, as well as in the poorer quarters and in the suburbs.

I visited the place recently, and saw something of the life of the operatives and of other portions of the population. Various friends had offered me letters of introduction to prominent citizens and owners of the mills; but I have long been aware that when one wishes to see things directly, and for himself, introductions are not always helpful. They are apt to commit an observer to certain lines and methods of investigation, and they necessitate the adoption, at the outset, of some plan of operations; and this, whether it is adhered to or discarded, is commonly a disadvantage. A man who is capable of making valuable observations of the life around him can usually obtain access to all those persons who possess knowledge or information which is essential to his objects; and he can do this most successfully by making his plans as he goes on,—that is, by leaving himself free to adapt his methods, at every step, to circumstances and conditions which could not possibly be foreseen.

I employed one day in leisurely sauntering about the city, in the course of which I saw nearly all its streets and byways, its nooks and out-of-the-way corners. During the day the noise of the machinery of the mills fills the air of the whole city with a muffled humming sound, which is not unmusical, but rather soft and dreamy; inside of the mills the shrill buzz and clatter are at first rather painful to unaccustomed ears. In the evening I saw the mill people on their way to their homes. When I walked in the direction opposite to theirs, so as to meet them and see their faces, I noted that they all regarded me with alert, searching glances, and they were plainly at once aware that I was a stranger. A group of children came first, laughing and chattering. They were about twelve or fourteen years old. One of the girls gave me a critical look, and remarked to her companions, “He’s a detective.” I heard that exclamation many times during the first few days of my sojourn, but the operatives soon recognized me everywhere. I often walked in the same direction with them, going a little more slowly than they, so as to hear their talk. It did not differ greatly from that of young people of about the same age of any class with which I am acquainted: “what Jane said about you; ” “ what Ned told Delia Smith; ” and animated remarks about the “ new things ” which some of the girls had bought lately, with grave talk of the sickness of some of their companions; all this accompanied and interrupted by frequent careless, noisy laughter. It was rather pleasant and encouraging. The young people of the mills appeared to be very much like other young people when in a crowd together in the street.

Copyright, 1879, by HOUGHTON, OSGOOD & CO.

When I inquired at the hotels whether one could see the mills, the answer was, “ Yes, most of them ; but at a few of the largest the rules forbid the admission of visitors. The officers are very strict, and if you are a stranger you cannot go in.” In the shops and business houses which various errands led me to visit, and in which I always met gentlemen who were ready to talk about the trade and manufactures of their city, this information about the mills from which visitors were excluded was often repeated, and the same mills were always named. I therefore decided to begin by looking through the places which were thus reported to be difficult of access. I encountered no obstacle anywhere that was not easily surmounted. I passed through more than half a dozen of the largest mills, inspecting all the processes and details of the manufacture, from the boiler room in the cellar, where the smooth, resistless swing of the gigantic Corliss engines made one feel as if be were watching the motion of a planet in its path, to the enormous tubs of sizing, high up in the attic.

In all the mills which I visited, far more than half the operatives were girls and women. I saw very few children who appeared to be under twelve years of age, though I heard much criticism, among some of my new acquaintances in the city, of the cruelty of the laws and usages relating to the employment of young children in the mills. As to nationality or descent, the English, Scotch, and Irish operatives, with their children born here, constitute the most numerous classes, but there are also many French Canadians. I had often heard and read the assertion that very few Americans, or, more strictly, descendants of American families, now work in the mills. But I found among the operatives a considerable proportion of young women who are the children of families that have lived in this country for one hundred and fifty or two hundred years, and I have since learned that the same thing is true of several other factory towns.

All the mill people looked as if they had enough to eat, but some of them showed in their faces indications of the effects of poor cookery. Some had the peculiar look which comes from living in impure air, and this result is produced chiefly, as I was convinced by what I saw in the mills and in the homes of the people, by the foulness of the air in the rooms in which the operatives eat and sleep. In many, probably in most, of their homes the cooking is done in the “sitting-room;” that is, the apartment in which the members of the family pass the evening together until bed - time. The cost of fuel is one of the principal expenditures and burdens of the household, and economy in its use is one of the most important means of saving; so the room is kept closely shut to prevent the escape of heat and the entrance of cold air from the outside. The impurity of the air in these rooms during cold weather is very great, and this is one of the most unwholesome features of the life of the operatives.

The cotton is brought to the mills in the bale, “just as it comes from the fields in Indiana, or wherever it grows,” as an obliging overseer in one of the largest mills explained to me, and all the processes of picking, cleaning, carding, spinning, weaving, dressing, and finishing are performed in the same building. Nearly all this work is done by machinery, and the labor of the operatives consists almost entirely in attendance upon the machinery. There are a few things, such as the drawing of the threads of the warp through the “harness,” which are done with the fingers, but the wonderful capabilities of the machines leave very few things to be done by human hands. Many of the looms are so constructed that they stop at once if a thread breaks, and do not go on till it is mended. Each girl tends four, five, or six looms. A few of the most skillful can manage eight looms each, as many as the best hands among the men.

There is not much work that requires great muscular strength or exertion, not much lifting or handling heavy materials or articles of any kind. Most of it requires alertness and exactness of attention, the concentration of the faculties and their constant application to the processes going on under one’s hand, rather than severe muscular effort. Such work usually exhausts the nervous vitality quite as rapidly as many occupations which appear to be more difficult and toilsome. Most of the operatives are necessarily on their feet nearly all the time, and this feature of their work has an unfavorable effect upon the health of the women and girls. They all appear to be tired at the end of their day’s toil, though I saw no signs of extreme weariness or exhaustion. It is very hard for any one who is not well, or who is “ nervous ” and sensitive. The noise of the machinery then becomes insufferably irritating and torturing.

No part of the work in the mills appeared to me so severe, or so unwholesome, for girls and women as is the toil of those who run sewing-machines in city shops; yet it is work which requires good health and high average vitality. The high temperature which is necessary for some of the processes of cotton manufacture renders the operatives specially liable, during the winter, to injury by taking cold when they pass into the open air, unless they use some precautions against it by putting on extra clothing when they leave the mills. But I observed that most of them were careless in this respect, though not more so, probably, than is usual among the pupils of the high - schools in every part of our country. I noted considerable coughing, and certain complained of sore throats. In several departments of a mill the air is always filled by fine flying fibres and particles of cotton. Some of these are drawn into the lungs, and this produces injurious effects. When the lungs are at all sensitive or inclined to disease, this dust increases the irritation. Even for persons who are strong and well it is of course unwholesome, and it probably causes greater injury to health than any other feature or condition of mill work.

A group or company of the young people of the mills, when approached by a stranger, always exhibits the peculiar instinctive shrinking and drawing together for self-defense which is shown by wild animals in similar circumstances. In the mill people it is a feeling of distrust, suspicion, and hostility regarding all who do not belong to their class. The first question asked of a stranger is always, “ Do you wish to get work in the mill? ” Of course I was simply a stranger, who wished to see the mills and the work which was done in them. During the hour at noon, when the machinery is at rest, is a favorable time for forming some acquaintance with the operatives. Many of them have brought their dinner with them, and they eat it sitting on the floor, or standing in groups together. One scarcely knows when or how the eating is done in some of these little companies, for the talk and chatter and laughter are incessant. The presence of a stranger is at first a restraint, and excites their caution when he approaches or addresses them. Unless a man knows how to penetrate and disarm this reserve, he will learn little from them of their thought or life. They soon became merry and communicative with me. Some of the younger girls were then inclined to be forward and impudent, but they were checked and controlled by the older ones.

The girls and young women in the mills “ learn to take care of themselves,” to use a phrase which one often hears among them; that is, they are not at all ignorant of evil or vice. They know what are the dangers that beset and threaten young girls in their circumstances, among men many of whom are coarse and sensual. In such conditions the delicacy and modesty of thought, deportment, and speech which are so precious and lovely in the character of young women are almost impossible, and we have no right to require or expect them. But these girls are not so liable to be led into actual vice or immorality as are some of the pupils in our Sunday-schools, whose very ignorance of evil, and of the need of avoiding or resisting it, sometimes exposes them to temptation unwarned and unprepared. The mill girls are familiar with coarse and vile language, and can hear it unabashed and without blushing; they can answer in like terms. But these facts are not, in their case, marks of extreme depravity or immorality. They afford no evidence of unchastity. I do not believe that this vice prevails to any considerable extent among the young women of the mills. Some of the older women, especially among the English and Irish, have not always been successful in self-protection, or in repelling temptation, as one can plainly see. But there is, as I am thoroughly convinced, far less of sexual vice among the factory operatives than is usually attributed to them. I am certain that working-people in general, of both sexes, are more pure and free from this vice than most moralists and clergymen think them. Their toil represses passion. Their time is filled by their regular occupations, and they have little leisure for vicious thoughts, for nourishing mischievous and profligate desires. It is among idle men and women that this evil finds most of its recruits. No system of morals or of religious culture has yet been devised which provides any effective safeguard against licentiousness for those who are exempt from toil.

In studying the life of any class of people, an observer soon distinguishes the persons who can be of use to him, who representor possess something which he wishes to learn or understand. When I had found several men and women who could thus be of service to me, the next step was to visit their homes, which I did upon their invitation. I saw their food and their methods of preparing it, examined the books and papers which they read, and listened to their accounts of their own life and work and experience.

There are but few “ tenement houses " in this place owned by the mill proprietors. Most of the operatives find homes or apartments wherever they prefer, and many of them live in small buildings where there are only two or three families under the same roof. I think this much better than the system of large tenement houses, unless these could be superior in design and arrangement to the buildings of this class which are ordinarily found in American cities. There are, however, a few large buildings here belonging to the mill owners, and each is occupied by a large number of families.

I examined two or three of them, and am compelled to say that their construction is not what it should be. In some cases the cellars are not properly secured against the ingress of surface water, and the water-closets are inadequate and unsuitable. The city government should give this matter immediate attention. The tenants should be required by the proprietors to keep the yards surrounding these houses in a more wholesome and cleanly condition than that in which I found them.

The cookery in the homes of the operatives, if judged by what I saw and learned in several families, is not usually very good. They fry too much of their food, and many do not know how to extract the nutritive elements from beef-bones by long boiling. They throw out to their dogs what would give them the basis for a valuable and delicious soup. (The operatives keep a great many dogs, as is the custom among poor people generally, in this country.) If the women had sufficient knowledge in regard to the best methods of preparing it, they could have better food and more of it without additional expense. Much good might be done by an arrangement for instructing these women and girls in economical methods of preparing wholesome and appetizing food. Perhaps the good women of the city who possess the advantages of wealth and culture can do something to aid their less fortunate sisters among the operatives in this matter.

The young people of the mills generally read the story papers, published (most of them) in New York city, and devoted to interminably “ continued ” narratives, of which there are always three or four in process of publication in each paper. I have read some of these stories. They have usually no very distinct educational quality or tendency, good or bad. They are simply stories, — vapid, silly, turgid, and incoherent. As the robber-heroes are mostly grandlooking fellows, and all the ladies have white hands and splendid attire, it may be that some of the readers find hard work more distasteful because of their acquaintance with the gorgeous idlers and thieves, who, in these fictions, are always so much more fortunate than the people who are honest and industrious. But usually, as I am convinced by much observation, the only effect of this kind of reading is that it serves “ to pass away the time,” by supplying a kind of entertainment, a stimulus or opiate for the mind, and that these people resort to it and feel a necessity for it in much the same way that others feel they must have whisky or opium. The reading is a narcotic, but it is less pernicious than those just named.

Many hundreds of the older operatives, especially foreigners, of two or three nationalities, were reading a paper which is devoted to the liberation of the working-people of America. Its principal literary attraction at this time was a very long serial story of the overthrow of the republic in 1880. This is written as if the events which form the subject of the narrative had already occurred. It introduces General Grant as dictator, and describes elaborately the character and effects of the terrible despotism which he establishes, in that year, upon the ruins of popular government. He “suppresses Congress,” seizes New York city at the head of an armed force and by the assistance of the capitalists or “ money power ” of the country, and is about to make himself emperor, when the working-people rise in arms, under the direction of a nameless leader, “ a man with the executive intellect of Cæsar, Napoleon, and Bismarck, and the lofty impulses of Leonidas, Cincinnatus, and Washington.” (To continue the description of this personage, “ he was a man of huge bulk and brawn. His head was the size and shape of Daniel Webster’s, whom he greatly resembled, except in being of the blonde type. His awful gray eyes had a power in them far beyond that of the orbs of the indolent Webster.”)

The workingmen, soldiers of the new revolution, are instructed by this hero to supply their own needs from the abundant stores of their neighbors, giving them receipts in the name of the revolution for the property thus forcibly appropriated. They accordingly seize the national banks, and help themselves to as much money as they desire. This story was read with deep interest by many of the older operatives, especially those who were interested in labor reform. The paper containing it prints each week a declaration of principles, which affirms that the government should hold all the land of the nation; that it should be without price (the free use of as much of it as he can cultivate being secured to every man) ; that ground rents of towns and cities should be controlled by government; that gold and silver should be demonetized, and that in their stead absolute paper money should be issued by the government: that interest on money should be forbidden ; that all mines, railroads, and highways should be owned and controlled by the government; that the government ought not to interfere for the collection of debts between individuals, but that the payment of debts should be left entirely to the honor of the debtor. There should be an income tax on all incomes above one thousand dollars, growing heavier for larger sums. Eight hours’ labor should be a legal day’s work, and the senate of the United States should be abolished. Recently the paper has devoted much space to the advocacy of " the right of the people to free travel: ” the government should own the railroads, and tax capitalists to obtain means for operating them, and people who do not wish to pay fares should be permitted to ride free. This paper has a large circulation among operatives, miners, and city mechanics in nearly all parts of the country. It is a large sheet, and is conducted with much ability. It always contains two or three serial stories by popular writers, which are designed to “ float ” the heavier articles devoted to the propagation of the doctrines of the agitators, who seek to establish a universal, international sovereignty of workingmen upon principles and methods which contradict and oppose every essential of civilization. The tone and spirit of the paper are indescribably bitter, and expressive of intense hostility against the possessors of property and culture. It represents capitalists as a class of cruel and inhuman oppressors, and instructs the working-people that the time is at hand for them to seize the rights of which they have been so long deprived. All its teaching is opposed to the spirit and principle of nationality, and tends, so far as it has any effect, to produce social and political disintegration.

There is a labor-reform newspaper published in this city of mills, and I had much conversation with the editor. He thinks the mill owners and capitalists of the city are thoroughly selfish and heartless; that they have no regard for the interests or welfare of the operatives, and care only to obtain the greatest possible amount of labor from them for the least possible pay. He was engaged, when I saw him, in the promotion of a movement having for its object the reduction of the hours of labor in the mills. The legal day’s work is now ten hours, but my friend the editor informed me that the mill agents often disregard the law and work the hands ten and a half, and even eleven hours per day. He said that the largest mill in the city was run nearly seventy hours one week, and that the agent of this mill was “ determined to be king of devils.”

I asked the editor what change he regarded as, at present, most important and necessary for the emancipation of labor and the improvement of the condition of the working-people; and he replied, “ The next great step is the reduction of the hours of labor.”

“ What should be the length of a day’s work? ”

“ We are working now to obtain more stringent legislation against running the mills more than ten hours, but six hours a day would be enough for people to work.”

I asked him if he could give me any information regarding the amount of deposits by operatives in the savings-banks of the city. This is his reply, in a note which he kindly sent me not long ago, and which is now before me: “ I have no exact means of stating the precise amount, but it is practically nothing. There is no city where the operatives own fewer bank-books than here. The operatives of this city are very poor indeed, perhaps no place poorer, and the per cent. who own their homes is a great deal smaller. Factory life has almost reached serfdom. ”

I thought my friend a well-meaning, sincere man, but extreme in his bitterness against capitalists. He could give me little information regarding the most important features of the life of the operatives of his city, but I am grateful to him for the opportunity for acquaintance with his opinions and the aims of his fellow-reformers.

I am obliged to say that I found few signs of interest among the work people in reforms of any kind. Most of them appeared to be entirely indifferent to such matters, and to political subjects in general. But there is a considerable number of men, especially among the spinners, who are discontented under what they deem tyranny and oppression on the part of the mill owners and agents. These operatives have an organization, or society, for the promotion of their aims, and they employ a secretary with a salary sufficient to enable him to devote his time to their interests. I met this secretary, and had a long conversation with him. He is a foreigner, and seemed a very good-natured fellow. He thought that in cases of dissatisfaction on the part of the operatives, the employers were usually ready to hear and consider any statement which the working-people might wish to present through a committee of their own choosing. He appeared to regard the owners and agents as reasonable men, who were disposed to deal justly with the laborers; and I thought that he, more than any other of the reformers whom I met, understood that both capitalists and laborers in this country are suffering from the operation of causes which no legislation or reform could at once remove.

The operatives are paid by the piece, and not by the day or hour; that is, it is the quantity of goods manufactured, and not the amount of time employed, which determines the amount of wages paid. The reformers complained that when a new mill is opened the agent stimulates the operatives to the highest possible performance and production for the first few days, and then adjusts the wages-rate upon the basis of what the best hands have thus been able to do for a short time. As only a few operatives are capable of such a pace, and even they cannot maintain it permanently, the arrangement has the effect of establishing a low rate of wages. (That is, if we represent by one hundred the amount of work performed in a day by the best hands when spurred to unusual activity, the average daily performance will not rise above eighty-five or ninety; but the amount of pay is regulated upon the assumption that the average daily work will reach one hundred.)

The reformers thought the average pay of the operatives of the city, at the time of my visit, was considerably less than one dollar per day for “ full hands,” that is, for those who can do a full day’s work; but the mill owners and agents ssured me that the average pay was above one dollar per day. I visited the agents and managers of several of the largest mills, and asked them for their view of the condition of the operatives and of the situation and prospects of the cotton manufacture in the city. They answered my inquiries with ready, quiet courtesy. Here is the substance of the notes which I made as we talked: —

“ The women weavers are paid a little more than one dollar per day. Any boy of thirteen or fourteen years old can make two dollars and a half per week. Operatives pay for rent, for four rooms, from three and a half dollars to six dollars per month. The owners and managers are satisfied with the ten-hour law, and do not think any additional legislation necessary (in this State) for the proper regulation of the relations between capital and labor, or the workingpeople and their employers. We prefer ten hours per day, but as the machinery is run by steam-power we have to start it a little before the hour, and some of the hands always go to work at once, in order to add a little to the day’s production, and so to their wages. At present rates of pay, the average operatives can save something from their wages. If we compare the cost of living and wages of the times before the war, say in 1860, with the cost of living and wages now, we shall find that operatives are better paid now than they were then. All of us, operatives and employers, have lived more extravagantly since the war than ever before. All wars make waste, and we are all of us suffering from the consequences of the waste caused by our civil war, and especially by the unwise expenditure of money since 1865. When wages were very high, a few years ago, the operatives wasted nearly all that they received. Few of them saved anything. We must all learn and practice economy. Many people who are regarded as being rich are living more carefully and economically than most of the working-people, because they have more foresight and a clearer understanding of the absolute necessity of keeping their expenditures within their income.

“The corporations do not own one fourth of the tenements or dwellings occupied by the operatives. It is for the interest of the capitalists that the operatives should own the houses they live in, and that as many as possible should have homes of their own. The capitalists and mill owners of the city all wish the operatives to buy land and build houses, and are always ready to sell them land at low rates, and to allow as much time for the payment as the purchasers desire. Many of the operatives in the largest mill, and some in all of them, have thus come into possession of comfortable homes. A man and his wife came into one of the mills, a few years ago, from a manufacturing town in England. They were then about fifty years old, and had never been able to have meat on their table except when now and then the man caught a hare. They were industrious and economical, saved money, and bought a piece of ground. A year or two ago they built a four-tenement house (a house with suites of rooms for four families). They occupy one and let the three others to tenants, and are living in comfort and happiness.

“ For several years the mills have been run in the interest of the operatives. Probably not more than one fourth of the mills in the city can pay any dividends during the current year. The capital invested in the mills amounts to nearly thirty millions of dollars; and for several years the profits upon these investments have not equaled one half of the lowest rates of interest paid by the savings-banks of the country. If the ideas or principles of the trades-unions could be carried out, half the mills would be bankrupt in ten years. The intelligence of the laboring people is increasing; we hope so, at any rate. A few wrong-headed and impracticable men wish to make mischief. In all cases of dissatisfaction on the part of operatives, if they appoint a committee to meet the managers, everything can be amicably arranged ; but a few agitators do whatever they can to produce discontent among the working-people, and to disturb the relations between them and their employers. One of the labor reformers bought a share or two of the stock of one of the largest mills, in order to gain admission to the meetings of the stockholders. Then he constantly reported the proceedings of these meetings to the trades-union of which he was a member, and used the knowledge he had obtained relative to the affairs of the mill corporation as a basis for perpetual complaint and agitation among the operatives.”

The capitalists and mill owners of the city with whom I conversed attributed the prevailing depression of business and industry in large measure to the waste of capital necessarily produced by our civil war, and in still greater degree to the extravagance of expenditure which was so general among our people a few years ago. They thought that the principal means of recovery must be economy and wisdom in expenditure; that capitalists and employers have come to understand this necessity more fully than the operatives do, as a class; and that those who belong to the capitalist class are at present really more saving and economical in their methods of living than the operatives.

I was greatly interested in learning about the amusements or diversions of the mill people. My first step was to ask a great many of the young women what they did in the evening, after working hours were over. The French Canadian girls, who are Catholics, nearly all replied, “ We stay at home. We have to sew, and mend our clothes, and wash them. We do not know anybody, and so we have no place to go in the evening.” At times the answer was, “ My mother” or “my sister will not let me go out.” Most of the other young women said, “ Oh, we go out with our fellers, and with some of the other girls.” “ And where do you go? ” “ Oh, along the streets, down town; to the postoffice, or the candy-store, if the boys will shout.” “ If they will shout, —what is that?” “ Oh, don’t you know? Why, that means if they will treat, — if they will buy some candy for us.” “ And do you drink something, too? ” To this the younger women always answered, “ No, we don’t drink anything, unless it ’s soda-water, sometimes, in warm weather.” But they usually pointed to some older companion, and said, “ She drinks, — she drinks beer.” Then the woman thus spoken of would laugh, and toss her head, and say, “ Ain’t you goin’ to shout?” And when I met the same group in the street in the evening, the question would be repeated, with a smile of recognition.

I do not think these girls and younger women have usually any habitual amusement, except this walking out with their friends which I have just mentioned. Once or twice during the winter many of them go to a ball. To go more frequently would be regarded by their own class as an extravagance, as an indication of unsteadiness and a tendency to dissipation. I found many young people in the mills who “ belonged,” as they said, to the Methodist church, and some who were Baptists. Probably there were, among the operatives, members of other religious societies, but I did not happen to meet them.

The young people whom I have thus far been describing appeared to be rather steady and well-behaved. They looked and acted as if they kept good hours, and had no marks of anything wild or irregular about them. But I saw others, both young men and women, whom I knew at. once to be of a different type. Every class, every type of character, has a rhythm of its own, which runs through all bodily movements, through the tones of the voice; which is accented in glances and changes of expression, and is revealed in all spontaneous mental action.

I knew that some of these young people would have other amusements than those I have described. I did not think it wise to ask any of them how they passed their evenings; I thought there might be better ways of acquiring this knowledge.

I had observed in various parts of the city such signs as “ Harmony Hall,”

“ The Avon Arms,” “ St. George’s Hall,” etc. I sauntered into one of these places, one evening, about nine o’clock. It was on the second floor, and was reached by an open stair-way running up from the street. I found a hall about fifty feet long and twenty-five feet wide. At one end was a bar for the sale of liquors, and at the other a curtained recess and a small stage or platform elevated two or three steps from the floor. There were about fifty persons present, grouped around eight or ten tables. About one fourth of them were young women. Some of the young men were smoking. There were glasses on the tables, and some of the young people were drinking beer. As I went up the stairs, I heard the clang of a piano much out of tune and the clapping of hands, and a young man was just descending from the stage, while he smiled and bowed in acknowledgment of the applause. He sat down with one of the groups nearest the stage, and some one at the table called for “ four beers.” The four glasses were taken away by a pleasant - looking English girl, and brought back filled. There were similar requests from various parts of the room, and after she had responded to them the young waitress approached the place where I sat alone, and civilly inquired, “ Is (here anything you wish for? ” I gave her an order that would bring her back to my table now and then.

When most of the glasses had been emptied once or twice, some one said, quietly, “Mr. Lee will oblige,” and there was a general clapping of hands. A young Englishman ascended the stage, and sang, in tolerable accord with the weary, protesting piano, a melancholy song about a sailor lover who sailed away from his mistress and never returned. Both hearts were true: one lies “ in his long, last sleep, a thousand fathoms deep, where the wild monsoons do sweep ” forever above his rest; the other “ watched her life away, looking seaward o’er the bay,” from a New England hil-top, and hoping to the end for one who came no more. At the close there was more applause and more beer, and for some time busy, chattering talk. There was nothing loud or boisterous. One of the girls, who was a little tipsy, came across the room, in a rather demonstrative way, and asked me if I was not “going to shout;” but a young man at the table she had left reproved her sharply, and one of the young women from the same company came over and led her back to her place.

By this time I had noted most of those present as persons whom I had met before, in the mills and on the streets. They were nearly all operatives, or had at some time belonged to that class. But I observed at one of the tables, with half a dozen young men and women around him, a young colored man whom I had never seen until now. He was more silent than any other member of the company, but was evidently the object of general attention and respect. He was the only person of his color in the hall, but was plainly as welcome there as anyone. He seemed obviously superior to his neighbors, and I was interested at once, and felt that I must know something about him. Presently there was another invitation to the stage, and when the young colored man rose to comply with it there was unusually hearty applause. He sang one song after another till he seemed tired, but the audience was still impatient for more. The songs were of many kinds, comic, sentimental, pathetic, and silly. One had these stanzas: —

When he sang “ I got a mammy in the promised land,” with a strange, wailing refrain, the English waiter-girl, who was sitting at my table, wiped her eyes with her apron, and everybody was very quiet. He sang and acted with a kind of suppressed intensity of manner and expression, and I thought that to him the dusty hall and its somewhat squalid appointments had given place to a grand theatre, thronged by an admiring, applauding multitude. He seemed rapt and inspired. His face was black, and the features African in type, but not at all repulsive or unpleasant. When he left the stage, I sent the waiter-girl to tell him I wished to see him. He came down the hall with a dignified courtesy of manner; we were introduced, and had a little conversation. I found him very intelligent. He talked well, but quietly and deliberately. His speech was that of cultivated New England people, and had none of the peculiarities which usually mark the language and utterance of colored persons.

It would not do to show too much curiosity or interest there, as this was my first visit to the hall; but I arranged to meet my colored friend next day, and took my leave, assured of a welcome there whenever I might return, I visited half a dozen similar places before midnight. They were all much alike. I spent several hours, at various times, in these music halls, calling sometimes in the afternoon, because the attendants had more time then than in the evening. Some of them had stories to tell which I wished to hear, but I had to wait till I had established such relations between us as would inspire them with the willingness to talk to me.

All the attendants at these places had worked in the mills. The young man who plays the piano is usually paid four or five dollars per week, besides his board. The young men who sing receive one dollar per night, but most of them board themselves. The real business at all these places is the sale of liquor. They all keep cigars, and most of them have pies and a few other articles of food, but the profits come from the drinking. The piano, the singing, and recitations attract and entertain visitors. These resorts are sustained almost entirely by the operatives, besides a great many other places where there is no music or entertainment of any kind, except the drink. At the city clerk’s office I learned from the official records that there are in the city two hundred and fifty-seven houses licensed to sell liquors, and many of the leading citizens expressed the opinion that the unlicensed drinking places (where liquor is sold unlawfully) were at least equal in number. Last year there were 5400 voters in the city; so there was a licensed drinking saloon for every twenty-one voters. The city’s revenue from these licenses last year was $38,782. This large sum, and a great deal besides, the liquor dealers received from the working-people,—a very large proportion of it from the mill hands. At one of these music halls the woman in charge informed me that “ the expenses of the establishment ” averaged two hundred dollars per month, and I visited several places which did a much larger business than this one.

The editor of the labor-reform newspaper told me that the most usual course for a man who for any reason falls out of the ranks of mill workers (if he loses his place by sickness, or is discharged) is the opening of a liquor saloon or drinking place. He takes up this business for a living, and rarely quits it for any other occupation. At first, he buys a very small stock, — a keg of beer, or a few gallons of low-grade whisky. He hires a little corner or closet in some shop or basement, or he begins in his own cellar, and is soon able to lay in a larger and more varied supply. After much observation and study of the subject in most of the States of our country, I believe there is no other kind of business or employment which can be entered upon or engaged in with so little capital, or which will yield so large a return in proportion to the amount invested. There is greater profit and less risk of loss than in any other occupation which is open to so many people. Its principal support comes from the classes engaged in manual labor. Many men will buy intoxicating liquors when they and their families are suffering for food. Whatever degree of poverty may prevail among the workingpeople, those who sell liquor to them still find the business profitable. The great causes of the drinking habit among the working-people are poor cookery, living in impure air, and the lack of any dramatic entertainment or amusement for their evenings or times of leisure.

I met the young colored man several times, and found him a person to give one a sad kind of interest in him. He was just then doing more to amuse and entertain the mill people than any one else in the city, so I gave a little time to conversation with him. I like average and ordinary men and women best, and have not commonly found what is unusual or extraordinary in human life or character best worth study or acquaintance. But this man was not precisely what I was looking for. On one occasion I asked him who was the author of a song he had just sung. Looking at me keenly, he asked, “ Do you like it? ” “Yes,” I said; “it is simple and tender and natural.” “ Well,” he replied, “it is mine, such as it is.” “ Do you mean that you wrote the words? ” “ Yes, the words and the music.” “ Have you written others ? ” “Oh, yes; I have quite an income from my songs.” “ Where are they published? ” He gave me the name of a well-known music-publishing house in Boston, and when I came home I ordered specimens of my friend’s compositions. They were sent to me, and I found everything as he had told me.

I asked him if he had been singing at these places in the city very long. “Nearly a year,” he replied; and then he told me that his business was negro minstrelsy and theatricals. He had traveled with the principal companies in this country, and had a permanent engagement at a good salary. But about a year ago his mother died. He was greatly attached to her, was with her in her last illness, and was “ too heartbroken to be making money. I did not feel like acting, and thought it would show more respect to my mother, if she knows about it, if I did not appear in public for a year. I sing a little in this private way to accommodate my friends here, and because it is not good to be doing nothing.” He acknowledged that he drank too much, and that his life was not what it should be. I asked him if anybody had ever encouraged him to cultivate his mind and make a man of himself. “ No,” said he; “ the only encouragement anybody ever gave me was,

' Bill, go another dollar on this! ’ ” But many people would probably find this man’s story more interesting if it were not true.

At the principal hotel I met many salesmen and book-keepers from the shops and stores of the city, and when there was opportunity I sometimes made inquiries regarding the mill people,— their character and ways of living. These gentlemen always appeared to be surprised that I should be interested about the operatives, or suppose there was anything in their life that was worthy of attention. At one time there was considerable excitement among my friends at the hotel, on account of the announcement that a certain “ celebrated star troupe ” of actors would appear “for one night only ” at the Academy of Music. It was to be a “ variety entertainment,” to comprise a play in two acts, songs, dances, a trapeze performance, etc., — all of the very highest character. My companions at the table courteously advised me to go. It would be a good opportunity to see the people of the city, as the attendance would be very large. “ Will the mill people be there?” I inquired. “Oh, no [with impatience]; they are not capable of appreciating anything of this kind. They have their own low amusements, but this is first-class.” I went. The house was filled with well-dressed people of both sexes. The feature of the entertainment which was most to the mind of the audience was a song. A rather pretty girl came out in spangled tights, and sang half a dozen stanzas with this refrain: —

This was “ received with great enthusiasm,” as the play-bills said it would be, and was encored again and again.

I looked around over the applauding multitude; the mill people were not there.

The mills were running on full time, and were worked to their utmost capacity, with all the hands the machinery would employ. They require about fifteen thousand hands. But there were, as I judged from all I could learn about the matter, between fifteen hundred and two thousand persons of the operative class in the city in excess of the number which the mills could employ.

These were destitute of work, except when, now and then, the temporary illness of some hand left a place vacant, and so gave the opportunity of work to one of these superfluous laborers for a day or two. There was much hardship among these people. Many had families, and their children suffered for food. In some of the worst cases the city gave assistance; the labor unions sustained others, in part; and neighborly kindness among the operatives was more helpful than either. The labor-reform agitation, in all its stages, from vague discontent to violent denunciation, was reinforced and sustained chiefly by the presence of this unemployed class. Their life was a daily struggle against the inevitable, — a long and useless waiting for what could not come. Every morning some hundreds of these seekers after employment presented themselves at the doors of the mills, in the hope, almost always a vain one, that a few of them might be wanted.

the overseers at the mills kindly allowed persons seeking work to put down their names in application for the opportunity of filling vacancies when they should occur. In visiting one of these unemployed families, I saw a fine-looking, capable young man, who had been idle for months. His name was on the list at one of the principal mills, but there were twenty-eight names before his, and it was not probable that his turn would ever come. This young man bears a well-known name, and his ancestors have lived in the State more than two hundred years. The presence of so large a number of superfluous hands in any place is a matter of grave importance. There were too many laborers there already, but every day there were new arrivals from other manufacturing towns. Some, on learning that the mills were crowded, resumed their quest in new directions. Others had not means to go farther, and remained to swell the number of the unemployed and discontented. Is it impossible to devise some plan which would prevent this migration of crowds of laborers to places where there is no demand for labor and no prospect of their finding employment? We already map the course of the winds and the state of the weather for the whole country each day. Would it be much more difficult to map the state of the labor market for the whole country every week or every month, or less valuable in its results? The impotence of society in the presence of such evils is more apparent than real.

I found several large Catholic temperance societies among the mill people. They were working vigorously and with excellent effect. The Catholic church is doing more than any other, I think, for the moral guidance and improvement of the operatives. The Methodist church comes next, and its work is important and salutary. I saw evidences, now and then, among the young Methodist converts, of strong sectarian feeling, a disposition to employ social pressure as a means of increasing the influence of the church. As this was, under the circumstances, a sign of earnestness and vitality, it was a less evil than indifference. The Baptist church has also a considerable share in the religious culture of the mill people; and it is probable that other religious bodies, besides those which I have named, are at work with noticeable energy and success among the operatives, but I had no opportunity of observing their activities. The Unitarian pastor informs me that his church has some influence among the young mill people, “but it reaches very few, as you might naturally expect it would. It is not fitted to their appreciation, nor, perhaps, to their wants.” He adds, “ Being brought little into contact with the operative class, I can in general speak only from hearsay in regard to them, and therefore should not presume to give an opinion to one who is searching for facts.”

Many of the older operatives, especially among the English, Scotch, and Americans, are strongly influenced by what is called modern scientific thought, and have come to regard religion as something outgrown and antiquated for all intelligent persons, but still useful and necessary for the ignorant and inferior classes, —the common people. The strongest separative and unfraternal influence which I have encountered or observed in American life and thought is this tendency of “scientific thought” to produce a feeling of contempt for those who do not share it, — for “the unenlightened masses.”

Several of the mill corporations of this city are embarrassed by indebtedness out of all proportion to their financial strength or available assets. Some of them have recently been forced to suspend payment, and it is probable that others will soon have a similar experience. These difficulties have been caused in part by embezzlements and defalcations, of which the city has had its Share, within a few years, in common with most other places in our country; but the popular judgment attributes far too large a proportion of the financial troubles of the mills to this source. Most of them have resulted from the effects upon business and industry produced by our civil war, and from the peculiar intellectual and psychological conditions which prevailed among our people for a few years after that convulsion. Usually these evils or embarrassments are the result of false or erroneous thinking. There was too much money invested in machinery for the manufacture of cotton goods, more than was required for all the business that could be done. More mills were built and equipped than could be employed with profit. These excessive and abnormal investments of capital in a particular branch of business were made because capitalists and manufacturers depended upon imaginary markets, upon a demand for cotton goods which was supposed to be practically unlimited.

The labor reformers insist that there can be no over-production while any human want remains unsupplied. This is pure sentimentalism, worthy of the political economy of Rousseau, and has no scientific or practical quality whatever. What is more to he regretted is that many of the writers of our time who are trying to aid the development of rational ideas on these subjects are themselves influenced, and much of their work is vitiated, by the same illusions which have made the sentimentalists their prey. When we declare, in poems, sermons, and optimistic essays, that men everywhere should be able to possess and enjoy whatever can add to the comfort, refinement, and happiness of life, it has a delightfully generous and philanthropic sound, and we are disposed to feel that we have done something to hasten “ the good time coming.” But the simple fact, of inexpugnable strength, upon which the whole matter depends in actual business is that over-production occurs whenever a manufacturer produces so many more goods than he can sell that the amount left upon his hands absorbs the profits of his business, or such a proportion of the profits as gradually to impair and lessen his productive capital. Men do not manufacture cotton cloth, or grow corn and wheat, or make newspapers, from motives of generosity or sentimental philanthropy. They produce all these articles to sell them; and fraternal justice to the laborers employed, and the use of whatever means can be applied for their education, will give increasing productiveness, security, and permanence to all these branches of industry. But it will not do to make any kind of goods merely because people ought to have them. We might insist that life must be a condition of squalid misery in every family where there is not a seven-octave piano; but the manufacturer who should therefore undertake to make pianos for all who do not now possess them would soon be in a position to give lessons to our political economists on the real nature of over-production. It is not true philanthropy to employ men to make goods which cannot be sold. To do so must always result in the destruction of capital and the injury of the laborer. Of course, there are chances of loss by the production of unsalable goods which cannot beforeseen, but this only makes all possible foresight the more necessary. We have built many mills and bought much costly machinery for the manufacture of cotton and iron goods which nobody would buy. Some of these enterprises have already come to an end in necessary ruin. Others are deferring their fate by adding to an indebtedness which is already greater than the present value of the entire property or investment. Much of the capital thus invested is lost, and can never be recovered by any possible skill or ingenuity.

My friend the editor of the laborreform newspaper holds that the best means for securing the rights of the la boring people, and obtaining a just remuneration for their labor, is the multiplication of their wants; that is, they should be taught to live more and more expensively. He says that civilization consists in this constant increase in the number of the wants of human beings, and that we must encourage the working-people to demand and use so many things as necessaries of life for them that employers will be compelled to give them higher wages. But I think that all the facts which have any relation to the subject indicate that this particular element or tendency of civilization has already an excessive development, and that most persons in this country have already more wants than can possibly be satisfied. It would tend to greater clearness of thinking if people would remember that there is no evidence of any provision in the nature of things which assures us the possession of everything we may want. It does not appear that the earth contains materials for unlimited wealth, or that it will ever be possible for everybody to be rich and live in luxury. The earth does contain materials for subsistence for human beings, as long as there are not too many of them. But the overproduction of human beings is a frequently recurring fact in the history of the race. It is a possibility in nearly all civilized countries, and though it may not require attention here for a long time to come, it is certain that its recognition is already necessary in all systematic treatment of the chief subjects connected with political economy and national welfare.

I believe the labor reformers are in error in thinking that the continued and indefinite reduction of the hours of labor would be a benefit to the working-people; but I am aware that they have the support, in this view of the matter, of nearly all the political economists of every school. Most writers upon the subject eulogize the effect of labor-saving machinery upon the interests of the workingman, affirming that any inconvenience resulting from it is but temporary, and that the permanent effects are necessarily beneficial. It is constantly assumed, as if it were an indisputable certainty, that the less men have to work the better for them. I cannot discover any necessity or provision in the nature of things which renders it thus certain that all devices and inventions which result in dispensing with human labor are to work advantage to mankind. It is time to challenge this assumption. It is entirely a question of fact, and a priori reasoning is here out of place. The most positive proof that labor-saving machinery is beneficial up to some certain point or degree of development and application cannot be safely accepted as evidence that its development and application can be profitably extended without limit.

I believe that for most men more than eight hours’ work per day is required for the maintenance of physical, mental, and moral health. I think that for most men, including operatives, mechanics, farmers, and clergymen, more than eight hours’ labor per day is necessary, in order to keep down and utilize the forces of the animal nature and passions. I believe that if improvements in machinery should discharge men from the necessity of laboring more than six hours a day, society would rot in measureless and fatal animalism. I have worked more than ten hours per day during most of my life, and believe it is best for us all to be compelled to work. It would be well, I think, if we could make it impossible for an idler to live on the face of the earth. Religious teachers are not without responsibility for having taught that the necessity of labor is a curse. The world owes most of its growth hitherto to men who tried to do as much work as they could. Its debt is small to the men who wished to do as little as possible.

The principal thing required in connection with these interests of our national life is, I think, that the operatives and other working-people shall have a better education, — an education which shall include some more adequate safeguards or defenses against illusion than are provided by the methods of culture and training now in common use in this country. As things are, it can scarcely be said that any effort is made to teach the working-people anything regarding their duties, rights, and interests as citizens, as Americans, except by the churches and the labor reformers. As religion is at present usually understood by its teachers in this country, it does not habitually give great prominence or emphasis to the cultivation of feelings of attachment, responsibility, and obligation to our country. It is commonly regarded as dealing with men only as individuals, and as accomplishing the elevation of society by improving the character of the units of which it is composed. Few, even of our best people, have now any vital feeling, or sense of nationality, of our position and duties as Americans. Nor have I been able to find anywhere a clear exposition of the claims which our country has upon us all, of any service which the nation rightly demands of its children, except what is required in time of war.

I think the time will come (and should come soon) when the preparation and supply of suitable reading matter, as an instrument for the education and guidance of the working-people, will be regarded as a necessary part of the equipment of the manufacturers in a town like this. It is so now, but the prevailing optimism, being essentially unintelligent, and therefore wanting in flexibility, is not yet aware of the new conditions and tendencies in our industrial, social, and national life. The capitalists, manufacturers, and cultivated people of every town where there are one thousand operatives should unite in the publication of a small, low-priced newspaper for circulation among the working - people, — a paper conducted by some one who understands that the elements and tendencies of our national life cannot be adequately dealt with by the subjective method which most of our teachers now employ; by a man who sees clearly that the knowledge and recognition of the objective facts of human experience supply the only sufficient basis for wise action.

The use of such means for the education and guidance of the working-people would cost far less, in money even, than the present plan of letting things take their course. The confident expectation that an improvement or revival of business will soothe the discontent of the working classes, and relieve the country from anxiety regarding their action, which has become general within the last few months, is, in part, the result of a hasty and superficial judgment of the facts of the time. There are many workingmen and teachers of workingmen in this country, believing in the absolute sovereignty of the laboring classes, who would not be rendered less active or determined in their campaign against the existing order of things by any possible degree of industrial prosperity. They believe in a different order of society, and hope to organize the wage laborers of the United States, and unite them in a persistent endeavor to modify the existing social and political order. They have more impulse and endurance than most of the supporters of our existing civilization, and also a better understanding of the necessity of adapting means to ends. They have also a measure of truth on their side, for the existing order and civilization cannot be defended as Complete, or wholly just; they need improvement.

I wish to deal gently with the impenetrable inapprehension which thinks it a sufficient answer to all such pleas for an increase of activity on the part of cultivated people to say that the ignorant and visionary schemers who would like to overthrow our institutions can never succeed. Sarcasm here would be a waste of force. But intelligence can understand that some things short of absolute ruin are still so undesirable and injurious that it is worth while to try to prevent them. The force by which the world has chiefly grown hitherto is the love of excellence for its own sake, the feeling of obligation to try to make things better, to remedy injustice, and to remove hurtful, enslaving ignorance whenever we can do so. But it is to be confessed that these are considerations of little weight with the optimism of our time.

It is not enough that people who have money and culture pay the operatives their wages. That is not all that justice requires. It is my belief that, in the city of which I have here written, the manufacturers were paying the laborers, at the time of my visit, all that they could pay, and that in some cases their wages absorbed the entire profits of the business. But the working-people are ignorant, and they are not taught as they should be. They are among the most valuable and indispensable of all the children of our country. Our national industry and prosperity would be impossible without them. Their life is at best rather hard and uninviting, with little room or means for the ameliorating, refining, and sustaining influences which vary and brighten life for many others. There is far too little fraternal interest in them, —too little disposition to share their burdens, and to help them to make the best of their life and of themselves that its inevitable conditions will allow. We do not know as much about them as we should. Most people think and care very little about the operatives, except when they threaten to make trouble. It is not safe or wise to allow so large a class to be so far alien and separate from the influences and spirit of our national life. I do not think the mill people are, as a class, inferior in morality, in the ordinary sense of that word, to any equally numerous class in this country. On the contrary, I believe they are superior in this respect to any class of men and women who do not work.

We ought to know more about this sort of people, about their circumstances, their ways of living, their thought, and the tendencies and effects of such a life as theirs upon character and civilization. As things are, there is nobody to speak for them. We should know more about what they do with their wages; how much they are able to save, and to what extent they have the disposition to save anything from their earnings. I was very desirous to learn something of this last feature of their life in the city herein described; but although I visited all the savings-banks, and met everywhere gentlemen desirous of assisting me, nobody, so far as I could learn, had any knowledge of the amount of deposits by operatives in the savings-banks of the city. The matter had once been “ looked up ” as an electioneering measure, but the statistics had not been preserved. The mill owners thought the amount was very large, while the labor reformers, as we have seen, believed it was “practically nothing.”

I received the utmost courtesy and kindness from all whom I met, without exception. In these qualities the city is not surpassed by any place I have ever visited. I am indebted to many persons there for invaluable assistance. and am most grateful to some who will never see what I have written.