American Notes for General Circulation

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I was met at the station at Lowell by a gentleman intimately
connected with the management of the factories there; and gladly
putting myself under his guidance, drove off at once to that
quarter of the town in which the works, the object of my visit,
were situated. Although only just of age - for if my recollection
serve me, it has been a manufacturing town barely one-and-twenty
years - Lowell is a large, populous, thriving place. Those
indications of its youth which first attract the eye, give it a
quaintness and oddity of character which, to a visitor from the old
country, is amusing enough. It was a very dirty winter's day, and
nothing in the whole town looked old to me, except the mud, which
in some parts was almost knee-deep, and might have been deposited
there, on the subsiding of the waters after the Deluge. In one
place, there was a new wooden church, which, having no steeple, and
being yet unpainted, looked like an enormous packing-case without
any direction upon it. In another there was a large hotel, whose
walls and colonnades were so crisp, and thin, and slight, that it
had exactly the appearance of being built with cards. I was
careful not to draw my breath as we passed, and trembled when I saw
a workman come out upon the roof, lest with one thoughtless stamp
of his foot he should crush the structure beneath him, and bring it
rattling down. The very river that moves the machinery in the
mills (for they are all worked by water power), seems to acquire a
new character from the fresh buildings of bright red brick and
painted wood among which it takes its course; and to be as light-
headed, thoughtless, and brisk a young river, in its murmurings and
tumblings, as one would desire to see. One would swear that every
'Bakery,' 'Grocery,' and 'Bookbindery,' and other kind of store,
took its shutters down for the first time, and started in business
yesterday. The golden pestles and mortars fixed as signs upon the
sun-blind frames outside the Druggists', appear to have been just
turned out of the United States' Mint; and when I saw a baby of
some week or ten days old in a woman's arms at a street corner, I
found myself unconsciously wondering where it came from: never
supposing for an instant that it could have been born in such a
young town as that.

There are several factories in Lowell, each of which belongs to
what we should term a Company of Proprietors, but what they call in
America a Corporation. I went over several of these; such as a
woollen factory, a carpet factory, and a cotton factory: examined
them in every part; and saw them in their ordinary working aspect,
with no preparation of any kind, or departure from their ordinary
everyday proceedings. I may add that I am well acquainted with our
manufacturing towns in England, and have visited many mills in
Manchester and elsewhere in the same manner.

I happened to arrive at the first factory just as the dinner hour
was over, and the girls were returning to their work; indeed the
stairs of the mill were thronged with them as I ascended. They
were all well dressed, but not to my thinking above their
condition; for I like to see the humbler classes of society careful
of their dress and appearance, and even, if they please, decorated
with such little trinkets as come within the compass of their
means. Supposing it confined within reasonable limits, I would
always encourage this kind of pride, as a worthy element of self-
respect, in any person I employed; and should no more be deterred
from doing so, because some wretched female referred her fall to a
love of dress, than I would allow my construction of the real
intent and meaning of the Sabbath to be influenced by any warning
to the well-disposed, founded on his backslidings on that
particular day, which might emanate from the rather doubtful
authority of a murderer in Newgate.

These girls, as I have said, were all well dressed: and that
phrase necessarily includes extreme cleanliness. They had
serviceable bonnets, good warm cloaks, and shawls; and were not
above clogs and pattens. Moreover, there were places in the mill
in which they could deposit these things without injury; and there
were conveniences for washing. They were healthy in appearance,
many of them remarkably so, and had the manners and deportment of
young women: not of degraded brutes of burden. If I had seen in
one of those mills (but I did not, though I looked for something of
this kind with a sharp eye), the most lisping, mincing, affected,
and ridiculous young creature that my imagination could suggest, I
should have thought of the careless, moping, slatternly, degraded,
dull reverse (I HAVE seen that), and should have been still well
pleased to look upon her.

The rooms in which they worked, were as well ordered as themselves.
In the windows of some, there were green plants, which were trained
to shade the glass; in all, there was as much fresh air,
cleanliness, and comfort, as the nature of the occupation would
possibly admit of. Out of so large a number of females, many of
whom were only then just verging upon womanhood, it may be
reasonably supposed that some were delicate and fragile in
appearance: no doubt there were. But I solemnly declare, that
from all the crowd I saw in the different factories that day, I
cannot recall or separate one young face that gave me a painful
impression; not one young girl whom, assuming it to be a matter of
necessity that she should gain her daily bread by the labour of her
hands, I would have removed from those works if I had had the
power.

They reside in various boarding-houses near at hand. The owners of
the mills are particularly careful to allow no persons to enter
upon the possession of these houses, whose characters have not
undergone the most searching and thorough inquiry. Any complaint
that is made against them, by the boarders, or by any one else, is
fully investigated; and if good ground of complaint be shown to
exist against them, they are removed, and their occupation is
handed over to some more deserving person. There are a few
children employed in these factories, but not many. The laws of
the State forbid their working more than nine months in the year,
and require that they be educated during the other three. For this
purpose there are schools in Lowell; and there are churches and
chapels of various persuasions, in which the young women may
observe that form of worship in which they have been educated.

At some distance from the factories, and on the highest and
pleasantest ground in the neighbourhood, stands their hospital, or
boarding-house for the sick: it is the best house in those parts,
and was built by an eminent merchant for his own residence. Like
that institution at Boston, which I have before described, it is
not parcelled out into wards, but is divided into convenient
chambers, each of which has all the comforts of a very comfortable
home. The principal medical attendant resides under the same roof;
and were the patients members of his own family, they could not be
better cared for, or attended with greater gentleness and
consideration. The weekly charge in this establishment for each
female patient is three dollars, or twelve shillings English; but
no girl employed by any of the corporations is ever excluded for
want of the means of payment. That they do not very often want the
means, may be gathered from the fact, that in July, 1841, no fewer
than nine hundred and seventy-eight of these girls were depositors
in the Lowell Savings Bank: the amount of whose joint savings was
estimated at one hundred thousand dollars, or twenty thousand
English pounds.

I am now going to state three facts, which will startle a large
class of readers on this side of the Atlantic, very much.

Firstly, there is a joint-stock piano in a great many of the
boarding-houses. Secondly, nearly all these young ladies subscribe
to circulating libraries. Thirdly, they have got up among
themselves a periodical called THE LOWELL OFFERING, 'A repository
of original articles, written exclusively by females actively
employed in the mills,' - which is duly printed, published, and
sold; and whereof I brought away from Lowell four hundred good
solid pages, which I have read from beginning to end.

The large class of readers, startled by these facts, will exclaim,
with one voice, 'How very preposterous!' On my deferentially
inquiring why, they will answer, 'These things are above their
station.' In reply to that objection, I would beg to ask what
their station is.

It is their station to work. And they DO work. They labour in
these mills, upon an average, twelve hours a day, which is
unquestionably work, and pretty tight work too. Perhaps it is
above their station to indulge in such amusements, on any terms.
Are we quite sure that we in England have not formed our ideas of
the 'station' of working people, from accustoming ourselves to the
contemplation of that class as they are, and not as they might be?
I think that if we examine our own feelings, we shall find that the
pianos, and the circulating libraries, and even the Lowell
Offering, startle us by their novelty, and not by their bearing
upon any abstract question of right or wrong.

For myself, I know no station in which, the occupation of to-day
cheerfully done and the occupation of to-morrow cheerfully looked
to, any one of these pursuits is not most humanising and laudable.
I know no station which is rendered more endurable to the person in
it, or more safe to the person out of it, by having ignorance for
its associate. I know no station which has a right to monopolise
the means of mutual instruction, improvement, and rational
entertainment; or which has ever continued to be a station very
long, after seeking to do so.

Of the merits of the Lowell Offering as a literary production, I
will only observe, putting entirely out of sight the fact of the
articles having been written by these girls after the arduous
labours of the day, that it will compare advantageously with a
great many English Annuals. It is pleasant to find that many of
its Tales are of the Mills and of those who work in them; that they
inculcate habits of self-denial and contentment, and teach good
doctrines of enlarged benevolence. A strong feeling for the
beauties of nature, as displayed in the solitudes the writers have
left at home, breathes through its pages like wholesome village
air; and though a circulating library is a favourable school for
the study of such topics, it has very scant allusion to fine
clothes, fine marriages, fine houses, or fine life. Some persons
might object to the papers being signed occasionally with rather
fine names, but this is an American fashion. One of the provinces
of the state legislature of Massachusetts is to alter ugly names
into pretty ones, as the children improve upon the tastes of their
parents. These changes costing little or nothing, scores of Mary
Annes are solemnly converted into Bevelinas every session.

It is said that on the occasion of a visit from General Jackson or
General Harrison to this town (I forget which, but it is not to the
purpose), he walked through three miles and a half of these young
ladies all dressed out with parasols and silk stockings. But as I
am not aware that any worse consequence ensued, than a sudden
looking-up of all the parasols and silk stockings in the market;
and perhaps the bankruptcy of some speculative New Englander who
bought them all up at any price, in expectation of a demand that
never came; I set no great store by the circumstance.

In this brief account of Lowell, and inadequate expression of the
gratification it yielded me, and cannot fail to afford to any
foreigner to whom the condition of such people at home is a subject
of interest and anxious speculation, I have carefully abstained
from drawing a comparison between these factories and those of our
own land. Many of the circumstances whose strong influence has
been at work for years in our manufacturing towns have not arisen
here; and there is no manufacturing population in Lowell, so to
speak: for these girls (often the daughters of small farmers) come
from other States, remain a few years in the mills, and then go
home for good.

The contrast would be a strong one, for it would be between the
Good and Evil, the living light and deepest shadow. I abstain from
it, because I deem it just to do so. But I only the more earnestly
adjure all those whose eyes may rest on these pages, to pause and
reflect upon the difference between this town and those great
haunts of desperate misery: to call to mind, if they can in the
midst of party strife and squabble, the efforts that must be made
to purge them of their suffering and danger: and last, and
foremost, to remember how the precious Time is rushing by.

I returned at night by the same railroad and in the same kind of
car. One of the passengers being exceedingly anxious to expound at
great length to my companion (not to me, of course) the true
principles on which books of travel in America should be written by
Englishmen, I feigned to fall asleep. But glancing all the way out
at window from the corners of my eyes, I found abundance of
entertainment for the rest of the ride in watching the effects of
the wood fire, which had been invisible in the morning but were now
brought out in full relief by the darkness: for we were travelling
in a whirlwind of bright sparks, which showered about us like a
storm of fiery snow.

CHAPTER V - WORCESTER. THE CONNECTICUT RIVER. HARTFORD. NEW
HAVEN. TO NEW YORK

LEAVING Boston on the afternoon of Saturday the fifth of February,
we proceeded by another railroad to Worcester: a pretty New
England town, where we had arranged to remain under the hospitable
roof of the Governor of the State, until Monday morning.

These towns and cities of New England (many of which would be
villages in Old England), are as favourable specimens of rural
America, as their people are of rural Americans. The well-trimmed
lawns and green meadows of home are not there; and the grass,
compared with our ornamental plots and pastures, is rank, and
rough, and wild: but delicate slopes of land, gently-swelling
hills, wooded valleys, and slender streams, abound. Every little
colony of houses has its church and school-house peeping from among
the white roofs and shady trees; every house is the whitest of the
white; every Venetian blind the greenest of the green; every fine
day's sky the bluest of the blue. A sharp dry wind and a slight
frost had so hardened the roads when we alighted at Worcester, that
their furrowed tracks were like ridges of granite. There was the
usual aspect of newness on every object, of course. All the
buildings looked as if they had been built and painted that
morning, and could be taken down on Monday with very little
trouble. In the keen evening air, every sharp outline looked a
hundred times sharper than ever. The clean cardboard colonnades
had no more perspective than a Chinese bridge on a tea-cup, and
appeared equally well calculated for use. The razor-like edges of
the detached cottages seemed to cut the very wind as it whistled
against them, and to send it smarting on its way with a shriller
cry than before. Those slightly-built wooden dwellings behind
which the sun was setting with a brilliant lustre, could be so
looked through and through, that the idea of any inhabitant being
able to hide himself from the public gaze, or to have any secrets
from the public eye, was not entertainable for a moment. Even
where a blazing fire shone through the uncurtained windows of some
distant house, it had the air of being newly lighted, and of
lacking warmth; and instead of awakening thoughts of a snug
chamber, bright with faces that first saw the light round that same
hearth, and ruddy with warm hangings, it came upon one suggestive
of the smell of new mortar and damp walls.

So I thought, at least, that evening. Next morning when the sun
was shining brightly, and the clear church bells were ringing, and
sedate people in their best clothes enlivened the pathway near at
hand and dotted the distant thread of road, there was a pleasant
Sabbath peacefulness on everything, which it was good to feel. It
would have been the better for an old church; better still for some
old graves; but as it was, a wholesome repose and tranquillity
pervaded the scene, which after the restless ocean and the hurried
city, had a doubly grateful influence on the spirits.

We went on next morning, still by railroad, to Springfield. From
that place to Hartford, whither we were bound, is a distance of
only five-and-twenty miles, but at that time of the year the roads
were so bad that the journey would probably have occupied ten or
twelve hours. Fortunately, however, the winter having been
unusually mild, the Connecticut River was 'open,' or, in other
words, not frozen. The captain of a small steamboat was going to
make his first trip for the season that day (the second February
trip, I believe, within the memory of man), and only waited for us
to go on board. Accordingly, we went on board, with as little
delay as might be. He was as good as his word, and started
directly.

It certainly was not called a small steamboat without reason. I
omitted to ask the question, but I should think it must have been
of about half a pony power. Mr. Paap, the celebrated Dwarf, might
have lived and died happily in the cabin, which was fitted with
common sash-windows like an ordinary dwelling-house. These windows
had bright-red curtains, too, hung on slack strings across the
lower panes; so that it looked like the parlour of a Lilliputian
public-house, which had got afloat in a flood or some other water
accident, and was drifting nobody knew where. But even in this
chamber there was a rocking-chair. It would be impossible to get
on anywhere, in America, without a rocking-chair. I am afraid to
tell how many feet short this vessel was, or how many feet narrow:
to apply the words length and width to such measurement would be a
contradiction in terms. But I may state that we all kept the
middle of the deck, lest the boat should unexpectedly tip over; and
that the machinery, by some surprising process of condensation,
worked between it and the keel: the whole forming a warm sandwich,
about three feet thick.

It rained all day as I once thought it never did rain anywhere, but
in the Highlands of Scotland. The river was full of floating
blocks of ice, which were constantly crunching and cracking under
us; and the depth of water, in the course we took to avoid the
larger masses, carried down the middle of the river by the current,
did not exceed a few inches. Nevertheless, we moved onward,
dexterously; and being well wrapped up, bade defiance to the
weather, and enjoyed the journey. The Connecticut River is a fine
stream; and the banks in summer-time are, I have no doubt,
beautiful; at all events, I was told so by a young lady in the
cabin; and she should be a judge of beauty, if the possession of a
quality include the appreciation of it, for a more beautiful
creature I never looked upon.

After two hours and a half of this odd travelling (including a
stoppage at a small town, where we were saluted by a gun
considerably bigger than our own chimney), we reached Hartford, and
straightway repaired to an extremely comfortable hotel: except, as
usual, in the article of bedrooms, which, in almost every place we
visited, were very conducive to early rising.

We tarried here, four days. The town is beautifully situated in a
basin of green hills; the soil is rich, well-wooded, and carefully
improved. It is the seat of the local legislature of Connecticut,
which sage body enacted, in bygone times, the renowned code of
'Blue Laws,' in virtue whereof, among other enlightened provisions,
any citizen who could be proved to have kissed his wife on Sunday,
was punishable, I believe, with the stocks. Too much of the old
Puritan spirit exists in these parts to the present hour; but its
influence has not tended, that I know, to make the people less hard
in their bargains, or more equal in their dealings. As I never
heard of its working that effect anywhere else, I infer that it
never will, here. Indeed, I am accustomed, with reference to great
professions and severe faces, to judge of the goods of the other
world pretty much as I judge of the goods of this; and whenever I
see a dealer in such commodities with too great a display of them
in his window, I doubt the quality of the article within.

In Hartford stands the famous oak in which the charter of King
Charles was hidden. It is now inclosed in a gentleman's garden.
In the State House is the charter itself. I found the courts of
law here, just the same as at Boston; the public institutions
almost as good. The Insane Asylum is admirably conducted, and so
is the Institution for the Deaf and Dumb.

I very much questioned within myself, as I walked through the
Insane Asylum, whether I should have known the attendants from the
patients, but for the few words which passed between the former,
and the Doctor, in reference to the persons under their charge. Of
course I limit this remark merely to their looks; for the
conversation of the mad people was mad enough.

There was one little, prim old lady, of very smiling and good-
humoured appearance, who came sidling up to me from the end of a
long passage, and with a curtsey of inexpressible condescension,
propounded this unaccountable inquiry:

'Does Pontefract still flourish, sir, upon the soil of England?'

'He does, ma'am,' I rejoined.

'When you last saw him, sir, he was - '

'Well, ma'am,' said I, 'extremely well. He begged me to present
his compliments. I never saw him looking better.'

At this, the old lady was very much delighted. After glancing at
me for a moment, as if to be quite sure that I was serious in my
respectful air, she sidled back some paces; sidled forward again;
made a sudden skip (at which I precipitately retreated a step or
two); and said:

'I am an antediluvian, sir.'

I thought the best thing to say was, that I had suspected as much
from the first. Therefore I said so.

'It is an extremely proud and pleasant thing, sir, to be an
antediluvian,' said the old lady.

'I should think it was, ma'am,' I rejoined.

The old lady kissed her hand, gave another skip, smirked and sidled
down the gallery in a most extraordinary manner, and ambled
gracefully into her own bed-chamber.

In another part of the building, there was a male patient in bed;
very much flushed and heated.

'Well,' said he, starting up, and pulling off his night-cap: 'It's
all settled at last. I have arranged it with Queen Victoria.'

'Arranged what?' asked the Doctor.

'Why, that business,' passing his hand wearily across his forehead,
'about the siege of New York.'

'Oh!' said I, like a man suddenly enlightened. For he looked at me
for an answer.

'Yes. Every house without a signal will be fired upon by the
British troops. No harm will be done to the others. No harm at
all. Those that want to be safe, must hoist flags. That's all
they'll have to do. They must hoist flags.'

Even while he was speaking he seemed, I thought, to have some faint
idea that his talk was incoherent. Directly he had said these
words, he lay down again; gave a kind of a groan; and covered his
hot head with the blankets.

There was another: a young man, whose madness was love and music.
After playing on the accordion a march he had composed, he was very
anxious that I should walk into his chamber, which I immediately
did.

By way of being very knowing, and humouring him to the top of his
bent, I went to the window, which commanded a beautiful prospect,
and remarked, with an address upon which I greatly plumed myself:

'What a delicious country you have about these lodgings of yours!'

'Poh!' said he, moving his fingers carelessly over the notes of his
instrument: 'WELL ENOUGH FOR SUCH AN INSTITUTION AS THIS!'

I don't think I was ever so taken aback in all my life.

'I come here just for a whim,' he said coolly. 'That's all.'

'Oh! That's all!' said I.

'Yes. That's all. The Doctor's a smart man. He quite enters into
it. It's a joke of mine. I like it for a time. You needn't
mention it, but I think I shall go out next Tuesday!'

I assured him that I would consider our interview perfectly
confidential; and rejoined the Doctor. As we were passing through
a gallery on our way out, a well-dressed lady, of quiet and
composed manners, came up, and proffering a slip of paper and a
pen, begged that I would oblige her with an autograph, I complied,
and we parted.

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