States that it is no very difficult thing. The field is moral: capital is less so. The field is religious, it attaches one to the soil, and elevates man. The trickeries of which one complains in America come from free capital, from the bold speculator; but as the moral base of the cultivated field is gigantic, it balances or rather bears down the frauds and adventurousness of capital, which at least, it moralizes.

SECTION VII

THE

LOWELL

FACTORY GIRLS BOSTON-THE BLACKS

PRIDE OF RACE.

One knows what manufacturing life is in France, and how the females so engaged exist, how many victims are thrown to prostitution, and what strange and abominable trades are invented by the crowding of men in the great cities. One knows what manner of education the children of the people receive in the streets and places, and how a young girl's intellect is developed in the same sphere. Laws, governments, ministers, administrators whom they are incessantly accusing can do nothing against the easy seduction, the vile reading, the misery which presses, the example which corrupts, the indifference which vitiates, the jealousy which gnaws, the desired enjoyments and the iniquity that aggravates the evil.

To cure these wounds there is nothing but the Christian principle which Calvinism has pushed to severity and which consecrates the labor of all, by basing it upon man's feebleness and his natural imperfection. This is not the moral basis which French chivalry has left to the workman and woman of France. The Child of the people, quick generous, clever

and easily amused, of whom so mournfully gay a portrait has been sketched by Mr. Robert Guyard, is neither less industrious, nor less endowed that her American sister at Lowell; but she is otherwise placed. "She never drops the needle until three o'clock on Sunday; mass or other religious office do not exist for her she prepares her little dinner and thinks of the ball as the negro forgets his cous cousou for the dance; finally she is happy, she goes to the ball, which is no great crime. A storm arises, the fair white frock is ruined, the week's labor is ruined. So she says, 66 one is forever buying yet never has anything." But on Monday next, the white frock is refreshed, and brilliant and ready for the dance." To this poor girl, when Catholicism does not guide her inexperienced youth, who has no asylum in the convent, for whom old family feeling has no protection, whose sanctuary is the ballroom, let us oppose the Lowell factory-girl, daughter of some farmer or workman, and employed by Bostonian capital Employing her strength and capacity, the manufacturer moralizes and enriches her, a great phenomenon worth some study.

The first curious fact is that a population of 30,000 now replace that of 200 which Lowell possessed in 1820. This creation of yesterday situated at the junction of the Merrimack and Concord rivers, is the second city in Massachusetts and perhaps the twelfth in importance of the Union. In 1816 there were but a few cabins. Now the spinsters of Lowell turn some two hundred thousand spindles; nearly all the important mills belong to corporations, eleven in number a little time ago. The principal one, called the Merrimack Company, owns the great canal which conducts the water power to the mills. Not only does it own the canal and the mills but all the land below the falls. Queen of the industry there, this company is the mistress or lessor of all the others. In 1844 these companies made 100,000,000 yards of printed

cotton, dyed 15,000,000 yards of the same stuff, and used an eighth part of the cotton produced in America.

As you approach Lowell, you find neither smoke nor putrid exhalations, nor crooked streets: no insalubrity: a pure nature furnishes a healthy atmosphere, plenty of water, and the anthracite coal which is used there, does not produce such masses of black vapor as hang over Manchester and Sheffield. All is tranquil or even gay. The freshness of the faces, the smiles of the women, the regular animation of the town and the extreme cleanliness of the streets seduce you. If you enter the establishments you find contentment upon all faces. Schools are numerous: the poorest can send their children to the primary schools, of which there are thirty; while eight upper seminaries furnish the more wealthy with a more complete education. The workmen who love knowledge have founded what they call a "laboring man's hall," where they are taught reading, writing, and modern languages. population of 30,000 send to school 6000 children.

A

As

The life of the Lowell women is still more remarkable. an American never employs infant labor, the factory girl is not taken until she is fifteen years old. She gains nearly $2 a week or more and her board. She is paid monthly. As she has little to pay for lodging or dress, she puts her savings into the bank, lets it grow to a thousand dollars or so, marries some one going westward, helps her husband to conduct some new prairie-farm and dies at an advanced age, after bringing up ten or eleven children. There is nothing like the European chance-life; the sentiment of religion and of family is preserved. There is some little pedantry joined to all this, as in Geneva and Glasgow. These moral factory girls are wrong in becoming blues. Mrs. Trolloppe calls them the "Precieuses ridicules of Industry."

The Bostonians are proud of Lowell, founded as it was by

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their capital, and which agrees well with their Puritanism and grave regularity. As basis of the prosperity of the model manufactories, we find the great matter of which we have already spoken, the respective liberty and mutual dependence of the States. Lowell grew by the suffering of South Carolina. The enormous and almost prohibitory tariff of 1828 assuring to capital placed in a certain way, much greater profits than to any other investment, produced the grand institutions which we have just described; manufacturing population sprang from the soil and the manufacturing capitalist soon grew rich the corporations of Lowell increased rapidly: gigantic fortunes were made; among others, that of Mr. Appleton, a person much esteemed in that country, some noise was made about it yet it was productive of glory and benefit to America. The slave states reproached the north with using the high tariff for their own profits at the expense of the consumers; and were in turn accused of maintaining slavery, of breaking the first laws of humanity, and of compromising in the eyes of the world, the federal integrity, the moral unity and the honor of the land.

And here presents itself the problem of slavery. Legally the question is small. The constitution has recognised the right of self-government in each State, makes the question of slavery a question of local administration, and Congress has no power to issue a decree of emancipation. To this the abolitionists reply that Washington is situated in a slave State; that the rules of Congress permit and enjoin it to determine upon measures essential to its repose and dignity, and that in maintaining slavery it destroys equilibrium and wounds justice. In this thorny and narrow enclosure rest, without power to get out, parliamentary discussion and trickery; outside of the circle, you find the true causes of the difficulty.

They, like all that belongs to the United States, are rooted in tradition, respect for State rights and above all in the spirit of race.

Not only do the blacks serve as instruments necessary to the grand conquests of the Americans, but in certain localities it would be difficult or impossible to replace them the pride of blood pushed to the extreme in the South, prevents their being considered as brethren, almost as men. The negro is not of the race, not the fellow, not like the son of Japhet, and nothing can elevate him to such rank. To conciliate this anomaly with their principles, the Puritans of the North claim the right of separating themselves from the blacks, as the Mormons separate from the Anabaptists or the Catholics. Therefore the Africans are left in possession of their own churches, taverns, waggons, and balls. Once emparked, the blacks remain so; and even when the traces of blood become faint, the white man will not yet acknowledge the equality of the mulatto or the quadroon. There is no example of marriage between a white and a creole; their union is illegal in the slave States. But if one do form such a marriage, he is not considered sufficiently punished by the public contempt, but is deprived of his rights as citizen. Before the marriage can be concluded he must swear that he has negro blood in his veins, that is that he has no civil rights. Mrs. Houston cites the example of a young man, "who injected some negro blood in to his arm, in order to swear, and so obtain the hand of a wealthy quadroon.”

The trace of African blood, the sign and color of the nails never disappear. The Emperor of Hayti would not be received in a tenth-rate hotel in the States. So the black prince, Boyer, found it through the United States even at the Astor House; nor was either box or parterre of the theatre open to him.