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AMERCAN NOTES: TRAVELS IN AMERICA 1750-1920 A PARISIAN PASTOR'S GLANCE AT AMERICA BY REV. J. H. GRANDPIERRE LOWELL 1854 We could not leave the United States without visiting Lowell, that marvellous creation of American manufactures. Let the reader represent to himself a town of thirty-seven thousand inhabitants, twelve thousand of whom are employed in the factories, that is, four thousand one hundred and sixty-eight men, and eight thousand four hundred and seventy young women. Twelve manufacturing companies, represent a capital of thirteen million nine hundred thousand dollars. The cotton which is transported raw to the sixth story of the manufactory, is returned to the first floor transformed into printed calicoes, which are at once packed and sent off. The quantity of fabrics of all kinds woven every year at Lowell, would form a vast belt, long enough to gird several times the circumference of the globe. Seventeen miles of cloth are woven every hour, such is the railroad speed with which they work. But great as is the admiration excited by so wonderful a development
of human industry and skill, it is far surpassed, by the feeling of satisfaction
with which a Christian witnesses the paternal care and supervision exercised
over the nine thousand female operatives, by their employers. Each company
has built and furnished comfortable houses, where they are lodged and boarded
at a moderate price. These buildings, which are of immense size, are subdivided
into small separate tenements, where the young girls are received in companies
of twenty-four, under the supervision of a respectable woman who acts as
housekeeper, and enforces the regulations of the establishment. Each person
has her own room, and they may assemble when they wish in the parlor, where
they find a little library prepared for them. The rooms, and even the stairs,
are well carpeted. To see these young women on their way to their work,
from their neat dress and modest manners you would suppose them persons
in quite another station. There are, in fact, to be found among them daughters
of country clergymen, who do not think it beneath them to pass three or
four years at Lowell, that they may lay aside as the fruit of their
honorable labor and economy, a small sum which afterwards serves as their
dowry.
The operatives of Lowell earn from four to five dollars a week.
Half of this sum serves to pay their board, and they may thus economize
two or three dollars weekly. It is known, that these young women edit and
publish among themselves, a monthly journal:--some of the numbers of this,
which we have in our possession are really very remarkable. We
If we were making a book on the United States, we should have many other institutions to mention, many other facts to recount, but our readers must not forget that our visit was but of two months, and that we have only promised a few notes on such, facts as fell under our notice, in the sphere of religion and morals, in that short space of time.
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