Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 1.djvu/181

 SOCIAL CHANGES IN NEW HAMPSHIRE

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��in America it takes three to make a couple — he, she, and a hired girl. Had Adam been a modern, there would have been a hired girl in Paradise to look after little Abel and 'raise Cain," and to burn the meat (if they had any) and spoil the bread. Domestic manufactures declined as factories arose. It is within the mem- ory of men now living when three wise men from Boston traversed the banks of the Pawtucket near the falls, pretending to be angling, but in reality considering a plan of building a dam across the river and using the water to turn spindles. They bought the privilege, drew out the water by a canal, reared their rectangu- lar brick buildings and filled them with machinery. They then scoured the coun- try for farmers' girls to work in the fac- tories. This process went on until large cities, like Lowell, Lawrence and Man- chester, sprang up wholly devoted to manufactures. A single city often con- tained as many as 6000 American girls engaged in spinning and weaving. The entire surplus population of the conntry was temporarily imprisoned in these noisy work-shops. Girls could no longer be found for domestic service. The high wages of the factories commanded the services of all that could be spared from home. Then starving Ireland began to pour her industrious population upon our shores. The men worked by thou- sands upon our railroads, and the girls, everywhere, went into domestic service. Then the reign of Bridget commenced. She has, with her improved condition and increased wages, made herself mis- tress of the situation. She dictates terms of peace and war, because she prepares and serves out the rations of the family. The farmers' daughters are no longer known as ,k hired help." Not one in a hundred of those doing housework in this country is of American birth. They have also disappeared from the factories, and Irish operatives are filling their places. Neither domestic service nor factory la- bor now employs'American girls. It is said to be a mystery what becomes of all the pins. It is equally mysterious what becomes of American girls. They have ceased to milk the cows and churn the butter; they toil not neither do they

��spin, as they once did ; they are missed, sadly missed, in the kitchen and in the factory. Many of them, by the new pro- cess of culture, have become delicate la- dies, sitting in close rooms heated by air-tight stoves or furnaces, without the natural stimulus of light and air. afflicted with chronic neuralgia or pulmonary weakness. Our modern physical educa- tion, which is to cure all the shocks that flesh is heir to, is conducted in heated rooms. Travelling is no longer a health- ful exercise. Men and women, fifty years ago, went long journeys in open wagons or on horseback. The most rapid kind of locomotion was the six-horse stage with twenty-five passengers inside and out, making speed at nine miles an hour. A day's ride in such a vehicle jolted the body, stirred the blood, wearied the limbs, and made the traveller hungry and sleepy. He ate heartily, slept soundly, and was refreshed. Now we are whirled along, in suffocating cars, three hundred miles instead of sixty in a day. Not a muscle has been called into action, not a draught of fresh air has been inhaled, no pleasant scenery has been enjoyed; but, on the contrary, we have had night- mare visions of green fields, running brooks and sunny lakes, inextricably mixed up with deep cuts, dark tunnels, stfling bridges and repulsive stations, with the same crowd, apparently, of from thirty [to one hundred idlers doing the " heavy loafing " of the whole town, waiting for they know not what. We are set down at our destination, and the hotel stage takes us and the ladies' large traveling trunks to our modern inn, with numerous waiters, large fees and few real comforts. Nervous, weary and nauseated, without appetite, without pa- tience, without satisfaction of any kind, we retire to toss through the dreary night with excited nerves, aching limbs and horrible dreams. Surely the world does move. We save time but lose rest. Traveling. does not recruit but wearies us. Take this little picture and study it. An eminent English physician says that the daily travelers who go out and into London every day, on the cars, grow old and decrepit sooner than any other class of men with whom he is acquainted.

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