Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/240

 struck by the relationship between the human being and the machinery. Thus, for example, I saw the young girls standing—each one between four busily working spinning jennies: they walked among them, looked at them, watched over and guarded them much as a mother would watch over and tend her children. The machinery was like an obedient child under the eye of an intelligent mother. The procession of the operatives, two and two, in shawls, bonnets, and green veils, as they went to their dinner, produced a fine and imposing effect. And the dinners which I saw at a couple of tables (they take their meals at small tables five or six together) appeared to be both good and sufficient. I observed that besides meat and potatoes there were fruit-tarts.

Several young women of the educated class at Lowell were introduced to me, and amongst these some who were remarkably pretty. After this my companions drove me out in a covered carriage over the crunching snow (there were seventeen degrees of cold this day) that I might see the town and its environs. The situation is beautiful, on the banks of the cheerfully rushing Merrimac river (the laughing river), and the views from the higher parts of the town as far as the white mountains of New Hampshire, which raise their snowy crowns above every other object, are extensive and magnificent. The town was laid out somewhat above thirty years ago by the great uncle of James Lowell, and has increased from a population at that time amounting to a few hundred persons, to thirty thousand, and the houses have increased in proportion.

Much stress is laid upon the good character of the young female operatives at the time of their entering the manufactories, and upon their behaviour during the period of their remaining there. One or two elopements I heard spoken of. But the life of labour here is more powerful than the life of romance, although that too lives in the