Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/156

118 Prides Crossing, and Magnolia, the summer homes of the greatest wealth of America.

Though Ocean street, Lynn, has many handsome residences, — the people living there boasting that nothing intervenes between them and Ireland save the stormy Atlantic, — still the city is not regarded as a summer resort, nor a residential district of Boston, but, as a factory town, one of the most important shoe factory centers in the world. When the American Civil War made a great demand for shoes, the old-fashioned method of producing foot wear by hand labor was not adequate to meet the demand. Men who held patents on machines for sewing sole leather found it lucrative to rent their machines and many small factories sprang up at this time, not only in Lynn, but in other towns adjoining Boston where land rent was cheaper than in the city and where labor could be attracted. Lynn easily led in this industry. Its situation was beautiful, the climate healthful, the accessibility to Boston with its many advantages easy. This industry very early attracted women workers as well as men and whole families went into the shoe factories, for women and children could operate the machines and find employment in the many divisions of the labor which arose from the factory method. Thus the character of a large proportion of the population of Lynn is indicated, and it will be readily grasped that this was an excellent starting point for a great religious work, even as Jesus found a seed place among the fishermen of Galilee and Paul among the tent-making Thessalonians.