pictures are no examples for wage-earners to copy." 'Every one of them is the work of my wife," was the answer, "as they might be those of our art-scholars. Come and look at her studio." I was not fortunate enough to see the mistress of this charming retreat, who was absent for the moment from her delightful home, but it was easy to see that Colonel Barrows possesses an able coadjutor as well as a woman who exalts" in his wife. Her rooms are open to every mill-girl in Oakgrove, their adornments are things for her to study, their refinements goals for the granddaughters of Irish peasants to reach. Meanwhile, if there is no "Lady Bountiful" to patronize, there is counsel for trouble, sympathy for affliction, and encouragement for energy awaiting every operative who enters the chief's doors.

That this is no traveller's tale, no exaggerated account of what I saw at Willimantic, let the president's parting remarks testify. It was time I should go, having already absorbed many hours of my kind entertainer's day, so much interested was I in all he had to show or say. Shaking hands at his door, whence we surveyed the cottages of Oakgrove, crowding around the very feet of the larger house, I said, "You prefer, then, to live surrounded by your employés, and do not mind the white flutter of washing-days, or the shouts of children at play below, because you think you can better their lot by your presence?" "It is not, with mc, a

question of preference at all,” was the reply. “This mill and these people are my life, my career, the next greatest responsibility I have in the world after that of my own family. I dare as soon desert my flag in action, as leave my hands without their natural and appointed head. --Good-bye."

1

CHAPTER XIV.

LOWELL, PAST AND PRESENT.

"Let the captains of industry retire into their own hearts, and ask solemnly if there is nothing but vulturous hunger for fine wines, valet reputations, and gilt carriages discoverable there? And thou who feelest aught of a God-like stirring in thee, follow it, I conjure thee. thyself, be one of those that save thy country."-Carlyle.

Arise, save

WE already know that a high condition of labour in New England is a survival of a state of things once much more general than at present, and we have seen it, now threatened, as at Holyoke, with complete submergence under the waves of foreign immigration, now lifted, as at Willimantic, to an even greater height than in the early days, according as laissez-faire is, or is not, king. In the early days, indeed, laissez-faire had no share in the administration of the New England factory, which, at a time when labour was most degraded in Europe, was conducted with the utmost care for the mental, moral and physical condition of the operative.

In the beginning of this century, the public opinion of New England was very unfriendly to the establish

This,

ment of manufactories, so great were the complaints then made in Europe of these, as the seats of vice and disease. Thus, when Humphreysville, the first industrial village on the Naugatuck River, was built by the Hon. David Humphreys, in 1804, discreet parents were reluctant to place their sons and daughters in its paper, woollen and cotton factories, from unfavourable apprehensions concerning the tendency of such establishments. notwithstanding the fact that General Humphreys' desire to foster American manufactures was solely the result of patriotic motives, and that he began the work with the avowed determination, either to prevent the evils of the European factory system from arising, or, if this could not be done, to give up his design. Hence, he built comfortable and healthy houses for the accommodation of all his hands, who were abundantly supplied with vegetables from great gardens in the rear of the manufactories. All his apprentices were regularly instructed in reading, writing and arithmetic, and any operative discovered to be in any way immoral was immediately discharged.

The same public opinion which stimulated Humphreys' efforts for the moral and physical health of his people influenced the State legislature of that day. Humphreysville was still in its infancy when a law was passed constituting the select men and magistracy of any town in which manufactories had been, or should be established visitors of these institutions. The same

statute required employers to control, in a specified manner, the morals of their workmen, and to educate their children as other children of plain families were educated throughout the State. The visitors were charged to inquire in what manner these duties were performed by the mill-owner, and to report any laxity on his part to the State legislature. Thus, contrary to what had occurred in Europe, the beginnings of manufacturing enterprise in America were marked by special efforts to secure the health, education and morality of the operatives, while the idea of the mill-owner's direct responsibility for the intelligence and good behaviour of his employés was firmly established in the public mind.

It was during the time when this responsibility was fully recognized that the most important industrial town in New England came to the birth. Harriett Martineau and Charles Dickens are only two among many distinguished writers who have sketched the factory life of Lowell, such as it was forty years ago, and given the world pictures which, if they once caused some silly people to laugh at the "refinements of factory girls," were none the less occasions of astonishment and delight to all sensible men at the time they were published. But everything is changed since then, and Lowell no longer knows the girl who tended a spinning-frame during the day and wrote for the Lowell Offering at night. Successive waves of Irish and Canadian immigrants have swept her out of the factories which now, better than