In the first place, Lowell is not open as a manufacturing town to the capitalists even of New England at large.  Stock may, I presume, be bought in the corporations, but no interloper can establish a mill there.  It is a close manufacturing community, bolstered up on all sides, and has none of that capacity for providing employment for a thickly growing population which belongs to such places as Manchester and Leeds.  That it should under its present system have been made in any degree profitable reflects great credit on the managers; but the profit does reach an amount which in America can be considered as remunerative.  The total capital invested by the twelve corporations is thirteen million and a half of dollars, or about two million seven hundred thousand pounds.  In only one of the corporations, that of the Merrimack Company, does the profit amount to twelve per cent.  In one, that of the Booth Company, it falls below seven per cent.  The average profit of the various establishments is something below nine per cent.  I am of course speaking of Lowell as it was previous to the war.  American capitalists are not, as a rule, contented with so low a rate of interest as this.

The States in these matters have had a great advantage over England.  They have been able to begin at the beginning.  Manufactories have grown up among us as our cities grew—­from the necessities and chances of the times.  When labor was wanted it was obtained in the ordinary way; and so when houses were built they were built in the ordinary way.  We had not the experience, and the results either for good or bad, of other nations to guide us.  The Americans, in seeing and resolving to adopt our commercial successes, have resolved also, if possible, to avoid the evils which have attended those successes.  It would be very desirable that all our factory girls should read and write, wear clean clothes, have decent beds, and eat hot meat every day.  But that is now impossible.  Gradually, with very up-hill work, but still I trust with sure work, much will be done to improve their position and render their life respectable; but in England we can have no Lowells.  In our thickly populated island any commercial Utopia is out of the question.  Nor can, as I think, Lowell be taken as a type of the future manufacturing towns of New England.  When New England employs millions in her factories instead of thousands—­the hands employed at Lowell, when the mills are at full work, are about 11,000—­she must cease to provide for them their beds and meals, their church-going proprieties and orderly modes of life.  In such an attempt she has all the experience of the world against her.  But nevertheless I think she will have done much good.  The tone which she will have given will not altogether lose its influence.  Employment in a factory is now considered reputable by a farmer and his children, and this idea will remain.  Factory work is regarded as more respectable than