, into forms of beauty and
fashion, moving in graceful dances.

Alas! this music of the shuttle and the daylong dance to it are not
altogether of the kind which Milton speaks of when he invokes the "soft
Lydian airs" of voluptuous leisure. From this time henceforward for
half a weary year, from the bell-call of morning twilight to half-past
seven in the evening, with brief intermissions for two hasty meals, the
operatives will be confined to their tasks. The proverbial facility of
the Yankees in despatching their dinners in the least possible time
seems to have been taken advantage of and reduced to a system on the
Lowell corporations. Strange as it may seem to the uninitiated, the
working-men and women here contrive to repair to their lodgings, make
the necessary preliminary ablutions, devour their beef and pudding, and
hurry back to their looms and jacks in the brief space of half an hour.
In this way the working-day in Lowell is eked out to an average
throughout the year of twelve and a half hours. This is a serious evil,
demanding the earnest consideration of the humane and philanthropic.
Both classes--the employer and the employed--would in the end be greatly
benefited by the general adoption of the "ten-hour system," although the
one might suffer a slight diminution in daily wages and the other in
yearly profits. Yet it is difficult to see how this most desirable
change is to be effected. The stronger and healthier portion of the
operatives might themselves object to it as strenuously as the distant
stockholder who looks only to his semi-annual dividends. Health is too
often a matter of secondary consideration. Gain is the great,
all-absorbing object. Very few, comparatively, regard Lowell as their
"continuing city." They look longingly back to green valleys of
Vermont, to quiet farm-houses on the head-waters of the Connecticut and
Merrimac, and to old familiar homes along the breezy seaboard of New
England, whence they have been urged by the knowledge that here they can
earn a larger amount of money in a given time than in any other place or
employment. They come here for gain, not for pleasure; for high wages,
not for the comforts that cluster about home. Here are poor widows
toiling to educate their children; daughters hoarding their wages to
redeem mortgaged paternal homesteads or to defray the expenses of sick
and infirm parents; young betrothed girls, about to add their savings to
those of their