y, although one
thousand sewing women investigated received on an average twenty-five
cents a day. In 1835 the New York _Journal of Commerce_ estimated that
at the beginning of the century women's labor brought about fifty
cents a week, which was equivalent to twenty-five cents in 1835. In
1845 the New York _Tribune_ reported fifty thousand women averaging
less than two dollars a week wages, and thousands receiving one dollar
and fifty cents. Another investigation in 1845 found "female labor in
New York in a deplorable degree of servitude, privation and misery,
drudging on, miserably cooped up in ill-ventilated cellars and
garrets." Women worked fifteen to eighteen hours a day to earn one to
three dollars a week.

And yet authorities tell us that some of the mill towns of New
England, Lowell in particular, are looked back upon as being almost
idyllic as regards the opportunities for working women. On examination
it is found that what was exceptional from our point of view was not
the conditions, but the factory employees. In those days work in the
mills was "socially permissible." Indeed there was practically no
other field of employment open to educated girls. The old domestic
labors had been removed from the household--where could a girl with
spirit and ability make the necessary money to carry out her
legitimate desires? Her brothers "went west"--she went into the
factories--with the same spirit. Ambitious daughters of New England
farmers formed the bulk of cotton mill employees the first half of the
nineteenth century. Their granddaughters are probably college
graduates of the highest type to-day. After the long factory hours
they found time for reading, debating clubs, lectures, church
activities, French, and German classes. Part of the time some of the
mill operatives taught school. Many of them looked forward to
furthering their own education in such female seminaries as existed in
those days, the expense to be met from their mill earnings. Poorly
paid as mill hands were, it was often six to seven times what teachers
received.

"The mills offered not only regular employment and higher wages, but
educational advantages which many of the operatives prized even more
highly. Moreover, the girl who had worked in Lowell was looked upon
with respect as a person of importance when she returned to her rural
neighborhood. Her fashionable dress and manners and her general air of
independence were greatly envied by those