some
moral and physical surroundings, and enjoying all the advantages of
schools, churches, libraries, and free institutions which the Great
Republic puts everywhere, with lavish profuseness, at the service even of
its least promising populations.

Concerning the Lowell mill-hands of to-day, I prefer, before my own
observations, to quote from an article entitled "Early Factory Labor in
New England," written by a lady, herself one of the early mill-girls, and
published in the "Massachusetts Labor Bureau Keport for 1883." She says:

"Last winter, I was invited to speak to a company of the Lowell
mill-girls, and tell them something of my early life as a member of their
guild. When my address was over, some of them gathered round and asked me
questions. In turn, I questioned them about their work, hours of labor,
wages, and means of improvement. When I urged them to occupy their spare
time in reading and study, they seemed to understand the need of it, but
answered, sadly, 'We will try, but we work so hard, and are so tired.' It
was plain that these operatives did not go to their labor with the
jubilant feeling of the old mill-girls, that they worked without aim or
purpose, and took no interest in anything beyond earning their daily
bread. There was a tired hopelessness about them, such as was never seen
among the early mill-girls. Yet they have more leisure, and earn more
money than the operatives of fifty years ago, but they do not know how to
improve the one or use the other. These American-born children of foreign
parentage are, indeed, under the control neither of their church nor their
parents, and they, consequently, adopt the vices and follies instead of
the good habits of our people. It is vital to the interests of the whole
community that they should be brought under good moral influence; that
they should live in better homes, and breathe a better social atmosphere
than is now to be found in our factory towns."

The city of Holyoke, another great cotton center, having 23,000
inhabitants, is in some respects the most remarkable town in the State of
Massachusetts. It was brought into existence, 35 years ago, by the
construction of a great dam across the Connecticut River; and, around the
water power thus created, mills have sprung up so rapidly that the
population, whose normal increase is eighteen per cent. every ten years in
Massachusetts, has doubled, during the last decade, in Holyoke. But eighty
out of every