In our laudable desire for "progress," in our vital wish "to develop our resources," we have produced many results, some interesting ones, quite unexpected. We have got cheap labor and we have got cheap cotton cloth and cheap boots and shoes, and a good deal of all of them. The smart little city of Lowell was begun by the most capable and enterprising of Boston's "solid men"; it was begun upon a theory that men and women in New England ought to be clean, decent, and virtuous. In its beginning nearly all the operatives were of New England birth, descendants of Puritans who were used to decency, cleanliness, and virtue. Then they lived and lodged in houses belonging to the mills, which were _regulated_--the men in their own boarding houses, the women in theirs. All were expected to be in their houses by or before a certain hour, say ten o'clock at night.
Then every young lady had a green silk parasol for Sunday's use, and she wrote poetry for the "Lowell Offering," if she felt the divine movement. At that early undeveloped time an English gentleman, one Anthony Trollope, visited the nascent city. He lamented the narrow-mindedness of the projectors, and predicted it would not work; that the little Lowell could never compete with such highly developed cities as Manchester and Preston, where they knew the magic of "cheap labor." In other words, Lowell could not be a great success.
That Arcadian simplicity worked for a while, but inevitably the magic of cheap labor made itself felt--it was potent--it came, it saw, it conquered. And now the best information I have convinces me that the squalor, filth, recklessness, and happiness are nearly or quite equal to what they are in the noble cities of Manchester and Glasgow in England. Should Mr. Trollope revisit those scenes of his youth, he would be as much delighted as any Englishman could permit himself to be with anything outside his "Merrie England" at the delectable advances made there.
He would find labor cheap and cotton cheap--as cheap as they are in his beloved Manchester. He would find, as in his beloved Manchester, that they made more than they could sell; which is the secret of cheapness. He would find that in that small elysium, in the year 1874, they made 135,000,000 yards of cotton cloth, which gospel of cotton they were then spreading abroad over all the earth, sending some of it to his beloved Manchester. He would learn also that there was invested there some $20,000,000 of good money of the realm, a large proportion of which paid no dividends; which also is an excellent method of securing cheapness. He would find all "narrow-minded regulations" quite done away with, and the full liberty of the subject enjoyed by all; that people staid "out nights" according to their own sweet wills; that men slept when they pleased and where they pleased, and with whom they pleased--women too for that matter; and that life was as free and pleasant as his good English heart could wish. He would find that the old-fashioned, narrow-minded New England stock had disappeared--not being cheap enough--and their places were fully supplied with a delightful conglomeration of gentlemen and ladies who had fled from poor Ireland, from the Azores, from Germany, from pastoral Acadie; and here and there he would note the pigtail of the frugal Chinese, the _avant courier of a better time coming_.