In the beginning of our history, women were at as high a premium as they are now in the remote West, but this was a temporary state, and as more and more, Fortune smiled on the struggling colonies, many forms of labor were transferred from male to female hands. Limitations were of the sharpest. That they were often unconscious ones, made them no less grinding. To "better one's self" was the effort of all. Long before the Declaration of Independence had formulated the thought that all men possess certain inalienable rights, amongst which are "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," this had become the faith of those who, braving the perils of the deep, had settled in an unknown country, that they might enjoy the rights to which they had been born. The largest liberty for the individual consistent with the equal liberty of others was demanded and received, nor did it lessen as time went on. Liberty begat liberty. The ideal was always a growing one. Less limitation, not more, was the order of each fresh day that dawned. To every soul born into the colony, to every descendant of these souls, was a larger hope, a higher ambition. The standard of living altered steadily even in that portion of the country which retained longest the old simplicity, and best knew how to combine "plain living and high thinking," until in course of time the family remained no longer a colony in itself. Clothing and every necessary, which was formerly of home manufacture, could now be obtained from without, and women found outside the family practicable work to do.
The first factory established in New England, early in the present century, ended the old order or rather was the beginning of the end. But long before machinery had made the factory a necessity, there had been the struggle to break the bonds which held all women save the few who had wealth fast to the household. The same spirit that brought the pilgrim over the sea stirred in his descendants. The kitchen had proved itself a prison no less than now, and women and girls flocked into this new haven and worked with an enthusiasm that nothing could dampen.
"Oh, those blessed factories!" said to me one day, a woman, herself an earnest worker for present factory reform, and who began her literary life as contributor to the Lowell _Offering_. "You people will never know the emancipation they brought. I loathed the kitchen, and life went by in one. So many New England kitchens were built with no outlook, and ours was one. I used to run round the house to see the sunset over the mountain, and I can hear Aunt Nabby now: 'There goes that child again! I'd lock her up if she were mine!' We were all locked up! No chance for more than the commonest education; no money for any other. And then came these blessed factories! You laugh, but that was what they seemed then. We earned in them and saved, and in the end got our education, or gave it to our brothers, who were almost as shut in. They have altered--yes; but they were deliverance in the beginning, I can tell you, and in spite of present knowledge, I never see one of the tall chimneys without remembering and being thankful."