"The crude treasures, perpetually exposed before our eyes, contain within them other and more valuable principles. All these, likewise, in their numberless combinations, which ages of labour and research can never exhaust, may be destined to furnish, in perpetual succession, new sources of our wealth and of our happiness."

Babbage.

The whole American people suffered, during the revolutionary war, from the want of the comforts and some of the necessaries of life, now so called. Their commerce with the world abroad being almost wholly intercepted, they had nothing wherewith to console themselves but the stocks which might be left in their warehouses, and the produce of their soil. It is amazing, at this day, to hear of the wants of the commonest articles of clothing and domestic use, undergone in those days by some of the first families in the republic.

The experience of these troubles suggested to many persons the expediency of establishing manufactures in the United States: but there was an almost universal prejudice against this mode of employment. It is amusing now to read Hamilton's celebrated Report on Manufactures, presented in 1790, and to see how elaborately the popular objections to manufactures are answered. The persuasion of the nation was that America was designed to be an agricultural country; that agriculture was wholly productive, and manufactures not productive at all; and that agriculture was the more honourable occupation. The two former prejudices have been put to flight by happy experience. The last still lingers. It is not five years since the President's message declared that "the wealth and strength of a country are its population; and the best part of that population are the cultivators of the soil."

Such prepossessions may be left to die out. They arise mainly from a very good notion, not very clearly defined;—that the more intercourse men have with Nature, the better for the men. This is true; but Nature is present in all places where the hands of men work, if the workmen can but see her. If Nature is supposed present only where there is a blue sky overhead, and grass and trees around, this shows only the narrowness of mind of him who thus supposes. Her forces are at work wherever there is mechanism; and man only directs them to his particular purpose. In America, it may be said that her beauty is present wherever her forces are at work; for men have there set up their mechanism in some of the choicest spots in the land. There is a good and an evil aspect belonging to all things. If tourists are exasperated at fine scenery being deformed by the erection of mills, (which in many instances are more of an ornament than a deformity,) let others be awake to the advantage that it is to the work-people to have their dwellings and their occupation fixed in spots where the hills are heaped together, and the waters leap and whirl among rocks, rather than in dull suburbs where they and their employments may not annoy the eye of the lover of the picturesque. It always gave me pleasure to see the artisans at work about such places as Glen's Falls, the Falls of the Genessee, and on the banks of some of the whirling streams in the New England valleys. I felt that they caught, or might catch, as beautiful glimpses of Nature's face as the western settler. If the internal circumstances were favourable, there was little in the outward to choose between. If they had the open mind's eye to see beauty, and the soul to feel wonder, it mattered little whether it was the forest or the waterfall (even though it were called the "water-privilege") that they had to look upon; whether it was by the agency of vegetation or of steam that they had to work. It is deplorable enough, in this view, to be a poor artisan in the heart of our English Manchester: but to be a thriving one in the most beautiful outskirts of Sheffield is, perhaps, as favourable a lot for the lover of nature as to be a labourer on any soil: and the privileges of the American artisans are like this.

As to the old objection to American manufactures, that America was designed to be an agricultural country,—it seems to me, as I said before, that America was meant to be everything. Her group of republics is merged in one, in the eyes of the world; and, for some purposes, in reality: but this involves no obligation to make them all alike in their produce and occupations; but rather the contrary. Here, as everywhere else, let the laws of nature be followed, and the procedure will be wise. Nature has nothing to do with artificial boundaries and arbitrary inclosures. There are many soils and many climates included within the boundary line of the United States; many countries; and one rule cannot be laid down for all. If there be any one or more of these where the requisites for manufactures are present, and those for agriculture deficient, there let manufactures arise. If there is poor land, and good mill-seats; abundant material, animal and mineral, on the spot, and vegetable easily to be procured; a sufficiency of hands, and talent for the construction and use of machinery, there should manufactures spring up. This is eminently the case with New England, and some other parts of the United States. It was perceived to be so, even in the days when the growth of cotton in the south was spoken of as a small experiment, not likely to produce great consequences.

New England formerly depended chiefly on the carrying trade. When that resource was diminished, after the war, it is difficult to see how her people were to be prevented setting up manufactures, or why they needed any particular exhortation or assistance to do it. They had the opportunity of obtaining foreign capital; their previous foreign intercourses having pointed out to them where it had accumulated, and might therefore be obtained with advantage. They had a vast material, left from their fisheries, of skins, oil, and the bones of marine animals; they had bark, hides, wood, flax, hemp, iron, and clay. They had also the requisite skill; as may be seen by the following list of domestic manufactures, carried on in private houses only, in 1790. "Great quantities of coarse cloths, coatings, serges and flannels, linsey-woolseys, hosiery of wool, cotton, and thread, coarse fustians, jeans, and muslins, coverlets and counterpanes, tow linens, coarse shirtings, sheetings, towellings, and table-linen, and various mixtures of wool and cotton, and of cotton and flax, are made in the household way; and, in many instances, to an extent not only sufficient for the supply of the family in which they are made, but for sale, and even in some cases for exportation. It is computed, in a number of districts, that two-thirds, three-fourths, and even four-fifths of all the clothing of the inhabitants, are made by themselves."[5] If all this was done without the advantage of division of labour, of masses of capital, or of other machinery than might be set up in a farm-house parlour, it is clear that this region was fully prepared, five-and-forty years ago, for the introduction of manufactures on a large scale; and there appears every reason to believe that they might have been left to their natural growth.

The same Report mentions seventeen classes of manufacture going on as distinct trades, at the same time, in the northern States.

The only plausible objection to the establishment of manufactures was the scarcity and dearness of labour, in comparison with that of the old countries of Europe. But, if the exportation of some articles actually took place, while the labour which produced them was scattered about in farm-houses, what might not be expected if the same labour could be called forth and concentrated, and aided by the introduction of machinery? A great immigration of artisans might also be looked for, when once any temptation was held out to the poor of Europe to come over to a young and thriving country. Moreover, improvements in machinery are the invariable consequence of a deficiency of manufacturing labour; for the obvious reason that men's wits are urged to supply the want under which their interests suffer. Again: manufactures can, to a considerable degree, be carried on by the labour of women; and there is a great number of unemployed women in New England, from the circumstance that the young men of that region wander away in search of a settlement on the land; and, after being settled, find wives in the south and west.

Thus much of the case might have been, and was by some, foreseen. What has been the event?

In 1825, the amount of manufactures exported from the United States, was 5,729,797 dollars. Of these about one-fourth were cotton-piece goods, in the sale of which the American merchants were now able to compete with the English, in some foreign markets. The manufacture of cottons in the United States afforded a market for one hundred and seventy-five thousand bales of cotton annually; and the printed cottons manufactured at home amounted annually to fourteen millions of yards. The importation of cotton goods into the country in 1825 was in value between twelve and thirteen millions of dollars; and in 1826, between nine and ten millions. The woollen manufacture has never flourished like the cotton; the bad effects of the tariff being more immediately visible in regard to articles of manufacture whose raw material must be chiefly derived from abroad.

In 1828, the legislature of Massachusetts passed resolutions deploring the increasing depression of the woollen manufacture, and praying for increased protection from Congress. The exportation of cotton goods that year amounted to upwards of a million of dollars; and the next year to nearly a million and a half. The importation of cotton goods was all but prohibited by the tariff of 1824: and the consequence was an immense investment of capital in the cotton manufacture, almost on the instant; and some perilous fluctuations since, too nearly resembling the agitations of older countries, where the pernicious policy of ages has accumulated difficulties on the present generation.

At Lowell, in Massachusetts, there was in 1818, a small satinet mill, employing about twenty hands; the place itself containing two hundred inhabitants. In 1825, the Merrimack Manufacturing Company was formed; it was joined by others; and in 1832, the capital invested was above six millions of dollars. The whole number of operatives employed was five thousand; of whom three thousand eight hundred were women and girls. The quantity of raw cotton used was upwards of twenty thousand bales. The quantity of pure cotton goods manufactured was twenty-five millions of yards. The woollen fabric manufactured in these establishments was, at the same time, one hundred and fifty thousand yards. Sixty-eight carpet-looms were at work also. The workmen employed in all these operations received for wages about 1,200,000 dollars per annum. About two hundred mechanics, of a high order of ability, are constantly employed. The fuel consumed in a year is five thousand tons of anthracite coal, besides charcoal and wood.

The same protective system which caused the sudden growth of such an establishment as this, tempted numerous capitalists to seek their share of the supposed benefits of the tariff. The manufacturing interest was well nigh ruined by the protection it had asked for. The competition and consequent over-manufacture were tremendous. Failure after failure took place, till forty-five thousand spindles were standing idle, and thousands of operatives were thrown into a state of poverty unnatural enough in such a country as theirs. A cry was raised by many for a repeal of the tariff: this created a panic among those who, on the strength of the tariff, had withdrawn their capital from commerce, and invested it in manufactures. The stock of all the manufacturing companies was offered in vain, at prices ruinously low. Thus stood matters in 1829.

The history of the quarrel between the north and south about the tariff, and the nature of the Compromise Bill, is already known. The mischief done will be repaired, as far as reparation is possible, by the reduction of the import duties, year by year, till 1842. If the demands of the country and of foreign customers should not rise to the limit of the over-manufacture which has taken place, time is thus allowed for the gradual withdrawing of the capital and industry which have been seduced into this method of employment. Meantime, the manufactures of the northern States are permanently established, though not in the wisest way. If they had been left to themselves, they would have been an unmixed good to the community. As it is, society has suffered the inevitable consequences of an irrational policy,—a policy indefensible in a republic. It is well that the experiment wrought out its consequences so speedily and so plainly that any repetition is unlikely,—little as the natural laws which regulate commerce are yet understood.

In 1831, the total number of looms employed in the cotton manufacture of the United States was 33,433. Of these, 21,336 were in New England; 3,653 in New York State; 6,301 in Pennsylvania; and the rest in Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and Virginia.

Next to the cotton and woollen manufactures, the most valuable are manufactures from flax and hemp; from tobacco and grain; sugar, soap, and candles, gunpowder, gold and silver coin, iron, copper and brass, hats, medicinal drugs, and shoes.

The shoe manufacture is one of the most remarkable in the States, from the suddenness and extent of its spread. It has been mentioned that the shoe trade of New York State is more valuable than the total commerce of Georgia. The extent to which the manufacture is carried on in one village in Massachusetts, with which I am acquainted, shows the prosperity of the business.

In order to shoemaking, there must be tanning. There are many and large tanneries in Danvers and the outskirts of Salem, for the supply of the Lynn shoe-manufacture. The largest tannery in the United States is at Salem. The hides are partly imported. The bark is brought from Maine. These tanneries were in a state of temporary adversity when I saw them. Some kinds of skins are two or three years in tanning; and capital is thus locked up in such amounts as render fluctuation dangerous. It had lately been discovered that oak bark could be had cheaper, and tanning consequently carried on to a greater advantage up the Hudson than on the Massachusetts coast: so that the tanners and curriers of Salem and Danvers were descending somewhat from their high prosperity. But nothing could exceed the nourishing aspect of Lynn, the sanctum of St. Crispin.

In 1831, the value of boots and shoes, (very few boots, and chiefly ladies' shoes,) made at Lynn was nearly a million of dollars a year. The total number made was above a million and a half pairs: the number of people employed, three thousand five hundred; being about seven-eighths of the population of the place, partially employed; and some hundreds from other places, wholly employed. Last year, the place was much on the increase. A green, with a piece of water in the middle, and trees, was being laid out in the centre of the town. New houses were rising in all directions, and fresh hands were welcomed from any quarter; for the orders sent could not be executed. Besides the domestic supply, two million pairs of ladies' shoes a-year were sent off to the remotest corners of the States; and, as they have once penetrated there, it seems difficult to imagine where the demand will stop; for those remote corners are all being more thickly peopled every day. Their united demand will be enough to make the fortune of a whole State.

It seems probable that a few more manufactures may be added to those which are sure to flourish in the United States: as silk and wine. If the government firmly refuses to interfere again in the way of protection, it will be easily and safely discoverable what resources the country really possesses; and what direction her improving industry may naturally and profitably take.

SECTION I.
THE TARIFF.

If I were to go into anything like a detailed account of what I heard about the tariff, during my travels, no room would be left for more interesting affairs. The recrimination on the subject is endless. With all this we have nothing to do, now that it is over. The philosophy and fact of the transaction, and not the changes of opinion and inconsistency of conduct of public men, are now of importance. It would be well now to leave the persons, and look at the thing.

Almost the only fact in relation to the tariff that I never heard disputed is that it was, under one aspect, a measure of retaliation. Rendering evil for evil answers no better in economical than in moral affairs; even if it take the name of self-defence. Because the British are foolish and wrong in refusing to admit American corn, the Americans excluded British cottons and woollens. More was said, and I believe sincerely, about self-defence than about retaliation: but it is very remarkable that men so clear-headed, inquiring, and sagacious as the authors of the American system, should not have seen further into the condition of their own country, and learned more from the unhappy experience of Europe, than to imagine that they could neutralise the effects of the bad policy of England by adopting the same bad policy themselves. It is strange that they did not see that if British cottons and woollens found easy entrance into their country, it must have been in exchange for something, though that something was not corn. It was strange that they did not see that if the apparent facilities for manufactures in the northern States were really great enough to justify manufactures, individual enterprise would be sure to find it out; and all the more readily for the deficiency in the resources of New England, which is assigned as the reason for offering her legislative protection. There was not even the excuse for interference which exists in old countries; that by intricate complexities of mismanagement, economical affairs have been perverted from their natural course. Here, in America, a new branch of industry was to be instituted. The skill was ready; the material was ready; the capital was procurable, if the object was good; and ought not to be, if the object was unsound. The interests of the people might have been trusted in their own hands. They would of themselves have taken less of British cotton goods, and more of something else which they could not get at home, if cotton goods could be made better and cheaper at home than in England; which it is proved that, for the most part, they can be. It is anticipated that when the Compromise method expires, the home manufacture of some kinds of fine cotton goods will diminish; but that the bulk of the manufacture is beyond the reach of accident. The effect of the tariff has been to over-stimulate a natural process, and thus to cause over-manufacture, panic, and ruin to many. It is said, and with truth, that America can afford to try experiments; that America is the very country that should learn by experience; and so forth. But it should be remembered that those who suffer are not always those who should be the learners. In New England, there is a large class of very poor women,—ladies; some working; some unable to work. I knew many of these; and was struck with the great number of them who assigned as the cause of their poverty the depreciation of factory stock, or the failure in other ways of factory schemes, in which their parents or other friends had, beguiled by the promises of the tariff, invested what should have been their maintenance.

No more need be said on the policy of the tariff. The truth is now very extensively acknowledged; and though some of those who are answerable for the American system continue to assume that manufactures could not have been instituted without its assistance, I believe it is pretty generally understood that no more infant manufactures will be burdened with this cruel kind of protection.

A far more important question than that of the policy is that of the principle of a protective system in the United States.

It is known that the strongest resistance was made to the American system on the ground of its being unconstitutional. Its advocates relied, for the necessary sanction, on the clauses which provide that "Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, and duties, imposts, and excises;"——and "to regulate commerce with foreign nations." With regard to the first of these clauses, both parties seem, more or less, in the right. By the tariff, Congress proposed "to lay and collect duties and imposts," as the constitution gives it express leave to do. Yet it is clear to those who view the constitution in the light of the sun of the revolution, that, such permission was given solely with a view to the collection of the revenue. No one of the framers of the constitution could have foreseen that any proposal would be made to lay duties for the protection of the productive interests of a section of the Union. Such a use of the clause is forbidden in spirit, though not in the letter, by the clause which ordains, "but all duties, imposts, and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States." This clause is, in its spirit, wholly condemnatory of partial legislation by Congress.

Remarks somewhat analogous may be made respecting the other clause, which empowers Congress "to regulate commerce with foreign nations." By the letter of this clause, Congress may appear to a superficial observer authorised so to regulate its commerce with Great Britain as to cause an arbitrary distribution of property and industry within her own boundaries; but such a double action could never have been in contemplation of the framers of the instrument. What they had in view was obviously the guardianship of the national commercial rights, and the promotion of the national commercial, not sectional manufacturing, interests.

Where the letter and the spirit of the constitution are made, by lapse of time and change of circumstance, to bear out opposite modes of conduct, there is an appeal which every man must make, for his individual satisfaction and conviction. He must appeal to the fundamental republican principles, out of which grew both the spirit and the letter of the constitution.

By these the tariff is hopelessly condemned. It is contrary to all sound republican principle that the general government of a nation, widely spread over regions, and separated into sections diversified in their productions, occupations, and interests, should use its power of legislating for the whole to provide for the particular interests of a part. The principle of perfect political and social equality is violated when the general government takes cognisance of local objects so far as to do a deed which must materially affect the distribution of private property; so far as to lay a tax on the whole of the nation for the avowed object of benefiting a part. The government of a republic has no business with distinctions among its subjects. It is to have no respect of classes, more than of individuals. Its functions are to be discharged for the common interest; and it is to entertain no fancies as to what new institutions or arrangements will be beneficial or the contrary to the nation.

All such institutions and arrangements must be made within the several States, or by an agreement of States; subject, of course, to the permissions and prohibitions of the constitution. If one State, or several States, should be pleased to decree bounties on their own manufactures, let them do so. Whether the measure were wise or unwise, no one out of the limits of such State or States would have a right to complain. This could not be said under the tariff. It was a just complaint which was urged by many States, that the federal representation was made useless to the minority, from the moment that the federal government applied itself to favour local and particular interests. The case is not altered by the possible result being highly beneficial to the whole country; which is the plea industriously advanced by the advocates of the tariff. Whatever direction and application of industry and capital may be ultimately most beneficial, Congress has, on principle, no more business with it than with the support of what may prove in the end to be the purest religious doctrine.

If America had been as free, from the beginning, in all respects, as a young country ought to be,—free to run her natural course of prosperity, subject only to the faithful laws which regulate the economy of society as beneficially as another set of laws regulates the seasons, we might never have heard of the American system. The poisonous anomaly which has caused almost all the diseases that have afflicted the republic, appears to be the original infection here also. If labour in the southern States had been free long ago, the deterioration of southern property would not have caused the southern planters to clamour for legislative protection. The arbitrary tenure of labour made them desire an arbitrary distribution of capital. They desired it for the north, as eagerly as for themselves, expecting the result to be that the cotton-growers would be protected by heavy import duties on cotton; and that the prosperity of the north, depending, as they supposed, wholly on its commerce, would be crippled by the same means; and thus, something like an equality between north and south be restored. The effect was different from what had been anticipated. The deterioration of the south went on; and manufactures first replaced, and then renovated, the commerce of the north. The next consequence was natural enough. The south became infuriated against the tariff, not only on the reasonable ground of its badness of principle, but on the allegation that it was the cause of all the woes of the south,[6] and all the prosperity, diversified with woes, of the north. It has always been the method of slaveholders to lay the blame of their sufferings upon everything but the real cause. Any one who reads the history of slavery in the book of events, will find slave-holders of every country complaining bitterly and incessantly of the want of legislative protection to themselves, or of its being granted to others. In the present instance, it was a device of the slave-holders, to renovate their falling fortunes, turned against themselves.

The true dignity of America would have been, had circumstances allowed of it, to have followed out her own republican principles, instead of adopting the false principles and injurious policy of older and less favoured nations. If she had left labour and commerce, and capital free; disdaining interference at home and retaliation abroad; showing her faith in the natural laws of social economy by calmly committing to them the external interests of her people, she would by this time have been the pattern and instructress of the civilised world, in the philosophy of production and commerce. But she had not the knowledge nor the requisite faith; nor was it to be reasonably expected that she should. Her doctrine was, and I fear still is, that she need not study political economy while she is so prosperous as at present: that political economy is for those who are under adversity. If in other cases she allows that prevention is better than cure, avoidance than reparation, why not in this? It may not yet be too late for her to be in the van of all the world in economical as in political philosophy. The old world will still be long in getting above its bad institutions. If America would free her servile class by the time the provisions of the Compromise Bill expire, and start afresh in pure economical freedom, she might yet be the first to show, by her transcendent peace and prosperity, that democratic principles are the true foundation of economical, as well as political, welfare.

SECTION II.
MANUFACTURING LABOUR.

So much is said in Europe of the scarcity of agricultural labour in the United States, that it is a matter of surprise that manufactures should have succeeded as they have done. It is even supposed by some that the tariff was rendered necessary by a deficiency of labour: that by offering a premium on manufacturing industry, the requisite amount was sought to be drawn away from other employments, and concentrated upon this. This is a mistake. There is every reason to suppose that the requisite amount of labour would have been forthcoming, if affairs had been left to take their natural course.

It has been shown that domestic manufactures were carried on to a great extent, so far back as 1790. From that time to this, they have never altogether ceased in the farm-houses, as the homespun, still so frequently to be seen all over the country, and the agricultural meetings of New England, (where there is usually a display of domestic manufactures,) will testify. The hands by which these products are wrought come to the factories, when the demand for labour renders it worth while; and drop back into the farm-houses when the demand slackens.

It is not the custom in America for women (except slaves) to work out of doors. It has been mentioned that the young men of New England migrate in large numbers to the west, leaving an over-proportion of female population, the amount of which I could never learn. Statements were made to me; but so incredible that I withhold them. Suffice it that there are many more women than men in from six to nine States of the Union. There is reason to believe that there was much silent suffering from poverty before the institution of factories; that they afford a most welcome resource to some thousands of young women, unwilling to give themselves to domestic service, and precluded, by the customs of the country, from rural labour. We have seen how large a proportion of the labour in the Lowell factories is supplied by women.

Much of the rest is furnished by immigrants. I saw English, Irish, and Scotch operatives. I heard but a poor character of the English operatives; and the Scotch were pronounced "ten times better." The English are jealous of their 'bargain,' and on the watch lest they should be asked to do more than they stipulated for: their habits are not so sober as those of the Scotch, and they are incapable of going beyond the single operation they profess. Such is the testimony of their employers.

The demand for labour is, however, sufficiently imperious in all the mechanical departments to make it surprising that prison labour is regarded with such jealousy as I have witnessed. When it is considered how small a class the convicts of the United States are, and are likely to remain, how essential labour is to their reformation, how few are the kinds of manufacture which they can practise, and that it is of some importance that prison establishments should maintain themselves, it seems wholly unworthy of the intelligent mechanics of America that they should be so afraid of convict labour as actually to obtain pledges from some candidates for office, to propose the abolition of prison manufactures. I believe that the Sing-Sing and Auburn prisons, in the State of New York, turn out a greater variety and amount of products than any others; and they have yet done very little more than maintain themselves. The Sing-Sing convicts quarry and dress granite: the Auburn prisoners make clocks, combs, shoes, carpets, and machinery. They are cabinet and chair-makers, weavers, and tailors. There were 650 prisoners when I was there; and of these many were inexperienced workmen; and all were not employed in manufactures. Jealousy of such a set of craftsmen is absurd, in the present state of the American labour-market.

I saw specimens of each of these kinds of labour. A few days after I entered the country, I was taken to an agricultural meeting, held annually at Pittsfield, Massachusetts. We were too late to see the best part of it,—the dispensing of prizes for the best agricultural skill, and for the choicest domestic manufactures. But there were specimens left which surprised me by the excellence of their quality;—table and bed-linen, diapers, blankets, and knitted wares. There was an ingenious model of a bed for invalids, combining many sorts of facilities for change of posture. There were nearly as many women as men at this meeting; all were well dressed, and going to and fro in the household vehicle, the country-wagon, with the invariable bear-skin covering the seat, and peeping out on all sides. A comfortable display, from the remains of the dinner, was set out for us by smart mulatto girls, with snow-berries in their hair. The mechanics' houses in this beautiful village would be enough, if they could be exhibited in England, to tempt over half her operatives to the new world.

The first cotton-mill that I saw was at Paterson, New Jersey. It was set up at first with nine hundred spindles, which were afterwards increased to fifteen hundred; then to six thousand. Building was still going on when I was there. The girls were all well-dressed. Their hair was arranged according to the latest fashions which had arrived, vi New York, and they wore calashes in going to and fro between their dwellings and the mill. I saw some of the children barefooted, but carrying umbrellas, under a slight sprinkling of rain. I asked whether those who could afford umbrellas went barefoot for coolness, or other convenience. The proprietor told me that there had probably been an economical calculation in the case. Stockings and shoes would defend only the feet; while the umbrella would preserve the gloss of the whole of the rest of the costume. There seems, however, to be a strong predilection for umbrellas in the United States. A convict, in solitary confinement in the Philadelphia prison, gave me the history of all his burglaries. The proximate cause of his capture after the last was an umbrella. He had broken into a good-looking house, and traversed it in vain in search of something worth the risk of carrying away. On leaving the house, he found it rained. He went back, and took a new cotton umbrella. It dawned as he entered the city, and he was afraid of being seen with the umbrella; but thought suspicion would be excited if he "heaved it away." He met an acquaintance who was further from home than himself, and insisted on his accepting the loan of the umbrella. The acquaintance, of course, was caught, and told from whom he had had the umbrella; and the burglar was, in consequence, lodged in jail. What English burglar would have thought of minding rain? If, however, there ever was a case of amateur burglary, this was one.

I visited the corporate factory-establishment at Waltham, within a few miles of Boston. The Waltham Mills were at work before those of Lowell were set up. The establishment is for the spinning and weaving of cotton alone, and the construction of the requisite machinery. Five hundred persons were employed at the time of my visit. The girls earn two, and some three, dollars a-week, besides their board. The little children earn one dollar a-week. Most of the girls live in the houses provided by the corporation, which accommodate from six to eight each. When sisters come to the mill, it is a common practice for them to bring their mother to keep house for them and some of their companions, in a dwelling built by their own earnings. In this case, they save enough out of their board to clothe themselves, and have their two or three dollars a-week to spare. Some have thus cleared off mortgages from their fathers' farms; others have educated the hope of the family at college; and many are rapidly accumulating an independence. I saw a whole street of houses built with the earnings of the girls; some with piazzas, and green venetian blinds and all neat and sufficiently spacious.

The factory people built the church, which stands conspicuous on the green in the midst of the place. The minister's salary (eight hundred dollars last year) is raised by a tax on the pews. The corporation gave them a building for a lyceum, which they have furnished with a good library, and where they have lectures every winter,—the best that money can procure. The girls have, in many instances, private libraries of some merit and value.

The managers of the various factory establishments keep the wages as nearly equal as possible, and then let the girls freely shift about from one to another. When a girl comes to the overseer to inform him of her intention of working at the mill, he welcomes her, and asks how long she means to stay. It may be six months, or a year, or five years, or for life. She declares what she considers herself fit for, and sets to work accordingly. If she finds that she cannot work so as to keep up with the companion appointed to her, or to please her employer or herself, she comes to the overseer, and volunteers to pick cotton, or sweep the rooms, or undertake some other service that she can perform.

The people work about seventy hours per week, on the average. The time of work varies with the length of the days, the wages continuing the same. All look like well-dressed young ladies. The health is good; or rather, (as this is too much to be said about health any where in the United States,) it is no worse than it is elsewhere.

These facts speak for themselves. There is no need to enlarge on the pleasure of an acquaintance with the operative classes of the United States.

The shoe-making at Lynn is carried on almost entirely in private dwellings, from the circumstance that the people who do it are almost all farmers or fishermen likewise. A stranger who has not been enlightened upon the ways of the place would be astonished at the number of small square erections, like miniature school-houses, standing each as an appendage to a dwelling-house. These are the "shoe shops," where the father of the family and his boys work, while the women within are employed in binding and trimming. Thirty or more of these shoe-shops may be counted in a walk of half-a-mile. When a Lynn shoe manufacturer receives an order, he issues the tidings. The leather is cut out by men on his premises; and then the work is given to those who apply for it; if possible, in small quantities, for the sake of dispatch. The shoes are brought home on Friday night, packed off on Saturday, and in a fortnight or three weeks are on the feet of dwellers in all parts of the Union. The whole family works upon shoes during the winter; and in the summer, the father and sons turn out into the fields, or go fishing. I knew of an instance where a little boy and girl maintained the whole family, while the earnings of the rest went to build a house. I saw very few shabby houses. Quakers are numerous in Lynn. The place is unboundedly prosperous, through the temperance and industry of the people. The deposits in the Lynn Savings' Bank in 1834, were about 34,000 dollars, the population of the town being then 4,000. Since that time, both the population and the prosperity have much increased. It must be remembered, too, that the mechanics of America have more uses for their money than are open to the operatives of England. They build houses, buy land, and educate their sons and daughters.[7]

It is probably true that the pleasures and pains of life are pretty equally distributed among its various vocations and positions: but it is difficult to keep clear of the impression which outward circumstances occasion, that some are eminently desirable. The mechanics of these northern States appear to me the most favoured class I have ever known. In England, I believe the highest order of mechanics to be, as a class, the wisest and best men of the community. They have the fewest base and narrow interests: they are brought into sufficient contact with the realities of existence, without being hardened by excess of toil and care; and the knowledge they have the opportunity of gaining is of the best kind for the health of the mind. To them, if to any, we may look for public and private virtue. The mechanics of America have nearly all the same advantages, and some others. They have better means of living: their labours are perhaps more honoured; and they are republicans, enjoying the powers and prospects of perfectly equal citizenship. The only respect in which their condition falls below that of English artisans of the highest order is that the knowledge which they have commonly the means of obtaining is not of equal value. The facilities are great: schools, lyceums, libraries, are open to them: but the instruction imparted there is not so good as they deserve. Whenever they have this, it will be difficult to imagine a mode of life more favourable to virtue and happiness than theirs.

There seems to be no doubt among those who know both England and America, that the mechanics of the New World work harder than those of the Old. They have much to do besides their daily handicraft business. They are up and at work early about this; and when it is done, they read till late, or attend lectures; or perhaps have their houses to build or repair, or other care to take of their property. They live in a state and period of society where every man is answerable for his own fortunes; and where there is therefore stimulus to the exercise of every power.

What a state of society it is when a dozen artisans of one town,—Salem,—are seen rearing each a comfortable one-story (or, as the Americans would say, two-story) house, in the place with which they have grown up! when a man who began with laying bricks criticises, and sometimes corrects, his lawyer's composition; when a poor errand-boy becomes the proprietor of a flourishing store, before he is thirty; pays off the capital advanced by his friends at the rate of 2,000 dollars per month; and bids fair to be one of the most substantial citizens of the place!

Such are the outward fortunes of the mechanics of America. Of their welfare in more important respects, to which these are but a part of the means, I shall have to speak in another connexion.

There are troubles between employers and their workmen in the United States, as elsewhere: but the case of the men is so much more in their own hands there than where labour superabounds, that strikes are of a very short duration. The only remedy the employers have, the only safeguard against encroachments from their men, is their power of obtaining the services of foreigners, for a short time. The difficulty of stopping business there is very great; the injury of delay very heavy: but the wages of labour are so good that there is less cause for discontent on the part of the workmen than elsewhere. All the strikes I heard of were on the question of hours, not of wages.

The employers are, of course, casting about to see how they can help themselves; and, as all are not wise and experienced, it is natural that some should talk of laws to prohibit Trades Unions. There is no harm in their talking of such; for the matter will never get beyond talk;—unless, indeed, the combinations of operatives should assume any forms, or comprehend any principles inconsistent with the republican spirit. The majority will not vote for any law which shall restrain any number of artisans from agreeing for what price they will sell their labour; though I heard several learned gentlemen agreeing, at dinner one day, that there ought to be such laws. On my objecting that the interest of the parties concerned would, especially in a free and rising country, settle all questions between labour and capital with more precision, fairness, and peace, than any law, it was pleaded that intimidation and outrage were practised by those who combined against those who would not join them. I found, on inquiry, that there is an ample provision of laws against intimidation and outrage; but that it is difficult to get them executed. If so, it would be also difficult to execute laws against combinations of workmen, supposing them obtained: and the grievance does not lie in the combination complained of, but somewhere else. The remedy is, (if there be indeed intimidation and outrage,) not in passing more laws, to be in like manner defied, while sufficient already exist; but in enlightening the parties on the subjects of law and social obligation.

One day, in going down Broadway, New York, the carriage in which I was, stopped for some time, in consequence of an immense procession on the side-walk having attracted the attention of all the drivers within sight. The marching gentlemen proceeded on their way, with an easy air of gentility. Banners were interposed at intervals; and, on examining these, I could scarcely believe my eyes. They told me that this was a procession of the journeymen mechanics of New York. Surely never were such dandy mechanics seen; with sleek coats, glossy hats, gay watch-guards, and doe-skin gloves!

I rejoice to have seen this sight. I had other opportunities of witnessing the prosperity of their employers; so that I could be fairly pleased at theirs. There need be no fear for the interests of either, while the natural laws of demand and supply must protect each from any serious encroachment by the other. If they will only respect the law, their temporary disagreement, and apparent opposition of interests will end in being mere readjustments of the terms on which they are to pursue their common welfare.

[5] Hamilton's Report on Manufactures. 1790.