the earliest years they had flocked into
Pawtucket, were New-Englanders by birth and training. This meant not
only quickness and deftness of handling, but the conscientious filling
of every hour with the utmost work it could be made to hold.

The life of the Lowell factory-girls has full record in the little
magazine called the "Lowell Offering," published by them for many years.
Lucy Larcom has also lately given her "Recollections," one of the most
valuable and characteristic pictures of the life from year to year, and
it tallies with the summary made by Dickens in his "American Notes."
Beginning as a child of eleven, whose business was simply to change
bobbins, she received a wage of one dollar a week, with one dollar and a
quarter for board, the allowance made by most of the corporations while
the system of boarding-houses in connection with the factories lasted.
The oldest corporation, known as the Merrimack, introduced this system,
and for many years retained oversight of all in its employ. With
increasing competition and the increase of the foreign element,
alteration of methods began, and Lowell lost its characteristic
features.

In the beginning the conditions of factory labor for New England at the
point where work was initiated, were, as compared with those of England,
almost idyllic. The Lowell workers came from New England farms, many of
them for the sake of being near libraries and schools, and thus securing
larger opportunities for self-culture.

The agricultural class then outranked merchants and mechanics. There
were no class distinctions, and the workers shared in the best social
life of Lowell. The factory was an episode rather than a career; and the
buildings themselves were kept as clean as the nature of the work
admitted, growing plants filling the windows; and the swift-flowing
Merrimac turning the wheels.

In 1841 the girls had to their credit in the savings-banks established
by the corporations over one hundred thousand dollars; and many of them
shared their earnings with brothers who sought a college education, or
lifted the mortgages on the home farms. At the International Council of
Women, held in Washington in 1888, Mrs. H.H. Robinson, after telling how
she entered the Lowell Mills as a "doffer," when a child, gave a
brilliant description of the intellectual life and interests of the
workers. She remained in the mill till married, and said: "I consider
the Lowell Mills as my _alma mater_