chapter from More's "Utopia." The Waterbury Watch Company has lately
built a factory, employing 600 hands, on similar lines to those of Mr.
Pullman. Cheney Brothers' silk mills at South Manchester remain now, after
Irish labor has entirely taken the place of native hands, at almost the
same high level as that which, in common with Lowell, they held forty
years ago. Messrs. Fairbanks, of St. Johnsbury, in Vermont, conduct a
large establishment, where every married _employe_ owns a house in the
village, almost an Eden for beauty and order, which has grown up around
these remote but remarkable scale works. Similarly, the Cranes at Dalton,
in Massachusetts; Messrs. Brown, Sharpe and Co., at Providence, Rhode
Island; Mr. Hazard at Peacedale, Narragansett; and last, not least, Col.
Barrows, at Willimantic, in Connecticut, have all succeeded in restoring
the past conditions of native American labor among operatives, now, for
the most part, of alien origin.

I wish that time permitted me to sketch, however briefly, the mills to
which I have last alluded. It must suffice to say that the devoted labors
of Col. Barrows, President of the Willimantic Thread Co., have succeeded
in creating, out of Irish labor, social conditions of industrial life
which approach ideal perfection as nearly as the work of imperfect man can
possibly do. And, better still, the high morality and intelligence of Col.
Barrow's 1,600 operatives, the comfort and seemliness of their homes, the
cleanly and cheerful character of the mill work, even the refinements of
the music and art schools attached to the mill, can be proved, by hard
figures, to be paying factors in the undertaking, viewed from a purely
commercial standpoint.

So far, I have endeavored to show that a great contrast exists between
what once was and now is the condition of factory labor in America. I
have, further, described certain survivals of an earlier and happier state
of things, and indicated the forces now at work tending to lift the
Holyoke of to-day, for example, to the social levels of old Lowell. I have
given my reasons for believing that the democratic institutions of America
are incapable, unaided, of accomplishing such a task as this charge
implies, and concluded that its accomplishment depends mainly on the
action of the American employer. What this action as a whole, and what,
therefore, the future of labor in America is likely to be, I confess
myself in grave doubt--doubt from