arms, to
earn money for a trousseau, to send a brother through college, to raise
a mortgage, or to enjoy the society of their fellow workers, and have a
good time in a quiet, serious way, discussing the sermons and lectures
they heard and the books they read in their leisure hours. They had
numerous "improvement circles" at which contributions of the members in
both prose and verse were read and discussed. And for several years they
printed a magazine, "The Lowell Offering", which was entirely written
and edited by girls in the mills.

Charles Dickens visited Lowell in the winter of 1842 and recorded his
impressions of what he saw there in the fourth chapter of his "American
Notes". He says that he went over several of the factories, "examined
them in every part; and saw them in their ordinary working aspect, with
no preparation of any kind, or departure from their ordinary every-day
proceedings"; that the girls "were all well dressed: and that phrase
necessarily includes extreme cleanliness. They had serviceable bonnets,
good warm cloaks, and shawls.... Moreover, there were places in the mill
in which they could deposit these things without injury; and there were
conveniences for washing. They were healthy in appearance, many of them
remarkably so, and had the manners and deportment of young women; not of
degraded brutes of burden." Dickens continues: "The rooms in which they
worked were as well ordered as themselves. In the windows of some there
were green plants, which were trained to shade the glass; in all, there
was as much fresh air, cleanliness, and comfort as the nature of the
occupation would possibly admit of." Again: "They reside in various
boarding-houses near at hand. The owners of the mills are particularly
careful to allow no persons to enter upon the possession of these
houses, whose characters have not undergone the most searching and
thorough enquiry." Finally, the author announces that he will state
three facts which he thinks will startle his English readers: "Firstly,
there is a joint-stock piano in a great many of the boarding-houses.
Secondly, nearly all these young ladies subscribe to circulating
libraries. Thirdly, they have got up among themselves a periodical
called 'The Lowell Offering'... whereof I brought away from Lowell four
hundred good solid pages, which I have read from beginning to end." And:
"Of the merits of the 'Lowell Offering' as a literary production, I will
only observe, putti