III.

MANCHESTER.

WE entered Manchester just at evening, when the streets were filled with stern, hard-fisted men, returning from their daily toil, and squalid-looking women, flitting along to some rude tenement, weary, faint, and sad. On every hand we met deformed and shapeless beings, some vending coffee, and some peanuts; some women, some men, and some children,- living products of a system which places mere children at the loom, and over the wheel, at an age when they are unable to endure fatigue, or resist the influence of confinement and weariness.

We were amused at the readiness with which the people in the streets recognized us as Americans. A gentleman stepped up as we passed along one day, and inquired if we were acquainted with Mr. B., a gentleman of Philadelphia, who was then in the city. A little lad followed us along some distance, and at length, to extract from us a few coppers, said, "I'll whistle you Yankee Doodle for a penny, sir," and forthwith commenced whistling our national air, to our great amusement.

Manchester is a large and beautiful city. I had pictured out a town of wretched appearance; long, low, narrow streets, filled with beggars and thieves, and lined on each side by the miserable habitations of half-paid laborers. But I was agreeably disappointed.

The streets are wide, paved with a small, brick-form stone, and contain many very elegant buildings of a public and private character. The churches are fine structures- some of them erected at a very great expense. I have heard Lowell designated as the "Manchester of America;" but it no more compares with the Manchester of England, than does a little, rural village with the great and populous city-the crowded mart of commerce.

The first object of interest and study to the stranger in Manchester is the manufacturing system, with the condition of the operatives, male and female. To see the mills to the best advantage, we inquired for one which should be a specimen of all the others, and were directed to an establishment owned and carried on by an enterprising manufacturer, who employs about five hundred persons. The outside of the mill was dingy and dirty, the bricks were of a very poor quality, and covered and begrimed with smoke and coal dust. The inside was of unfinished brick or stone; the walls, floors, stairs, all of one or the other of these materials; no wood-work seen except in the window frames, the doors, and in the machinery. The floors were slippery with oil, the walls covered with dust and hung with cobwebs, and the windows cracked, broken, and shattered. The operatives were generally younger than those employed in the mills in our own country, and would bear no comparison with that industrious, cheerful, and intelligent class of our own population. They were very poorly dressed, and very dirty. Many of them were deformed, and seemed to groan as they moved about, as if in bodily anguish. On the countenances of some there were the marks of crime and woe, the contemptuous scowl, and the lewd, wanton

smirk. On other countenances were the deep traces of suffering and wretchedness; care and sorrow had made youth look haggard and withered like age. The comparison between our own cotton manufactories and those in Manchester is altogether favorable to this country. The condition and character of the operatives, the construction and convenience of the mills, the compensation paid for labor, and the pleasure derived by the laborer from his toils, -all far exceed, in our system, the same particulars in the English system. I noticed that the several rooms into which I entered were very poorly ventilated. One large mill, with one hundred and sixty windows, on one side, was ventilated by having several of those windows thrown up a few inches each. The comfort and convenience of the operatives seem not to have entered the minds of the employer, in many of these establishments; and as you see many of the operatives, with bare feet and shivering limbs, gliding over the cold stone or brick floor, you feel justly proud of the more enviable condition of operatives in this land.

Connected with the mill in which we spent the most time is a school for children over nine and under thir

teen years of age, who are taught gratuitously. These children are employed in the mill a number of hours each day, the time being limited by law. Connected with this establishment were about ninety of these children, one half of whom work, and the other half attend school, certain hours each day, so that fortyfive are at school, and forty-five are at work, all the time. While we were present, the children sung several little hymns, and showed us specimens of their needlework, which would have done no discredit to persons of a more mature age, and in more elevated

life. The pleasure derived in visiting this school, which appeared very much as do primary schools in New England cities, was marred by a thought of the sad necessity which prompted its existence. The generous employer we could praise; but the very pleasure produced by the contemplation of his benevolence was mingled with the sad evidences that this school was but the result of the want of a proper system of general education, and deep, grinding poverty, which compelled the parent to send his little child into a cotton mill at a very early and tender age, ere the constitution was able to bear the fatigue, exposure, and pain.

In looking through Manchester, I missed a most important appendage to a manufacturing city-the boarding-houses for the operatives. Among us, long brick edifices are erected, which have all the outward, and many of the internal, evidences of luxury and ease. Operatives at night are not driven away to rude and wretched tenements, where poverty and filth rule and ruin, or to the den of infamy, or to the street, but‍ have a comfortable home provided. In Manchester, each girl boards herself where best she can; and consequently many of them scarcely live at all. When they are sick, no care is taken of them; and they die uncared for and unmourned. Vice must be the product of such an arrangement; and we have no reason to be astonished when we are told that many leave the path of rectitude and virtue, and sink into the depth of ruin. One of the wisest and most humane provisions for the comfort and safety of operatives in our American towns is found in the neat, spacious, and even elegant boarding-houses, in the kind and maternal care exercised by the women who have the charge of them, and the wise

rules which are adopted by the corporations to secure the necessary ends of order and good behavior.

But Manchester is not famed for its cotton manufactures alone. A vast amount of machinery is turned out every year, which is carried to every part of the kingdom. I visited the Atlas Machine Shop, where seven hundred and fifty men are now employed, which number is sometimes increased to twelve or fifteen hundred. In the first room, several large locomotives were being put together; and in some twenty rooms or more, into which we were introduced, all kinds of work were in progress, from the forgery and the foundery which gleamed, sparkled, and blazed, to the neatlyfitted apartment where the artist was executing his designs and preparing his models.

As I passed out, I noticed a box in the countingroom, in a conspicuous place, on which was a respectful notice requesting the visitor to drop in his tribute money for the relief of such of the workmen as should have the misfortune to be deprived of health. The attendant informed us that, out of the large number employed, some were sick all the time, and that large sums of money were collected in this way for their benefit. I dropped in my piece of money with the greatest pleasure, and regarded the plan as a most valuable one, which, perhaps, might be carried out to advantage even in this country of plenty and charity.

We closed our examinations of the manufacturing establishments by standing at the gate of one of the mills, to see the operatives as they came out. At the appointed hour, the gates were thrown open, and the living stream came pouring forth, upon which we gazed until we almost imagined we were in Lowell or Lawrence; nor were we wholly undeceived until the last