people. Political parties sometimes have regard to the political power of the Roman Catholic Church; school-committee nominations are not always made independent of political considerations. Members of school committees are not always free from political aspirations or independent of political influences. Quite apart from politics there are difficulties. In Massachusetts the law permits school committees, at their discretion, to accept the attendance of mill children at other than public schools. Such other schools must be "approved" by the committee, and, when approved, the superintendent is authorized to give mill certificates to the children who have attended them during the required time. The intent of the law is to secure the best education practicable for mill children. It is supposed that some private schools may be as good as the public schools; or perhaps the law makers wished to avoid responsibility and criticism. In Massachusetts, it is rarely, if ever, the case that Roman Catholic parochial schools can bear comparison with the public schools. The teachers are nuns, and, not infrequently, are phenomenally incompetent. The discipline of the school is far below that of the public school. The pupils spend half their time upon the church catechism and the prayer-book. The progress in secular studies is not, and can not be, as rapid as in the public schools, nor the work as thoroughly done. In most cases where mill children attend parochial schools the intent of the law is but partially attained.

The employment of women involves another class of evil liabilities. Girls and women are commonly employed on the new fly frames for ring spinning; they do the spooling, and are often more numerous in the weaving rooms. Many girls are taken from their homes and put into the mills before character is formed. They are often separated from parents and older friends; of course, a great deal depends on the character of those into whose company they come, on the character of the overseer and his management. It has been said that girls learn more wickedness in one year in the mill than in five years out of it. That is probably true of some mills and of some girls. Naturally they all become self-reliant; a portion of them lose the delicacy of their girlhood, and become bold in manners and rough in speech. Some of them are no strangers to foul language, and shock men by their use of it. Under the best management such language is forbidden in the mill, and those who are prone to it are weeded out; but there is something of it almost everywhere, on the street if not in the mill. There is little of the evil of social life of which such

foul-speaking girls are ignorant; but it by no means follows that they are immoral in conduct. Some of them are keenly alive to the dangers of vicious indulgence: they may lure a tempter only to repel him. Others fall an easy prey. Every year it happens somewhere, and repeatedly, that an overseer, having charge of a room in which girls are employed, is viciously inclined. Under his control are some who are careless in their work, perhaps because their moral tone is already low. They are often among the more ignorant, but not always; perhaps among the more destitute, but not always boisterous. They are told that their poor work will be passed over on one condition; otherwise they will be discharged. Such an overseer would commonly be discharged as soon as his practices were known; but if he is an efficient manager, and avoids open scandal, there are mills in which the superior officers would say, We are not responsible for a man's private immorality if he attends to his business. It is a relief to add that, in spite of all the evil liabilities, there are many girls in cotton mills who retain and mature the best moral qualities of womanhood, who are pure and gentle and discreet and aspiring; in the aggregate many who are Christian girls.

A distaste for home life and home occupations is a frequent evil result of employment in the mill. Accustomed to the whirr of machinery and to the multitude of fellow-workers, the home seems lonely, and confinement at home is dull and irksome. When girls marry they may still prefer to remain in the mill, hiring some one to take care of their children as soon as they are old enough to leave, perhaps even as soon as the mother is able to go to work. The amount of intelligent choice in marriage will depend on the previous condition. Young men and maidens who have some aspiration, and who have friends in better circumstances, or in a higher class than their own, will naturally wish to have wives and husbands worthy of their aspiration and their circle of friendship. Those whose social circle is limited to mill workers, especially if limited to the lower grades, will be governed by chance impulse, with little intelligence or choice. Almost inevitably, girls who have grown up in the mill are poor housekeepers, best of them, for a time. It may easily happen that they have almost no knowledge at all of the housekeeper's duties; they sometimes are not even able to sew a neat seam. Of course, these are the worst cases. If the housewife works in the mill, the lighter and more necessary housework is done in the evening; the heavier on Saturday afternoon or on Sunday. Efficient and thorough

the

housekeeping requires thought, contrivance, economy. The work in the mill is a mechanical routine; those who have been long engaged in it lose the habit of contrivance, lose taste for it, and may almost lose the power of it. Often they lose the power of making home comfortable and attractive. Thoughtfulness about little things has never been acquired. The womanly instincts that may make a poor man's home sweet and dear have been slowly obliterated. According to their means factory people are quite apt to buy the best their market affords. But the food may be cooked in a hurry, cooked poorly and wastefully. The little economies that make the difference between thrift and imminent pauperism are frequently not understood and not practiced; perhaps there is neither taste nor patience for them. Those who come from a native land where social castes are fixed have little or no thought of rising above their first level. Home is a few, small rooms. The best room has a carpet, comfortable furniture, and some decoration; the others are four bare walls, with floors uncarpeted, and with only the plainest and most necessary furniture. Here is economy, according to a prevalent idea of it. The rooms may be clean and neat, or neglected and very untidy. The home is a place in which to sleep, to eat one or two meals daily, and to spend a part of Sunday. Of course, there are better homes, in the aggregate many better ones; the description given applies to a frequent condition, not far from the average. Given such homes. and such housekeeping, what will be the atmosphere in which children will grow up? What will be the poor man's probable thrift? What wonder if he and his older boys seek the brightly lighted and comfortable beer shop, with increasing demoralization?

The tenement house is a common element of the factory system in America. As operatives come from other countries, they are rarely able to have a house of their own. They rent from private owners or from the corporation, and can often pay only a low rent. Low rent means a tenement house, large or small; a great, plain box for human beings to live in. The halls, each with a front door on the ground floor, are one to four in number. On each floor there is one tenement on each side of the hall. The floors are from two to four in number. Many corporations prefer to control the matter of residence, and build long rows of tenement houses, each one just like every other, in which their operatives are required to live. The houses have two tenements or twenty, or any number between, according to the principles on which the corporation does its business. These principles also

determine the rules regulating the use of tenements, the kind of care taken of them, and the care or carelessness about the moral life of those who occupy them. A fairly high-minded corporation furnishes better houses than the operative could elsewhere get for the same price, insists upon care and neatness in the use of them, forbids mutilation of every sort, and, in fine, establishes rules which require a certain amount of character in the tenants. Perhaps an inspector is provided to enforce the rules. The sanitary condition is almost always susceptible of improvement; sometimes it is wholly bad. Mills which manufacture goods of the lowest grades, or which, for other reasons, have operatives of the lower grades, find it difficult to enforce the best use of tenements. Cases have been known in which, through neglect on the part of the corporation, there was a family for almost every room; while the walls of the halls were covered with indecent drawings and scribblings. Some corporations prefer to leave the matter of residence to the operative. In that case he is given over to the mercy of private owners, who are sometimes sharpers, and to his own character, good or bad. The result is very different in different cases; in the worst cases the lessee gets permission to sublet, and fills every room; the sanitary condition is horrible, and the moral condition worse. On the ground floor there may be a rum shop; if the building is long there may be more than one. At the best a tenement house is an evil, and greatly so according to the number of tenements it contains. For a time it may be a necessary evil. With certain classes of operatives it may be permanently necessary, if it be necessary to perpetuate such classes, concerning which there is room for more than doubt. If the house is filled with residents of the lower grades they find in each other nothing to restrain or inspire. If good and bad are mingled together, the case of the best is very pitiable. It has been truly said that it is impossible to tell the amount of evil that may be done, or that may be generated, in tenement houses where the young are thrown together under circumstances which at the best are somewhat demoralizing.

As has been said, almost all cotton-mill operatives are now foreign-born, or the children of the foreign-born. The Scotch, including Nova Scotians, are the least numerous, and in general are of the highest grade. The English are numerous, and embrace all varieties, from highest to lowest. The best of them Overseers have often

have no superiors in character or in work.

been Englishmen, because of their thorough training in manufac

ture. If of equally good character they have not been superseded. But many of them have been clannish, favoring their own countrymen or their own set, and irritating all other workmen ; have been dictatorial to those under them, and inclined to insubordination toward their superiors. In England all operatives have been trained in labor unions, and they establish them here. They have been trained to make use of strikes, and most of the strikes in this country have been brought about by English spinners. The lowest class have been trained to think themselves hopelessly confined to their caste; they are imbruted, unaspiring, unthrifty. The majority of the English are large consumers of beer. The Irish are also numerous, and are seldom of high grade. They are the least steady in their work, they drink whiskey, and are vigorous politicians, with an eye to the spoils. The Canadian French are the latest comers, and on the average represent the lowest grade in the development of humanity. It hardly needs to be said that there are great differences among them; in New England they are becoming very numerous. They are docile and apt in their work, most steady of all in their application to it; they are disinclined to strikes or labor troubles, and will bear what would be resisted by other nationalities as oppression. They are intent on their pecuniary gains, which they seek by steady work and by parsimony. Many of them have been untidy in their homes; they are often superstitious, wholly without education, and many of them care little for enlightenment. Diversities among them are increasing, however. Their leaders are anxious for the preservation of all national peculiarities, for the maintenance of parochial schools, and for a gradual preponderance in civil and political affairs. In religion the Scotch and English are usually Protestant, the Irish and French almost always Roman Catholic. Operatives who are of foreign birth feel themselves somewhat ill at ease among our institutions, do not readily adapt themselves to the new condition, and still less readily mingle in social life with native Americans. They are sensible of the absence of the old restraints, associations, and conventionalities, and may easily suffer some degeneration of character.

It may properly be inferred that there is very considerable difference in the intelligence of operatives. The fullest intelligence is found in the best classes of the Scotch and English. If they have access to a public library, the men are readers of substantial books, with a taste for political economy. Some of them are