Chamberss Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 | Page 9

limit the numbers, and determine the accommodation of the
inmates, two of whom sleep in one room. Females, whose wages are
12s. per week, pay 6s. 6d. per week for board and lodging; for males,
the wages and cost of board are about 15 per cent. higher. These
females are housed, fed, and dressed as well as the wives and daughters

of any tradesman in Edinburgh or London. The hours of work at the
mills leave them leisure; which some spend in fancy needle-work, so as
to increase their income; and all, by arrangements among themselves,
have access to good libraries. The amusements are balls, reading-rooms,
lectures, and concerts; indeed, all the means of intellectual cultivation
are placed within their reach, and full advantage is taken of them. There
is an ambition to save money, which they nearly all do; those in
superior situations, such as overlookers, have considerable sums in the
savings-banks established by the companies owning the mills; the
workers in each mill thus putting their weekly savings into the concern,
from which they receive interest in money, and so having an interest in
the well-doing of the mill itself, and a bond of attachment to its
proprietors. In this manner, the capital of all is constantly at work, and
provision is made for a possible slackness, which, however, has not yet
befallen Lowell.
To this place, it is no longer a toilsome journey from Boston.
Three-quarters of an hour, in a very commodious railway-carriage,
brought me into the centre of the town, when a most interesting sight
presented itself. The railway had been pouring in for the occasion
upwards of 20,000 persons; and in the streets, all was bustle and
harmony; thousands of well-dressed persons--some of the females
elegantly so--moving in throngs here and there, all bearing the tokens
of comfort and respectability. The occasion of the gathering is called
the Mechanics' Fair, held for a fortnight, during some days of which all
mill-work is suspended; the attraction consisting of a horticultural and
cattle show, and an exhibition of the products of art and manufactures
of the county, which is Middlesex.
The horticultural show was in the Town-hall, a large, handsome
apartment, with long aisles of tables, covered with piles of fruits and
vegetables; and such fruits! peaches, nectarines, apricots, and the
choicest plums, all of open-air growth, and not surpassed by any I have
seen--fully equal to the best hot-house productions of England.
Vegetables also very fine, all equal to the finest, except the turnip,
which in New England is small. The flowers as beautiful as in the Old
Country, but much smaller; consequently, that part of the show was

much inferior to our shows of the kind. In the evening of each day, the
fruits are put up to auction, and a good deal of merriment is caused by
this part of the entertainment. Those who supply the show are well paid,
as each morning there is a fresh supply; thus proving that it is not the
selected few that are exhibited, but the average produce of the county.
From thence I walked to the show of products of industry. I found a
building 600 feet in length, 40 feet wide, and two storeys high,
crammed with such a variety of articles that it is extremely difficult to
describe them, or, indeed, to reduce them to order in the mind. I do not
propose to send you a catalogue, but to convey, as far as I can, the
impression made upon me. The ground-floor is devoted to the
exhibition of agricultural implements and machinery. I have no
intention to enter into the question of our own patent laws, but I cannot
refuse to acknowledge the superiority of the arrangements here. The
greatest advantage is, that the right to an invention is so simply,
cheaply, and easily secured, that there is no filching or ill-feeling.
Talking with a very intelligent person, who was kindly trying to give
me definite ideas in this labyrinth of cranks and wheels, by shewing
and explaining to me the movements of a most singular machine for
making carding implements--I said: 'How is it, that with these wonders,
the American portion of the Crystal Palace in London should have been
so scant? Here is enough for almost an indefinite supply: the
reaping-machine is but a unit.' 'True,' he replied, 'but we could get no
guarantee for securing the patents; and if one man was simple enough
to give the English his reaping-machine, it did not suit others to be
robbed. We have little ambition about the matter: satisfied with what
we have, we cannot afford to give away inventions for the sake of fine
words.' This explained the whole to me.
The first store I looked over in this country was one in Boston,