[15] Philosophy of Manufactures, by Andrew Ure, M.D., p. 13.




III.

EARLY ASPECTS OF FACTORY LABOR FOR WOMEN.


Lack not only of machinery but of any facilities for its manufacture
hampered and delayed the progress of the factory movement in the United
States; but these difficulties were at last overcome, and in 1813
Waltham, Mass., saw what is probably the first factory in the world that
combined under one roof every process for converting raw cotton into
finished cloth.

Manufacturing, even when most hampered by the burden of taxation then
imposed and the heavy duties and other restrictions following the long
war, began under happier conditions than have ever been known elsewhere.
Unskilled labor had smallest place, and of this class New England had
for long next to no knowledge. Her workers in the beginning were
recruited from the outlying country; and the women and girls who
flocked into Lowell, as in the earliest years they had flocked into
Pawtucket, were New-Englanders by birth and training. This meant not
only quickness and deftness of handling, but the conscientious filling
of every hour with the utmost work it could be made to hold.

The life of the Lowell factory-girls has full record in the little
magazine called the "Lowell Offering," published by them for many years.