notably in Connecticut, revealed a state of things hardly less harrowing
than that which had brought about the passage of the first Factory Acts
in England. At the same time wages were very inadequate. In twelve
hours' daily labor the weavers of Baltimore were able to earn from sixty
to seventy cents a day, the wage of the women being half or a third this
amount; and they declared it not enough to pay the expenses of schooling
for the children.

With the increase of production and the growing competition of
manufacturers, wages were steadily forced downward. Less and less
attention was paid to the comfort or well-being of the operatives, and
many factories were unfit working-places for human beings. Overseers,
whose duty it was to keep up the utmost rate of speed, flogged children
brutally; and the treatment was so barbarous that a boy of twelve at
Mendon, Mass., drowned himself to escape factory labor. Windows were
often nailed down, and their raising forbidden even in the hottest
weather.

The most formidable and trustworthy arraignment of these conditions is
to be found in a pamphlet printed in 1834, the full title of which is as
follows: "An Address to the Working-men of New England, on the State of
Education, and on the Condition of the Producing Classes in Europe and
America."

The author of this pamphlet, a mechanic of some education, stirred to
the heart by the abuses he saw, made an exhaustive examination of the
New England mills; and he gives many details of the hours of labor, the
wages of employees, and the abuses of power which he found everywhere
among unscrupulous manufacturers. The principal value of his work lies
in this, and in his reprint of original documents like the "General