unwise misapprehension of the effects which would result from the
cultivation of their minds and the improvement of their condition, and
an avaricious propensity to avail of their laborious services, at the
lowest possible rate of wages for which they can be induced to work."

The evils protested against here did not lessen as time went on. Irish
emigration had begun in 1836, and speedily drove out American labor,
which was in any case insufficient for the need. A lowered wage was the
immediate consequence, the foreigner having no standard of living that
included more than bare necessaries. At this distance from the struggle
it is easy to see that the new life was educational for the emigrant,
and also forced the American worker into new and often broader channels.
But for those involved such perception was impossible, and the
new-comers were regarded with something like hatred. English and German
emigrants followed, to give place in their turn to the French-Canadian,
who at present in great degree monopolizes the mills.

In the beginning little or no effort was made toward healthful
conditions of work and life, or more than the merest hint of education.
England, in which far worse conditions had existed, had, early in the
century, seen the necessity of remedial legislation. But though the
first English Factory Act was passed in 1802, it was not till 1844 that
women and children were brought under its provisions. The first one,
known as the Health and Morals Act, was the result of the discovery made
first by voluntary, then by appointed inspectors, that neither health
nor morals remained for factory-workers, and that hopeless deterioration
would result unless government interfered at once. Hideous epidemic
diseases, an extinction of any small natural endowment of moral sense,
and a daily life far below that of the brutes, had showed themselves as
industries and the attendant competition developed; and the story in all