The city of Lowell has long enjoyed a national, even world-wide
reputation, as the leading center for the manufacture of cotton fabrics.
And, while this industry offers employment to something like 25,000 men,
women and children, there are also enterprises in great variety that do
not use cotton fibre in any way, yet find work for ten to fifteen
thousand more toilers. The principal corporations are the Lawrence,
Tremont and Suffolk, Merrimack, Boott, Massachusetts, Hamilton and
Appleton, beside the Middlesex, where shawls are made, and the carpet
mills, where the famous Lowell carpets are woven. While the city is a
veritable beehive of industry, yet the people find time for recreation,
and have wisely provided breathing places in different parts of the
city, where they can recuperate mind and body. The prominent pleasure
resorts are Fort Hill park, the North and South commons, Park Garden,
the boulevard--extending three miles along the bank of the Merrimack
River--and Lakeview, an attractive watering-place some five miles out
from the center. This latter place is reached by means of the Lowell and
Suburban Street Railway, an electric line, which also connects the
neighboring villages of North Chelmsford, Dracut, North Billerica and
Chelmsford Center. A ride to any one of these places costs but twenty
cents for the round trip, and the Lakeview line is especially
interesting at its terminal.

The city's moral and educational interests are also well provided for,
as evidenced by the following: 30 churches, 47 primary schools, 10
grammar and 1 high school, besides a training school for teachers, and a
manual training-school for boys; also a prospective State normal school.
We also have three or four hospitals, an old ladies' home, and a home
for young women and children. The police protection consists of a chief,
his deputies, captains and sergeants, and about one hundred patrolmen.
The fire system of the city is excelled by none in the country, and is