The corporation of Lowell has built
streets of convenient houses, for the accommodation of the workmen;
and nine-tenths of these are occupied by the unmarried. These houses
are farmed by the corporation to elderly females, whose characters
must bear the strictest investigation, and at a rent just paying a low
rate of interest for the outlay. They carry on the business under
strict rules, which 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.
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