The Express.
London, England, 1856-02-16 00:00:00

LONDON, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 16.

Tax most exhilarating spectacle that life affords
is that of good things working together to produce
other and better good. That such is the natural
tendency of all real good is the encouragement
of the statesman in those earlier periods of effort,
when he can carry no measure but by unremitting '
perseverance and the cheerful endurance of fre-
quent failures. It is the encouragement of bees►
volent workers on behalf of the health, the edu-
cation, and the liberties of the helpless classes of
society. And from time to time occurs some cheering
evidence that the talent, fairly put into circulation,
is producing flee talents or tent and, again, that
beneficial efforts, which seem to have no connexion
with each other, are co-operating for some result
which seems equally remote from the purpose of any of
them. It is probable that no such thought has entered
anybody's mind as that out of the combined working
of the Limited Liability Law, the experience of
London club-houses, and the departure of Miss
Nzonrurctste and her nurses for the East, might
arise the regeneration of the female factory popula-
tion of this country. Yet there Sr. documents before
vs at this moment which seem to indicate each a
probability.
The ease is this. For twenty years past—a term
which includes a large proportion of the factory life
of England—travellers returned from the United

States have expressed a painful seams of the contrast
between the female crackers la on, manufactories and
those of America. In Birmingham. Maasheater,
Norwieb, Paisley, Coventry, &e., the best factory
girl. are seldom fit for anything bat their one detail
or factory labour. They cannot cook. or sew, or per.
chase to advantage, or manage domestic accounts; and
too often their manners are hard and bold, sad their
mind. wofelly ignorant. In Masmachasetts, on the
ether hand—at Waltham and at Lowell, where the
inhabitants are es thoroughly a factory population as
those of any town or village in Lancashire or
Yorkshire, or Lanarkshin—tho womm employed
at the mile are like American women in general
—without the factory cramp on their abilities,
or the factory stamp on their manners, their Weds,
or their &mu Why is this f 6 the question con-
tinually asked. Every girl at any mill in Musa-
&omits is the child of people who earn their bread
with their owe hands. The boors of labour threes»
seventy per week. The workers are paid by the
poses; and they choose to work twelve hoar.. Their
wages are not high—for female labour I. underpaid,
in proportion to qoality, in America se elsewhere.
The children are paid one dollar (ts. 3d.) per week,
with their meals; the mooed clam, two dollars; and
the best, only three. 'I he average of Angriest;
health is always lower than ours. nos, the Anod-
ise factory girla have no advantage over owe in
rank, in health, In amount of labour, or in wages.
Yet, see bow they live
They units their earnings (clothing being first pro-
vides], of course), and make homes for themselves.
We have seen a whole street—the pretty country-
street of an American small town—of houses beloag•
lag to the factory girls. Neat frame homes they
were, with green blinds sad a plainest verandah
outside—and within, a large airy sitting-room, with
the keg diniog-table down the middle; a piano at
sae sad; prints on the walls; and bookshelves con-
taining the united libraries of the inmates. Ica the
open apses in and near the town are eherche•—also
the property of the Ihetorrworkere—cme built by
Episcopalians, =ether by ladependents, another by

degngationallets, and so on. Recent burgle;
have horse testimony to the Beadily klieg observed in
a most exemplary manner by a congregated factory
pepolation now numbering tens of thousaeds in one
pleat sad nowhere move as thee in town, where,
as at Lowell, the factory-workers are hoes tone-fifths
to three-fifths women and girls. These women
end girls have also built Lyceums, where
the best lecturers in the country are mord
by them to deliver waren of lecture' in the
winter evenings. The young wawa have staging.
clams, and occasiosel dances. They take country
walks as sumer evenings and on Sundays. They
manage to make and mend their own clothes. and to
appear well-dressed at workieg-days, and hand-
somely deemed on holidays. As for their weeded &mew
tie life, they unite in homobolds of hoes eight to
twelve, according to the /dad abeam they Sod them-
selves able to afford. Some aunt or widowed mother
of am of them keeps house, sad gives respectability
to the party, if the girls have so pinata as the spot.
We need not contrast this with the life of oar
*Any girls, eves at their beet estate. Even where
they are living at home with respectable parents,
having duly attended the factory schools, and seed
wash advantages as they have, they cannot be
regarded as the same elan with the mill-workers
of Massachusetts. Then is, is oar Lancashire
end Yorkshire and &Joke mills, a clam whose
mateoedents are remarkably like those of the
Lowell sad Waltham workare—the daughters of
our Cumberland and Westmorelaed "statesmen"
es email landowners. Agricultural improvement has
lowered the maditice of these eld.fashicmed ankle♦
toe, who dislike new ways. They decline in fortunes,
mortgage their land, and are obliged to part with
their sots to the shops, and with their daughters to
the mills, of the inanafectariag distrists. These
daughters are as like as may be is the eirounistanses
of
their going forth into the world to the fanner/
daughters who spin and weave at Waltham and
Lowell. They earn as mach, their permeal expenses
may be less (fat clothing is dearer is America); yet
who ever heard of say number of them owning a
hoes*, or a ebareb, or a reading-room P—or of their
independently pureeing a coarse of intellectual im-
provement, while at the ease time laying by pomade
is the savings bank P An American factory girl
doss not like to have lees than t6L is the leak whoa
ohs marries.

There is nobody who, seeing the emstrest, does net
sessestly desire that oar famory-women shield be as
Irravali, es demist* as cultivated, and as prosperous
as the Americas. The time bee arrived fee previa;
whether these is any resets why than should not be
an elevation of that slue among es. There have
beg bees eyes to see that Leedom gentlemen end
their clab•house melt set be be our sat eons*
seems examples of the monemy of association. Our
model lodging-homes have proved to meltitedes what
eassfort. respectability, mad favourable coaditions of
health may be commanded for less mosey than seal
Mount speedo whets shifting fair himself. The law
of Limited Liability, when improved as we bops to
NO it this sestion, will open a wide and wholesome

field of in7estment for purposes of living, lilt', that
which has raised whole streets of pleasant homes In
New England town.. And the devotedness of the
ladies of Min NIGHTINGALE'S band has brought to

light an amount of service at command which intho-
rises us to believe that no good enterprise need
fail for want of ladies to work in it. It is
discovered that there are women in England eager
to learn to teach, to learn to nurse—to find employ-
ment, in fact, for energies and affections which need
some such task and outlet. These things being so, it is
with less surprise than pleasure that we see before us
the details of an enterprise which seems full of sound-
ness and of promise. In the neighbourhood of a certain
factory, as we learn from the prospectus alluded to, it
is intended to erect a Home, under the best conditions
of health and muyenieuce, for the female workers. The
house once erected, an amount of comfort in lodging
and board far surpassing what they have hitherto
enjcyed may be obtained by the workers for so little
money that they will be able to command great ed..
rational advantages, as well as to lay by. The esta-
blishment is to include a school, or schools, in whisk
orphans or other destitute children will be taught and
trained to labour and self-support. There is reason to
believe that ladies will swept the teak of superiuten•
decor, teaching, and training. If so, we cannot conceive
of a higher calling or a nobler aim. As the proposers
of the enterprise say—when the workers of our mills
become the mothers of another generation of workers
the evil of their unfitness for domestic life gathers in
intensity, and is productive of misery and degrada-
tion to thousands. Ia like manner, any rational
method by which our workers are placed in a home,
where they may and must learn home ways and
domestic qulifications, must tend to lessen the evil
of factory employment, and to raise the conditions of
life to the neat generation. "As one successful self-
supporting demonstration," we are told, " would do
more good than a thousand theoretical treatises," the
experiment is actually going to be tried. One gen-
tleman advances a thousand pounds at the outset
and there is sash an appearance of soundness about
the proposal, that we rather expect to ea it carried
into effect without a public appeal. If so, and if it sue-
weds, we will take are that it is made public enough.
Meantime, if this notice should excite any interest in
the anonymous enterprise we have described, nobody
can be at any lose for a manufacturing district in
England in which to set on foot a similar useful
work—self-sustaining and seltrewudiog.