WEAVING-RATES AT LOWELL

31

On the wall of the room was a notice, in compliance with the Massachusetts Factory Act, giving particulars of the prices paid for weaving, and from it I obtained the following figures: For a print-cloth 28 inches wide, in cuts 53 yards long, 64 ends and 60 picks to the inch, 28's warp and 36's weft, the weaving prices per cut are—

(a) If woven on ordinary looms with 6-inch bobbins or with 5-inch cops, 22 cents.

(b) If woven on ordinary looms with 7-inch bobbins, 21 cents. (c) If woven on Northrop looms, II cents.

I was told that as a rule the Northrop weaving price at this mill was one-half the price for weaving done on ordinary looms plus 10 per cent. The notice stated that the prices quoted above were for perfect weaving, and that for imperfect work 50 per cent. less would be paid. The average weekly production per loom of ordinary print-cloth 28 inches wide was from 270 to 280 yards per week (fifty-eight hours) for the ordinary looms and 245 yards a week for the Northrops. On account of the greater tension of the warp, the Northrop loom, I am told, weaves a somewhat greater length of cloth than the common loom from the same length of warp-about 4 per cent. more.

The number of loom-fixers or tacklers employed here, as at other New England mills, was surprisingly small. Seven hundred and fifty of the ordinary plain looms with warp stop-motions were under the care of five tacklers, and other tacklers had 125 looms each; these men were paid 46s. 3d. a week. Eighty Northrop looms were in charge of one tackler at 46s. 3d. a week, assisted by one oiler-and-cleaner at 30s. a week; and the tacklers in charge of looms weaving lenos (two, three, and four beams each) earned 51s. a week and ran 60 looms each. On the day after I visited the mills all the tacklers came out on strike; it was a case of post hoc sed non propter hoc, for their intention was known to the superintendent before my arrival at Lowell. Their grievance, I believe, was unconnected with their wages or the number of looms entrusted to them; it arose out of the employment as tacklers of men who were not members of the Lowell Loom-fixers' Club, a very strong society, whose entrance fee is, I am told, $25. A large proportion, perhaps

one-third, of the Merrimack loom-fixers had been in the service of the company for ten years or more, and some of them for from twenty to twenty-five years.

I could never understand how one tackler could attend to so many looms until I saw one of the Merrimack tacklers change the beams of a loom and 'gait' it up. Before the old warp had run out the new warp was brought in from the sizing-room on a trolley which carried four beams held vertically. As soon as the last cut was finished the tackler and a woman specially employed for such work took the loom over from the weaver. The woman helped the tackler to 'gait' each beam, and in fifteen minutes the whole job was done and the loom running again. The weaver had nothing to do with the new warp until the loom had been started and was working smoothly.

Nor had the weaver to take the woven cloth out of the loom. The whole roll was lifted out (not pulled off) and examined by a 'room-girl' in the room in which it was woven. If any serious faults were discovered in the piece, the room-girl would report them to the overseer, and the weaver would be called up' before the whole room. This 'calling-up' is felt by the weavers to be something of a disgrace, and the superintendent assured me that its disciplinary effect was even greater than that of the fines. Good overseers at Lowell command good wages-from $4 to $6 a day-but their work has been much increased during the past fifteen years. At the Merrimack mills, for instance, there were formerly six overseers in the weaving department, four in the spinning department, and four in the carding department. To-day there are but two in each department, or six in all, as compared with fourteen. The pay of an overseer was formerly $3 a day, so the work has been increased in a greater proportion than the reward. 'Speeding-up' has been the rule all round; the looms that ran at 170 picks fifteen years ago are now running at 190, and everything else has been quickened to keep pace with them.

The Merrimack workpeople are paid every Friday morning for work done up to the preceding Friday morning, so that a week's wages are always in the hands of the company. A number of them live in houses belong

WORKING MOTHERS

33

ing to the mill, but the company has already sold many such houses, and is not building any more. Some of the employés have saved enough to become their own landlords. The average rent of a workman's dwelling, containing four rooms and a small kitchen, is 10s. 6d. a week. The houses are probably no better than can be obtained at Oldham or Bolton for half the amount; but their physical environment is far more pleasant, and the really magnificent public library and excellent technical school afford the people opportunities for improvement such as are within the reach of few in England.

The healthy American sentiment against the wife's working in the mill when there are young children in the family has not, I fear, very much force with the foreign weavers and other factory hands at Lowell. In the doorway of the mill I saw a placard advertising a day nursery where, at the rate of 10 cents for one, or 15 cents for two, children are taken care of during the day-time. Outside a theatre or public hall were bills announcing a performance to be given for the benefit of the same institution, which, I am told, is partly supported by gifts, or perhaps one should say by subsidies, from the mill-owners and shop-keepers of the town.

Before leaving Lowell let me record an incident which seems to me a curious reversal of a familiar economic precedent. I was told that one of the mills at Lowell bought recently 1,000 new automatic looms, and the loommakers took in part payment the thousand non-automatic looms which were displaced by the change. Many of these non-automatic looms had been running for only three or four years, and were therefore in their very prime—perhaps better than when new. Their value may easily have been £6,000. But the automatic loom-makers who had bought them (by exchange) broke them up carefully into small fragments before they removed them from the mill, in order that they might never be in the market in competition with their own automatic loom. The association of machinesmashing with the introduction of labour-saving appliances is nothing new; but whereas formerly labour smashed the new machines to protect the old, now capital smashes the old machines to protect the new.

CHAPTER V

Manchester, New Hampshire-A 'garden city'-Gigantic millsWater-power and coal-Freight rates to Boston and New York-Wages at Manchester—‘Unions' and 'ginghams '-A mill boarding-house-Middle-class comfort and cheap food-Lake Massabesic.

N

ONE of the manufacturing towns of New England pleased me so much as Manchester, in New Hampshire. Unlike its great godmother, it has clear air, clear waters, and sunny skies; almost every street is an avenue of noble trees, whose leaves fall so thick in autumn on the electric car tracks that at first, when they are sappy, they make the car wheels skid, and later, when they are dry, they are fired by the sparking current, and fill the city with aromatic smoke. And, as if all these green trees were nothing, the citizens have given themselves public parks or gardens upon a scale of unexampled generosity. The city is laid out in rectangular blocks, which, since it is hilly, do not rob it of variety; and, you walk diagonally across the town, starting at the right point and going in the right direction, every third 'block' or square of the chessboard to which you come will be a public pleasure-ground.

if

Perhaps the handsomest, certainly the most impressive, buildings in Manchester are the Amoskeag and the Manchester Mills. They are not ornate ornate mills are often hideous-but they are built of a warm red brick, beautifully weathered, and form a continuous curved façade (like the concave side of Regent Street in London), nearly half a mile long. Rising sheer out of a deep, clear, swiftflowing stream (the Merrimack), upon the other bank of

MANCHESTER, NEW HAMPSHIRE

35 which are grass and trees, they need little more than to be silent to masquerade successfully as ancient colleges.

Not until one has passed over one of the pretty bridges and penetrated through the waterside building to the court beyond does one begin to appreciate the enormous extent of these simple, stately buildings. Behind the riverside pile there runs a courtyard so long as to be more like a private road, and on the other side of this road stands another line of mills, parallel with the curve of the first, so that one cannot see to the end of them. First come the Manchester Printworks, new buildings containing 17 acres of floor space, and seventeen calico-printing machines; then the Manchester Mills, where there are 3,250 looms, with a proportionate number of spindles; and, finally, the Amoskeag Company's mills, eleven of them, containing 11,000 looms, and between three and four hundred thousand spindles. The eleventh mill was built in 1893.

The Manchester Mills and Printworks draw 3,000 horsepower, and the Amoskeag Mills 8,000 horse-power, from the river. Sometimes the mills are stopped for a day or two in winter, when the river rises so high as to cause back-pressure on the turbines, but there is never any stoppage on account of drought. The water-power is supplemented by steam; the coal comes by boat from Portsmouth, thirty miles away, and costs from 15s. 6d. to 16s. 8d. per ton at the mills. The manufactured goods are sent from Manchester to Boston, a distance of fifty or sixty miles, by rail, at a station-to-station rate of 8 cents per 100 pounds, or to New York (partly by sea), a distance of 350 miles, for 9 cents per 100 pounds.

The Manchester Mills manufacture woollens, cottons, and unions, and print on their own account both plain and fancy goods, some of which are bought from other mills. I found that in the cotton department labour on the roving frames was paid for by the hank, and that the rovers earned from 25s. to 29s. per week, as compared with 48s. at Fall River. Cotton spinners on ring frames were paid 24s. per week for minding six sides-a low wage as compared with New Bedford; but there the spinners mind many more spindles. The doffers here earned nearly as much as the spinners, viz., 21s. 3d. per week; and the cotton slasher-tenters, who were