matters which most manufacturers trouble themselves very little about.
The small pittance she receives as wages is sometimes paid in money, sometimes partly in money, and the rest in goods. With these wages she has to provide clothes, board, lodging and washing, and also pay her taxes to Government.
It is a well known fact that the Government of England requires 5,000,000 dollars weekly, in order to enable them to pay off the interest of the National Debt, and carry on their Government. In order to raise this enormous demand, every man, woman and child, must pay a part; it matters not whether they earn twenty cents, twenty shillings, or twenty dollars a week; a part of it must be given up to Government.
Taking these things into consideration, it is no wonder if Miss B. should find herself at the close of the year as poor as at the beginning. Neither is it surprising to find her under the painful necessity of following her occupation till her strength fails, and she is turned off just the same as a machine of wood and iron, to be replaced with some new comer.
It must not be supposed that my object in writing this, is to endeavor to reduce the Lowell females to a level with those of Bradford, and elsewhere. God forbid that any such base and unworthy motive should enter the mind of any man, much less one who has been such a great sufferer by the system he is describing. My object is simply to show the condition of my countrywomen, and the insufficiency of the means about to be employed by a few benevolent persons to effect a radical change in their condition. Before any permanent good can be done, it will be necessary to pay off, or in some way erase from the statute book their enormous National Debt; reduce the extravagant expenditures of the Gov-
