Less than twenty years ago, there were not more than forty or fifty houses on the site of this flourishing city, which now contains upwards of twenty thousand inhabitants.  Its numerous mills are all worked by water power, and belong to incorporated joint-stock companies.  We were obligingly shown over two of the largest woollen and cotton factories, where every stage of the manufacture was in process, from the cotton, or sheep’s wool, to the finished fabric.  We also visited works, where the printing of cottons is executed in a superior style, besides a new process for dyeing cotton in the thread, invented by an Englishman, now in the establishment.  The following abstract of the manufacturing statistics of Lowell, on the first of January, 1841, will show the great importance to which this new branch of industry has attained with such unprecedented rapidity.

Ten joint-stock companies, with a capital of ten millions of dollars, having thirty-two woollen and cotton factories, besides print works, et cet., with one hundred and seventy-eight thousand eight hundred and sixty-eight spindles, and five thousand five hundred and eighty-eight looms, employing two thousand one hundred and seventy-two males, and six thousand nine hundred and twenty females, who made, in 1840, sixty-five millions eight hundred and two thousand four hundred yards of cotton and woollen cloths, in which were consumed twenty-one millions four hundred and twenty-four thousand pounds of cotton alone.

The average amount earned by the male hands employed, exclusive of their board, is four dollars and eighty cents, or about twenty shillings sterling per week, and of the females two dollars, or about eight shillings and sixpence per week.

But the most striking and gratifying feature of Lowell, is the high moral and intellectual condition of its working population.  In looking over the books of the mills we visited, where the operatives entered their names, I observed very few that were not written by themselves; certainly not five per cent. of the whole number were signed with a mark, and many of these were evidently Irish.  It was impossible to go through the mills, and notice the respectable appearance and becoming and modest deportment of the “factory girls,” without forming a very favorable estimate of their character and position in society.  But it would be difficult indeed for a passing observer to rate them so high as they are proved to be by the statistics of the place.  The female operatives are generally boarded in houses built and owned by the “corporation” for whom they work, and which are placed under the superintendence of matrons of exemplary character, and skilled in housewifery, who pay a low rent for the houses, and provide all necessaries for their inmates, over whom they exercise a general oversight, receiving about one dollar and one-third from each per week.  Each of these houses accommodates from thirty to fifty young women, and there is a wholesome rivalry among