By 1835 chiefly the poorer order of workers filled the mills, but even skilled labor made constant complaint of cruelties and injustices.  Not only were there distressing cases of cruelty to children, but outrage of every kind had been found to exist among the women workers, whose wage had been lowered till nearly at the point known to-day as the subsistence point.  Parents then, as now, gave false returns of age, and caught greedily at the prospect of any earning by their children; and any specific enactments as to schooling, etc., were still delayed.

These evils were not confined to New England, but existed at every point where manufacturing was carried on.  But New England was first to decide on the necessity for some organized remonstrance and resistance, and the first meeting to this end was held in February, 1831.  Of this there is no record; but the second, held in September, 1832, is given in the first “Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor,” issued in 1870.  Boston sent thirty delegates, and the workingmen of New York City addressed a letter to the workers of the United States, showing that the same causes of unrest and agitation existed at all points.

“These evils,” they said, “arise from the moral obliquity of the fastidious, and the cupidity of the avaricious.  They consist in an illiberal opinion of the worth and rights of the laboring classes, an unjust estimation of their moral, physical, and intellectual powers, and unwise misapprehension of the effects which would result from the cultivation of their minds and the improvement of their condition, and an avaricious propensity to avail of their laborious services, at the lowest possible rate of wages for which they can be induced to work.”

The evils protested against here did not lessen as time went on.  Irish emigration had begun in 1836, and speedily drove out American labor, which was in any case insufficient for the need.  A lowered wage was the immediate consequence, the foreigner having no standard of living that included more than bare necessaries.  At this distance from the struggle it is easy to see that the new life was educational for the emigrant, and also forced the American worker into new and often broader channels.  But for those involved such perception was impossible, and the new-comers were regarded with something like hatred.  English and German emigrants followed, to give place in their turn to the French-Canadian, who at present in great degree monopolizes the mills.

In the beginning little or no effort was made toward healthful conditions of work and life, or more than the merest hint of education.  England, in which far worse conditions had existed, had, early in the century, seen the necessity of remedial legislation.  But though the first English Factory Act was passed in 1802, it was not till 1844 that women and children were brought under its provisions.  The first one, known as the Health and Morals Act, was the result