of the old as suddenly as if an evil magician had waved his wand and cried:  “Presto!” But this agent soon gave evidence that great unscrupulousness doesn’t pay, even as a financial investment.  After several other short regimes the present agent, Mr. Steere, came to Amesbury, and the corporation has found it worth while to keep him.  The effect of the sudden influx of foreign population into Amesbury has never done away with; it has its “Dublin” in a valley where the corporation built houses for its operatives.  And with what indifference to cleanliness, or health these were built!  The poor operatives were crowded together in a way that would make neatness difficult to the most fastidious.  A physician in Amesbury who considered the poor, presented this state of things so strongly and so persistently to the agent, spoke so forcibly of the moral degradation that such herding increased, or induced, that when it became necessary to build new tenements they were much better arranged.  Every manufacturing town in New England has now its unwholesome because untaught population, a danger signal on the line of progress of the republic.  It is only popular education that can remove this obstruction of ignorance.  The foreign population of Amesbury today is large, and although it gives hands to the mills, it adds neither to the beauty nor the interest of the town.  But it gives a mission to those who believe in the possibilities of human nature, and the right of every man to have a chance at life, even if the way he takes it be not agreeable to his cultivated neighbor.

The mills in the days of their greatest prosperity were all woolen mills:  now a part of them are cotton mills.  They are all running, and, although not with the remarkable success of a score of years ago, have a future before them.

The making of felt hats, now so important a business, was started here a number of years ago by a gentleman who built a hat factory near his house at the Ferry.  He was a gentleman in that true sense in which, added to his nerve and will (and he had abundance of both) were those knightly qualities of generosity and kindliness that have made his memory dear, while the Bayley Hat Company, called after him as its founder, bears witness to his business ability.

The great, oblong, many-windowed carriage manufactories meet one at every turn, and often the smithy stands near with its clangor.  This business used to be confined to West Amesbury, now Merrimac.  At the beginning of the century it was started on an humble scale by two young men, one a wood-worker, the other a plater, while another young man was trimmer for them.  One of the firm lived in West Amesbury, the other in South Amesbury, now Merrimac Port, and after each had built his share of the carriage, it was found a little difficult to bring the different parts together.  This was the beginning, and now Amesbury ships its carriages over the world.  One of the first to bring this business from what