Some Ethical Phases of the Labor Question

with the deeper, underlying ethical aspects of the question. Thirty years ago, before I began the investigation of social and economic conditions, I very naturally adopted the superficial view; but as my investigations proceeded, and as I studied the real relation of the factory to common, every-day life, I was obliged to change my attitude. It is only natural that this superficial view should obtain in the popular mind. Almost every writer, certainly with rare exceptions, adopts the view that the factory has been beneficial in a purely economic sense. Few are ready to adopt the idea that the factory has been of itself and through its own influence an element in civilization or an element in lifting up the social life of any of the people. The latter view results from a superficial study, as I have said, and also from an inverted vision. The glamour which surrounded the factory in the early days of its establishment in this country has led to very many erroneous conclusions. Some of us remember, and all of us have heard of, the Lowell factory girls, and the intellectual standard which they attained. Then, looking to the present textile factory operatives in different parts of the country, the comparison becomes very sharp and the conclusion apparently decisive. In making this comparison, however, the real conditions of the factory in the early days at Lowell, when the factory girls edited their own literary magazine, which achieved high rank everywhere, are ...