Chapter VII
The Lowell Offering (Continued)

The Lowell Offering was a small, thin magazine of about thirty pages, with one column to the page. The price of the first number was six and a quarter cents. Its title-page was plain, with a motto from Gray ; the verse beginning : —

“Full many a gem of purest ray serene.”

This motto was used for two years, when an other was adopted : —

“Is Saul also among the prophets?”

In January, 1845, the magazine had on its outside cover a vignette, a young girl simply dressed, with feet visible and sleeves rolled up. She had a book in one hand, and her shawl and bonnet were thrown over her arm. She was represented as standing in a very sentimental attitude, contemplating a beehive at her right hand. This vignette was adopted, as the editor said, “To represent the New England school girl, of which our factories are made up, standing near a beehive, emblem of industry and intelligence, and in the background the Yankee schoolhouse, church, and factory.” The motto was : —

“The worm on the earth
May look up to the star.”

This rather abject sentiment was not suited to the independent spirit of most of the contributors, who did not feel a bit like worms; and in the February number it was changed to one from Bunyan : —

“And do you think the words of your book are certainly true?
“Yea, verily.”

The magazine finally died, however, under its favorite motto : —

“Is Saul also among the prophets ?”

The title-page, or outside cover, was copyrighted in 1845.

The Lowell Offering was welcomed with pleased surprise. It found subscribers all over the country. The North American Review, whose literary dictum was more autocratic than it is to-day, indorsed it, and expressed a fair opinion of its literary merit.

The editor, John G. Palfrey, said : —

“Many of the articles are such as to satisfy the reader at once, that if he has only taken up The Offering as a phenomenon, and not as what may bear criticism and reward perusal, he has but to own his error, and dismiss his condescension as soon as may be.”

Charles Dickens, in his “American Notes,” says: —

“They have got up among themselves a periodical, called The Lowell Offering, whereof I brought away from Lowell four hundred good solid pages, which I have read from beginning to end. Of the merits of The Lowell Offering, as a literary production, I will only observe — putting out of sight the fact of the articles having been written by these girls after the arduous hours of the day — that it will compare advantageously with a great many English annuals.”

Harriet Martineau prompted a fine review of it in the London Atheneum, and a selection from Volumes I. and II. was published under her direction, called “Mind Among the Spindles.”

This book was issued first in London, in 1844, and republished in Boston in 1845, with an introduction by the English editor, Mr. Knight. In a letter to this gentleman, Miss Martineau said, “I had the opportunity of observing the invigorating effect of ‘Mind among the Spindles,’ in a life of labor. Twice the wages and half the toil would not have made the girls I saw happy and healthy, without that cultivation of mind which afforded them perpetual support, entertainment, and motive for activity. They were not highly educated; but they had pleasure in books and lectures, in correspondence with home, and had their minds so open to fresh ideas as to be drawn off from thoughts of themselves and their own concerns.”

English friends were particularly kind in their expressions of approval. One said, “The Lowell Offering is probably exciting more attention in England than any other American publication. It is talked of in the political, as well as in the literary world. … It has given rise to a new idea, that there may be mind among the spindles… . The book is a stubborn fact.”

President Felton of Harvard University, while in Paris attending a course of lectures on Eng lish Literature by Philaréte Chastles, heard an entire lecture on the history and literary merits of The Lowell Offering.

Thiers, the French historian, carried a volume into the Chamber of Deputies, to show what working-women in a republic could do.

George Sand (Madame Dudevant) thought it a great and wonderful thing that the American mill-girls should write and edit a magazine of their own.

Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal gave The Offering a rather back-handed compliment, which is quoted to show the old-time prejudice against female writers. It said, —

“Constrained to speak candidly, we have found amongst the pieces few which would have any chance of admission into a British periodical above the humblest class ; yet it must also be admitted, that even where there is no positive attraction, there is nothing irreconcilable with good taste; and some of the articles, the verse as well as the prose, would appear as respectable efforts for females of any rank in life.”

It may be said that at one time the fame of The Lowell Offering caused the mill-girls to be considered very desirable for wives; and that young men came from near and far to pick and choose for themselves, and generally with good success. No doubt these young men thought that, if a young woman had the writing talent, rare in those days, she naturally would have other rare talents towards the making of a good wife ; and I can say that my own knowledge, added to recent inquiries, confirms this belief.

The fact was often disputed that a “factory girl ” could write for or edit a magazine, since she had hitherto been considered little better than the loom or frame she tended. Inquiries on the subject came to the editors from different parts of the country, and questions like the following were often put to them: “Do the factory-girls really write the articles published in The Offering?” or, “Do you print them just as they are sent?” or, “Do you revise or rewrite them?”

In the preface to the first volume, Mr. Thomas answered these questions. He says, ” The articles are all written by factory-girls, and we do not revise or re-write them. We have taken less liberty with them than editors usually take with other than the most inexperienced writers.” He adds, “Communications much amended in process of training the writers were rigidly excluded from print; and such articles only were published as had been written by females employed in the mills.” He continues, “and thus was published not only the first work written by factory girls, but also the first magazine or journal written exclusively by women in all the world.”

The contributions to The Offering were on a great variety of subjects. There were allegories, poems, conversations on physiology, astronomy, and other scientific subjects, dissertations on poetry, and on the beauties of nature, didactic pieces on highly moral and religious subjects, translations from French and Latin, stories of factory and other life, sketches of local New England history, and sometimes the chapters of a novel. Miss Curtis, in 1840, wrote an article on “Woman’s Rights,” in which were so many familiar arguments in favor of the equality of the sexes, that it might have been the production of the pen of almost any modern advocate of woman’s rights; but there was this difference, that the writer, though she felt sure of her ground, was too timid to maintain it against the world, and towards the end throws out the query, “whether public life is, after all, woman’s most appropriate and congenial sphere?” It is a curious coincidence, that at this date the English and the American Anti-Slavery Associations were at the point of division on this very question.

There is a certain flavor in all The Lowell Offering writings, both in prose and verse, which reminds one of the books read by the authors, and the models they followed in their compositions. The poetry savors of Mrs. Sigourney, Mrs. Hemans, Miss Landon, Mrs. Barbauld, Milton, Pope, Cowper, and Hannah More. Byron’s sardonic vein is copied by one or two of the most independent minds among them. The prose models of writing were The Spectator, the English classics, “Miss Sedgwick’s Letters,” ” The Vicar of Wakefield,” and Lydia Maria Child’s writings.

Though the literary character of these writings may not rise to the present standard of such productions, yet at that season of intellectual dearth they must have had a certain influence on contemporary literature ; and viewed by the critical eye of a later date, it is found that the selections from The Lowell Offering will compare quite favorably with those in the “Ladies’ annuals” of the same date, as, for instance, The Lady’s Repository, The Rose of Sharon, The Lily of the Valley, Gems of Beauty, The Opal, and other like literary curiosities, of which The Lowell Offering may well be ranked as one, and with which, no doubt, it will hold its place in the history of American publications.

These factory-girl writers did not confine their talents within the pages of their own publication. Many of them wrote for the literary newspapers and magazines. One sometimes filled the poet’s corner in Zion’s Herald and in the Saturday Evening Gazette; another took that envied place in The Ladies’ Casket ; a third sent poetic effusions to The Lowell Courier and Journal.

These authors represent what may be called the poetic element of factory-life. They were the ideal mill-girls, full of hopes, desires, aspirations; poets of the loom, spinners of verse, artists of factory-life.

The Lowell Offering did a good work, not only among the operatives themselves, but among the rural population from which they had been drawn. It was almost the only magazine that reached their secluded homes, where it was lent from house to house, read and re-read, and thus set the women to thinking, and added its little leaven of progressive thought to the times in which it lived. Its influence or its memory is not by any means forgotten; and if a newspaper or magazine which had so brief an existence is so well remembered after at least fifty years, when the novelty of such a publication is all worn away, it shows that it must have had some vitality, something in it worthy of preservation.

It was considered good Sunday reading. A friend told me recently that as a child she used to watch for its coming, and how much she liked it, because her father, a clergyman, allowed her to read it on Sunday; and on that day it was placed on the table with the Bible, while other secular reading-matter was excluded. Another has said that she used to get the themes for her “compositions ” out of the pages of The Lowell Offering.

The names of The Lowell Offering writers, so far as I have been able to gather them, are as follows: Sarah G. Bagley, Josephine L. Baker, Lucy Ann Baker, Caroline Bean, Adeline Bradley, Fidelia O. Brown, M. Bryant, Alice Ann Carter, Joanna Carroll, Eliza J. Cate, Betsey Chamberlain, Lucy A. Choate, Kate Clapp, Louisa Currier, Maria Currier, Lura Currier, Harriot F. Curtis, Catherine Dodge, M. A. Dodge, Harriet Farley, Margaret F. Foley, A. M. Fosdick, Abby A. Goddard, M. R. Green, Lydia Sarah, Hall, Jane B. Hamilton, Harriet Jane Hanson, Eliza Rice Holbrook, Eliza W. Jennings, Hannah Johnson, E. Kidder, Miss Lane, Emmeline Larcom, Lucy Larcom, L. E. Leavitt, Harriet Lees, Mary A. Leonard, Sarah E. Martin, Mary J. McAffee, E. D. Perver, E.S. Pope, Nancy R. Rainey, Sarak Shedd, Ellen L. Smith, Helen E. Smith, Laura Spaulding, Mary Ann Spaulding, Emmeline Sprague, S. W. Stewart, Laura Tay, Rebecca C. Thompson, Abby D. Turner, Elizabeth E. Turner, Jane S. Welch, Caroline H. Whitney, A. E. Wilson, Adeline H. Winship, and Sabra Wright, fifty-seven in all. Most of the writers signed fictitious names, such as Ella, Adelaide, Dorcas, Aramantha, Stella, Kate, Oriana, Ruth Rover, Ione, Dolly Dindle, Grace Gayfeather, and many others.

In 1848 seven books had been published, written by contributors to The Lowell Offering. These were “Lights and Shadows of Factory Life,” and “Rural Scenes in New England,” by Eliza Jane Cate; “Kate in Search of a Husband,” “Jessie’s Flirtations,” and “S. S. Philosophy,” by Harriot S. Curtis; ” Domestic Sketches” by Abby A. Goddard, and “Shells from the Strand of the Sea of Genius” by Harriet Farley.

Not many of the lesser lights continued to write after their contributions were no longer in demand for The Offering. But there were a few who had written for the pure love of it, and who, in spite of their other duties, and a restricted life, still clung “to the dreams of their youth,” and kept up the writing habit, even beyond the verge of the allotted threescore years and ten.

There is hardly a complete set of The Lowell Offering in existence. I have Miss Larcom’s copies, which, added to my own, the result of many years of collecting, in the shape of gifts, make as complete a set as I have been able to find. The 1847 copy I never heard of outside my own collection. Mr. L. L. Libbie of Boston has nearly a full set, with a rare collection of bibliology relating to the magazine.

The volumes in the State Library are neither perfect nor consecutively bound. A set of The Lowell Offering, complete to 1847, was sent by the mayor of Lowell to the mayor of Paris, “all neatly bound and lettered.”

There are odd volumes, no doubt, in libraries or in private collections, but they are not complete enough to give an adequate idea of the magazine; and unless such a book as this were written, an historical record of what is now considered a most interesting phase in the history of early factory labor would not be preserved. I may add to this, that the Lowell Public Library contains the first five volumes, which are The Lowell Offering proper. In closing this brief sketch of The Lowell Offering, it may be well to quote Mr. Thomas’s letter, written to the Vox Populi, Lowell, in answer to a request for information with regard to his connection with the magazine.

Dear Sir, — Your letter of December 9^th, 1872, solicits me to furnish, in some detail, the facts, as I now remember them, respecting the origin and early history of The Lowell Offering, the writers for it, etc.

It would seem, by your epistle, that you have seen, and perhaps own, the second and later series of the unique publication, but that you question whether a copy of the first four numbers is in existence — indicating, I judge, that you have sought for them in vain.

I am happy to inform you that your apprehension of total loss is “ruled out” by my possession of two complete sets of those first four numbers, lacking only the printed cover of Number One. You will not be surprised that my sons, to whom they belong, are unwilling to part with these memorials of their father’s brief residence in Lowell; but I hope that your earnest antiquarian call will awaken a response among the hidden or forgotten things of some one of your many readers.

Meanwhile I will endeavor to make a compact statement of what you desire, with no more of personality than is necessary to an intelligible narrative.

Number 1 of The Lowell Offering was published in October, 1840. No. 2 was issued in December following. No. 3 appeared in February, 1841, and No. 4 in March. Printed by A. Watson, 15 Central Street. Each number consisted of sixteen pages small quarto, double columns, in small pica solid, and was sold at retail for six and one-fourth cents. I have forgotten how many copies were printed. The third and fourth pages of a plain cover were devoted to advertisements of less than an average of one inch brevier, and in this way we managed to `make both ends meet.’

In No. 2 appeared the following note, the words in brackets being here inserted in the way of explanation.

“A social meeting, denominated Improvement Circle, was established in this city about a twelve-month since [by the Rey. A. C. Thomas, pastor of the Second Universalist Church]. At the sessions of this Circle, which have been holden one evening in a fortnight, communications (previously received by the gentleman in charge) have been read, the names of the writers not being announced. The largest range of subject has been allowed: fiction and fact, poetry and prose, science and letters, religion and morals; and in composition the style has been humorous or otherwise, according to the various taste or talent of the writers. The reading of these articles has constituted the sole entertainment of the meetings of the Circle. The interest thus excited has given a remarkable impulse to the intellectual energies of our population.

” At a social meeting for divine worship connected with one of our societies (First Universalist Church, the Rey. T. B. Thayer, pastor), communications, chiefly of a religious character, have been read, during several years past. The alternate weekly session of this Conference was appropriated mainly to communications, and de nominated Improvement Circle, soon after the institution of the one above mentioned, and the interest has thereby been greatly increased.

“A selection from the budgets of articles furnished to these Circles, together with a few communications de rived from other sources, constitutes The Lowell Offering, whereof the two gentlemen in charge of the meetings aforesaid are the editors.

«We have been thus particular, partly to gratify the curiosity of our readers, and partly to call attention to the advantage of such social institutions for improvement in knowledge. and in the art of composition. The meetings being free to all who are disposed to attend, they may be likened to so many intellectual banquets, the writers furnishing the feast of reason, while all present participate in the flow of soul.”

Confessedly there was little novelty in the organization and conduct of these Circles, excepting perhaps that the leaders took special pains in private interviews, and by informal hints and criticisms at the gatherings, to awaken and foster a desire for improvement. But the honorable presentation to the world, in print, of a class of people usually considered ignorant and degraded, was certainly a new thing under the sun.

In the number of The Offering for November, 1842, which was after my removal from New England, Miss Harriet Farley, who was then in editorial charge, published her personal knowledge of the origin, etc. as follows : —

“The gentlemen were at liberty to contribute to the Circle, but they were of no great assistance. Those who were not engaged in the mills were also contributors, but it was soon found that the principal interest of the meetings depended upon the factory-girls.

… There were at length so many articles of a promiscuous character, that it was thought they might form a pleasing variety in a little book. … To tell the truth, we did not really believe that it would ever come into being. We did not believe our articles would do to print — that they were good enough to be put in a book. But there was one who thought otherwise. … Then a periodical was spoken of, and it was even suggested that we should edit it. We the editor! The idea was very awful. Je should as soon have thought of build ing a meeting-house! We shrank so sensitively from the proposal that it was not urged, and the projector of the work became its editor.

“We shall never forget our throb of pleasure when we first saw The Lowell Offering in a tangible form, with its bright yellow cover, nor our flutterings of delight as we perused its pages. True, we had seen or heard the articles before, but they seemed so much better in print! They appeared to be as good as anybody’s writings. They sounded as if written by people who never worked at all.

“The Offering was well received by the public. or at least would have been if people had not been so confused and perplexed and mystified and unbelieving.

“The first number was an experiment, and a successful one. The second, third, and fourth appeared at irregular intervals; and then it was thought best that it should be permanently established. Hitherto it had been sold singly, or given away, and there had been no subscription list. With the fifth number commenced a new series, different in form and materially improved in outward appearance.”

The new series was a monthly of thirty-two pages, large octavo, in long primer, leaded, with embellishments of wood engravings, chiefly of churches in Lowell, also pages of music, the whole put up in neat printed covers.

Communications much amended in the process of training the writers were rigidly excluded from print, and such articles only were published as had been written by females employed in the mills. One article only was afterwards challenged as a plagiarism. A few of the contributions from the first needed only the usual corrections to fit them for the press; the contributors, besides possessing rare native talent, having had the advantages of a New England common-school education.

Mostly the writers chose to appear anonymously, not subscribing even their initials; and I am not at liberty to reveal their names, even if I could remember and designate them all. I have, however, already mentioned Miss Harriet Farley, and may add that she was a daughter of the Rev. Stephen Farley, an aged Unitarian clergyman residing in Amesbury, Mass., a man richer in faith and life than in dimes and dollars. She left home, and worked steadily in the mills at Lowell, that she might help a brother through college. I have no hesitation in naming her as a sample of extraordinary genius. She greatly enriched the Circle which was in my charge, and was foremost in every issue of The Offering for several years. Miss Lydia S. Hall was another contributor whose productions aided largely in the celebrity of The Offering, especially in the line of poetry. “The Tomb of Washington,” “Lowell, a parody on Hohenlinden,” “No,” and a number of other poetical articles of singular merit, stamped this “Adelaide” as a remarkable writer.

Mrs. Betsey Chamberlain, a widow who worked in the mills for the support and education of her two children, was a constant Circle helper, and vitalized many pages of The Offering by humorous incidents and the wit of sound common sense.

Miss Harriot Curtis, who held a dashing pen, left the mills for a season to attend to a sick friend in Troy. At the date of her return, the contents of the second volume of The Offering had already been made up, where upon, by my encouragement (suggestion, I believe) she wrote a novelette entitled “Kate in Search of a Husband,” the manuscript of which I sold in her behalf to J. Winchester, a New York publisher, who issued large editions of it. A year or two later she was associated with Miss Farley as editor and proprietor of The Offering. Several “Chapters on the National Sciences” were written by a factory-girl (Eliza J. Cate) in Manchester, N. H. She afterwards wrote “Lights and Shadows of Factory Life,” also “Rural Life in New England,” both of which I sold to Winchester in her behalf.

Miss Harriet Lees, S. G. B., E. E. T., H. J., A. B., and many others, are pleasantly in my memory as cordial aids ; these memoranda, as you will perceive, reach ing beyond the first four numbers, concerning which you make special inquiry.

On the second page of the cover of Number 4, issued March 4, 1841, an endeavor to establish The Offering permanently was announced. “Be the number large or small who are disposed to patronize the undertaking, we have concluded to hazard the experiment for one year,” the labor and responsibility being wholly my own.

If my ecclesiastical connections had been of the popular order, there could have been no doubt of success; but I was well known as a Universalist. Sectarian hostility, in that day, was of a sort which would not be tolerated now; and I had to combat the falsehood that The Offering was a Universalist publication.

The Operatives’ Magazine was issued as a rival, or competitor; and only the superior talent of the contributors to the original work kept it in the ascendant of repute and circulation. I am happy, too, to remember that the most influential laymen in the city indorsed my enterprise, as will appear by the following card : —

Lowell, March 7, 1841.

The undersigned have seen the numbers of The Lowell Offering already issued. Believing the work calculated to do good, and understanding that it is to be permanently established by means of a subscription list, we take pleasure in recommending it to the patronage of the public generally, and to persons connected with the manufacturing establishment especially.

Those of your readers who have memories of the Lowell of thirty years ago, will observe that the names of all (or nearly all) the superintendents of the corporations are in this list, and that it includes a liberal representation of other dignitaries in the city, excepting only the clergy. One of these is indeed in the record; but he shortly afterward wished to have his signature cancelled, for the reason that he had placed it there without due consideration! Whereupon Mr. Case, who passed the paper around, gave indefinite time for consideration to all of the rest of the clergy, each having the benefit of a doubt to begin with. I must not, however, fail to mention that the Rev. Henry A. Miles, of the Unitarian Church, was steadfastly a friend of The Offering from first to last.

I have thus endeavored to answer your inquiries, and will add a few incidents.

In January, 1842, Samuel Lawrence introduced me to Charles Dickens, who was at that time on a tour of inspection in Lowell. In a brief interview, I gave him assurance that all the articles in The Offering were written by the class known as factory-girls. I afterward sent him a bound copy of the first volume, new series, which he noticed at some length in “American Notes for General Circulation,” the following being an extract : —

“They have got up among themselves a periodical called The Lowell Offering . . . whereof I brought away from Lowell four hundred good solid pages, which I have read from beginning to end…. Of the merits of The Lowell Offering as a literary production, I will only observe, putting entirely out of sight the fact of the articles having been written by these girls after the arduous labors of the day, that it will compare advantageously with a great many English annuals.”

A volume entitled “Mind among the Spindles,” being a selection from The Offering, was published in England under the auspices, I believe, of Harriet Martineau. She, at all events, was the prompter of a fine review in The London Atheneum. This was early in 1843. The compliment was acknowledged by the present of an elegantly bound copy of the first and second volumes of the new series, with the inscription : —

“HARRIET MARTINEAU,
FROM
Harriet Fartey, Harrior Curtis, and Harriet Lees.”

The distinguished authoress said in reply: “It is welcome as a token of kindness and for its own value, and above all as a proof of sympathy between you and me, in regard to that great subject, the true honor and interests of our sex.” She might truly have claimed, in addition, not only that The Offering was the first work written entirely by factory-girls, but the first magazine or journal written exclusively by women, in all the world.

My administration as editor and publisher ceased with the close of the second volume, the numbers of which, as `copy’ was abundant, having been pushed to completion in advance of regular monthly issues.

And now, after the lapse of more than thirty years of varied experience, I send salutations of grace, mercy, and peace to all, being yet in the flesh, who wished well to that undertaking, and helped it, while I here record happy memories of the friends who have passed behind the veil.

Truly yours,

Abel C. Thomas. Tacony,
Philad., Dec. 29th, 1872.”

Although the magazine under its women editors was a continued success, still, to Mr. Thomas, as its projector and first editor, must be given the credit of bringing before the public these productions; and too much honor cannot be awarded to him for believing in the capabilities of the young people under his charge, and for utilizing the talent which he found. But for his Improvement Circle The Lowell Offering might never have been heard of; and its writers, if this impetus had not been given to their talents, would never have thought themselves capable of any success in this direction. To improve and cultivate the mind was the injunction urged by this good man upon the working men and women of his time.

The fact that Mr. Thomas was the grandson of a noted Quaker preacher (Abel Thomas) probably accounts for his inheritance of the idea, first promulgated in this country by that sect, that women have the right and the ability to express their thoughts, both in speaking and in writing; and he found in Lowell a good field for the application of this principle.

Although a Universalist minister, he was very fond of the Quaker manner of speech, and used the “thee” and “thou” to the end of his life. He was an eloquent and convincing preacher, and consecrated his whole life to the work of disseminating the doctrines of his denomination. He married the daughter of Judge Strange Palmer, of Pottsville, Penn., and M. Louise Thomas is well known as taking a prominent part in many social and philanthropic reforms ; it is to her that I am indebted for the privilege of quoting her husband’s letter.

Mr. Thomas died Sept. 28, 1880; but he had lived to rejoice in the result of his enterprise, though he had little thought, perhaps, of what would be the outcome of his efforts to encourage the young people of his church and community. He was a model publisher, since, as two at least of his writers testify, he shared the pecuniary profits of his magazine with its contributors.