It is a Southern opinion, that the large factories which have grown up in the North, within the last seventeen years, are of a very demoralizing tendency: that so many persons--_such_ persons too--cannot be housed together, and allowed the free intercourse unavoidable where the restraint is not for crime, without a large result of licentiousness and vice. I have long thought thus: and must confess I entered New England with a sort of _wish_ (arising from my hostility to the protective system,) to have the opinion confirmed. In some places, I heard and saw confirmation strong: but in most--and those the chief seats of manufactures--my inquiries resulted directly otherwise. The laborers there, it seems, are as moral as any other class of the population. The females watch each other's deportment with the most jealous vigilance: a slip is at once exposed, and punished by expulsion; even a slight indiscretion is sure to draw down remonstrance, and if that fails, complaint to the ruling power. The boys and girls are allowed a reasonable part of the year to attend the common-schools; and are encouraged at all seasons to frequent Sunday schools. Lectures, occasional or in courses, are delivered, of which the operatives are eager hearers: and social Libraries, with habits of reading, sometimes produce among them strengthened and well stored minds. Wherever these good effects appear, be it observed, the proprietors and superintendents (generally men of fortune, as well as intelligence) have taken the greatest possible care to produce them. And where the unfavorable appearances occurred, there seemed to have been a corresponding neglect on the part of owners and agent. The _natural_ course of these establishments, then, seems to be _down the stream of vice_. Great exertions may enable them to resist, nay to surmount and ascend the current; but so soon as those efforts cease, that instant the downward tendency prevails.[1] While the manufacturing system is young--while high protecting duties enable employers to give high wages--while a desire to conciliate favor to the system keeps both owners and operatives upon _their best behavior_--the favorable moral condition I have described may continue. But the oarsman cannot forever row up the stream; weariness, or confidence, or incaution, will, some day, relax his arm. In process of time, these promiscuous assemblages of hundreds and thousands will vindicate the justness of the reasoning, which argues the danger of contamination (a sort of _spontaneous combustion_) from so close a contact:[2] will shew themselves rank hot beds of vice; and make the lover of good morals grieve, that so many souls should ever have been seduced from the healthful air of field, and forest, and rustic fireside, to sicken and die in a tainted, unnatural atmosphere.