established for their use by the corporations. In 1841, one hundred thousand dollars, a sum which was a source of pride to all concerned, was deposited to the credit of the girls of Lowell. Happy in their social position, and in the good feeling existing between employers and employed, free from pecuniary care for the necessities of life and in command of some of the best luxuries, the Lowell girls reached an intellectual height unique in the history of industrial workers. When the twelve or fourteen hours that then constituted a day’s work were ended, buoyant with the health of generations of out-door workers, the Lowell women were fresh enough to enjoy in various ways what was left of their evenings. In most of the boarding-houses there were pianos, the joint property of the girls. Some played, others sang. Books were read, topics discussed, and poems, stories, and essays written. These formed the pages of the “Lowell Offering,” a monthly magazine composed entirely of articles by the girls. The literary merit of these articles astonished people from abroad. Harriet Martineau republished some of them in England under the title of “Mind among the Spindles,” while Dickens claimed that, independent of the fact that the articles were written by girls after a long, hard day’s work in factories, they “compared favorably with those of many English periodicals.” In character, the stories differed from the sentimental love-tales common to women’s writings of that period. Simple in style, they were mostly descriptive of human life and the beauties of nature that the girls had left behind them, and what was best in their Lowell environments. Among the contributors, who attained national reputation, were Lucy Larcom, the poet; Margaret Foley, the sculptor, and Mrs. H. H. Robinson, the author.[174] These women always spoke with affectionate respect of their factory experiences. Mrs. Robinson, at the International Council of Women, held at Washington in 1888, after telling how she had entered the Lowell mills as a “doffer” when a child, and remained there until she married in 1848, said: “I consider the Lowell mills my _alma mater_, and am as proud of them as most girls of the colleges in which they have been educated.”