And yet authorities tell us that some of the mill towns of New England, Lowell in particular, are looked back upon as being almost idyllic as regards the opportunities for working women. On examination it is found that what was exceptional from our point of view was not the conditions, but the factory employees. In those days work in the mills was “socially permissible.” Indeed there was practically no other field of employment open to educated girls. The old domestic labors had been removed from the household—where could a girl with spirit and ability make the necessary money to carry out her legitimate desires? Her brothers “went west”—she went into the factories—with the same spirit. Ambitious daughters of New England farmers formed the bulk of cotton mill employees the first half of the nineteenth century. Their granddaughters are probably college graduates of the highest type to-day. After the long factory hours they found time for reading, debating clubs, lectures, church activities, French, and German classes. Part of the time some of the mill operatives taught school. Many of them looked forward to furthering their own education in such female seminaries as existed in those days, the expense to be met from their mill earnings. Poorly paid as mill hands were, it was often six to seven times what teachers received. “The mills offered not only regular employment and higher wages, but educational advantages which many of the operatives prized even more highly. Moreover, the girl who had worked in Lowell was looked upon with respect as a person of importance when she returned to her rural neighborhood. Her fashionable dress and manners and her general air of independence were greatly envied by those who had not been to the metropolis and enjoyed its advantages.”[2] [Footnote 2: Abbot, _Women in Industry_.] By 1850 the situation had altered. With the opening of the west, opportunities for women of gumption and spirit increased. The industrial depression of 1848-49 lowered wages, and little by little the former type of operative left the mill, her place being filled largely by Irish immigrants.