We were obliged to go to school with our champions, the boys, for we did not dare to go alone. These “Acreites” respected one or two of us from our relationship to the “bullies,” as some of the fighting leaders of our boys were called; and when caught alone by Acreites coming home from school, we have been in terror of our lives, till we heard some of them say, in a language used by all sides, air-o-there owes-o-gose e-o-the ooly-o-boos’ ister-o-see. (There goes the bully’s sister.) This language was called Hog Latin by the boys; but it is found in one of George Borrows’ books, as a specimen of the Rommany or gypsy language. These fights were not confined to the boys on each side; after mill-hours the men joined in the fray, and evenings that should have been better employed were spent in carrying on this senseless warfare. The authorities interfered, and prevented these raids of the Acreites upon the school-children, and the warfare was kept within their own domain. It lasted after this for more than ten years, and was ended by the “bloody battle” of Suffolk Bridge, in which a young boy was killed. The agents were paid only fair salaries, the overseers generally two dollars a day, and the help all earned good wages. By this it will be seen that there were no very rich persons in Lowell, nor were there any “suffering poor,” since every man, woman, and child, (over ten years of age) could get work, and was paid according to the work each was capable of doing. The richest young lady of my time was the daughter of a deceased mill-owner; her income, it was said, was six hundred dollars a year! And many of the factory girls made from six to ten dollars a week! out of this, to be sure, they paid their board, which was one dollar and twenty-five cents a week.[2] [2] In addition to this, the corporation paid twenty-five cents a week to the boarding-house keeper, for each operative. But this sum was soon withdrawn, the girls were obliged to pay it themselves, and this was one of the grievances which caused the first strike among the Lowell factory operatives. By this it will be seen that there could not have been much aristocracy of wealth; but (as in most manufacturing cities to-day), there was a class feeling, which divided the people, though not their interests. For, as has been said, the corporation guarded well the interests of its employees; and as the mill-hands looked to the factories for their support, they worked as one man (and one woman) to help increase the growing prosperity of the city, which had given to them a new and permanent means of earning a livelihood. The history of Lowell gives a good illustration of the influence of woman, as an independent class, upon the growth of a town or a community.