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.”