After the American Century
 |
| New England Mill, c. 1850 |
Historical
Document
The Swedish novelist and champion of women’s rights
Fredrika Bremer visited the United States in the middle of the nineteenth
century, a decade before the Civil War. She traveled widely and made many
interesting observations of the places and people she saw. In this connection,
she is known for the book she published on these travels, under the title Hemmen
i den nya världen, Stockholm, 1853,
and immediately translated into English as The Homes of the New World:
Impressions of America, vol. I-III. London, 1853.
The selections below concern the industrial mills in Lowell, Massachusetts and the institution of slavery. They come from her letters, which were only published in 1924 under the title America of the fifties: letters of Fredrika Bremer, edited by Adolph B. Benson. New York, The American-Scandinavian foundation, 1924.
The selections below concern the industrial mills in Lowell, Massachusetts and the institution of slavery. They come from her letters, which were only published in 1924 under the title America of the fifties: letters of Fredrika Bremer, edited by Adolph B. Benson. New York, The American-Scandinavian foundation, 1924.
On the Mills at Lowell
I
visited the celebrated manufactories of Lowell. I would willingly have declined
the journey, because it was so cold, but they had invited strangers to meet me,
got up an entertainment, and therefore I was obliged to go. And I did not regret
it. I had a glorious view from the top of Dewcroft Hill, in that cold,
starlight winter evening, of the manufactories of Lowell, lying below in a
half-circle, glittering with a thousand lights like a magic castle on the
snow-covered ground. And then to think and to know that these lights were not ignes
fatui, not merely pomp and show, but that they were actually symbols of a
healthful and hopeful life in the persons whose labor they lighted; to know
that within every heart in this palace of labor burned a bright little light,
illumining a future of comfort and prosperity which every day and every turn of
the wheel only brought the nearer. In truth there was a deep purpose in these
brilliant lights, and I beheld this illumination with a joy that made the winter's
night feel warm to me.
The
following morning I visited the manufactories and saw the young ladies at their
work and at dinner; saw their boarding-houses, sleeping-rooms, etc. All was
nice and comfortable, as we had heard it described. Only I noticed that some of
the "young ladies" were about fifty, and some of them not so very
well clad, while others again were too fine. I was struck by the relationship
between the human being and the machinery. Thus, for example, I saw the girls
standing, each one between four busily-working spinning-jennies: they walked
among them, looked at them, watched over and guarded them much as a mother
would watch over and tend her children. Machines are becoming more and more
obedient under the maternal eye of intelligence. The procession of the
operatives, two and two, in shawls, bonnets, and green veils, as they went to
their dinner, produced a respectable, imposing effect. And the dinners which I
saw at a couple of tables (they take their meals at small tables, five or six
together) appeared to be good and bountiful also. I observed that, besides meat
and potatoes, there were fruit tarts.
The
industrious and skillful can earn from six to eight dollars per week, never
less than three, and so much is requisite for their board each week, as I was
told. The greater number lay by money and in a few years are able to leave the
manufactory and undertake less laborious work.
On
slavery
You
may believe that there are many discussions here about slavery. I do not
originate them, but when they come, which they frequently do, I express my
sentiments candidly, though as inoffensively as possible. One thing, however,
which astonishes and annoys me here, and which I did not expect to find, is
that I hardly ever meet a man, or woman either, who can openly and honestly look
the thing in the face. They wind and turn about in all sorts of ways, making
use of every argument, sometimes the most contradictory, to convince me that
the slaves are the happiest people in the world and do not wish to have their
condition altered or to be placed in any other relationship to their masters
than the present one. In many cases and under certain circumstances this is
true; and it occurs more frequently than the Northerners believe. But there is
such an abundance of unfortunate examples, and always must be in this system,
that the idea is detestable.
In
general the house slaves here seem to be well treated; and I have been in
houses where their rooms and furnishings (for every servant, male or female,
has his own pleasant room) are much better than those provided for the free
servants of our country. The relationship between the servant and the employer
seems also, for the most part, to be good and genuine; the older servants
especially seem to stand in that affectionate relationship to the family which
characterizes a patriarchal condition, and which it is so beautiful to witness
in our good families between servant and employer; but with this
important difference, that with us the relationship is the free-will attachment
of one rational being to another. Here, also, may often occur this free-will
attachment, but it is then a conquest over slavery and that slavish
relationship, and I fancy that here nobody knows exactly what it is. In the
meantime, it is true that the negro race has a strong instinct of devotion and
veneration, and this may be seen in the people's eyes; they have a peculiar,
kind, faithful, and affectionate expression which I like, and which reminds me
of the expression in the eye of a dog. Also, they have a natural tendency to
subordination to the white race and to obey the higher intelligence; and white
mothers and black nurses prove continually the exclusive love of the latter for
the child of the white. No better foster-mother, no better nurse, can any one
have for her children than a black woman; and in general no better sick nurses
than the blacks, either male or female. They are naturally good-tempered and
devoted; and if the white "Massa" and "Missis," as the
negroes call their owners, are kind on their part, the relationship between
them and "Daddy" and "Mammy," as the black servants are
called, especially if they are well on in years, is actually good and tender.
But neither are circumstances of quite the opposite wanting. The tribunals of
Carolina and its better class communities have yet fresh in their memories
deeds of cruelty done to house-slaves which rival the worst abominations of
heathen times. Some of the very blackest of these deeds have been perpetrated
by women; by women in the higher class of Charleston society! Only
lately a rich planter has been condemned to two years' imprisonment in the
House of Correction for barbarous treatment of a slave. And then it must be
borne in mind that the public tribunal does not take cognizance of any
cruelties except those that are too horrible to be passed over. When I bring
forward these universally known circumstances in my arguments with the patrons
and patronesses of slavery, they reply, "Even in your country, and in all
countries, there are masters and mistresses who are sometimes severe to their
servants." To which I reply, "But then they can leave them!" To
this they have nothing to say, and look displeased.
Ah!
the curse of slavery, as the common phrase goes, has fallen not merely
on the black, but perhaps at this moment still more upon the white, because it
has warped his sense of truth and has degraded his moral nature. The position
and the treatment of the blacks, however, really improve from year to year;
while the whites do not seem to advance in enlightenment. Yet I must see and hear
more before I condemn them.
From America
of the fifties: letters of Fredrika Bremer, edited by Adolph B. Benson. New York, The American-Scandinavian
foundation, 1924, 79-81, 99-103.
