ART. V.-MANUFACTURING CORPORATIONS AND MANUFACTURING VILLAGES.

The Twenty-second Annual Report of the American Home Missionary Society. Presented by the Executive Committee, at the Anniversary Meeting, May 10, 1848. With an Appendix.

No small portion of the field of Home Missionary labor is in New England, and in others of those older states which are best supplied with religious institutions. Many an old parish is weakened rather than strengthened by the growing up of a manufacturing village at the distance of some three or four miles from the old place of worship. The new village must be provided with a church and with a pastor, or it will become a center of pernicious influences. Thus, for a few years at least, a decaying agricultural parish on the one hand, and, on the other, a young church and society, in the midst of an unsettled and changeable population, and struggling against the tendencies to sectarianism and to infidelity, which are at work all around it,—are both dependent in some degree on the aid of the Home Missionary Society. After a while, the ideas and habits of the people, the modes of agriculture, and all the investments of capital, will have adjusted themselves to the new order of things. The old meeting-house has been repaired and beautified, or perhaps some more commodious and attractive edifice has taken its place; and though the spot has lost something of its importance as a center, the congregation finds itself well able-perhaps better able than before-to support the expenses of public worship and religious instruction without any burdensome sacrifice. The new village is no longer made up of transient operatives, living at board, and with no interest in its character and welfare; it has its permanent and prosperous households, whose dearest interests, both secular and spiritual, are dependent on the moral influences that give character to the place. But while these changes are in progress-while the old order of things is passing away, and the new order of things is getting itself established-there is a season of hazard and danger; and the far-sighted patriotic Christian zeal which is gathering churches and establishing pastoral ministrations beyond the Mississippi and on the shore of the Pacific, is compelled to exert itself lest the powers of darkness obtain dominion on the soil which was first occupied by our fathers more than two centuries ago, and which has been hallowed by their graves.

To one who, with a thoughtful mind, observes how constantly new villages are created in these eastern states, by the application of associated capital to all sorts of manufacturing industry, it can not but occur that the men who own and control the capital by

which these villages are called into existence, are the depositaries of a power which affects, widely and permanently, the welfare of their fellow men. The proprietors of that capital, and especially the directors and agents by whom it is controlled, are obviously acting under a responsibility to God of which they are not always aware. Too often it is taken for granted that the whole duty of capitalists, and especially of corporations, to the population of the villages which rise into existence at their call and in conformity with their arrangements, begins and ends with the fair payment of fair wages. Here then, if we mistake not, is a large chapter of Moral Philosophy, which has never been adequately written. We introduce the subject in this connexion as a subject in which all our readers have an interest. It will hardly be expected of us that we shall do full justice to such a subject within the limits of a few pages. It will be enough for us, at present, if we can bring the subject distinctly to the attention of thoughtful minds. Let the moral sense of the people take cognizance of such a subject as this, and in due time, it will pronounce a just decision and one that must be respected.

What have manufacturing corporations to do with the character and the social and moral well-being of the manufacturing villages which they create? Here on the one hand are the proprietors of capital, and generally of capital associated in large masses under a legislative incorporation. Here on the other hand a village is coming into existence in consequence of the employment of this capital-a compact settlement of workshops and dwellings, in which successive generations of human beings, connected by all domestic ties, and by all the duties and relations of neighborhood and society, will live and labor-will enjoy and suffer-will act upon each other, and be acted upon, by all the influences that constitute or control the common life of the community-will die and pass to their account. What responsibilities are involved in the relation between the one and the other?

Let it be considered under what circumstances the inhabitants of a new manufacturing village are brought together. They are almost always persons who have no accumulated capital, and whose earnings are barely sufficient to provide them from one year's end to another with the means of living. If indeed, by economical management, some of them may lay up a little for a day of need, and if all of them may be extremely comfortable, real poverty being unknown except in protracted sickness, still they are not by any means able, of themselves, to make that provision for the wants of their intellectual and religious natures, which ought to exist in the institutions and local influences of every community. They can not build churches and schools, nor can they support ministers and teachers. They are unable even to

supply themselves with comfortable houses, or even to lay out their village in a tasteful or ornamental manner. All these things, necessary to their intellectual and moral welfare, and necessary to all the welfare of the community which is there beginning to exist, must be provided for them from without, or not provided at all. Past generations have bequeathed to the present a rich legacy of invested capital, in all the places settled by the natural gatherings of population. Churches and schools and dwellings are built, roads are opened, public grounds are provided ;-the present is started upon the career of advancement, with the accumulations which it has inherited from the past. But in the process by which New England is so rapidly becoming more and more a manufacturing country, the proprietors of capital are bringing together masses of people in places entirely barren of all these advantages. In the most desolate and rocky situation, avoided by all human beings since the settling of the Pilgrims as the image of loneliness and barrenness, amid rocks and stumps and blasted trees, there is a water-fall. Taking its stand here, the genius of our age calls into almost instantaneous life a bustling village. Here factories are erected in this barren waste, and suddenly a large population is gathered. For this population every thing necessary to the social state is to be created. The past contributes nothing.

Now, where lies the responsibility of providing for the community thus beginning to be formed, the essentials to human welfare? Who is bound to do it? The individuals of such a populationthe operatives, not yet domiciliated on the spot, nor knit to each other and to the locality by the ties which constitute society-are not able to do it for themselves. Does it not then follow that the associated proprietors of the capital which has called these persons together, should aid in providing the institutions and influences essential to their well being, and in starting them upon the career of mental and moral improvement? Does no obligation to this effect devolve upon a man or body of men, who, having wealth to invest in enterprises which involve the creation of a village, assume the responsibility of calling together a mass of people, away from all the privileges which established society affords? Will not God hold to an account those who thus cause a human community, with all of destiny which is involved in its existence, to spring up for their profit and advantage?

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It should be distinctly remembered that in these manufacturing villages, the corporations for a long term of years have the only permanent interest. The operatives and overseers are only sojournThey go and come at the bidding of the companies. If a man has ever so much public spirit, he is not at home there; he is liable to lose his situation in a month, and to be turned adrift to find employment elsewhere. Not a man employed in the factories expects to live and die in the village. Not a man regards it as his

permanent residence. This must always be the case for a term of years, if the village is started in an entirely new situation. If there are a few farmers in the neighborhood, who naturally belong to the new community, this gives an element of stability; but it would be very unjust to throw upon them the responsibility of providing for the new population, which comes not at their bidding. For the new value given to their farms, and the greater nearness of their markets, they should be willing to pay their increased taxes, and they are bound to assist according to their ability; but their peculiar responsibility evidently ceases here. Among those who are employed by the corporations, it will take years to develop any permanent interest in the place. When they shall have been in their situations long enough to consider themselves fastened there, they will begin to have a home feeling, but not before. Wherever, then, the incorporated proprietors by the very tenor of their engagements with those whom they employ, exclude this permanent interest from the employed, how undeniable is it that the necessities of the social state should be in a great part provided for by them. They alone have a permanent interest. The village is theirs, and as it is theirs, they are bound under God to make it all that a village should be. They are as much bound to take care of its moral, intellectual and religious welfare, as the citizens of any of our towns are bound to care for the well being of the community in which they are proprietors and lords. If the village which is under their control, and in which they only have any permanent interest, grows up with a malaria of degrading and demoralizing influences hanging over its population, God will hold them responsible.

We are aware with what facility the sense of this responsibility may be evaded by the proprietors. Those employed, it may be said, come for definite wages, and can easily understand the situation of the place; and therefore when they come, they come on their own responsibility. But this argument will not answer. The individual doubtless is responsible for going to such a place, but this does not relieve the corporations from responsibility for having created such a place. An argument like this would vindicate the keeper of the dram shop or gambling house. Those who resort to such places know what they are doing. But the question is deeper ought you to make such a place for them to resort to? A man might almost as well send his children to dram shops and gambling houses as into some neglected manufacturing villages.

The relation, then, of such corporations to their villages, is essentially parental. It is as much so as the relation of master and apprentice. God has placed in the parent's care children who are unable to take care of themselves. And because God has thus placed them, parents are bound to take care of them, and to educate them in all good morals and sound principles.

He holds them to the obligations of this relation; nor can they escape if they would. So with the relation of master and apprentice. A youth is placed under an experienced business man, to be educated in his trade, and not only so, but to be watched over in his character. The master is obviously bound by imperative duty to guard the morals of the apprentice. He is invested, for a time, with parental responsibilities. Should he neglect to provide for that boy's intellectual and moral wants, he fails essentially in the discharge of his obligations. So with the relation now in question. The manufacturing corporation draws together, in unfavorable circumstances, those who in their new position are unable to provide for the wants of an unformed community, and who, being without the means of improvement and religious culture, can not be expected to make the arrangements necessary for the supply of such a deficiency. The capitalists are the parents of the village; they have called it into being, and they are responsible for its character, as truly as the parent for the character of his children. A manufacturing village needs for the formation of its character, all the means of improvement, moral and religious, which are needed by other villages. The transient, operative population who have no permanent interest or influence, are not the village, nor can they supply it with these means of improvement; the proprietors, therefore-the parents of the village-ought to do so. In other places, the population being permanent, and the property being theirs, the responsibility is divided among them; but in these villages, the property and the permanent interest being in the hands of the corporations, the burthen of all this duty lies upon them.

We may put this matter perhaps in a clearer light by a few plain questions. Can a village be suffered to grow up in vice and immorality, deprived of the many checks to evil and incitements to good which are essential to the character of a civilized and Christian community, while there is no responsibility in the matter? Where then shall this responsibility rest, except upon those who create the village, and who have ample power to aid it into the possession of all that is desirable and necessary? Where, when they who have created the village have the only permanent interest in it; and when, by the terms of their contract with those whom they employ, they deny to the villagers the idea of a home? Is a parent responsible for his children's training,and are not corporations responsible for their villages, which are their children? Can the members of a corporation, caring for nothing but their dividends, create a Sodom in the midst of New England, and not find themselves arraigned at last for such a deed at God's tribunal? Are there no moral obligations connected with the control of accumulated capital? And can any man, or company of men, exercise that control to build up a