Appleton (mill owner): . . . In this rich, young republic-we have started afresh in all things. Here on the Merrimack River we have prospered, not only because we invented a power loom. But also because we found disciplined and respectable workers, the virtuous daughters of our new England farmers. Our mills at Lowell are a kind of industrial miracle. In America, we can have manufactures without the sprawling, filth-strewn slums of England. Abundance without the degradation and poverty of the old world. . .

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Obadiah Smith (overseer): Watch out, Harriet Dearie. Or you can leave right now and not come back. Don't need all of you anyway. People aren't buying so much cloth these days. The Boston partners-Appleton and the rest-they can't sell what they got already. You better quiet down and be sensible like little Lucy here.