Thirdly, they have got up among themselves a periodical called 'The Lowell Offering'...

whereof I brought away from Lowell four hundred good solid pages, which I have read from beginning to end." And: "Of the merits of the 'Lowell Offering' as a literary production, I will only observe, putting entirely out of sight the fact of the articles having been written by these girls after the arduous labors of the day, that it will compare advantageously with a great many English Annuals." The efficiency of the New England mills was extraordinary.

James Montgomery, an English cotton manufacturer, visited the Lowell mills two years before Dickens and wrote after his inspection of them that they produced "a greater quantity of yarn and cloth from each spindle and loom (in a given time) than was produced by any other factories, without exception in the world." Long before that time, of course, the basic type of loom had changed from that originally introduced, and many New England inventors had been busy devising improved machinery of all kinds.
Such were the beginnings of the great textile mills of New England.
The scene today is vastly changed.

Productivity has been multiplied by invention after invention, by the erection of mill after mill, and by the employment of thousands of hands in place of hundreds.

Lowell as a textile center has long been surpassed by other cities.