Benjamnin F. Butler, Butler's Book: Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin Butler

[53] Manufacturing Company were taxed a small sum,--I think thirty cents each month,--and this sum was deducted from their wages. Mr. Boot, from his training, was not as much impressed as Mr. Edson was with the necessity for the education and welfare of the common people, who were, of course, the operatives in the mills. Almost all of the land on which the town stood was held by the Proprietors of the Locks and Canals on the Merrimack River. They sold off this land, and they also sold the water power furnished from the Merrimack River by a dam. This dam was put across at the head of Pawtucket Falls, although the law said that there should be no dam, because it would affect the navigation of the river. The water was conducted through the new town of Lowell, at first by a canal, which had been established by the Proprietors of the Locks and Canals about the year 1792, for the purpose of taking boats around the falls.

With a foresight as sagacious and remarkable as was the persistency with which the scheme was carried out, Mr. Edson, in connection with a committee of the citizens of the new town, determined that two squares or commons, the North and South Common, should be dedicated to the public use. It was done; and the commons remain even to this day the breathing and recreation points of the citizens. That enterprise for the benefit of the laboring man and woman and their children was not opposed by Mr. Boot, as the land was comparatively valueless. But Mr. Boot was astounded when the young clergyman proposed that two schoolhouses, costing more than twenty thousand dollars, should be erected for grammar schools,--one on the corner of each park. A very considerable number of buildings for primary schools, then termed infant schools, had been hired and put in use in various parts of the town, but up to that time, anything like instruction of the elder classes of children was not provided for, save that two or three small rooms had been hired for that purpose. The taxation of that day for those new grammar school buildings of brick would be borne substantially by the manufacturing companies and the Proprietors of the Locks and Canals. Mr. Boot declared that this could not and would not be done. A town meeting was called, to appropriate for such expenditure by the town. Mr. Boot appeared in person and opposed the proposition. He was backed by the managing agents of the several mills. They