Explore "The Black Forge Mills" by William P. Chipman on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It was a soft balmy day in June, just two years later than the close of our previous chapter. The little village of Wenton lay nestling white and beautiful among its surrounding hills. The words white and beautiful are meant literally. For the mill and cottages and stores and schoolhouse and chapel were all as white as fresh paint could make them, and the village was beautiful because every cottage had its garden, and green plot, and shrubs and flowers; while the mill was surrounded with tasteful lawns and tall shade trees and climbing vines.
George Branford firmly believed that there was a moral and an elevating influence in the beauties God has thrown around us. He said it costs the manufacturer but little more to make his cottages and factories pretty and tasteful in their surroundings, and that he is more than compensated for the extra outlay in the ennobling effects upon his employés. They are broadened in mind, made contented in heart, and elevated in spirit. So, with Mr. Bacon's permission, he had during the two years and more that he had been here at Wenton carried out his ideas to a practical result, and he was satisfied; for there never was a happier nor more contented manufacturing community.