[Illustration: LOWELL MACHINE SHOP About 1860.]

[Illustration: APPLETON MILLS. 1845.]

Nor would a sketch of Lowell be complete without mention of the firm of
J.C. Ayer and Company. Dr. J.C. Ayer started the business in 1837, when
he offered to physicians the prescription of cherry pectoral. It soon
became a very popular remedy, and he was soon embarked in the enterprise
of manufacturing it. Liter he added to the list of his proprietary
medicines cathartic pills, sarsaparilla, ague cure, and hair vigor. He
died July 3, 1878, after having accumulated a princely fortune. His
brother, and partner, Frederick Ayer, conducts the business. The firm
occupy several large buildings and employ three hundred people. The
world demands fifteen tons of Ayer's pills yearly. They publish thirteen
million almanacs, in ten languages, issuing twenty-six editions for
different localities, keeping several large presses constantly at work.

[Illustration: HIGH-STREET CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH.]

C.J. Hood and Company also make sarsaparilla and other proprietary
medicines. They employ seventy-five operatives.

E.W. Hoyt and Company employ twenty hands, and make two million bottles
of German cologne.

There are numerous other manufactories in the city, of more or less
extent. Their products consist of porus and adhesive plasters, lung
protectors, sulphuric, hydrochloric, and nitric acids, and other
chemicals and dye-stuffs, belting, paper stock, yarns, shoulder-braces,
suspenders, shoe-linings, elastic webbing, sackings, rugs, mats, gauze