I have been induced to bring this book before the public, that the working-classes of the United Kingdom may have the experience and opinion of one of their own order upon the condition of the people of the United States of America. I have endeavoured to give a true account of the industrial, social, moral, and political state of the people, the circumstances which influence their conduct, and the relation their condition bears to the same classes in Europe. It may be thought that some of my pictures of men and things in the New World are exaggerations; I beg, however, to say that, in my humble opinion, exaggeration of either the people or the country, even by a professional romancist, would be next to an impossibility!

It will be seen that I have not drawn an attractive picture of social life among the working-classes of America, but truth compels me to add a word or two as to the impression made upon me since my return to England, by the condition of the humbler classes in this country, viewed in contrast with those of the United States. The stranger who comes to England with the impression that he is visiting the richest and most highly civilized country in the world, cannot but be disagreeably impressed with the squalor and intemperance which everywhere meet his sight. In America the socially degraded members of the State form but a small class : human beings in bundles of filthy rags, or creatures steeped in abject poverty, if they exist at all, are rarely to be seen ; and though rowdies, rogues, and ruffians hang about lazy corners, and frequent beer-house bars, it it is only doing justice to the people to say that these places are not the haunts of female tipplers.