In the 1870s and 1880s, Joseph Cook was a fiery young congregational minister in the industrial town of Lynn, Massachusetts. His extraordinarily successful series of "music hall" lectures on factory reform and industrialism earned him renown as an articulate spokesman for the troubled middle class in the industrializing Northeast. The lectures touch on such topics as child labor, social control, urbanization, the theater and the press—with Cook always vehemently opposing the evils of the factory system. The first full-length study contains these fascinating lectures, as well as responses to them by the manufacturers and the community. They are presented in the context of the changing times in which they originated.