I have heard how "the rights of small peoples" have been destroyed by
capitalism; and if the right to sleep five in a bed was prized by the
little folks, this privilege has certainly been taken away from them.
At the Mooseheart School we are pinched for sleeping room for our
fast-growing attendance. I suggested that, for the time being, we might
double deck the beds like the berths in a sleeping car. "No," cried the
superintendent. "Not in this age do we permit the crowding of children
in their sleeping quarters." So this is the slavery that capitalism has
driven us to; we are forced to give our children more comforts than we
had ourselves. When I was sleeping five in a bed with my brothers, there
was one long bolster for five hot little faces. The bolster got feverish
and a boy sang out: "Raise up." We lifted our tired heads. "Turn over."
Two boys turned the bolster. "Lie down." And we put our faces on the
cool side and went to sleep.

Those were not hardships, and life was sweet, and we awoke from our
crowded bed, like birds in a nest awakened by their mother's morning
song. For, as I have said, my mother was always singing. Her voice was
our consolation and delight.

One of the most charming recollections of my boyhood is that of my
mother standing at our gate with a lamp in her hands, sending one boy
out in the early morning darkness, to his work, and at the same time
welcoming another boy home. My brother was on the day shift and I on the
night, which meant that he left home as I was leaving the mills, about
half past two in the morning. On dark nights--and they were all dark at
that hour--my mother, thinking my little brother afraid, would go with
him to the gate and, holding an old-fashioned lamp high in her hands,
would sing some Welsh song while he trudged out toward the mills and
until he got within the radius of the glare from the stacks as they.
belched forth the furnace flames. And as he passed from the light of the
old oil burner into the greater light from the mills, I walked wearily
out from that reflection and was guided home by my mother's lamp and
song on her lips.

Happy is the race that sings, and the Welsh are singers. After the
tiring labor in the mills we still had joy that found its voice in song.
When I was six years old I joined a singing society. The whole land of
Wales echoes with the folk songs of a people who sing because they must.

The memory of my mother singing, has made my whole li