ot piles of
money. What do they care for a few penniless lot of strikers? They can
shut down and not feel it. Why, these hyar people might just as well
fight against a stone wall."

The wages of these people, remember, pay Jones for the organs upon which
they cannot play and the machines which they cannot use. His home is a
mill corporation house; he makes a neat sum by lodging the hands. He has
fetched down from the hills Molly, his own niece, to work for him. He
perforce _will_ speak well. I do not blame him.

He is by all means the most respectable-looking member of the colony. He
wears store clothes; he dresses neatly; he is shaven, brushed and
washed.

"Don't you let the mill hands discourage you with lies about the mill.
Any of 'em would be jealous of you-all." Then he warns, again forced
to plead for another side: "You-all won't come out as you go in, I
tell you! You're the picture of health. Why," he continues, a little
later, "you ain't got no idea how light-minded the mill-girl is. Why,
in the summer time she'll trolley four or five miles to a dance-hall
they've got down to ---- and dance there till four o'clock--come home
just in time to get into the mills at 5:45." Which fact convinces me
of nothing but that the women are still, despite their condition and
their white slavery, human beings, and many of them are young human
beings (Thank God, for it is a prophecy for their future!) _not yet
crushed to the dumb endurance of beasts_.

Rather early I bid them all good-night and climb the attic stairs to my
loft. There the three beds arrayed in soggy striped comforters greet me.
Old boots and downtrodden shoes are thrown into the corners and the
lines of clothing already describe fantastic shapes in the dark,
suggesting pendant sinister figures. Windows are large, thank Heaven! In
the mill district the air is heavy, singularly lifeless; the night is
warm and stifling.

Close to an old trunk I sit down with a slip of paper on my knee and try
to take a few notes. But no sooner have I begun to write than a step on
the stair below announces another comer. Before annoyance can deepen too
profoundly the big, awkward form of the landlady's niece slouches into
sight. Sheepishly she comes across the room to me--sits down on the
nearest bed. Molly's costume is typical: a dark cotton wrapper whose
colours have become indistinct in the stains of machinery oil and
perspiration. The mill girl boasts no coquetry of any ki