e she leaves
for me is broken. This delays, naturally, and the overseer, after
proving to his satisfaction that I am hampered, gets me a new one and I
set to work.

Many of the older hands come without breakfast, and a little later tin
pails or paper parcels appear. These operatives crouch down in a Turkish
fashion at the machines' sides and take a hasty mouthful of their
unwholesome, unpleasant-looking food, eating with their fingers more
like animals than human beings. By eight the full steam power is on, to
judge by the swift turning, the strong resistance of the spools. Not one
of the women near me but is degrading to look upon and odourous to
approach. These creatures, ill clad, with matted, frowsy hair and hands
that look as though they had never, never been washed, smell like the
byre. As for the children, I must pass them by in this recital. The
tiny, tiny children! The girls are profane, contentious, foul-mouthed.
There is much partisanship and cliqueism; you can tell it by the scowls
and the low, insulting words as an enemy passes. To protect the hair
from the flying pieces of cotton the more particular women, and
oftentimes children as well, wear felt hats pulled down well over the
eyes. The cotton, indeed, thistledown-like, flies without cessation
through the air--spins off from the spools; it rises and floats, falling
on the garments and in the hair, entering the nostrils and throat and
lungs. I repeat, the expectoration, the coughing and the throat-cleaning
is constant. Over there two girls have taken advantage of a wait for
yarn to go to sleep on the floor; their heads are pillowed on each
others' shoulders; they rest against a cotton bale. Maggie wanders over
to me to see "how you-all is gettin' on." "Tired?" "Well, I reckon I am.
Thank God we get out in a little while now."

* * * * *

One afternoon I went up to the loft to rest a few moments before going
to the mill. Mrs. White was sitting on her bed, a slender figure in the
blue-checked wrapper she always wore. Her head was close to the window,
her silhouette in the light, pale and slender. "I wa'n't sick when I
come hyar, but them mills! They's suttinly tew hyard on a woman!
Weave-room killed me, I guess. I couldn't hyar at all when I come out
and scarcely could stan' on ma feet when I got home. Tew tyred to eat,
tew; and the water hyar is regularly pisen; hev you-all seen it? It's
all colours. Doctor done come to se