n the humourous to use the
word sanitation. In the mill district, as far as my observation reached,
there is none. Refuse not too vile for the public eye is thrown into the
middle of the streets in front of the houses. The general drainage is
performed by emptying pans and basins and receptacles into the
backyards, so that as one stands at the back steps of one's own door one
breathes and respires the filth of half a dozen shanties. Decaying
vegetables, rags, dirt of all kinds are the flowers of these people, the
decorations of their miserable garden patches. To walk through Granton
(which the prospectus tells us is well drained) is to evoke nausea; to
_inhabit_ Granton is an ordeal which even necessity cannot rob of its
severity.

These settlers, habitants of dwellings built by finance solely for the
purpose of renting, are celebrated for their immorals--"a rough, lying,
bad lot." "Oh, the mill-hands!" ... Sufficient, expressive designation.
Nevertheless, these people, simple, direct and innocent, display
qualities that we have been taught are enviable--a lack of curiosity,
for the most part, in the affairs of others, a warm Southern courtesy,
a human kindliness. I found these people degraded because of their
habits and not of their tendencies, which statement I can justify;
whatever may be their natural instincts, born, nurtured in their
unlovely environment, they have no choice but to fall into the usages of
poverty and degradation. They have seen nothing with which to compare
their existences; they have no time, no means to be clean, and no
stimulus to be decent.

A job at Granton was no more difficult to secure than was "spoolin'" at
the other mill. I applied one Saturday noon, when Granton was silent and
the operatives within their doors asleep, for the most part, leaving the
village as deserted as it is on a workday. A like desolation pervades
the atmosphere on holiday and day of toil. I was so lucky as to meet a
shirt-sleeved overseer in the doorway. Preceding him were two ill-clad,
pale children of nine and twelve, armed with a long, mop-like broom with
which their task was to sweep the cotton from the floors--cotton that
resettled eternally as soon as it was brushed away. The superintendent
regarded me curiously, I thought penetratingly, and for the first time
in my experience I feared detection. My dread was enhanced by the
loneliness, the lawlessness of the place, the risk and boldness of my
venture.

By