t should they rejoice?

I have made the destitution of beauty clear. I believe there is an
absolute lack of every form or sight that might inspire or cause a soul
to awake. There is nothing to lift these people from the earth and from
labour. There should be a complete readjustment of this system. I have
been interested in reading in the New York _Sun_ of April 20th of the
visit of the bishops to the model factories in Ohio. I am constrained to
wish that bishops and clergy and philanthropists and millionaires and
capitalists might visit in bodies and separately the mills of South
Carolina and their tenement population. It is difficult to know just
what the ideas are of the people who have constructed these dwellings.
They tell us in this same prospectus, which I have read with interest
after my personal experience, that these villages are "_picturesque_."
This is the only reference I find to the people and their conditions. I
have seen nothing but horror, and yet I went into these places without
prejudice, prepared to be interested in the industry of the Southern
country, and with no idea of the tragedy and nudity of these people's
existence. The ultimate balance is sure to come; meanwhile, we cannot
but be sensible of the vast individual sacrifices that must fall to
destruction before the scales swing even.

* * * * *

THE CHILD IN SOUTHERN MILLS

* * * * *

CHAPTER IX

THE CHILD IN THE SOUTHERN MILLS

In the week before I left for the South I dined in ---- with a very
charming woman and her husband. Before a table exquisite in its
appointments, laden with the best the market could offer and good taste
display, sat the mistress, a graceful, intelligent young woman, full of
philanthropic, charitable interests, and one whom I know to be devoted
to the care and benefiting of little children in her city. During the
meal I said to her casually:

"Do you know that in your mills in South Carolina to-night, as we sit
here, little children are working at the looms and frames--little
children, some of them not more than six years old?"

She said, in astonishment, "I don't know it; and I can't believe it."

I told her I should soon see just how true the reports were, and when I
returned to New York I would tell her the facts. She is not alone in her
ignorance. Not one person, man or woman, to whom I told the facts of the
cases I ob