Mothers who have no one with whom to leave their
babies bring them to the workshop, and their lives begin, continue and
end in the horrible pandemonium.

One little boy passes by with his broom; he is whistling. I look up at
the cheery sound that pierces fresh but faint and natural above the
machines' noise. His eyes are bright; his good spirits surprise me: here
is an argument for my comfortable friends who wish to prove that the
children "are happy!" I stop him.

"You seem very jolly!"

He grins.

"How long have you been working?"

"Two or three days."

The gay creature has just _begun_ his servitude and brings into the
dreary monotony a flash of the spirit which should fill childhood.

I think it will be granted that it takes a great deal to discourage and
dishearten a child. The hopefulness of the mill communities lies in just
those elements that overwork in the adult and that child labour will
ultimately destroy. When hope is gone in the adult he must wreak some
vengeance on the bitter fate that has robbed him. There is no more
tragic thing than the hopeless child. The adult who grows hopeless can
affiliate with the malcontents and find in the insanity of anarchy what
he calls revenge.

It seems folly to insult the common sense of the public by asking them
whether they think that thirteen hours a day, with a half to
three-quarters of an hour for recreation at noon, or the same amount of
night-work in a mill whose atmosphere is vile with odours, humid with
unhealthfulness, filled with the particles of flying cotton, a
pandemonium of noise and deafening roar, so deafening that the loss of
hearing is frequent and the keenness of hearing always dulled ...
whether the atmosphere combined with the association of men and women
whose morals or lack of morals is notorious all over the world, is good
for a growing child? Is it conducive to progressive development, to the
making of decent manhood or womanhood? What kind of citizen can this
child--if he is fit enough in the economic struggle of the world to
survive--turn out to be? Not citizens at all: creatures scarcely fit to
be called human beings.

I asked the little girl who teaches me to spool who the man is whom I
have seen riding around on horseback through the town.

"Why, he goes roun' rousin' up the hands who ain't in their places.
Sometimes he takes the children outen thayre bades an' brings 'em back
to the mill."

And if the child can stand, it spin