he clay of their bodies is
different stuff from the clay in your body and mine and in the bodies
of all slaves. And I ask you, Why should a slave become the master of
another slave? And why should the son of a slave become the master of
many slaves? I leave these questions for you to answer for yourselves,
but do not forget that in the beginning the Vanderwaters were slaves.

And now, my brothers, I come back to the beginning of my tale to tell
you of Tom Dixon's arm. Roger Vanderwater's factory in Kingsbury was
rightly named "Hell's Bottom," but the men who toiled in it were men, as
you shall see. Women toiled there, too, and children, little children.
All that toiled there had the regular slave rights under the law, but
only under the law, for they were deprived of many of their rights by
the two overseers of Hell's Bottom, Joseph Clancy and Adolph Munster.

It is a long story, but I shall not tell all of it to you. I shall tell
only about the arm. It happened that, according to the law, a portion of
the starvation wage of the slaves was held back each month and put
into a fund. This fund was for the purpose of helping such unfortunate
fellow-workmen as happened to be injured by accidents or to be overtaken
by sickness. As you know with yourselves, these funds are controlled
by the overseers. It is the law, and so it was that the fund at Hell's
Bottom was controlled by the two overseers of accursed memory.

Now, Clancy and Munster took this fund for their own use. When accidents
happened to the workmen, their fellows, as was the custom, made grants
from the fund; but the overseers refused to pay over the grants. What
could the slaves do? They had their rights under the law, but they
had no access to the law. Those that complained to the overseers were
punished. You know yourselves what form such punishment takes--the fines
for faulty work that is not faulty; the overcharging of accounts in the
Company's store; the vile treatment of one's women and children; and the
allotment to bad machines whereon, work as one will, he starves.

Once, the slaves of Hell's Bottom protested to Vanderwater. It was the
time of the year when he spent several months in Kingsbury. One of the
slaves could write; it chanced that his mother could write, and she had
secretly taught him as her mother had secretly taught her. So this slave
wrote a round robin, wherein was contained their grievances, and all the
slaves signed by mark. And, with