of fact, the Acme
mills paid out to the people but very little money. Work as they
might, they seldom saw anything but an order on a store, for clothes
and provisions sold to them at prices that would make a Jew peddler
blush for shame.

The Bishop found entire families who never saw a piece of money the
year round.

There are families and families, and some are more shiftless than
others.

In one of the cottages the old man found a broken down little thing
of seven, sick. For just such trips he kept his pockets full of
things, and such wonderful pockets they would have been to a
healthful natural child! Ginger cakes--a regular Noah's Ark, and
apples, red and yellow. Sweet gum, too, which he had himself gathered
from the trees in the woods. And there were even candy dolls and
peppermints.

"Oh, well, maybe I can help her, po' little thing," the Bishop said
when the mother conducted him in. But one look at her was
enough--that dead, unmeaning look, not unconscious, but
unmeaning--deadened--a disease which to a robust child would mean
fever and a few days' sickness--to this one the Bishop knew it meant
atrophy and death. And as the old man looked at her, he thought it
were better that she should go. For to her life had long since lost
its individuality, and dwarfed her into a nerveless machine--the
little frame was nothing more than one of a thousand monuments to the
cotton mill--a mechanical thing, which might cease to run at any
time.

"How old is she?" asked the Bishop, sitting down by the child on the
side of the bed.

"We put her in the mill two years ago when she was seven," said the
mother. "We was starvin' an' had to do somethin'." She added this
with as much of an apologetic tone as her nature would permit. "We
told the mill men she was ten," she added. "We had to do it. The fust
week she got two fingers mashed off."

The Bishop was silent, then he said: "It's bes' always to tell the
truth. Liar is a fast horse, but he never runs but one race."

Although there were no laws in Alabama against child labor, the mill
drew the lines then as now, if possible, on very young children. Not
that it cared for the child--but because it could be brought to the
mill too young for any practical use, unless it was wise beyond its
age.

He handed the little thing a ginger man. She looked at it--the first
she had ever seen,--and then at the giver in the way a wild thing
would, as if expecting some trick in the proff