since the state was a state. So determined were the
women to have these questions fairly answered that they presently
asked them in cold print, on the front page of the town paper. And
Laurence told them. He had appalling lists and figures and names and
dates. The "chiel among us takin' notes" printed them. Dabney's
editorial comments were barbed.

Now there are mills in the South which do obey the state laws and
regulations as to hours, working conditions, wages, sanitation, safety
appliances, child labor. But there are others which do not. Ours
notoriously didn't.

John Flint and my mother had had many a conference about deplorable
cases which both knew, but were powerless to change. The best they had
been able to do was to tabulate such cases, with names and facts and
dates, but precious little had been accomplished for the welfare of
the mill people, for those who might have helped had been too busy, or
perhaps unwilling, to listen or to act.

But, as Flint insisted, the new Civic League was ready and ripe to
hear now what Madame had to tell. At one meeting, therefore, she took
the floor and told them. When she had finished they named a committee
to investigate mill conditions in Appleboro.

That work was done with a painstaking thoroughness, and the
committee's final report was very unpleasant reading. But the names
signed to it were so unassailable, the facts so incontrovertible, that
Dabney thought best to print it in full, and later to issue it in
pamphlet form. It has become a classic for this sort of thing now, and
it is always quoted when similar investigations are necessary
elsewhere.

It was the Butterfly Man who had taken that report and had rewritten
and revised it, and clothed it with a terrible earnestness and force.
Its plain words were alive. It seemed to me, when I read them that I
heard ... a bluejay's ribald screech ... and the heart-rending and
piercing cries of a little brown motherbird whose nest had been
ravaged and destroyed.

Appleboro gasped, and sat up, and rubbed its eyes. That such things
could be occurring here, in this pleasant little place, in the shadow
of their churches, within reach of their homes! No one dared to even
question the truth of that report, however, and it went before the
Grand Jury intact. The Grand Jury very promptly called Mr. Inglesby
before it. They were polite to him, of course, but they did manage to
ask him some very unpleasant and rather personal quest