them—­a natatorium, a reading library—­and these halls fell into disuse.”  I ask him now, through these pages, the questions which I did not put to him then as I listened in silence to his complaint.  He said he thought too much was done for the mill-hands.  What time would he suggest that they should spend in the reading-room, even if they have learned to read?  They rise at four; at a quarter before six they are at work.  The day in winter is not born when they start their tasks; the night has fallen long before they cease.  In summer they are worked long into their evenings.  They tell me that they are too tired to eat; that all they want to do is to turn their aching bones on to their miserable mattresses and sleep until they are cried and shrieked awake by the mill summons.  Therefore they solve their own questions.  Nothing is provided for them that they can use, and they turn to the only thing that is within their reach—­animal enjoyment, human intercourse and companionship.  They are animals, as are their betters, and with it, let us believe, more excuse.

The mill marriage is a farce, and yet they choose to call their unions now and again a marriage.  Many a woman has been a wife several times in the same town, in the same house.  The bond-tying is a form, and, of course, mostly ignored.  The settlements swarm with illegitimate children.  Next to me work two young girls, both under seventeen, both ringless and with child.

* * * * *

Let me picture the Foster household, where I used to call Saturday evenings.

Mrs. Foster herself, dirty, slipshod, a frowzy mass, hugs her fireside.  Although the day is warm, she kindled a fire to stimulate the thin, poor blood exhausted by disease and fevers.  Two flatirons lie in a dirty heap on the floor.  As usual, the room is a nest of filth and untidiness.

Mrs. Foster is half paralyzed, but her tongue is free.  She talks fluently in her soft Southern drawl, more Negro than white as to speech and tone.  Up to her sidles a dirty, pretty little boy of four.

“This yere is too little to go to the mill, but he’s wild to go; yes, ser, he is so.  Las’ night he come to me en say, ’Auntie, you-all wake me up at fo’ ‘clock sure; I got ter go ter the mill.’”

Here the little blond child, whose mouth is set on a pewter spoon dripping over with hominy, grins appreciatively.  He throws back his white and delicate little face, and his aunt, drawing him close to her, caresses him and continues:  “Yes, ma’am, to-day he dun wake up after they-all had gone and he sayd, ‘My goodness, I dun oversleep mase’f!’ He sha’n’t go to the mill,” she frowned, “not ef we can help it.  Why, I don’t never let him outen my sight; ’fraid lest those awful mill children would git at him.”