“And yet, who permits them?” Haynerd had once exclaimed. “Ames’s methods are the epitome of hell! But he is ours, and the worthy offspring of our ghastly, inhuman social system. We alone are to blame that he debauches courts, that he blinds executives, and that he buys legislatures! We let him make the laws, and fatten upon the prey he takes within their limits. Aye, he is the crafty, vicious, gold-imbruted manifestation of a whole nation’s greed!” Nay, more, he is the externalization of a people’s ignorance of God.
Carmen’s throat filled as she watched the old woman bustling about the wretched room and making a feeble attempt at order.
“You see,” the widow went on, happy in the possession of an auditor, “there is no use making apologies for the looks of my room; I couldn’t make it look much better if I tried. There’s no running water. We have to get water from the hydrant down back of the house. It is pumped there from the creek, and it’s a long climb up these stairs when you’ve got only one arm to hold the bucket. And I have to bring my coal up, too. The coal dealer charges extra for bringing it up so far.”
Carmen sat down on an empty box and watched her. The woman’s lot seemed to have touched the depths of human wretchedness, and yet there burned within her soul a something that the oppression of human avarice could not extinguish.
“It’s the children, Miss, that I think about,” she continued. “It’s not so bad as when I was a little one and worked in the cloth mills in England. I was only six when I went into the mills there. I worked from seven in the morning until after six at night. And the air was so bad and we got so tired that we children used to fall asleep, and the boss used to carry a stick to whip us to keep us awake. My parents died when I was only eight. They worked in the Hollow-ware works, and died of lead poisoning. People only last four or five years at that work.”
Carmen rose. “How many children are employed in these mills here?” she asked.
“I can’t say, Miss. But hundreds of them.”
“I want to see them,” said the girl, and there was a hitch in her voice as she spoke.
“You can go down and watch them come out about six this evening. It’s a sight to a stranger. But now I must hurry to look after the Hoolan babes.”
When she again reached the street Carmen turned and 155 looked up at the hideous structure from which she had emerged; then she drew a long breath. The foul air of the “death-room” seemed to fill her lungs as with leaden weights. The dim light that lay over the wretched hovel hung like a veil before her eyes.