“No,” replied the girl. “I wish I had!”
“Haven’t seen Pillette’s house then? He’s resident manager of the Ames mills. We can go a little out of our way and have a look at it.”
A few minutes later they stood at the iron gate of the manager’s residence, a massive, brown stone dwelling, set in among ancient trees in an estate of several acres, and surrounded by shrubs and bushes.
“Fine place, eh?” remarked the priest.
“Beautiful,” replied Carmen. “Does he know all about those tenements down there?”
“Ah, that he does; and cares less. And he knows all about the terrible hot air in his mills, and the flying lint that clogs the lungs of the babies working there. He sees them leave the place, dripping with perspiration, and go out into the zero temperature half naked. And when they go off with pneumonia, well he knows why; and cares less. He knows that the poor, tired workers in that great prison lose their senses in the awful noise and roar, and sometimes get bewildered and fall afoul of belts and cogs, and lose their limbs or lives. He knows; and doesn’t care. So does Mr. Ames. And he wouldn’t put safety devices over his machines, because he doesn’t care. I’ve written to him a dozen times about it. But––
“And then Pillette,” he continued; “I’ve asked him to furnish his hands with decent drinking water. They work ten and twelve hours in that inferno, and when they want to drink, why, all they have is a barrel of warm water, so covered with lint that it has to be pushed aside in order to get at the water. Why, Pillette don’t even give ’em change rooms! He won’t give ’em decent toilet rooms! Says Mr. Ames can’t afford it. Seems to me that when a man can give a ball and send out invitations on cards of solid gold, he can afford to give a thought to the 159 thousands who have toiled and suffered in order to enable him to give such a ball, don’t you?”
Carmen did. She had attended that reception. The memory came back now in hot, searing thoughts.
“Oh, he catches ’em coming and going!” the priest went on. “You see, he manipulates Congress so that a high tariff law is passed, protecting him from imported goods. Then he runs up the prices of his output. That hits his mill hands, for they have to pay the higher prices that the tariff causes. Oh, no, it doesn’t result in increased wages to them. Ha! ha! Not a bit! They’re squeezed both ways. He is the only one who profits by high tariff on cotton goods. See how it works?”
Yes, Carmen saw. She might not know that Ames periodically appeared before Congress and begged its protection––nay, threatened, and then demanded. She might not know that Senator Gossitch ate meekly from the great man’s hand, and speciously represented to his dignified colleagues that the benefits of high protective duties were for “the people” of the United States. She might not know how Hood, employed to evade the laws enacted to hedge and restrain his master, bribed and bought, schemed and contrived, lobbied, traded, and manipulated, that his owner might batten on his blood-stained profits, while he kept his face turned away from the scenes of carnage, and his ears stopped against the piteous cries of his driven slaves. But she did know how needless it all was, and how easy, oh! how pitiably easy, it would be to remedy every such condition, would the master but yield but a modicum of his colossal, mesmeric selfishness. She did not know, she could not, that the master, Ames, made a yearly profit from his mills of more than two hundred per cent. But she did know that, were he less stupidly greedy, even to the extent of taking but a hundred per cent profit, he would turn a flood of sunshine into hundreds of sick, despairing, dying souls.