Almost wolfishly the work-boy took the fruit from Hamilton and commenced to devour it. It was clear either that he was hungry or that such a luxury as an apple seldom fell to his lot. A few sentences passed, and then Hamilton asked:
"How long have you been in the factory here?"
"Eight years," 'the crusader' replied.
"You must have been just a youngster when you first came, then?"
"Seven years old," was the answer, "and small at that!"
"It's a shame to let little children work like that, I think," said Hamilton, wondering whether this would have the effect of rousing the other, "it must do them harm."
But even though expecting some fiery retort, Hamilton was unprepared for the transformation in the lad. A moment before he had been a stooped childish figure with an old and weary face, carrying trays of hot glass from furnace to bench and bench to furnace, but at the word he turned. The air of weariness fell from him, his back straightened, life and passion flamed into his eyes, and despite the grime and sordidness of his surroundings, despite the rags in which he was clothed, under the dull glow of the furnaces and the flickering violet play of a distant arc light he seemed the bearer of some high message as his boyish treble, rich in the tones of a familiar despair, rang through the factory.
"The land is filled with the voice o' cryin'," he began, "an' no one seems to hear. Tens o' thousands o' children cry themselves to sleep every night, knowin' that the mornin' only brings another day o' misery. Think of a little boy or girl o' ten years old, sufferin' already so much that hope is gone, an' tired enough to die! There are twenty-five thousand children less than ten years old in the fact'ries of America."
"Perhaps the people who could help don't know about it," suggested Hamilton.
"They know," the other continued, "but they don't care. They stop their ears to the cryin' o' the children an' talk about America as the land of opportunity. It is the land of opportunity—opportunity for the children to starve, opportunity to suffer, opportunity to die wretched an' to be glad to die. There's no country in the world where children are tortured as they are in the fact'ries of the United States."