PAY-DAY
It was Saturday afternoon and pay-day, and the mill shut down at six o'clock.
When Helen went in Kingsley sat at the Superintendent's desk, issuing orders on the Secretary and Treasurer, Richard Travis, who sat at his desk near by and paid the wages in silver.
Connected with the mill was a large commissary or store—a cheap modern structure which stood in another part of the town, filled with the necessaries of life as well as the flimsy gewgaws which delight the heart of the average mill hand. In establishing this store, the directors followed the usual custom of cotton-mills in smaller towns of the South; paying their employees part in money and part in warrants on the store. It is needless to add that the prices paid for the goods were, in most cases, high enough to cut the wages to the proper margin. If there was any balance at the end of the month, it was paid in money.
Kingsley personally supervised this store, and his annual report to the directors was one of the strong financial things of his administration.
A crowd of factory hands stood around his desk, and the Superintendent was busy issuing orders on the store, or striking a balance for the Secretary and Treasurer to pay in silver.
They stood around tired, wretched, lint- and dust-covered, but expectant. Few were there compared with the number employed; for the wages of the minors went to their parents, and as minors included girls under eighteen and boys under twenty-one, their parents were there to receive their wages for them.
These children belonged to them as mercilessly as if they had been slaves, and despite the ties of blood, no master ever more relentlessly collected and appropriated the wages of his slaves than did the parents the pitiful wages of their children.