The wages of these people, remember, pay Jones for the organs upon which they cannot play and the machines which they cannot use. His home is a mill corporation house; he makes a neat sum by lodging the hands. He has fetched down from the hills Molly, his own niece, to work for him. He perforce will speak well. I do not blame him.
He is by all means the most respectable-looking member of the colony. He wears store clothes; he dresses neatly; he is shaven, brushed and washed.
"Don't you let the mill hands discourage you with lies about the mill. Any of 'em would be jealous of
you-all." Then he warns, again forced to plead for another side: "You-all won't come out as you go in, I tell you! You're the picture of health. Why," he continues, a little later, "you ain't got no idea how light-minded the mill-girl is. Why, in the summer time she'll trolley four or five miles to a dance-hall they've got down to —— and dance there till four o'clock—come home just in time to get into the mills at 5:45." Which fact convinces me of nothing but that the women are still, despite their condition and their white slavery, human beings, and many of them are young human beings (Thank God, for it is a prophecy for their future!) not yet crushed to the dumb endurance of beasts.
Rather early I bid them all good-night and climb the attic stairs to my loft. There the three beds arrayed in soggy striped comforters greet me. Old boots and downtrodden shoes are thrown into the corners and the lines of clothing already describe fantastic shapes in the dark, suggesting pendant sinister figures. Windows are large, thank Heaven! In the mill district the air is heavy, singularly lifeless; the night is warm and stifling.
Close to an old trunk I sit down with a slip of paper on my knee and try to take a few notes. But no sooner have I begun to write than a step on the stair below announces another comer. Before annoyance can deepen too profoundly the big, awkward form of the landlady's niece slouches into sight. Sheepishly
she comes across the room to me—sits down on the nearest bed. Molly's costume is typical: a dark cotton wrapper whose colours have become indistinct in the stains of machinery oil and perspiration. The mill girl boasts no coquetry of any kind around her neck and waist, but her headdress is a tribute to feminine vanity! Compactly screwed curl papers, dozens of them, accentuate the hard, unlovely lines of her face and brow. Her features are coarse, heavy and square, but her eyes are clear, frank and kind. She has an appealing, friendly expression; Molly is a distinctly whole-souled, nice creature. One elbow sinks in the bed and she cradles her crimped head in her large, dirty hand.
"My, ef I could write as fast as you-all I'd write some letters, I reckon. Ust ter write; like it good enough, tew; but I ain't wrote in months. I was thinkin' th' other day ef I didn't take out the pencile I'd dun forgit how to spell."
Without the window through which she gazes is seen the pale night sky and in the heavens hangs the thread of a moon. Its light is unavailing alongside of the artificial moon—an enormous electric light. This lifts its brilliant, dazzling circumference high in the centre of the mill street. I have but to move a trifle aside from the window coping's shelter to receive a blinding blaze. But Molly has been subtle enough to discover the natural beauty of the night. She sees, curiously enough, past this modern
illumination: the young moon has charm for her. "Ain't it a pretty night?" she asks me. Its beauty has not much chance to enhance this room and the crude forms, but it has awakened something akin to sentiment in the breast of this young savage.