"Well," the drayman responded indulgently, "I guess Mr. Norse will know the best place for you folks."
We had come at once to the factory and the end of the boardwalk. It was but a few minutes before Mr. Norse had revealed himself as the pivot, the human hub, the magnet around which the mechanism of the mill revolved and clung, sure of finding its proper balance. Tall, lank and meager, with a wrinkled face and a furtive mustache, Mr. Norse
made his rounds with a list of complaints and comments in one hand, a pencil in the other and a black cap on his head which tipped, indulgent, attentive to hear and overhear. His manner was professional. He looked at us, placed us, told us to return at one o'clock, recommended a boarding-house, and, on his way to some other case, sent a small boy to accompany us on future stretches of boardwalk to our lodgings. The street we followed ended in a rolling hillside, and beyond was the mysterious blue that holds something of the infinite in its mingling of clouds and shadows. The Geneseo Valley lay near us like a lake under the sky, and silhouetted against it were the factory chimney and buildings. The wood's edge came close to the town, whose yards prolong themselves into green meadows and farming lands. We knocked at a rusty screen door and were welcomed with the cordiality of the country woman to whom all folks are neighbours, all strangers possible boarders. The house, built without mantelpiece or chimney, atoned for this cheerlessness with a large parlour stove, whose black arms carried warmth through floor and ceiling. A table was spread in the dining-room. A loud-ticking clock with a rusty bell marked the hour from a shelf on the wall, and out of the kitchen, seen in vista, came a spluttering sound of frying food. Our hostess took us into the parlour. Several family pictures of stony-eyed women and men with chin beards, and a life-sized
Frances Willard in chromo, looked down at our ensuing interview.
Board, lodging, heat and light we could have at $2.75 a week. Before the husky clock had struck twelve, I was installed in a small room with the middle-aged woman from Batavia and a second unknown roommate.
Now what, I asked myself, is the mill's attraction and what is the power of this small town? Its population is 3,346. Of these, 1,000 work in the knitting-mill, 200 more in a cutlery factory and 300 in various flour, butter, barrel, planing mills and salt blocks. Half the inhabitants are young hands. Not one in a hundred has a home in Perry; they have come from all western parts of the State to work. There are scarcely any children, few married couples and almost no old people. It is a town of youthful contemporaries, stung with the American's ambition for independence and adventure, charmed by the gaiety of being boys and girls together, with an ever possible touch of romance which makes the hardest work seem easy. Within the four board walls of each house, whose type is repeated up and down Perry streets, there is a group of factory employees boarding and working at the mill. Their names suggest a foreign parentage, but for several generations they have mingled their diverse energies in a common effort which makes Americans of them.
As I lived for several weeks among a group of this
kind, who were fairly representative, I shall try to give, through a description of their life and conversation, their personalities and characteristics, their occupations out of working hours, a general idea of these unknown toilers, who are so amazingly like their more fortunate sisters that I became convinced the difference is only superficial—not one of kind but merely of variety. The Perry factory girl is separated from the New York society girl, not by a few generations, but by a few years of culture and training. In America, where tradition and family play an unimportant part, the great educator is the spending of money. It is through the purchase of possessions that the Americans develop their taste, declare themselves, and show their inherent capacity for culture. Give to the Perry mill-hands a free chance for growth, transplant them, care for them, and they will readily show how slight and how merely a thing of culture the difference is between the wild rose and the American beauty.
What were my first impressions of the hands who returned at noon under the roof which had extended unquestioning its hospitality? Were they a band of slaves, victims to toil and deprivation? Were they making the pitiful exchange of their total vitality for insufficient nourishment? Did life mean to them merely the diminishing of their forces?
On the contrary, they entered gay, laughing young, a youth guarded intact by freedom and