ng the word, then he answered,

"Horrible."

"My dear fellow!" The owner's voice showed that he was really grieved.
"Why horrible?"

"Your mill is a crime against Nature. Look how it violates that
landscape. Look how it stands there gaunt and tawdry against these fresh
green meadows edged round with billowy white clouds that herald summer.
And you are proud of it. Could you not have found some arid waste for
this factory? Can't you see how Nature cries out against this outrage?
Can't you see that she has dedicated this country to seed-time and
harvest,--these verdant fields, deep woods and brooding streams?"

"The Millville people wanted our factory. They paid us a subsidy to bring
it here."

"Blind, too!" The dreamer looked backward at the town. "They tell me that
the founders there called their village Farmington. Have you ever
reflected what a change you are working in the lives of these people by
substituting industrialism for agriculture? Have you thought of the moral
transformations such a substitution must work among them?"

"We are not responsible for their morals," the mill-owner answered,
impatiently. "We have spared nothing to make our factory up to date. The
mill meets all the demands of modern hygiene and sanitation. We do that
for them."

His friend was silent for a time.

"Your employes here are chiefly women, very young women," he said at
last.

"Yes, we have two hundred girls," replied the mill-owner.

"What is your highest wage for a girl?"

"Eight dollars a week."

Again the younger man was silent. Then he took his friend's arm within
his own.

"These girls are the mothers of tomorrow. To an extent the destinies of
our race depend upon them. Your factory places upon you tremendous
responsibilities."

"We are growing to realize our responsibilities more and more," said the
man of business and of success gravely. "Perhaps we do not realize them
keenly enough. It is the fault of the times."

"Yes, it is the fault of the times. Life, honor, virtue itself trampled
down in the rush for the dollar."

"I believe that a change is coming, though slowly. I believe that the day
will come when we owners of mills will regard it as a disgraceful thing
for our corporations to declare a dividend while notoriously underpaying
our employes."

"Yes, and perhaps the day is coming, too, when the employer who maintains
conditions in his mills that subtly undermine the virtue of his women
workers will