runs up the prices of his
output. That hits his mill hands, for they have to pay the higher
prices that the tariff causes. Oh, no, it doesn't result in increased
wages to them. Ha! ha! Not a bit! They're squeezed both ways. He is
the only one who profits by high tariff on cotton goods. See how it
works?"

Yes, Carmen saw. She might not know that Ames periodically appeared
before Congress and begged its protection--nay, threatened, and then
demanded. She might not know that Senator Gossitch ate meekly from the
great man's hand, and speciously represented to his dignified
colleagues that the benefits of high protective duties were for "the
people" of the United States. She might not know how Hood, employed to
evade the laws enacted to hedge and restrain his master, bribed and
bought, schemed and contrived, lobbied, traded, and manipulated, that
his owner might batten on his blood-stained profits, while he kept his
face turned away from the scenes of carnage, and his ears stopped
against the piteous cries of his driven slaves. But she did know how
needless it all was, and how easy, oh! how pitiably easy, it would be
to remedy every such condition, would the master but yield but a
modicum of his colossal, mesmeric selfishness. She did not know, she
could not, that the master, Ames, made a yearly profit from his mills
of more than two hundred per cent. But she did know that, were he less
stupidly greedy, even to the extent of taking but a hundred per cent
profit, he would turn a flood of sunshine into hundreds of sick,
despairing, dying souls.

"This is the place," she heard the priest say, his voice seeming to
come from a long distance. "This is the Mission."

She stopped and looked about her. They were in front of an old,
two-story building, decrepit and forbidding, but well lighted. While
she gazed, the priest opened the door and bade her enter.

"This down here is the reading room," he explained. "The door is never
locked. Upstairs is my office, and sleeping rooms for men. Also a
stock of old clothes I keep on hand for 'em when I send 'em out to
look for work. I've clothed an average of four men a day during the
past year, and sent 'em out to look for jobs. I board 'em, and keep
'em going until they land something. Sometimes I have to lend 'em
money. I just help 'em to help themselves. No, I never bother about a
man's religion. Come up to my office."

Carmen climbed the rough steps to the floor above and entered th