is like. Every pound of it was wrapped in
paper as fast as it cooled, and the cooling and cutting room was filled
with girls who did the work. They were not the best order of girls. The
wages a week were from three to five dollars, and they were at it from
seven A. M. to six P. M. There was a good woman in the office,--a woman
with a head as well as a heart,--and she did the directing and
disciplining. It was no joke to keep peace if the cooling delayed and
the creatures began squabbling together, but she managed it, and by
night they were always meek enough. You're likely to be meek when you've
carried soap ten pounds at a time ten hours a day, from the cutting
table to the cooling table, across floors as slippery as glass or glare
ice. They picked it up as it cooled, wrapped it in paper, and had it in
boxes, five pounds to the minute, three hundred pounds an hour. The
caustic soda in it first turned their nails orange-color and then it ate
off their finger tips till they bled. They could not wear gloves, for
that would have interfered with the packing.

"Now and then one cried, but only seldom. They were big, hearty girls.
They had to be to do that work, but my heart ached for them as they
filed out at night, so worn that there was no life left for anything but
to get home and into bed. Very few stayed on. The smart ones graduated
into something better. The stupid ones fell back and tried something
easier. But as I watched them and it came over me how untrained and
helpless they were, and how every chance of learning was cut off by the
long labor and the dead weariness, I said to myself that we owed them
something: shorter hours; better wages; some sort of share in the money
we were making. Friend Peter shook his head when I began to hint these
things. 'They fare well enough,' he said. 'Thee must not get socialistic
notions in thy head.' 'I know nothing about socialism,' I said. 'All I
want is justice, and thee wants it too. Thee has cried out for it for
the black brother and sister; why not for the white?'

"'Thee is talking folly,' he said and would make no other answer.

"It all weighed on me. Here was the money rolling in, or so it seemed to
me. We did make it in a sure, comfortable fashion. I was well off at
twenty-five, and better off every month; and I said to myself, the money
would have a curse on it if those who helped to earn it had no share. I
talked to the men in the boiling department. It takes brains