s. In Viger Street I was more simply clad
than my companions. My aspect called forth only sisterhood and kindness.

Fellowship from first to last, fellowship from their eyes to mine, a
spark kindled never to be extinguished. The morning I left my tenement
lodging Mika took my hand at the door.

"Good-by." Her eyes actually filled. "I'm awful sorry you're going. If
the world don't treat you good come back to us."

I must qualify a little. One member of the working class there was on
whom my cheap clothes had a chilling effect--the spoiled creature of the
traveling rich, a Pullman car porter on the train from Boston to New
York! Although I called him first and purposely gave him my order in
time, he viewed me askance and served me the last of all. As I watched
my companions in their furs and handsome attire eat, whilst I sat and
waited, my woolen gloves folded in my lap, I wondered if any one of the
favoured was as hungry, as famished as the presser from Parsons', the
cleaner from Marches'.

* * * * *

THE SOUTHERN COTTON MILLS

* * * * *

CHAPTER VIII

THE SOUTHERN COTTON MILLS

THE MILL VILLAGE

Columbia, South Carolina, of course is conscious that there are mills
without its city precincts. It is proud of the manufacture that gives
the city precedence and commercial value all over the world. The trolley
runs to the mills empty, as a rule, after the union depot is passed.

Frankly, what is there to be seen in these dusty suburbs? Entry to the
mills themselves is difficult, if not absolutely impossible. And that
which forms the background for the vast buildings, the Mill Village, is
a section to be shunned like the plague. Plague is not too strong a word
to apply to the pest-ridden, epidemic-filled, filthy settlement where in
this part of the country the mill-hand lives, moves and has his being,
horrible honeycomb of lives, shocking morals and decency.

Around Columbia there lie five mills and their respective
settlements--Excelsior, the Granton, Calcutta, the Richland and the
Capital City. Each of these mills boasts its own so-called town. When
these people are free on Saturday afternoon and Sunday they are too
exhausted to do anything but turn into their hovels to sleep. At most on
Saturday afternoons or Sundays they board a trolley and betake
themselves to a distant park which, in the picturesque descriptions of
Colu