her place on a little low chair by the
sewing machine behind Jones. Her baby rocks contentedly in Molly's arms.

Jones continues: "I worked in the mill fifteen years. I have done a
little of all jobs, I reckon, and I ain't got no use for mill-work. If
they'd pay me fifty cents a side to run the 'speeders' I'd _go_ in fer
an hour or two now and then. Why, I sell sewing machines and organs to
the mill-hands all over the country. I make $60 a month, and _I touch
all my money_," he said significantly. "It's the way to do. A man don't
feel no dignity unless he does handle his own money, if it's ten cents
or ten dollars." He then explains the corporation's methods of paying
its slaves. Some of the hands never touch their money from month's end
to month's end. Once in two weeks is pay-day. A woman has then worked
122 hours. The corporation furnishes her house. There is the rent to be
paid; there are also the corporation stores from which she has been
getting her food and coal and what gewgaws the cheap stuff on sale may
tempt her to purchase. There is a book of coupons issued by the mill
owners which are as good as gold. It is good at the stores, good for the
rent, and her time is served out in pay for this representative
currency. This is of course not obligatory, but many of the operatives
avail themselves or bind themselves by it. When the people are ill,
Jones says, they are docked for wages. When, for indisposition or
fatigue, they knock a day off, there is a man, hired especially for this
purpose, who rides from house to house to find out what is the matter
with them, to urge them to rise, and if they are not literally too sick
to move, they are hounded out of their beds and back to their looms.

Jones himself, mark you, is emancipated! He has set himself free; but he
is still a too-evident although a very innocent partisan of the
corporation.

[Illustration: "THE SOUTHERN MILL HAND'S FACE IS UNIQUE, A FEARFUL
TYPE"]

"I think," he says, "that the mill-hand is _meaner_ to the corporation
than the corporation is to the mill-hand."

"Why?"

"Why, they would strike for shorter hours and better pay."

Unconsciously with one word he condemns his own cause.

"What's the use of these hyar mill-hands tryin' to fight corporations?
Why, Excelsior is the biggest mill under one roof in the world; its
capital is over a million; it has 24,500 spindles. The men that run
these mills have got all their stuff paid for; they've g