tand
upon. She is a pretty, frail, little thing, a spooler--"a good
spooler, tew!" Through the frames on the other side I can only see her
fingers as they clutch at the flying spools; her head is not high
enough, even with the box, to be visible. Her hands are fairy hands,
fine-boned, well-made, only they are so thin and dirty, and her
nails--claws; she would do well to have them cut. A nail can be torn
from the finger, _is_ torn from the finger frequently,[9] by this
flying spool. I go over to Upton's little girl. Her spindles are not
thinner nor her spools whiter.

[Footnote 9: In Huntsville, Alabama, a child of eight lost her
index and middle fingers of the right hand in January, 1902. One
doctor told me that he had amputated the fingers of more than a
hundred babies. A merchant told me he had _frequently_ seen
children whose hands had been cut off by the
machinery.--_American Federationist_.]

"How old are you?"

"Ten."

She looks six. It is impossible to know if what she says is true. The
children are commanded both by parents and bosses to advance their ages
when asked.

"Tired?"

She nods, without stopping. She is a "remarkable fine hand." She makes
forty cents a day. See the value of this labour to the
manufacturer--cheap, yet skilled; to the parent it represents $2.40 per
week.

I must not think that as I work beside them I will gain their
confidence! They have no time to talk. Indeed, conversation is not well
looked upon by the bosses, and I soon see that unless I want to entail a
sharp reproof for myself and them I must stick to my "side." And at noon
I have no heart to take their leisure. At twelve o'clock, Minnie, a
little spooler, scarcely higher than her spools, lifts her hands above
her head and exclaims: _"Thank God, there's the whistle!"_ I watched
them disperse: some run like mad, always bareheaded, to fetch the
dinner-pail for mother or father who work in the mill and who choose to
spend these little legs and spare their own. It takes ten minutes to go,
ten to return, and the little labourer has ten to devote to its own
food, which, half the time, he is too exhausted to eat.

I watch the children crouch on the floor by the frames; some fall asleep
between the mouthfuls of food, and so lie asleep with food in their
mouths until the overseer rouses them to their tasks again. Here and
there totters a little child just learning to walk; it runs and crawls
the length of the mill.