s and spools until it drops, till
constitution rebels, and death, the only friend it has ever known, sets
it free.

Besides being spinners and spoolers, and occasionally weavers even, the
children sweep the cotton-strewed floors. Scarcely has the miserable
little object, ragged and odourous, passed me with his long broom, which
he drags half-heartedly along, than the space he has swept up is
cotton-strewn again. It settles with discouraging rapidity; it has also
settled on the child's hair and clothes, and his eyelashes, and this
atmosphere he breathes and fairly eats, until his lungs become diseased.
Pneumonia--fatal in nearly all cases here--and lung fever had been a
pestilence, "a regular plague," before I came. There were four cases in
the village where I, lived, and fever and ague, malaria and grippe did
their parts.

"Why, thar ain't never a haouse but's got somebody sick," my little
teacher informed me in her soft Southern dialect. "I suttinly never did
see a place like this for dyin' in winter time. I reckon et's funerals
every day."

Here is a little child, not more than seven years old. The land is a hot
enough country, we will concede, but not a savage South Sea Island! She
has on one garment, if a tattered sacking dress can so be termed. Her
bones are nearly through her skin, but her stomach is an unhealthy
pouch, abnormal. _She has dropsy._ She works in _a new mill_--in one of
the largest mills in South Carolina. Here is a slender little boy--a
birch rod (good old simile) is not more slender, but the birch has the
advantage: it is elastic--it bends, has youth in it. This boy looks
ninety. He is a dwarf; twelve years old, he appears seven, no more. He
sweeps the cotton off the floor of "the baby mill." (How tenderly and
proudly the owners speak of their brick and mortar.) He sweeps the
cotton and lint from the mill aisles from 6 P.M. to 6 A.M. without a
break in the night's routine. He stops of his own accord, however, to
cough and expectorate--he has advanced tuberculosis.

At night the shanties receive us. On a pine board is spread our
food--can you call it nourishment? The hominy and molasses is the best
part; salt pork and ham are the strong victuals.

It is eight o'clock when the children reach their homes--later if the
mill work is behindhand and they are kept over hours. They are usually
beyond speech. They fall asleep at the table, on the stairs; they are
carried to bed and there laid down as t