our in the Southern
scene; the clothes of the mill-hands, the houses, the soil are of one
tone--and, more strange, there is not one line of red, one dash of life,
in the faces of the hundreds of women and children that pass me on their
way back to work.

Under the existing circumstances they have no outlook, these people, no
hope; their appearance expresses accurately the changeless routine of an
existence devoted to eternal ignorance, eternal toil.

From their short half-hour of mid-noon rest, the whistle, piercing,
inanimate call, has dared to command the slavish obedience of animate
and intelligent beings. I pause by the trestle over which rumble the
cars, heavily laden with the cotton cloth whose perfection has made this
Southern mill justly famous.

The file of humanity that passes me I shall never forget! The Blank Mill
claims 1,500 of these labourers; at least 200 are children. The little
things run and keep step with the older men and women; their shaggy,
frowzled heads are bent, their hands protrude pitifully from their
sleeves; they are barefooted, bareheaded. With these little figures the
elements wanton; they can never know the fullness of summer or the
proper maturity of autumn. Suns have burned them, rains have fallen upon
them, as unprotected through storms they go to their work. The winter
winds have penetrated the tatters with blades like knives; gray and
dusty and earth-coloured the line passes. These are children? No, they
are wraiths of childhood--they are effigies of youth! What can Hope work
in this down-trodden soil for any future harvest? They can curse and
swear; they chew tobacco and take snuff. When they speak at all their
voices are feeble; ears long dulled by the thunder of the mill are no
longer keen to sound; their speech is low and scarcely audible. Over
sallow cheeks where the skin is tightly drawn their eyes regard you
suspiciously, malignantly even, never with the frank look of childhood.
As the long afternoon goes by in its hours of leisure for us fatigue
settles like a blight over their features, their expressions darken to
elfish strangeness, whilst sullen lines, never to be eradicated, mark
the distinctive visages of these children of labour.

At certain seasons of the year they actually die off like flies. They
fall subject, not to children's diseases exactly--nothing really natural
seems to come into the course of these little existences--they fall a
prey to the maladies that