ts honour and wisdom
and citizenship is bound to do) the youngest of the children, do you
think that you shall inevitably continue to devour what remains? There
is too much resistance yet left in the mass of human beings. Youth will
then rebel at a servitude beginning _at ten years of age_: and the women
will lift their arms above their heads one day in desperate gesture of
appeal and cry out--not for the millionaire's surplus; not a tirade
anarchistic against capital.... What is this woman of the hills and
woman of the mills that she should so demand? She will call for hours
short enough to permit her to bear her children; for requital
commensurate with the exigence of progressive civilization; for wages
equal to her faithful toil.

This is not too fantastic a demand or too ideal a state to be divinely
hoped for, believed in and brought to pass.[10]

[Footnote 10: Of the 21,000,000 spindles in the United States, the
South has 6,000,000. $35,381,000 of Carolina's wealth is in
cotton mills.

NOTE. I have seen, in Aragon, Georgia, hope for the future of the
mill-hands. The Aragon Cotton Mills are an improvement on the
South Carolina Mills and are under the direct supervision of an
owner whose sole God is not gain. Mr. Walcott is an agitator of
the nine-hours-a-day movement; he is opposed to Child Labour, and
in all his relations with his hands he is humane and kindly. I
look to the time when Aragon shall set a perfect pattern of what
a mill-town should be. It is already quite the best I have seen.
Its healthfulness is far above the average, and its situation
most fortunate.]

* * * * *

Not inapt here is the pagan idea of _Nous_, moving upon chaos, stirring
the stagnant, unresponsive forces into motion; agitating these forces
into action; the individual elements separate and go forth, each one on
its definitely inspired mission. Some inevitable hour shall see the
universal agitation of the vast body known as the "labouring class." For
the welfare of the whole world, may it not come whilst they are so
ignorant and so down-pressed.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Woman Who Toils
by Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WOMAN WHO TOILS ***

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