low and pondering way, and shook his head. "I
don't know. It just happened."
"Carelessness?" I prompted.
"No," he answered, "I ain't for callin' it that. I was workin' overtime,
an' I guess I was tired out some. I worked seventeen years in them
mills, an' I've took notice that most of the accidents happens just
before whistle-blow.* I'm willin' to bet that more accidents happens
in the hour before whistle-blow than in all the rest of the day. A man
ain't so quick after workin' steady for hours. I've seen too many of 'em
cut up an' gouged an' chawed not to know."
* The laborers were called to work and dismissed by savage,
screaming, nerve-racking steam-whistles.
"Many of them?" I queried.
"Hundreds an' hundreds, an' children, too."
With the exception of the terrible details, Jackson's story of his
accident was the same as that I had already heard. When I asked him if
he had broken some rule of working the machinery, he shook his head.
"I chucked off the belt with my right hand," he said, "an' made a reach
for the flint with my left. I didn't stop to see if the belt was off. I
thought my right hand had done it--only it didn't. I reached quick, and
the belt wasn't all the way off. And then my arm was chewed off."
"It must have been painful," I said sympathetically.
"The crunchin' of the bones wasn't nice," was his answer.
His mind was rather hazy concerning the damage suit. Only one thing was
clear to him, and that was that he had not got any damages. He had a
feeling that the testimony of the foremen and the superintendent had
brought about the adverse decision of the court. Their testimony, as he
put it, "wasn't what it ought to have ben." And to them I resolved to
go.
One thing was plain, Jackson's situation was wretched. His wife was in
ill health, and he was unable to earn, by his rattan-work and peddling,
sufficient food for the family. He was back in his rent, and the oldest
boy, a lad of eleven, had started to work in the mills.
"They might a-given me that watchman's job," were his last words as I
went away.
By the time I had seen the lawyer who had handled Jackson's case, and
the two foremen and the superintendent at the mills who had testified, I
began to feel that there was something after all in Ernest's contention.
He was a weak and inefficient-looking man, the lawyer, and at sight of
him I did not wonder that Jackson's case had been lost. My first thought
was that it h
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