“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 they are, unwashed, undressed; and the inanimate bundles of rags so lie until the mill summons them with its imperious cry before sunrise, while they are still in stupid sleep: 

“What do you do on Sundays?” I asked one little girl.

“Why, thare ain’t nothing much to dew.  I go to the park sometimes.”

This park is at the end of a trolley line; it is their Arcadia.  Picture it!  A few yellow sand hills with clusters of pine trees and some scrubby undergrowth; a more desolate, arid, gloomy pleasure ground cannot be conceived.  On Sundays the trolleys bring those who are not too tired to so spend the day.  On Sundays the mill shanties are full of sleepers.

The park has a limited number of devotees.  Through the beautyless paths and walks the figures pass like shadows.  There come three mill girls arm in arm; their curl papers, screwed tight all the week, are out on Sunday, in greasy, abundant curls.  Sunday clothes are displayed in all their superbness.  Three or four young men, town fellows, follow them; they are all strangers, but they will go home arm in arm.

Several little children, who have no clothes but those, they wear, cling close to the side of a gaunt, pale-faced man, who carries in his arms the youngest.  The little girl has become a weight to be carried on Sundays; she has worked six days of the week—­shall she not rest on the seventh?  She shall; she claims this, and lies inert on the man’s arm, her face already seared with the scars of toil.