A kind-faced man wanders out from an unobserved doorway; a gust of roar follows him!  He sees me, and lifts his hat with the ready Southern courtesy not yet extinct.  I hasten to ask for work.

[Illustration:  “MIGHTY MILL—­PRIDE OF THE ARCHITECT AND THE COMMERCIAL MAGNATE”

“Charnel house, destroyer of homes, of all that mankind calls hallowed; breeder of strife, of strike, of immorality of sedition and riot”]

“Well, thar’s jest plenty of work, I reckon!  Go in that do’; the overseer will tell you.”

Through the door open behind him I catch glimpses of a room enormous in dimensions.  Cotton bales lie on the floor, stand around the walls and are piled in the centre.  Leaning on them, handling them, lying on them, outstretched, or slipping like shadows into shadow, are the dusky shapes of the black Negro of true Southern blood.  I have been told there is no Negro labour in the mills.  I take advantage of my guide’s kind face to ask him if he knows where I can lodge.

“Hed the measles?  Well, my gyrl got ’em.  Thar’s a powerful sight of measles hyar.  I’d take you-all to bo’d at my house ef you ain’t ’fraid of measles.  Thar’s the hotel.” (He points to what at the North would be known as a brick shanty.) “A gyrl can bo’d thar for $2.25 a week.  You won’t make that at first.”

With extreme kindness he leads me into the roaring mill past picturesque black men and cotton bales:  we reach the “weave-room.”  I am told that carpet factories are celebrated for their uproar, but the weave-looms of a cotton mill to those who know them need no description!  This is chaos before order was conceived:  more weird in that, despite the din and thunder, everything is so orderly, so perfectly carried forth by the machinery.  Here the cotton cloth is woven.  Excelsior is so vast that from one end to the other of a room one cannot distinguish a friend.  I decide instantly that the weave-room shall not be my destination!  An overseer comes up to me.  He talks with me politely and kindly—­that is, as well as he can, he talks!  It is almost impossible to hear what he says.  He asks me simple and few questions and engages me promptly to work that “evening” as the Southerner calls the hours after midday.

“You can see all the work and choose a sitting or a standing job.”  This is an improvement on Pittsburg and Lynn.

I have been told there is always work in the mills for the worker.

It is not strange that every inducement consistent with corporation rules should be made to entice the labouring girl!  The difficulty is that no effort is made to keep her!  The ease with which, in all these experiences, work has been obtained, goes definitely to prove that there is a demand everywhere for labourers.

Organize labour, therefore, so well that the work-woman who obtains her task may be able to continue it and keep her health and her self-respect.