The weekly examiner., 1901-04-06
LITTLE STRIKERS.
BLlGHTED CHILDHOOD OF TINY GIRL
 MILL HANDS.
The Struggles of ChiIdhood's Happy Nature With the Hard Conditions of Poverty A Cry For aaMOther Jones That Was Not Anawenad.

of Poverty A Cry For as91Other
 Jones That Was Not Answened. It was early. very early, in the mild March morning when the little velvet cutters, in twos and threes, came troop ing down the hillsides into Haledon Hollow and found me sitting there in the doorway of the deserted mill.
 They seemed more like a band of school children off for spring holiday than the company of striking wage earners that they were assembling for their daily mass meeting. Children they were, every one of them. What if their little old faces and bent forms did say ever so plainly that they had never been children, but always wom- en? The heart that beat under every small, shabby jacket was the heart of child.
 And because they had chi1dren'S hearts and because every breeze that soft March morning blew the breath of spring each girl grasped the ends of a skipping rope in her rough little hands, and two of the strikers, the tfnfest of them all, had not forgotten to bring with them their long neglected dolls. For, after all, it was holiday, a strike holiday, the only holiday the working child knows.
 The mass meeting was called for 8 o'clock, and there they were at that hour. every one of the 75 strikers, skip ping ropes, dolls and all, gathered in small groups and whispering and eying me furtively.
 Their shyness was the shyness of country children, for such all of them really were At last two little girls with more courage than the others ap- preached, while their companions fled in dismay and disappeared around the corner of the big unsightly mill.
 Please, ma 'am," one of them asked, fare you forelady looking for handsY'
 She carried a doll in her arms, and when told her that I was not fore lady, but had come to spend the day with her and the rest of the girls if they would allow me, her big brown eyes opened wide and she laughed.
 'sYou're surely not Mother Jones, are you? I thought she was an old white haired woman"
 | "No"
 "And not her daughter e1ther?"
 eve are looking for Mother Jones this morning." the larger girl spoke up, ''and we all thought you might be her when we first saw you as we came down the hill. Oh, we do wish Mother Jones would come and help us with our strike! They say that strikers always win when they have Mother Jones to o1y al, fh0 vanished, but in a moment reappeared with two other girls, who began to snake shy advances to friendIiness by asking me if lived in Paterson. As soon as I told them that I had come from New York and that I knew, too, what it was to work and suffer and starve, that I had come to spend the day with them and find out the truth of their condition, every bit of their proud shyness was gone, and they led me into the deserted mill to show me how much human suffering is woven into the warp and wool and pile of every yard of velvet that was ever made.
 Were it not for the long frames that fill the floors of the big barren rooms velvet factory might we'll be mistaken for a four mill. The beams and raf- ters overhead, the floor underfoot, the walls, are all infolded in sheet of soft white dust from the lime coated webs on the frames.
 It is this all prevailing lime dust which makes the velvet cutters work one of the most unendurable of all la borious occupations. As proof it is T,Ix to o44 of a velvet cutter who has worked at the frames any length of time. They are hacked and bleeding most of the time even ill the summer, and in the winter, the girls told me, it is something al- most unbearable. The finger nails are ruined beyond all remedy, and the pretty soft hair soon becomes harsh and brittle and breaks off and loses all it's 1uSter.
 But until some philanthropist gifted with Yankee ingenuity comes along and fnyents machine for cutting vel vet little girls hands must work, though hacked and bleeding, and little girls ringlets and braids must be sac riiced in order that the edge of the long steel velvet cutter may be pre- served.
 Lining" is the first process which the uncut velvet must go through be fore 1t is ready for the cutters knife. This work each little cutter does for herself, usually at night after the working day is over, so as to have it dry and ready for handling the next morning.
 The webs of 100 yards each are stretched over wooden frames and heavily whitewashed with strong so- lution of lime. When perfectly dry, the stiff web is unrolIed on the same frame, ten yards at time, and the races" cut, one by one, by hand.
 To make the most meager wages at this work entails labor almost hercu- lean in it's torture. It means that these fragile girls, these stunted children, as fhnir %oc ax,l a