The Birmingham age-herald., 1902-06-22

and devour their food. which consisted mostly of cornbread and bacon. These weazened pigmies munched in silence.an then toppled over in sleep on the hoor in all the abandon of babyhood. Very few wore shoes and stockings; dozens or little girls of. say. seven years of age wore only fne garment, linsey-woolsey dress When 1t came time to go to work the foreman marched through the groups shaking the sleepers. shouting in their ears lifting them to their feet and in few instances kicking the deI1nquents into wakefulness.
 The long afternoon had begun-from quarter to one until seven o'clock they worked without respite or rest.
 These toddlers, I saw, for the most part did but one thing-they watched the flying spindles on a frame twenty rect long, and tied the broken threads. They could not sit at their tasks; back and forward they paced, watching with inani- mate, dull look. the flying spindles. The roar of the machinery drowned every other sound-back and forth paced the baby toilers in their bare feet, and mend ed the broken threads. Two, three or four threads would break before they could patrol the twenty feet-the threads were always breaking!
 The noise and the constant looking at | the flying wheels reduce nervous sensa- | tion in few months to the minimum. | The child does not think, he ceases to
 suffer-memory Is as dead as hope; no
 more does he long for the green fields,
 the running streams, the freedom or the l woods and the companionshp of all the
 wild, free things that run, climb, fly, | swim or burrow. He does his work like | an automation; he Is part of the roar ing machinery; memory Is scared, physi- cal vitality is at such low ebb that he ceases to suffer. Nature puts a short limit on torture by sending insensibility. If you suffer, thank God!-it Is a sure sign you are alive.
 At a certain night school, where sev- eral good women were putting forth eff l forts to mitigate the condition of these baby slaves. one of the teachers told me that they did not try to teach the chil- dren to read-they simply put forth an effort to arouse the spirit through pie i lures and telling stories. In this school l saw the sad spectacle of half the class of a dozen or more. sunk into sleep that more resembled a stupor. The teacher was fine. competent woman, but worn l out nature was too much for her-to teach you must make your appeal to life l The parents of the children sent them l there so they could be taught to read 1 but I was told by one who knew. that
 no chil1 of. say, seven or eight years of
 age, who had worked in the mill a year.
 could readily learn to read He Is defec-
 tive from that time on. A year in the
 mills. and he loses the capacity to play;
 and the child that cannot play, cannot i learn.
 We learn in moments of joy; play Is
 education; pleasurabe animation Is nec-
 essary to growth and when you have
 robbed a child of it's play spell, you have 1 robbed It of its life.
 The reason that thought flags and stu l DOT takes possession of the child who | works at one task for eleven hours day. is through the fact that he does not ex- press himself. We grow through express sicn. and expression, which Is exercise, l is necessary to life. The child In the mill n, yer talks to anyone-even If the rules i .id not forbid it, the roar of the ma7
 inery would make it impossible. All
 d6rs are carried out In pantomime. em- ! hasized by pokes, punches, pinches,
 shakes and kicks. This wee slave loses
 all relationship with his fellows and the | world about him.
 I thought to lift one of the little toilers