Chapter VI: Part 6

A large pail was procured, and Jakey carried it into one of the saloons. We waited for his return, a huddled group standing in a vacant lot where we should not be seen. This was to be the gang’s first official venture into inebriety. When Jakey returned with the can, it was passed around. We stood in a circle, the better to watch one another. There were ten in the circle. Only three of us did not take a drink, for which we were not only duly laughed at, but Jakey heaped all manner of filthy abuse on our heads. But we did not drink.

The gang, under the worldly-wise Jakey’s direction, began, also, to hold “surprise parties” for the girls in the mill. These parties were arranged for Saturday nights. They were extremely shady functions, being mainly an excuse for beer-drinking, kitchen dancing, and general wild sport. The whole affair was based on a birthday, a wedding, an engagement, or a christening. About twenty-five picked couples were usually invited.

After the presentation speech, dancing took place on the boards of the cellar. Then refreshments were passed, and the boys and girls freely indulged. By midnight the party usually attained the proportions of a revel, threaded with obscenity, vulgarity, fights, and wild singing.

The gang had drawn away from the things I cared for. I had now to live my own life, get my own amusements, and make new companionships.

I was working in the mule-room again and this time I was advanced to the post of “doffer.” I had to strip the spindles of the cops of yarn and put new tubes on them for another set of cops. But this work involved the carrying of boxes of yarn on my shoulders, the lifting of a heavy truck, and often unusual speed to keep the mules in my section running. The farm work did not appear to have strengthened me very decidedly. I had to stagger under my loads the same as ever. I wondered how long I should last at that sort of work, for if I could not do that work the overseer would never promote me to a spinner, where I could earn a skilled worker’s wage. I was now near my nineteenth birthday, and I had to be thinking about my future. I wanted to do a man’s work now, in a man’s way, for a man’s wage. I learned with alarm, too, that I was getting past the age when young men enter college, and there I was, without even a _common school education_! Once more the gloom of the mill settled down on me. The old despair gripped me.

I did find companionship in my ambitions, now that I had left the gang. Pat Carroll, an Irishman, wanted to go to college also. He was far past me in the amount of schooling he had enjoyed, for by patient application to night-school in the winter, he had entered upon High School studies. There was Harry Lea, an Englishman, who was even further advanced than was Pat Carroll. Harry liked big words, and had tongue-tiring sentences of them, which created rare fun whenever he cared to sputter them for us. Harry had a very original mind, did not care much for society, and lived quite a thoughtful life.

These two aided me with knotty problems in arithmetic and grammar. But it was not often that I had time to spend with them now that my work was more strenuous and wearing than before.

Harry was attending a private evening school and invited me to the annual graduation. I asked him if there would be any “style” to it, thereby meaning fancy dress and well-educated, society people.

“Oh,” said Harry, “there will be men in evening dress, swallow tails, you know, and some women who talk nice. If they talk to you, just talk up the weather. Society people are always doing that!”

The graduation was held in one of the lecture halls of the Y. M. C. A. I sat in my place, watching with rapt eyes the speakers, the fluent speakers who had such an education! The principal was a college man. Him I watched with veritable worship. He had reached the goal I craved so eagerly, so vainly to reach. I wondered at the time if he felt bigger than other people because he had a college degree! When the program neared its end, a young man was announced to read an essay, the principal stating that the young man had been _studying English but five months_, and saying it so emphatically that I thought the reader must be a green Swede, so I marvelled greatly when the fluent diction sounded on my ears, for I did not hear a single sound with a Swedish accent to it!

One Monday morning there was a notice posted in the mill to the effect that an evening school of design would be opened in the Textile School. I inquired about it, and found that I could learn all sorts of artistic designing--wall-paper, book, and cloth, free of tuition. “Here’s my chance,” I thought. “I can learn a trade that will pay well, get me out of the mill, and not be too much of a tax on what little strength the mill has left me.” So I went joyously “up city,” and entered the splendid building used as a Textile College. I enrolled at the office and was assigned to a classroom.

I went to my task joyfully with dreams of future success, for I liked drawing. Had I not traced newspaper pictures ever since I was a small boy? Were not the white-painted walls of the mills I had worked in decorated with cow-boys, rustic pictures, and Indian’s heads, drawn by my pencil?

Three nights a week I walked back and forth to the Textile School, tired, but ambitious to make the most of my great opportunity. Week by week I went through various lessons until I began to design wall-papers with water-color and to make book-cover designs on which I prided myself, and on which my teacher complimented me.

Then my eyes began to weaken under the glare of the lights, and the long strain they had been under during the day, through staring at cotton threads and the fatigue of long hours under the mill lights. My conventionalized leaves and flowers, my water-lily book designs, my tracings for Scotch plaids--all grew hazy, jumpy, distorted, and my brush fell from a weary clutch. In dismal submission I had to give up that ambition. The mill was bound to have me. What was the use of fighting against it?

But now that the direction had been indicated by the Textile School, I thought that I might learn to draw in my spare time, and outside regular classrooms, for just then a Correspondence School agent came to me and offered me instruction in that line at a very reasonable rate. I enrolled myself, and thought that with the choice of my hours of study I could readily learn the art of designing. But a few evenings at elementary scribbling and a few dollars for advance lessons took away my courage. The whole thing seemed a blind leading. I cut off the lessons and gave up in utter despair.

Then, one night, as I was on my way from work, I was met near our house by a young lad who ran up to me, stopped abruptly, almost poked his finger in my eye as he called, derisively: “Aw, yer aunt’s been arrested fer being drunk! She was lugged off in a hurry-up! Aw, yer aunt’s got jugged! Shame on yer! shame on yer!”

I ran home at that, incredulous, but found the house deserted. Then I knew that it was true. I lay on the bed and cried my eyes sore in great misery, with the bottom gone out of the world.

My uncle had been called to investigate the matter. He came home and said that nothing could be done until morning, so we sat up to the table and made out as best we could with a supper.

The next morning I went to uncle’s overseer with a note to the effect that he would be unable to be at work that morning. The mill-boys, who had passed the news around, met me and in indelicate haste referred to my misfortune, saying, “Goin’ to the trial, Priddy,” and, “What did yer have to eat last night, Priddy--tripe on a skewer?” I worked apart that day, as if interdicted from decent society. My aunt’s shame was mine, perhaps in a greater measure.

On my return home that night I found my foster parents awaiting me with smiles on their faces.

“Al,” said my aunt, in tears, “I want you to forgive me. I’ve turned over a new leaf. Both of us have. Uncle and I have been to the city mission and have taken the pledge. The judge wasn’t hard on me. He sent us there. We’ve put you to shame often enough and are sorry for it. You’re to have a better home, and we’ll get along famously after this. Maybe it’s all been for the best, lad; don’t cry.” And from the new, inspiring light in her eyes I could tell that she meant every word, and I thanked God in my heart for the experience that had made such words possible--strange words on my aunt’s lips.

_Chapter XIX. A Reduction in Wages, Cart-tail Oratory, a Big Strike, and the Joys and Sufferings thereof_

_Chapter XIX. A Reduction in Wages, Cart-tail Oratory, a big Strike, and the Joys and Sufferings thereof_

In January of that year forty thousand mill operatives went on strike. I belonged to the union and had a voice in the preparations for the strike. The manufacturers wanted to reduce our wages ten per cent. Word was passed around the mule-room that there was to be a stubborn fight, and that every union member ought to be on hand at the next regular meeting, when a vote was to be taken which would be our answer to the officials.

Our union headquarters were then in a long, narrow room in one of the business blocks, lighted by smoky oil lamps. The room was crowded when the meeting was called to order. The men were allowed to declare their feelings in speeches.

“Th’ miserly manufacturers,” growled Hal Linwood, a bow-legged Socialist, “they never knows when they are well off, they dunno. Little enough we gets now, and worse off we’ll be if they slices our wages at the rate they would go. It ain’t just, and never will be just till we div--”

“Order!” shouted the chairman. “This here isn’t no Socialist meeting. What the man said at first is all right, though.”

“Hear! hear!” roared the crowd.

Linwood represented the prevailing opinion, and when the vote was taken we declared in favor of a strike by a large majority. Messengers were coming in from the other meetings, and we saw that a general strike would be effected.

The situation was serious, though, for we were in the heart of winter, the most inconvenient time for a strike.

I looked forward to it without any scruples, for it meant a chance for me to rest. I had been given no vacations either in winter or summer, and I felt that one was certainly due me.

I experienced a guilty feeling when I passed the silent mills the next Monday morning. I felt as if I were breaking some great, authoritative law. It was the same feeling I always experienced when I stayed away from work, even for a day. I always avoided passing the mill for fear the overseer would run out and drag me in to work.

During the early stages of the strike we were constantly in our strike headquarters, getting news and appointing committees. Collectors were sent out to other cities to take up contributions. Mass-meetings were held in the city hall, and we were addressed by Mr. Gompers and other labor leaders. Even in the public parks incendiary meetings were common, and wild-eyed orators called us to resistance--from the tail end of a cart.

The position of collector was eagerly sought, for to most of the men it offered a higher wage than could be earned in the mill. It also meant travel, dinners, and a good percentage of the collections. When I told my uncle that a man named Chad was earning more money as a collector than he could earn as a spinner, I was angrily told to mind my own business.

In fact, the conduct of the strike, as I looked on it from behind the scenes, was simply a political enterprise. Our leader kept urging us to resist. He himself was not working in the mill, but was getting his money from our dues. Several of our meetings were no more than drinking bouts. The strike manager, who conducted our part in it, elected his closest friends to important offices which offered good remuneration.

I have been to football games when the home team knew that it was beaten at the start, and yet the captain has pounded his men and said: “Come on, boys, we’ve got them whipped.” That sort of artificial courage was supplied us by our leaders. Perhaps it was necessary; for the most of us were hungry, our clothes were worn, and the fire at home had to be kept low. The grocers would not give us credit, and the winter was cold. But the leaders grinned at us, pounded the gavel on the table, and shouted: “This is a fight for right, men. We’ve got the right end of the stick. Keep together and we’ll come out all right!”

At one of the meetings, picketing committees were appointed, with specific instructions to do all in their power to prevent “scabs” from going into the mills. We boys were invited to special meetings, where we were treated to tobacco by the men and lectured on the ethics of the “scabbing system.”

“Just think, lads, here are those that would step in and take your work. Think of it! That’s just what they’d do! Take the bread right out of your mouths, and when the strike is done, you wouldn’t have no work at all to go to. It’s criminal, and you mustn’t let it pass. Fight, and fight hard. A ‘scab’s’ not human. Don’t be afraid to fight him by fair means or foul. And then, too, the manufacturers have the police and the judges and the governor on their side, because they are moneyed men! They will try to drive us off the streets so that we can’t show how strong we are. Look out for the ‘scabs’!”

His words came true, in part. The state police were called, several strikers were arrested, and given the full penalty for disorderly conduct and assault. We were not allowed to congregate on the street corners. The police followed every crowd.

These precautions intensified the anger of the strikers. Strike headquarters, in which we could meet and pass the day in social ways, were opened in vacant stores. Here we came in the morning and stayed through the day, playing cards, checkers, and talking over the strike.

In regard to newspapers, there was a prevailing opinion among us that the Boston _Journal_ alone favored our side, so we bought it to the exclusion of all other dailies. Against the Boston _Transcript_ there was a general antipathy. I liked to read it, but my uncle spoke against it.

“I don’t want anybody under my roof reading the paper that is owned hand and foot by our enemies,” he argued, and I saw that I had given him great offense.

The Boston papers sent their official photographers to take our pictures. I posed, along with several of my friends, before our headquarters, and had the pleasure of seeing the picture in the paper under some such caption as “A group of striking back-boys.”

I did not suffer during the strike. I had a splendid time of it. While the snow was on the ground I obtained a position as a sweeper in one of the theaters, and I spent nearly every day for a while at matinées and evening performances. The strike went on into the early part of May, and, when the snow had gone, I went out with a little wagon--picked coal and gathered junk. Through these activities I really earned more spending money than I ever received for working in the mill. I rather enjoyed the situation, and could not understand at the time how people could say they wanted it to end.

Before it did end, the state police withdrew, and we went on guard once more at the mill gates on watch for “strike-breakers.”

We boys made exciting work of this, encouraged by our elders. I recall one little man and his wife, who did not believe in unions or strikes. They did have a greed for money, and they had plenty of it invested in tenements. They had no children to support. They were, however, among the first to try to break the strike in our mill. Popular antipathy broke with direful menace upon their heads. Every night a horde of neighbors--men, women, boys, and girls--escorted them home from their work, and followed them back to the mill gates every morning. The women among us were the most violent. “Big Emily,” a brawny woman, once brought her fist down on the little man’s head with this malediction: “Curse ye! ye robber o’ hones’ men’s food! Curse ye! and may ye come to want, thief!” The poor man had to take the insult, for the flicker of an eye meant a mobbing. His wife was tripped by boys and mud was plastered on her face. The pettiest and the meanest annoyances were devised and ruthlessly carried into effect, while the strike-breaking couple marched with the set of their faces toward home.

Even the walls of their house could not protect them from the menace of the mob. One of the strikers rented the lower floor of their house, and one night, when we had followed them to the gate, he invited us into the basement, produced an accordion, and started a merry dance, which lasted well into the night.

The return of the swallows brought an end to the strike. We boys resolved to vote against a return, for the May days promised joyous outdoor life. But the men and women were broken in spirit and heavily in debt, and a return was voted. We had fought four long months and lost.

_Chapter XX. My Steam Cooker goes wrong. I go to Newport for Enlistment on a Training-ship_

_Chapter XX. My Steam Cooker goes wrong. I go to Newport for Enlistment on a Training-ship_

I returned to the mill with the feelings of an escaped convict who has been returned to his cell after a day of freedom. My uncle found that he had been put on the black-list, and consequently would not be able to obtain work in any mill in the city. I was allowed to take up a new position as “doffer.” This meant an advance in wages, but I knew that I was not physically equal to it. There was nothing for me to do, however, but accept, for there was a waiting line at the lower end of the room and the overseer was not a man who offered things twice.

The mill was getting more and more beyond me. It had taken my strength and I was incapable of a man’s work, as a man’s work went in the mule-room. I resolved, then, to break my aunt’s domination, leave the mill, and earn my own way with the first thing that offered itself outside the mill.

About this time I read of a young fellow who earned large profits by selling steam cookers. I wrote to the firm, borrowed five dollars, and obtained a sample and a territory. This cooker consisted of five compartments which fitted in each other like a nest of boxes. The sample was on such a small scale that great care had to be exercised in a demonstration of it. I practised faithfully on it for a few evenings, tried to sell one to my aunt, and then resolved to take a day’s holiday and attempt a few sales. One cooker would yield a good day’s pay. I resolved to abide by instructions and persevere.

So I started out one afternoon, full of hope, assured that the cooker would sell on sight and that my way out of the mill had come. I did not then think that personal appearance had everything to do with successful salesmanship. I did not stop to think that a tall, bony, red-eyed youth, with a front tooth missing and wearing trousers which bagged at the knees, whose coat-sleeves were just high enough to show that he had never worn a pair of cuffs in his life--I did not stop to think that he would invite laughter and ridicule on his head. I faced the situation seriously and earnestly, and I expected the same consideration from the world.

I walked cheerfully to a wealthy portion of the town, in a district where I was certain they would like to see my wonderful steam cooker. In great, gulping patience I waited for an answer to my ring before a very aristocratic house. I arranged my “patter” and determined that everything should go on smoothly so far as my talent was concerned.

The lady of the house appeared and I stated my business. She did not invite me into her house. I exposed my wonderful machine, pulled it apart, explained how she could cook cabbages, puddings, and meats at one and the same time. I expatiated on the superiority of steam-cooked foods, and implied that she could not intelligently keep house and maintain a reputation as a cook unless she used the steam cooker. She bore my “patter” with great patience, and must have smiled at my cockney dialect, of which I was blissfully ignorant.

I had reached that part of the demonstration where the several sections had to be fitted into each other, and had put the first two sections in place and told what foods could be cooked in them, when I came to grief at the third section. It stuck, and in spite of the beads of perspiration which rolled down my face and a vain attempt to keep up the “patter,” I could not unfasten it until I had turned the wonderful cooker upside down, a proceeding which would have emptied the beans and puddings in practical use. The woman was very kindly, and she dismissed me with cordial words. But I went down those steps chagrined and fully persuaded that I must stay in the mill.

My uncle was now earning his living by keeping another store. He and my aunt were spending the profits in a next-door saloon. My home life had not improved.

Then I remembered the novels I had read; some of them, an “Army and Navy Series,” had told of apprentice life in the navy. I knew that Newport was the recruiting station, and I resolved to enlist.

When I proposed the matter to my aunt, she agreed to let me go. The following morning I obtained a day’s holiday and went on the electric cars to the noted seaport town.

This trip abroad, with its opportunities to see that there were people who did other things besides work in the mill, and with its freedom and sunshine, made me more desperate than ever to leave the mill. I was like the Pilgrim in the first chapter of Bunyan’s allegory, running from the City of Destruction, fingers in ears, calling “Life, Life!”

I walked around Newport cliffs and touched the gateways of the palaces which front the famous walk. I reveled in the shimmer of the sea and the fragrance of shrubs and flowers. This was life and the world! I must get out in it; take my place daily in it, and live the life of a Man. God made the sun and the fragrant air; he made the flowers and created health. That was due me, because it was not my sin, but that of my elders, which had shut me out of it through my boyhood. These were some of the thoughts uppermost in my mind. I walked the narrow streets and broad avenues--places which I had read of and had never hoped to see. If I had to return to the mill, I could say that I had seen so much of the outside world, at least!

After I had watched the departure of some torpedo-boats in the direction of a gray-fronted fort across the bay, I hurried in the direction of the naval college to see if Uncle Sam would give me the chance to leave the mill which others had denied.

I passed a training-ship with its housed deck. I walked along past drill grounds and barracks and entered a quiet office. With a beating heart I announced to the attendant that I had come to offer myself for enlistment in the training-school. He led me into a large, dim room to a group of uniformed officers. They asked me a few questions, tested me with bits of colored wool, and then I was commanded to disrobe.

The remainder of the examination must have been exceedingly perfunctory, for the scales registered only one hundred and eighteen pounds and I stood five feet eleven inches in my bare feet. That was enough to exclude me, but they went on with the tests, examining my teeth (the front one was missing), pounding my chest, and testing the beat of my heart. No comments were made, and after I had dressed again I was sent to an anteroom and told to wait their decision.

For a few long minutes I sat in the silent room wondering what would be the decision. I was optimistic enough to plan what I would do if I should enter the navy. I should--here the attendant came, offered me a tiny card, and without a word bowed me to the door. I knew then that I had been refused. I walked through the yard in a daze. When I reached the city, I took heart to read the card they had given me. I recall that it read thus simply: “REFUSED. Defective teeth. Cardia--” Uncle Sam did not want to give me a chance!

_Chapter XXI. The Ichabod of Mule-rooms, some Drastic Musing, College at my Finger-tips, the Mill People wait to let me pass, and I am Waved into the World by a Blind Woman_

_Chapter XXI. The Ichabod of Mule-rooms, some Drastic Musing, College at my Finger-tips, the Mill People wait to let me pass, and I am Waved into the World by a Blind Woman_

On my return from Newport I went to work in one of the oldest mills in the city. The “mules” were in a gloomy basement--a crowded, dim, and very dirty place to work in. It was the Ichabod of mule-rooms, with every trace of glory gone. The machinery was obsolete and had to be helped along with monkey-wrenches, new parts, and constant, nerve-wearing wearing watchfulness. The alleys were so narrow that the back-boys had to edge in between the frames; and expanded chest often meant a destructive rubbing on bobbins and a breaking of threads. It always seemed to me that this room was reserved by the corporation to work off its veteran spinners and its unreliable ones, its veteran machinery, and its bad-tempered, ineffective bosses. This mule-room was the byword among the spinners at that end of the city. A man hung his head when he had to tell another that he was working in it; for it generally was his testimony to his fellows that he was in the last ditch. Spinners graduated from that room into scrubbing or oiling.

The personnel of this room was always changing; but its prevailing character remained the same: a dull-eyed, drunken set of men, a loafing, vicious set of young fellows who worked a week and loafed three.

I chose to work in that place because it was my first opportunity for an advance from doffing to “joiner.” A “joiner” is one who shares with another the operation of a pair of mules--a semi-spinner. The pay is divided, and the work is portioned off between the two. I had been working toward this position for six years and a half, and now it had come, even in that miserable room, I was eager to see how I should manage.

But, oh, the mockery and vanity of all efforts, even my wild ones, to master one of those machines! The lurching, halting, snapping things could not be mastered. Threads snapped faster than I could fasten them. One tie and two breaks, two ties and three breaks, along the row of glistening spindles, until there were so many broken threads that I had to stop the mule to catch up. And every stop meant the stoppage of wages, and the longer a thread stayed broken, the less I was earning; and on top of that, the bosses swore at us for stopping at all. I should have stopped work then and there--it would have been the sensible thing to do--but I was no loafer, and I was trying to make good in this new work--the end of a long desire. The other “joiners” and spinners did not try to keep at it. They gave up the work as soon as they discovered how useless it was to try to make a decent wage from the worn-out machines. Only myself and a few poor men who were there because they could not get any better place stayed on and fought the one-sided fight. Every time the machinery broke--and breaks were constant--the machinist grumbled, and took his own time in coming with his wrenches.

The physical and mental reaction of all this upon me was most woeful. My muscles grew numb under the excessive pressure on them, so much so that I often stood still when the threads were snapping about me and looked on them as if I had never seen a broken thread before. Or I would suddenly stop in my wild dashes this way and that in the mending of threads and look dazedly about, feel a stifling half-sob coming to my throat, and my lips would tremble under the misery and hopelessness of it all. My only consolation, and very poor, too, lay in the clock. At six o’clock it would all end for a few hours at least, and I could get out of it all. But when you watch the clock under those circumstances, an hour becomes two, and one day two days. So the labor was, after all, a wild frenzy, a race and a stab and a sob for ten and a half hours! I can never think of it as anything more.

Some of my work-fellows in that room were sent to jail for assault, petty thieving, and drunkenness. I used to think about them, in the jail, doing light work under healthy conditions, even though they were paying penalties for lawlessness, but I, who had done no crime, had to have ten hours and a half of that despairing contest with a machine. How much better to be sewing overalls or making brooms in a jail! I had to stay in the house at night in order to be thoroughly rested for the next day’s work. I had no liberty.

And, added to all this, there was the constant depressive contact with unsympathetic and foul-mouthed desecrators of ambition. Those who knew me in that room were aware that I was trying to avoid every degenerative and impure act. Some of them passed word around also that I was attending such and such a church! They came to the end of the mule, when the boss chanced not to be around, and, in a huddled group, stood at my elbows, where I had work to do, and put on their dirty lips the foulest vocabulary that ever stained foul air.

Then one day there came a flash which clearly lighted up everything. “Why are you going through this wild, unequal labor in this dull room day by day! Why? Do you absolutely have to do it? Are others keeping at it, as you? Why, why, why?” each one bigger than its fellow, made me meet every fact squarely. “To what end all this?”

My labor was helping to buy beer at home! I was giving up all my wage to my aunt, and getting back a little spending money. I had fifteen cents in the bank at the time. I did not _have_ to overstrain myself as I was doing. I _had_ the privilege of giving up my work at any moment I chose. I was no slave to such conditions. No man could drive me to such tasks. Giving up the work only meant a scolding from my aunt and a little going about among other mills to find another, and perhaps better, position. This was a new thought to me--that I could leave my work when I wanted; that I might be given work too hard for me.

Previously I had worked on the supposition that whatever was given me _ought_ to be done at all costs; that the _mill_ was the measure of a man, and not _man_ the measure of the mill. I had always looked upon my work as a test of my moral capacity; that any refusal to work, even when it was harder than I could bear, was a denial of my moral rights. But now the worm of conscience was boring through me. Why should I, at twenty years of age, not be entitled to what I earned, to spend on my education, instead of its being spent on my aunt’s appetite for intoxicants?

Then, too, why should I have to work with people who had no moral or mental sympathy with me? Was five dollars and seventy-five cents, my pay for the first week in that gloomy room, worth it? Assuredly not.

But, then, what could I do outside of the mill? I had done nothing else but work in the mill and spend a little time on a farm. If I left the mill at so late a time, left all the technical knowledge I had gathered while I had been going through it, should I be doing the best thing for my future? There seemed nothing in the future from the mill, for, as I have shown, I had not the strength to cope with more difficult tasks than those that then faced me. Probably if I got out of doors, in some open-air work, I should gain strength and be able to make progress in some other line of work. But I had been trying for that, and nothing had come. What then?

Then the greatest light of all came--flooded me. _Leave the mill at any cost!_ Stop right where I was; quibble no more, offend all, risk all, but _get away from the mill_! It was all so simple after all! Why had I not worked it out before? _Leave home! Have all I earned to save for my education!_ That was my emancipation proclamation, and I started to follow it.

First of all, I went to the overseer in that dingy room and told him frankly that the work he had given me to do was too hard for me. I could not keep it up. I also told him I did not care to leave just then, but, if he had any easier work in the room--doffing, for instance--I should like to continue. He did not receive this declaration with any expression of reproach, as I had expected, but said simply: “You go to work back-boying on those first three mules. You’ll make as much money by it as at anything in here.”

This first break made, how easily all others followed, as if they had been waiting around all the time! It was just at this time that I met a young fellow who had come back to the city to spend his vacation from study at a university in the Middle West. To him I told all my thoughts concerning getting away from the mill. I said: “I wonder if I went out where you go to college, and worked at something for a time, just to be away from mills, whether in time I might not have money enough on hand to be able to start on _my_ way towards an education?”

“How much do you think you would have to save?” he asked, smilingly.

“Why--why, hundreds of dollars, isn’t it?”

“Do you think so, Al?”

“Why, certainly.”

“And how long would you work to save up?”

“Oh,” I replied, “that depends upon what I get to do and how much I could put by.”

“Suppose, Al, that you could go right out and start right in with school at the university--it has a preparatory course--and work your way along, what would you say?”

“You mean, jump right in now, this year?”

He nodded.

“But it’s all I can do to board and clothe myself by working hard in the mill. I couldn’t by any means work hard enough to pay for going through a school.”

“How much would you be willing to--oh, Al, you’re all wrong about the cost. I tell you, old fellow, you can get through a year at my place on a hundred dollars: board, tuition--”

“What’s that?”

“Teaching and room and heat. All the rest of your expenses won’t amount to over fifty dollars, if you’re careful.”

I gazed on him, open-mouthed, for I thought he was laughing at me.

“Say--you aren’t kidding me, are you? All that is straight--about being so--so cheap?”

“Why, yes, it’s all true enough. I think you can manage it too, Al. I’ll do my best to speak a word for you. Get ready to go in three weeks, no matter how much money you have. I think you’ll be able to get some outside work to do at the university, to work your way through and meet expenses.”

“Well,” I said, “I sha’n’t be sorry even if I don’t get a chance at the school for a while, you know. If I could only get something to do _near_ there, my chance might come later. I shouldn’t be any worse off than I am here. I can earn my living at something, don’t you think so?”

“Why, yes, I do; but I think you will have a chance at the school without having to wait.”

“Oh, I can hardly believe that,” I exclaimed for sheer joy.

“But you can make all your plans for it, just the same,” said my friend with confidence.

This new outlook set every strong emotion shouting in me. The world was not dressed in so gray a garb as I had thought. I went home and told my aunt about my new plan. She said:

“You’ve never asked _me_ if you could go!”

“Well, no,” I said, “I haven’t; and I don’t think I need to. I mean to set out for myself, at any rate. It’s about time now that I was doing something for myself, don’t you think so?”

“I think you’re an impudent puppy, that’s what!” indignantly cried my aunt.

I told Pat and Harry, and they could hardly believe their own ears; but they urged me to take the chance, for they thought it was a “chance.”

My work--all work in the mill--had suddenly taken on a temporary aspect now, a means to a great end and not an end in itself. I could look on it now and feel that I had mastered it at last. The throbbing, jubilant shout of the victor was on my lips now. I saw past those lint-laden rooms, the creaking, whirling pulleys, and the clacking belts; past them, and everything that the mill meant to me; to a very pleasant new life ahead; one whose ground was holy and on which it was the privilege of but few to walk. I think there must have been a complete effacement of all the lines that had marked my face. For once, I felt sure of myself; sure that all the lines of leading were to mass into one sure road toward a better thing.

My mind was not on my work for the following three weeks. I went about with a dream in my eyes. I know I whistled much and began to lose all respect for those machines which had driven me, in times past, like a chained slave. I even found myself having much pity for all the other men and boys in the mill. I went among them with hesitation, as if I had a secret which, if told, would make them feel like doing what I was about to do.

I had found out from a ticket agency in the city that my fare to the Middle West would cost approximately seventeen dollars. I knew that in two weeks, with the week’s wage that the mill always kept back and with the seven dollars my Uncle Stanwood had promised to let me have, that I should have my railway fare and incidental expenses, anyway. So there, in the ticket agency, I had the clerk take me, with his pencil, over the route I should later take in the cars. It was a wonderful itinerary. I was to see the mountains of New England, the lakes of the border, and to plunge into a new part of the country! It would take me three days. How I stared at the prospect of so much traveling! I obtained time-tables with maps containing the route over the different railways I should ride on during that journey away from the mill. Three days from the cotton mills! That was a thought to make a fellow dance all day without rest.

One day I lay sprawled out at full length in an alley behind a box, so that the overseer might not see me, when Micky Darrett peeped over my shoulders at the maps I had spread out on which I had traced and retraced my great journey with a pencil.

“What yer’ doin’, Priddy?” said Micky. “Oh,” I announced with studied nonchalance, “just planning out the road I shall take in two weeks. I’m going to college, you know.”

“Oh,” laughed Micky, “quit yer kiddin’ like that! _What_ are you doin’, really?”

“Just what I said, Micky. I mean it.”

“Gee!” gasped the little Irishman; “yer a sporty bluffer, Priddy!”

“But ’tis true, though,” I insisted.

“What yer givin’?” growled Micky. “It’s only swells goes ter college.”

“That’s what you think, Micky, but it’s God’s truth that I go in two weeks and try to make a start.”

“Gee!” he gasped; “I allus thought you was poor. You must have got a lot of money saved, all right, all right!”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Micky. I shall have about three weeks’ wages and what my uncle gives me--seven dollars--if he gives it to me at all. That’s all I’ve got to start on.”

“Don’t stuff that down me, Priddy!” cried Micky, in great disgust, for he hated to be made sport of. “You can’t bluff yer uncle.”

But nevertheless he published all over the room what I had told him, and thereafter I answered many questions about myself and my plans, and had to spend much energy in rebutting the prevalent suspicion that I was “bluffing the room.”

Then came my last Saturday in the mill--the last day I have ever spent in the mill. I did my work with a great conscience that day. I don’t believe the second hand had to look twice to see if I had done my sweeping well. The spinners had become very friendly, as if my ambition had won respect from them, and even the overseer came to me just before I left the room, took me by the hand, and said: “I wish you the very best of luck, Priddy. Keep to it!”

On Monday morning, at six o’clock, I sat in the train. I had drawn thirteen dollars from the mill, received seven dollars from my uncle, said good-by to my old friends, and paid fifteen dollars and sixty-five cents for a ticket. Aunt Millie, in tears, had kissed me, and had hoped that “I’d do well, very well!” Uncle Stanwood had carried my hand-bag for me to the electric car and had given me good counsel out of his full heart. Now I sat listening to the mill bells and whistles giving their first warning to the workers. “You’ll never call for me again, I hope!” I said to myself as I listened. Then the train started, and I glued my face to the window-pane to catch a last glimpse of the city where for seven years I had been trying to get ahead of machinery and had failed. The train went slowly over the grade crossings. I saw the mill crowds at every street, held back by the gates, waiting deferentially while I, who had been one of them last week, was whirled along towards an education. I saw them as I had walked with them--women in shawls and looking always tired, men in rough clothes and with dirty clay pipes prodded in their mouths, and girls in working aprons, and boys, just as I had been, in overalls and under-shirts. And I was going away from it all, in spite of everything!

One of my friends was an old woman, stone blind. When I had given her my farewell, she had said: “Al, I’ll be at the crossing in front of my house when the train goes by on Monday morning. Look for me. I’ll wave my handkerchief when the train passes, lad, and you’ll know by that sign that I’m sending you off to make something of yourself!”

We came to the outskirts of the city; the mill crowds had been left, and at last a lonely crossing came, the one for which I had been looking. I had the window open. The train was gathering speed, but I saw the black-garbed blind woman, supported by her daughter, standing near the gates, her eyes fixed ahead, and her handkerchief fluttering, fluttering, as we plunged into the country.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.