"For example, it constantly depresses me to observe the effect of the cotton mills on the girls in my employ.
They come in from the country, fresh, blooming, and eager to work.
Within a few months perhaps they are pale, anaemic, listless.

Not infrequently a young girl contracts tuberculosis and dies before one realizes that she is ill.

It wrings the heart to see it." "I suspect," said the visitor, "that there is something wrong with your mills.

Are you sure that they are sufficiently well ventilated ?" "They are as well ventilated as we can have them," said the rich young man.

"Of course we cannot keep the windows open." "Why not ?" persisted the visitor.
"Because in our mills we spin both black and white yarn, and if the windows were kept open the lint from the black yarn would blow on the white yarn and ruin it." A quick vision rose before the visitor's consciousness, of a mill room, noisy with clacking machinery, reeking with the mingled odors of perspiration and warm oil, obscure with flying cotton flakes which covered the forms of the workers like snow and choked in their throats like desert sand.
"But," she exclaimed, "you can have two rooms, one for the white yarn and the other for the black." The rich young man shook his head with the air of one who goes away exceedingly sorrowful.
"No," he replied, "we can't.