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1 SATURDAY, JAN. 1, 1021. THE TOILER PAGE derstand. I answered and she didn't know what I said. Just the same we understood each other. Weren't we both of us women? Weren't we both of us carrying home heavy bundles and we were both going to sew all night and with us our child ren so that we could eat. Where would I have been but for her? She called to her friends. They gathered, about me. They to ok her bundle between them. She lifted me to my feet My bundle she put on her head. In this way I got home. "Then you were- born, Morris. Each baby what a worry. You remember, Reba come close to me you were my only help, you helped wash and dress the new babies. You were the only one there to hand me a cup of water. "How hard papa worked in those days. Winter's mornings he would crawl out before the light, bent down like an old man he would stir around making himself tea. Coughing, always coughing I could hear him come up the stairs nights. His cough came ahead of him and when he left I could hear it going off in the distance. He would wipe his mouth with a rag. and I would see him looking at it. I knew what he was looking for. How many went that way! What with the long hours and little food. And then he would look at me and the children. We would sit there and the spectre of death would stand between us. Fear went to bed with us, and fear got up with us. "Was it a wonder that babies got sick? Was it any wonder they died? Oh, it is a bitter thing to go through the pain of bearing and then the pain of losing. But there is a bitterer thing yet and that is when they die that you should be glad for their sake." Pain stopped his mother's speech. There was silence. Throughout the room a little sound only broke it Reba crying softly to herself. She seemed remote and lonely in her fashionable plain clothes. Memories flowed past Morris as she talked. He remembered a dank tenement house. When you opened the door foul air rushed out past you like an evil animal. He remembered the tide of pants mounting so high that when you went into the room you thought of pants first and human beings last. Pants every where and his mother's fingers flying as though driven by fear while he sat and played beside her with spools on a string. Snatches of talk went on over his head of underpay, of the cost of thread. The older children were at work beside her and if he cried, Reba hushed him. His mother never seemed to hear. Often he crawle into the hallway and out into the odorous street. She spoke again: "I would sew and sew. Thftj children would sicken before my eyes. Their ma would beat upon my heart. I could not stop to tend to them. My hands could not stop work. The others must eat. Once when father was out rf work, the baby lay dying. I knew it, I had s his blue lips. There were eight more pants to finish 'When these are done, I'll take him ntf I thought. I finished the work and I looked aionnd. He lay still. I went to him. Dead, dead. I had not stopped work even for death." Again she spoke. "You remember, Reba how you would pick bastings and pick bastings siting on your BUh stool. You would nod asleep. How many times have I waked you up, jogging you with my foot. Earn many times have I thought 'Must I bring children into the world to livo in a dark hole, to work almost before they can walk, o ily that they may have a crust of bread to Th it was thrt time when clothes were made of the blood awi bones of men and women and children. Toracfltf went into the making of clothes "Oh, the long years, one after the other likr that Oh, the long years! "I remember when your papa just joined a union. 'You will lose your job', I said. I was fright ened. I didn't understand." He would explaim " 'There is city full waa suffer like us. Not a few. Hundred and hundred hundred and hundreds the shop full of gurh and women speeding their lives away. Thousand and thousands and thousands living like us. Wfc will help us if we don't. No Moses will come to feat us from this bondage.' "Strikes one after another and the men scab bing on each other because of misery and hunfjar 'You're a fool,' Mose Stich said to papa "flow can you -organize an industry like ours? There1 too much labor; the people are too wretched. Yea's be out of work all the time.' "When the boys and papa began bringtof tiome good money and the hours grew shorty what a pleasure 1 1 could look with joy on Moe and Henry! These boys can go to school, they caa learn something. "Sometimes when I would hear the chMwa) talking that women were making twenty and thirty a week, T am dreaming,' I would think. Bad the union grew and grew. Do you know howf