He told her of child slavery, and brought before her eyes the pictures
he himself had seen, of the pale, stunted little victims of Mammon's
greed, toiling by day and night in stifling, dangerous mines; in the
Hell-glare of the glass-factories; in the hand-bruising,
soul-obliterating Inferno of the coal-breakers; in the hot, linty,
sickening atmosphere of the southern cotton-mills. And as he talked, she
saw for the first time the figures of these bowed and bloodless little
boys and girls, giving their lives drop by drop, and cough by cough,
that _she_ might have purple and fine linen and the rich, soft, easy
paths of life.
* * * * *
Then, pausing not, he spoke to her of white slavery, of girls and women
by the uncounted thousand forced to barter their own bodies for a
mockery of life; and, stinging as a nagaika, he laid the lash of blame
on Capitalism, evil cause of an evil and rotten fruit, of disease and
crime, and misery, and death. He told her of political corruption beyond
belief; of cheating, lying, trickery and greed, for power.
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