Short Stories
mother had fainted. They stretched her out on the floor in the
midst of the shrieking machines. A couple of elderly women
were called from their looms. The foreman assisted. And in a
few minutes there was one more soul in the loom room than had
entered by the doors. It was Johnny, born with the pounding,
crashing roar of the looms in his ears, drawing with his first
breath the warm, moist air that was thick with flying lint. He had
coughed that first day in order to rid his lungs of the lint; and for
the same reason he had coughed ever since.
The boy alongside of Johnny whimpered and sniffed. The
boy's face was convulsed with hatred for the overseer who kept
a threatening eye on him from a distance; but every bobbin was
running full. The boy yelled terrible oaths into the whirling bob-
bins before him; but the sound did not carry half a dozen feet,
the roaring of the room holding it in and containing it like a
wall.
Of all this Johnny took no notice. He had a way of accepting
things. Besides, things grow monotonous by repetition, and this
particular happening he had witnessed many times. It seemed to
him as useless to oppose the overseer as to defy the will of a ma-
chine. Machines were made to go in certain ways and to perform
certain tasks. It was the same with the overseer.
But at eleven o'clock there was excitement in the room. In an
apparently occult way the excitement instantly permeated every-
where. The one-legged boy who worked on the other side of
Johnny bobbed swiftly across the floor to a bin truck that stood
empty. Into this he dived out of sight, crutch and all. The super-
intendent of the mill was coming along, accompanied by a
young man. He was well dressed and wore a starched shirt—a
gentleman, in Johnny's classification of men, and also, "the
25