the Factory MONTAGUE. Harry B. Lachman. No longer they idly listen to a warbler's futile song, No longer their idle laughter rings out the whole day long, No longer they roam the meadows like idle gipsy bands, For the world is growing richer by the work of their puny hands. And the man who found them idling among the feathery blooms, And brought them to watch their lives away beside his clattering loomsHe talks of the goodly riches that his enterprise has won With the toil of the sad-faced children, and boasts of the thing he's done! The Story of the Medicine Bottle* Georgie was in bed feeling very uncomfortable and what made him more uncomfortable still was to see the big bottle of medicine standing on the table by his bed. At last he said fiercely, "Mr. Medicine Bottle I am going to smash you!" "Oh, please don't, Georgie," cried the Bottle, "I have had such a hard life of it and besides, you must remember, I had to take every drop of your medicine before a single teaspoonful was given to you!" "That's true," said Georgie, "I hadn't thought of that. But tell me about your hard life." "Well," and the Bottle spoke slowly, "I don't think after all my life was as hard as the boys' lives." "What boys?" asked Georgie. "All the boys excepting you that I've known. Yes, Georgie, all the boys I have known would be glad enough to be in your place. *Fourteen year old boys work all night in the glass factories of Pennsylvania and West Virginia. All other important glass manufacturing states have forbidden night work under the age of 16, and census figures show that the industry has prospered under this restriction. You needn't look as if you didn't believe me; for those boys often felt sick enough, but there was no soft bed for them. No, indeed, only the same work day or night as it happened to be. But I'll begin at the beginning. I became a member of the Bottle family in a dark and dirty factory in West Virginia, and it was in that same dark and dirty factory that the boys had to stay for eight and nine hours at a stretch, one week in the daytime, when you, sir, would be going to school or playing; and the next week in the night-time, when you would be sleeping in such a nice soft bed as not one of them ever laid down in. The Furnace where Medicine Bottle first found himself melting hot. "The first I knew about myself, I was hot, just blazing, melting, white hot; and a man caught me up on a long iron tube, all melted as I was, and jammed me into an iron mold. A boy was sitting down close to the mold to shut it and steady it. And his face was close enough to me to get the heat as I passed by, and I saw a big scar where once some hot glass had hit his cheek. All the time that the man was blowing me into shape the mold boy sat cramped up with the heat pouring into his face. And he had to do that hour after hour for my brothers and sisters as well. When I was shaped, he opened the mold and another boy took me out and carried me to what they call the 'glory hole' to have my neck melted into a good shape where the tube had been broken away. The fire at the 'glory hole' was blinding bright for the boy's eyes, and almost blistering hot for his face. The Snapping-up Boy carrying Medicine Bottle to the "Glory Hole". "I saw another boy take the tube the man had blown through, and knock off the pieces of glass that stuck to it. The glass broke into small flakes and was bright and sparkling as it flew through the air. But it was very bad for the boys to breathe, and often got into their eyes and hurt so much they had to stop work to get it out. Working in the hot factory made them catch cold easily too, and they often were sick with bad coughs." "It's very tiring to cough," said Georgie, who knew all about it, for he had been doing it a good deal. |