from conscious physical distress, rebelled from its monotony and craved something in the evening to offset the long dull hours when she speeded herself or raced with the other girls in her effort to make a little more than her board.

Then I asked what the town offered in exchange for this hard-won little more that would give her the rest and relaxation she needed and satisfy the craving of her spirit. And I followed that other crowd down the street and into the Scenic. The cooled air was pleasanter than that of the street outside. The seats were comfortable and they were filled with Myras whose mothers asked not where they spent their evenings. The pictures were censored. Many of them were attractive, but in them all was one appeal. I joined a group going out. "Did you like the pictures?"

"Sure. Wasn't they all love pictures?" "Are they the only kind you like?"

"Sure. Though I don't mind a cowboy picture now and then, and a burning house when he saves her. But that's a love picture when he saves her."

They passed on and entered Steinman's. I remembered that it was learners' night, and I went to the balcony to watch. It was a happy place, a good floor, a good band, bright lights, and no restraint except two signs which read: "No person under sixteen allowed. Grizzly bear and turkey trot not allowed." The young people enjoyed themselves. They danced well, and naturally they took pleasure in the rhythmical movement of their young bodies. So far as I saw, there was very little amiss. Now and then the

movement was a little more voluptuous than was good for untutored spirits, now and then their bodies were perhaps too tightly pressed together, now and then in the balcony were passages between girls and their "fellers that would better have been curbed. An intermission was announced. A general exodus took place, and I followed. No drink was allowed in the hall, but the street was lined with saloons, and group by group the "fellers" disappeared behind swing doors. Some with their girls continued a block farther, where there were candy stores and soda fountains.

This, then, was what we offered these children. They were all factory girls and boys. Many of them I knew by sight. All day long they toiled from seven in the morning until six at night, just beyond the fatigue limit of nerve and muscle, just beyond that

of mental uninterest. And when they were rebelling from they knew not what, there was only the crowded main street with its moving pictures, its dance-hall, its skating-rink, its pool-rooms, its candy stores, and its saloons set before them with all the appeal that can be devised by the ingenuity of modern advertising. If there were anything left after they had paid their board, they could go into one of these for diversion; if there were not, there was still the gayly lighted street. And in long lines girls and boys passed and repassed, rubbing up against each other with the free unthinkingness of young animals at play. And when they turned toward home there were dark alleys, unlighted corners, deserted cemeteries, and no watchful eye to see that no harm came.

I turned homeward. automobile stopped me.

The sound of an It whirled past, its

young occupants laughing gayly. I knew them by sight. They were getting cobwebs brushed out of brains that had very little right to be tired. Fresh air was toning muscles that had had no strain put upon them beyond that of a game of tennis. But, in accord with the spirit of the age, they were craving and getting excitement. This rapid motion in the open air, with its inevitable thrill of possible danger, would be healthgiving to the factory girl. It would rest her in mind and body. But it is precisely what cannot come to the average factory girl legitimately. Is it small wonder that she sometimes gets it illegitimately?

I saw Katie the other day. I had been away from the town for nearly two years. I wanted to know about Myra. Once in the early days I had seen her, her lagging steps without elasticity, her shoulders drooping with fatigue, "too tired" to go to the pictures. I had wondered what life would finally bring her. Now I found out. Katie looked at me with a gentle smile. She was always a patient soul. "She's at home," she said, and stopped.

shop. I asked him how many girls he employed and what they could earn. He answered my questions after his fashion and added some thoughts of his own: "I've got two hundred girls. I could use two hundred and fifty, but I can't get 'em. Oh, they can make good money if they'll work. You see, it is 'most all piece-work in my place, and it is all up to the girl. If she'll work, she can make seven, eight, nine, ten dollars. I've got girls that make their twelve dollars. But they ain't no good, most of 'em. Why, you wouldn't believe it, but some of the little ones fifteen years old do the best. They get five dollars a week. If I was to put 'em on piecework they could-well, they could do as good as any of 'em, but I couldn't do it. If I was to pay 'em any more'n I do now, they'd get the swelled head and I couldn't do nothin'

with 'em any more. They'd want to run the business. They are talking about passing a bill in the legislature calling for a minimum wage and shorter hours. I'd just like to go down there and talk to them fellers. They don't know nothin' about running a business. All they think about is the girls. Them girls ain't worth now what we're payin' 'em, always running downtown nights instead of going to bed. On Sundays in winter, you wouldn't believe it, but they go out to the park and skate all day, and when they come back here on Monday they ain't no good. Wouldn't it be better for 'em to stay home and rest and come back here Monday ready to work?"

It would certainly be better for his business. About the girls I held my peace, and

he went on :

"If we say a word, them fellers down there say we ain't got no right to interfere with a working-girl's recreation. I tell you things is fierce these days. They ain't like they was when I began. I got a dollar and a half a week, and I worked for it. Of course it takes more to live on now than it did then. But they ain't no good. They ain't worth what we pay 'em."

I forebore to remind this philanthropist, who was looking for fifty more girls "not worth what we pay 'em " to heap his benefits upon, of the fifteen-year-olds not yet put upon piece-work for fear that if their work received its just due their undernourished bodies might develop the unpleasant accompaniment of a "swelled head," children whose fresh young spirits had not yet been worn by underfeeding and nervous strain to the point where the spur must be applied.

"And I'd like to know, when this bill gets through, what they're going to do about the old ones that we are just keeping on out of kindness. Why, we got an old woman up there; she's over sixty and she's got a blind sister, and they depend on the three dollars she brings home every week. I'd sure hate to let her go; been with us twenty years; used to make her twelve dollars a week."

Not a word about present-day speeding, about the mercilessness of new whirling machinery that exacts its toll from human nerves, about the long hours of monotony that by their very duration produce nervous unrest that can be stilled only by excitement, about piece-work at which a girl makes $7.30 one week and $4 the next, and the cruel strain it puts upon her nerves to try against odds to get her seven dollars when stock is bad; our precious industrial system, under which girls like Myra go to the wall and girls like Katie wear their bodies to the breaking-point, decreasing day by day their efficiency; under which girls of fifteen are able to produce more than their wearied older sisters, and women of sixty are thrown on the scrap-heap; under which the many are sacrificed for the enrichment of the few.

Is it not a problem of our civilization to find a way by which the many shall profit by the work of the many? At least may we not find a way whereby we shall not steal the precious youth of children, by which they shall not be broken before their time, by which we shall not wear them out with monotony, and then seek to offset our deadly work by surfeiting them with the wrong sort of pleasure-pleasure which for its better commercialization, for its greater profit to those providing it, appeals first and always to that great sex instinct which, often beyond the control of those experienced enough to know and resist, swamps with its strength the untutored child played upon by the power of suddenly aroused and unaccustomed emotions?

There are many Myras, but many more Katies-the one rebelling and falling a quick prey to the system, the other accepting as inevitable the life of her class. But whether Myras or Katies, whether they voice their spirit or are still with a terrible patience, they want their fun while they are young. They have a right to it while they are young, the fun and joy of childhood. It is one of the responsibilities of our age. It is our responsibility. Shall we not face it?

evening in February, about three

and a Russian fox. It is a common saying

an apartment of the Hotel Judson, in New York City, talking with a young Polish lawyer from Minsk. He had come to the United States a short time before as a political refugee, and had brought a letter of introduction to me from a valued and trusted friend in St. Petersburg. As he seemed to be a man of culture, courage, and resolution, I felt curious to know what his history had been and what the circumstances were that had forced or induced him to leave his native country. There were reasons enough, of course, for a man's leaving Russia; but I had found in experience that expatriation in such cases is generally due to some specific determining cause rather than to general political conditions, and that such cause is often connected with an interesting personal story. At the first favorable opportunity, therefore, I asked my visitor the direct question, "What finally made you decide to get out of Russia ?"

"A Russian fox," he replied, gravely.

The answer was so unexpected and apparently so irrelevant that I was rather taken aback, and looked at him for a moment in puzzled surprise. Then the thought occurred to me that he was probably speaking figuratively, and that the fox in question was some Russian official- -a governor or chief of police-who had the cunning and subtlety with which the fox, in Russia as in America, is usually credited.

"Do you mean a real fox," I asked, merely a man with foxy characteristics?" "I mean a real fox," he replied. red Russian fox with pointed ears and a bushy tail had not left tracks in the snow on the edge of a certain piece of woods four or five years ago, I might still be practicing my profession in Minsk."

bilities;' but, with all your Siberian experience, could you possibly imagine a Russian fox entering into a conspiracy with a Catholic Pole to dishonor the Holy Orthodox Church?" "Well, hardly," I replied. "The fox in our fairy tales sometimes does queer things, but nothing so queer as that. How did it happen-if it did happen?"

"The story is an almost incredible one," he said; "but the facts are on record in the Circuit Court of Minsk, and also in the archives of the Governing Senate" (the Russian Supreme Court) "in St. Petersburg. The fox is dead; but, if we can trust the findings of a Russian jury, he died in trying to help a Catholic Pole express his hatred and contempt for the Greek faith. Have you been in any of the Polish provinces of Russia since the revolution of 1905 ?"

"No," I said. "I passed through that part of the Empire several times in earlier years, but I haven't been there since 1901."

"Then I'd better begin by telling you something about the state of affairs in Russian Poland at the time when this fox case came up. I'm afraid you won't believe the story at all if I don't give you the historical background. You remember, perhaps, that the revolutionary movement of 1905-6 received much of its support from the so-called 'alien' nationalities of Russia, particularly the Jews, the Georgians, and the Poles. When it was finally defeated, largely through the bloody pogroms which were planned by the monarchists and executed by the Black Hundreds, the Government determined not only to punish these 'alien' peoples for their revolutionary sympathies and activities, but, as far as possible, to break up their national or racial solidarity and Russianize them at the point of the bayonet. Field courts martial,

"It is a story," he assented, "or rather a tragedy; but it isn't primarily mine. I was finally brought into it, but I played only a subordinate part. The real actors were a Polish landed proprietor and his friends, two or three priests of the Greek Church, a Black Hundred representative in the Duma,

almost decimated the male population of the southern and western provinces, and the policy of repression, which has always been rigorous in Poland, became not only more cruel in spirit but more openly terroristic in form. The whole country was under martial law; every official who showed the least sympathy with the Poles was removed or