I went on down to Mobile, then to New Orleans. Wherever I went, all through the South, I heard the cry in the night of cruel abuse and neglect of the wage-slave just as I heard it all through the North. I saw the blood drops of the peon, the broken, bruised and lacerated bodies of human beings leased from the prison to the convict camp. I heard the unceasing cry of woe from stone walls and iron bars, the mad shrieks from dungeon cells and torture chambers and the terror-striking bay of the bloodhound. While what I have written of will remain an incurable wound, when I carried the message of progress, of justice and love, a plea for an institution for labor, for health, and for brotherly care, into the labor councils, the progressive Business Men's Union, composed of three hundred citizens, and the Women's Clubs (especially the Era Club), the intense interest shown by all of these for the oppressed heralds an illumined page in history and bespeaks a glorious victory for the South. CHAPTER XXVIII HOUSTON--THE CHURCH AND THE CITY'S SIN AGAINST SOCIETY "_Do no wrong, do no violence to the stranger._"--JEREMIAH, 22: 3. The weather was bright and cold when I reached Texas. As I walked the streets of Houston I noticed that the police glanced at me suspiciously. Several of them, by their looks, seemed to be weighing my worth. After my arrival in this city, from morning until night I walked its streets in search of work, until compelled by the shadows of the night to seek a free place to rest. During all my earnest endeavors that day the only opportunity for work came from a labor solicitor offering me a dollar a day and board to work ten hours a day in the woods. [Illustration: _A Sick and Homeless Boy with His Dog on Guard. He is Sleeping on a Bed of Refuse Thrown from a Stable, with an Old Man Lying near Him_] "How do they feed you?" I asked. "As good as in any camp." (I knew all that meant.) "What are the sleeping accommodations like?" "Well, it is a new camp, and, of course, they are not the best." "What is the fare to the camp?" "Five dollars." "Do you pay the fare there?" "No, but we advance it to you and take it out of your pay." "Is my pay assured when my work is done?" "Oh, yes. You will be working for a mighty big corporation of Chicago, worth millions of dollars." "But when I reach there I am five dollars in debt to you. Suppose that I did not want to stay, or that I couldn't stand the work, or that I might be taken ill, or that there should be some reasons why I could not work, my only bond is my body, what then?" His face flushed. "I suppose I could run away if I had the strength," I continued, "and if I did, what then?" The already flushed face turned scarlet.