Hertha hesitated as she answered. "No, I don't think I have. I lived much of the time in the city. I haven't known about such things." She thought of Ellen as she spoke, and was sure, had she been there, she could have talked intelligently about peonage and poverty among white and black. She remembered that Ellen used to say the Negro never fell as low as the lowest white. "Those are the folks," she added, "that we call poor white trash." Her friend flared up at her. "Yes, and why are they trash? Because you treat them worse than slaves! You hold them in debt, steal from them with every piece of bacon or cup of meal they buy from your store, work their children when they should be at school or playing out under the blue skies; and then you live in idleness and sneer at the trash that done the work of the world for you." "Miss Hertha doesn't sneer, and neither do I, Kitty, but I think you're talking of an exceptional case. At any rate, as I have seen things in the North and West, I've found that it was the fault of the man if he didn't live decently in the world, and keep his woman that way, too. Why didn't this woman's husband pay off his debt and go to another farm?" "For the same reason likely that his children won't. Because he was starved and worked until all the life was squeezed out of him." "Well, it's not that way in the North." "Isn't it? Haven't I seen the tenement child sewing on the buttons to pants, and coughing fit to send her in a few years to heaven--for if those babies that have no chance in this world don't have one in the next, there's no God." "And I've seen things, too, Kitty. I've known a good many families that were down and out, and it's always been one person of the lot who's been to blame. If every one did his share, kept sober, worked hard and saved money, he would get out of the tenement. When the family doesn't do better, when it keeps staying in the dirt, it's because there's a father perhaps who only works three days in the week and gets drunk the other three, or there's a son who can't find the right job, a round peg in a square hole. There's somebody who doesn't do right and keeps the family back." "And do you mean to say that rich folk aren't like that?" Kathleen was growing very angry. "And yet I'm noticing they're not starved for it." "If they're rich it's because they're industrious. My grandfather used to tell me that America was the land of opportunity, and that it rested with the individual whether or not he made a success." "Oh!" Kathleen rose. She looked as though she could personally assault the little man. He in the meantime had resumed his pipe and was talking in a pleasant, matter-of-fact tone.