As a stranger I encountered a surprising lack of civility at a “non-union” plough company at Chattanooga. The employees were mostly Negroes, and I called on the white superintendent to obtain permission to go over the works. A heavy-jowled fellow kept me waiting half an hour in an anteroom, and then not only refused point-blank to let me see conditions in his factory, but was so brusque in his manner that I was forced to give him my mind roundly on his lack of courtesy, not to me personally, but to a literary man. As a rich business man he seemed to consider the profession of letters as dirt under his feet. I must say I felt shame to be so angry, and I was much amused some weeks later to read in a Chattanooga newspaper picked up by accident that Billy Sunday had visited this city and had preached in the said works, and at the close of his address, the superintendent being present, all the employees were en bloc converted to Christ. Chattanooga is a larger city than Knoxville, better built and more spacious. One has entered the rayon of Southern steel and coal. Its many factory chimneys and its sooty sky testify to considerable industrialism. As in its sister city of Birmingham, Alabama, there are many non-union shops. A great steel strike was in progress in the United States, but while the workers in the North stood their ground in a long and bitter struggle, there was scarcely the semblance of a walkout in places like Chattanooga and Birmingham. Northern labor trouble seemed to mean Southern capitalistic prosperity. One reason why Southern labor remains to a great extent unorganized is the Negro difficulty. Unions are not ready to accept Negro membership. Therefore the Negro can always be brought in to do the white man’s work if the latter goes on strike. Whether union or non-union, the wages seem fairly high. I talked with a Negro moulder who earned on an average six dollars a day. That is over eighteen hundred dollars American, and about five hundred pounds British money a year. A non-union unskilled man would, however, earn little more than two dollars a day—which, with the cost of food so high, is very little.