If the children prove healthy, if they “turn out well,” if work is continuous, the little home may be secured and the modest little dream may come true. But suppose that a weaver, rushing into the cold air at the end of his ten-hour day, is chilled and has pneumonia—it happens often enough. Suppose an uncovered gear or belt catches him in an incautious moment and crushes a limb or takes his scalp, or a carelessly handled machine nips off a finger—it happens all the time. Carelessness? More often it is that the limit of human endurance has been passed. Fatigue has ceased to be normal and has become abnormal—his mind is dulled—his nerve deadened—his muscles do not respond. The wonder is that in the shrieking, devilish uproar of the factory, a tired man can keep up his habit of caution as steadily as most of them do. Suppose that, standing through the hot summer in the poisoned air of a dry closet, he falls ill of a fever. Or, if he escapes all these things, suppose that the factory goes on short time—thousands of operatives all over New England have had their weekly wages cut in half in the last three years by short time. Or, suppose that, which has happened repeatedly in Rhode Island, he is obliged by some intolerable condition to strike and have no wage—what happens then? That happens which is more disastrous to the family than even child labor—the wife must go into the factory. So narrow is the margin in the best of times that an illness, a shut down, disturbs the budget so that only the combined exertion of all the members of the family can save it. The mothers go into the factory, and the homes gradually go to pieces. After her ten hours at spindle or loom the woman hurries to a cold, unkempt house, which she must make comfortable and cheerful if it is to be so. Is it strange that the homes of the factory mothers are generally untidy, the food poor, the children neglected? How can it be otherwise? Her limit of endurance, of ambition, of joy, even of desire of life, has been passed. More appalling, she sees her ability to work falling off. Almost universally, women who have worked ten years in a factory have the patent-medicine habit—they are “so tired” they “take something.” Is it surprising that a few of them finally discover that they can get from beer or whiskey the same temporary strength at less cost? The surprise is not that many drink, but that more do not.