Now the hope of this factory mother lies in her child, since she, like her husband, is bound to wear out at a comparatively early age. And what chance has she to bear a healthy child? They give you heartbreaking figures of infant mortality in Rhode Island, and everywhere one goes what one sees and hears confirms their truthfulness. The district nurses talk to you of “bottle babies,” the factory mother being, as a rule, so poorly nourished and so overworked that she cannot nurse her child. Moreover, she cannot care for it. She must return as soon as possible to the factory. The doctor’s bill is heavy. “He” is having a hard time, the mill is running short. The baby is left to an older child if there be one, or, if there is none, it perhaps goes to one of the human institutions of the factory town—the “old woman.” The old woman may not be over 50, but the factory has got all it can out of her and the factory community utilizes her by giving her its young children to care for, paying perhaps $2.00 a week. The old woman may have borne children, but she has never had an opportunity to learn to care for them properly. She is often so deaf she cannot hear them cry and she is too poor to buy them proper food, and to boot, she may be a tippler. Unless husky beyond all probability, or saved by some lucky chance—a district nurse or a sister or some other good angel—the baby dies. One should go to the cemetery to see how many die. There is nothing more pitiful in all this beautiful world than the interminable rows of little graves in the cemeteries of the factory towns. In recent years the problems of the operative have been complicated by the soaring cost of living. Almost everything he buys is higher in price, or if he insists on a standard price, the article is poorer in quality. Take the very protected articles from which Rhode Island draws her wealth. All these 68,000 textile workers must have clothes. The price of women’s all-wool dress goods increased in Providence, the centre of the industry between 1891 and 1907, over 33 per cent. There was an increase in practically all the cotton-warp goods varying from 4 to 40 per cent. Underwear in which there was any mixture of wool cost a fourth more in 1907 than sixteen years before. Cotton underwear was reported as stationary in price, though since 1907 it has risen. Bleached muslin used for shirtings was 34 per cent dearer in 1907 than in 1891. Cotton thread was 10 per cent dearer. All linens were higher, though of course the textile operatives cannot buy much linen. That is, their own industries are taking out of them the increase in wages which this same period has seen!