“They are generous,” replied her visitor, “but they are not just. There is an old saying, ‘Be just before you are generous,’ which, if lived up to in Papyrus, would make a wonderful difference in favor of the working class. How have the Baldwins made their millions? Of course the whole world knows that they make a very high grade of paper. It is said that this is due, in some measure, to the pure water found in Papyrus, which is the gift of God. Then, too, it is claimed that Mack Baldwin laid the foundation of the Baldwin millions by manipulations in Wall Street, during the Civil War. But some of those millions are the fruit of low wages. If the Baldwins pay twenty-five cents a day less than a fair wage, to two thousand hands, three hundred days in a year, what is the result? It’s a yearly saving of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, of money due the laborer, is it not? Then, perhaps, the Baldwins may spend fifteen thousand dollars a year in pensions to a very few, and in charity to the working class. Nothing can exceed the cleverness of the Baldwins, in making one dollar in charity, look bigger to the laborer, than ten dollars in wages withheld. I think the time is coming when the law will require the accounts of all such concerns as the Baldwin Paper Company, to be as open as town accounts, and then the lion’s share of profits will go to the laborer. But I guess you have had all the rag-room and paper-mill you want for one day.” “No, I have been very much interested, and I wish you women might get justice,” replied Mrs. Wycliff. “I think there cannot be any harder or more disagreeable work in the mill than yours, and I wish that you might have better pay and kinder treatment. The Baldwins are well able to pay. I hear that this new library that Zechariah Baldwin is giving to the city of Elmfield will cost a half a million dollars.” “Yes, I try to restrain my anger, as a Christian woman should,” said Mrs. Clyde, “but my blood boils every time I see that building. We poor women must slave in Zack Baldwin’s rag-room, and the money which ought to go to the mill-help, in higher wages, is given, with a great flourish of trumpets, to the city of Elmfield, which is already rich enough. As to our work. If we try to work a bit faster than usual, we are liable to get cut on the scythes, and there’s many a terrible gash been got in the rag-room. Then how often do you hear of contagious diseases spread by the rags of a paper-mill.