And it was to make steel rails
for the Wymans that the slaves of the mills were toiling!
Here was the palace of the Eldridge Devons, with a greenhouse which
had cost one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and which merely
supplied the daily needs of its owners. Here was the famous tulip
tree, which had been dug up and brought a distance of fifty miles,
at a cost of a thousand dollars. And Montague had seen in the making
the steel for one of the great hotels of the Eldridge Devons!
And here was the Walling establishment, the "three-million-dollar
palace on a desert," as Mrs. Billy Alden had described it. Montague
had read of the famous mantel in its entrance hall, made from
Pompeiian marble, and costing seventy-five thousand dollars. And the
Wallings were the railroad kings who transported Mississippi Steel!
And from that his thoughts roamed on to the slaves of other mills,
to the men and women and little children shut up to toil in shops
and factories and mines for these people who flaunted their luxury
about him. They had come here from every part of the country, with
their millions drawn from every kind of labour.
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