swore that they had seen fifty-seven varieties and were expecting
new ones at any meal. The crowd here was a selected crowd. It was
made up of the pie connoisseurs of mill-town. Word was quietly
passed out among the wisest fellows to move to this boarding-
house and get a liberal education in pie. So it was a selected
and well-behaved crowd. They didn't want to start any rumpus and
thus lose their places at this attractive table.

And that is one way that virtue is its own reward. Only the
well-behaved fellows were tipped off to the pie bonanza. From
this I learned that the better manners you have, the better fare
you will get in this world. I had steadily risen from the "Bucket
of Blood," through the "Greasy Spoon" to a seat at the cherished
"Pie" table. Here the cups were so thin that you couldn't break a
man's head with them. I was steadily rising in the social world.



CHAPTER XXVIII

CAUGHT IN A SOUTHERN PEONAGE CAMP


It was while I was in Birmingham that the industrial depression
reached rock bottom. In the depth of this industrial paralysis
the iron workers of Birmingham struck for better pay. I, with a
train load of other strikers, went to Louisiana and the whole
bunch of us were practically forced into peonage. It was a case
of "out of the frying pan into the fire." We had been saying that
the mill owners had driven us "into slavery," for they had made