with her knitting, her voice lifted in jubilant song for hours at
a time. And all her songs were songs of praise.

She thanked God for life and for strong hands to labor for her
little ones. In those days furniture was rare, and few were the
pieces in a worker's home. It took a dozen years for her to
acquire two feather beds. And when at last we owned two
bedsteads, we rated ourselves pretty rich. We boys slept five in
a bed. Why were bedsteads in those days harder to get than
automobiles are to-day? Because the wooden age still lingered,
the age of hand work. And it took so long to make a bed by hand
that people came into the world faster than beds. But within my
lifetime the iron mills have made possible the dollar bedstead.
The working man can fill his house with beds bought with the wage
he earns in half a week. This, I suppose, is one of the "curses
of capitalism."

I have heard how "the rights of small peoples" have been
destroyed by capitalism; and if the right to sleep five in a bed
was prized by the little folks, this privilege has certainly been
taken away from them. At the Mooseheart School we are pinched for
sleeping room for our fast-growing attendance. I suggested that,
for the time being, we might double deck the beds like the berths
in a sleeping car. "No," cried the superintendent. "Not in this
age do we permit the crowding of children in their sleeping
quarters." So this is the slavery that capitalism has driven us
to; we are forced to give our children more comforts than we had
ourselves. When I was sleeping five in a bed with my brothers,
there was one long bolster for five hot little faces. The bolster
got feverish and a boy sang out: "Raise up." We lifted our tired