brutal. The strongest will, backed by the strongest arm, rules. The place reeks with profanity as well as with dust. Innocence perishes. For what reason then are these growing boys subjected to so much hardship and so great moral risk? For sixty cents a day. In the coal regions men are plenty and cheap; the supply, both foreign and domestic, but especially foreign, far exceeds the demand. But boys are at a premium.

Of course it isn't just right, as the boy's mother would admit to herself, and of course the law forbids his working in the breaker before he is twelve; but when his father is brought home dead, (or, at least, part of him is); and when the other children are nothing but girls; and when his mother's speak-easy, (and who could find fault with a poor widdy woman with a lot of girls selling a drop or two?)-but when the speak-easy is not a profitable enterprise, from having to do a credit business, or from too great friendliness on the part of the neighbours, or from too much home consumption; and when the boy doesn't want to go to school, and does want to go to work in the breaker, (the darling boy!)-and when his mother goes to the breaker boss and swears that he is over twelve but small for his age,-why, what is to be done? Breaker bosses are not employed as detectives, and boys are not horses whose age can be told by their teeth. So into the breaker he goes.

Or perhaps his father, weakened by the same kind of burdens borne in his youth, may now be prematurely disabled; then the boy must become the frail

support of the family. He may be so small that his dinner pail drags on the snow as he trudges to his work. Or it may be that the father is put on "half shift," because he works for himself, while the boy must work over time, because he works for the company. More likely still, the father spends so much of his earnings at the saloon that the boy must support his mother and the younger children. In any such case, into the breaker he must go.

Of course the work in the breaker precludes all opportunity for attending school. While provision is made by law for night schools, and while such schools are established in some communities, it is seldom that much real good is accomplished by them. As a final consequence, the children of the foreigners who have overrun the valleys in the mining regions are to a startling degree ignorant of even the rudiments of learning. While their fathers are usually able to read their native language, the sons of these strangers are often utterly illiterate.

Mick and Jim took their way to the top of the culm heap which lay next the village of Mudtown and paused a moment, before descending to the meeting place of the Terrors, to give the final signal by which a meeting of the club was called, three short blasts followed by one long one blown upon Mick's grimy fingers.

Most of the members of the 'Malgamated Terrors had come up by this time. Many smoked and all of them swaggered, each one copying some trick of manner or speech admired in his father or some stage

66

hero. Mick Phelan was beginning to take more interest in pugilists than in mere actors. Mick had begun to outgrow the small suburban ambition of being the toughest kid in Reagan's Patch," and was beginning to send out challenges for pugilistic encounters with the "breaker bullies" or the " feather-weight" champions of other communities.

As for the sending of these documents, that was really managed by the faithful satellite Jim Owens, who signed as well as wrote them. Mick could not have signed his name to anything, for he did not know how to write, his entire education consisting of the first three lessons in the primer, which had been thumped into him by various teachers during the intervals of playing hookey which had occupied the two years when the state had his name upon its schoolroll.

Among the last to arrive was an under-sized, unwashed imp known as Bat McCarty, the clown of the breaker and hence a privileged person. Looking about the ring of assembled Terrors, he asked in a highpitched voice, "Who'll lind me a match?"

Several were proffered. Accepting the first one offered, the gamin prepared to strike it on his trousers' leg. Then suddenly arresting his hand, he made a motion towards his mouth as if he had forgotten his pipe, tapping his pockets one after another in

succession.

"Sure, now, if I on'y jist had the loan of a pipe an' tobacky, Mick Phelan, I'd be havin' a shmoke!" A shout of laughter greeted Bat's sally, and Mick,