The man paused in his work an instant, and looked at the lad, passing his hand over his forehead as he did so.
"I was just ten years old when I began," he said. "I'm only thirty now. I look fifty, don't I?"
"You certainly look over thirty," Hamilton admitted.
"Oh, I look fifty all right, I know that, and I'm as nearly played out as a man of fifty. And it's all due to work when I was a youngster. Every year that a boy is put to hard physical work before he is sixteen is equal to five years taken off his life."
"I wonder that any employer does it, and that any State permits it," said Hamilton.
"There's not as much of it in Connecticut as in other States, although the figures show that it is growing here," was the reply. "But you talk as though you had been having a session with 'the crusader,'" the workman continued.
"Haven't you seen him, then? With your ideas, you ought to get along well together. And," he added, more seriously, "'the crusader' will be heard of yet."
"He's a boy who started at work in this place when he was only seven years old," the workman answered. "He's been here eight years now, and he's an odd genius. He taught himself to read and write, but he doesn't read anything except about labor conditions all over the world, and he knows all there is to know, I guess, about this business of children working. All the labor union people and the socialists know 'the crusader,' young as he is, and they send him, free, nearly every book and paper that's published."
[Illustration: YOUNG BOYS FROM THE PIT. A group of workers in a coal mine during dinner-time. Many even younger work on the night shift. (_Courtesy of the Ridgway co._)]
"But why do you call him 'the crusader'?" asked Hamilton.
"Because he has some crusade idea on the brain,--thinks he can start a revolution or something that will put a stop to child labor, and he talks all the time of getting ready for this 'crusade' as he calls it. But everybody likes him just the same, and he's a good worker--when he's not talking."
"Which is he?" asked Hamilton. "I'd like to talk to him, if I might."
"No reason why you shouldn't," the other answered "he's kept busy of course, but there are minutes in which he can talk, and 'the crusader' is given special favors, anyway. That's the boy, 'carrying in' over there."