First-person journalistic account by Marie Van Vorst of working undercover in cotton mills near Columbia, South Carolina (Excelsior and Granton) in 1902. She describes spooling, drawing-in and speeding work, wages, hours, company coupons and stores, boarding-house conditions, sanitation, child labor, health hazards such as lung disease and snuff use, and the workers' outlook. The article is illustrated with halftone photographs and engravings of mill hands and mill village housing. It is the fourth in a series of five articles on women factory workers.