3

3 Alabama
Ellawhite, Mill Village
doors hang crookedly on broken hinges. Children, too
small to attend school, play in the dusty road with tin
cans and broken wheels, dodging each passing car and
hardly waiting for the cloud of dust to settle before
resuming their play. Nearby a lean spotted pig, staked
by the roadside, grunts hungrily as he searches for
stray bits of food.

The third section, toward the southern end is not as
thickly settled as the rest of the village. Here the
less fortunate inhabitants live; those who are not skilled
laborers and get only a few days work a week. The houses
are scattered and dilapidated, the yards bare except for
a clothes line here and there flying a few faded garments.
Children playing around the doorsteps with dirty faces and
untidy hair, their soiled garments barely covering thin
undernourished bodies.

The road too "runs out" here and is full of deep
gullies making it hard for even a wagon to pass. The
houses are reached by an overgrown path made by the tread
of many feet.

About the center of the village the Widow Osmer
lives in a two-room cottage. She and her husband were
among the first settlers at Ellawhite, moving there from
Morris thirty-five eyars ago when there were only about a
dozen cottages at the village. Her husband then made
seventy-five cents a day. But, says Mrs. Osmer, "We got
along a heap better then on seventy-five cents then we
do now on higher wages, 'cause groceries is so high, and
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