MISS GRACE HICKS, Sworn In For The State, 7th To Testify

MISS GRACE HICKS, sworn for the State.

I knew Mary Phagan nearly a year at the pencil factory. She worked on the second floor. I identified her body at the undertaker's Sunday morning, April 27th. I knew her by her hair. She was fair skinned, had light hair, blue eyes and was heavy built, well developed for her age. I worked in the metal room, the same room she worked in. Mary's machine was right next to the dressing room, the first machine there. They had a separate closet for men and a separate one for ladies on that floor. There was just a partition between them. In going to the office from the closets they would pass the dressing room and Mary's machine within two or three feet. Mr. Frank, during the past twelve months, would pass through the metal department looking around every day. Sometimes I would see him talking to some of the men in the office at the clocks. He came back to the metal room to see how the work was getting on. The metal is kept in a little closet back under the stair steps. I asked Mr. Quinn, not Mr. Frank, if the metal had come. Saturday at twelve o'clock is the regular pay-day, but the week of April 26th most of the employees got paid off on Friday night between six and seven o'clock. I hadn't worked there since Wednesday. Mr. Quinn called me up and told me that pay-day would be Friday. The metal had not come from Monday to Saturday. Mary didn't work after Monday of that week.

CROSS EXAMINATION.

Standing at the time clock you can't see into Mr. Frank's private office. A person wouldn't see from Mr. Frank's office any one coming in or out of the building. I worked at the factory five years. In that time Mr. Frank spoke to me three times. Mary Phagan worked at the factory with me for about a year in the same department and I never saw Mr. Frank speak to Mary Phagan or Mary Phagan speak to Mr. Frank. When Mr. Frank came through the metal department he never spoke to any of the girls; just went through and looked around. The three times Mr. Frank spoke to me were as follows. He was showing a man around and I was laying on my arm mighty near asleep and he says "You can run this machine asleep can't you," and I said," Yes, sir." Then another time I asked him for a quarter and he loaned me a quarter. The next time I met him on the street he tipped his hat to me. Mr. Frank knew my face or he wouldn't have spoken to me on the street. The floor in the metal department is awful dirty. The white stuff that they use back there gets all over the floors. Mr. Darley is general manager and foreman who employes the help. Mary Phagan's hair was darker than mine. She weighed about 115 pounds. Sometimes we sit over at the machine and comb our hair and sometimes when I want to curl my hair with a poker or anything, I go over there to the table right by the window and light the gas and curl my hair. Magnolia Kennedy's hair is nearly the color of Mary Phagan's. The pay is given employes from a window in the packing department. There is paint in the polishing room, just across from the dressing room. The door of the polishing room is a few feet across from the dressing room. No paint is kept in the metal room. I have seen drops of paint on the floor. I have seen it leading from the door straight across from the dressing room out to the cooler where the women come out to get water. The floor all over the factory is dirty and greasy. And after two or three days you can't hardly tell what is on the floor after it gets mixed with the dirt and dust. I saw Helen Ferguson Friday, April 25th, when we were paid off.