in reply to How would I add a pause b/t forks in my $pid = $pm->start and next;

That next is running in the parent and that's why your loop creates children without pausing. Here's how to pause in the parent after each child is forked: 

   my $pid = $pm->start;

   if ($pid) {
      # this code runs in the parent
      sleep 3;
      next;
   }

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-sam

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom