emitting toil.

Factory-hands overtook me, and I overtook others of them, directing their
steps to the drinking-shops and taverns. Many were already intoxicated,
many were women. Every morning at five o'clock we can hear one whistle,
a second, a third, a tenth, and so forth, and so forth. That means that
the toil of women, children, and of old men has begun. At eight o'clock
another whistle, which signifies a breathing-spell of half an hour. At
twelve, a third: this means an hour for dinner. And a fourth at eight,
which denotes the end of the day.

By an odd coincidence, all three of the factories which are situated near
me produce only articles which are in demand for balls.

In one factory, the nearest, only stockings are made; in another
opposite, silken fabrics; in the third, perfumes and pomades.

It is possible to listen to these whistles, and connect no other idea
with them than as denoting the time: "There's the whistle already, it is
time to go to walk." But one can also connect with those whistles that
which they signify in reality; that first whistle, at five o'clock, means
that people, often all without exception, both men and women, sleeping in
a damp cellar, must rise, and hasten to that building buzzing with
machines, and must take their places at their work, whose end and use for
themselves they do not see, and thus toil, often in heat and a stifling
atmosphere, in the midst of dirt, and with the very briefest breathing-
spells, an hour, two hours, three hours, twelve, and even more hours in
succession. They fall into a doze, and again they rise. And this, for
them, senseless work, to which they are driven only by necessity, is
continued over and over again.

And thus one week succeeds another with the breaks of holidays; and I see
these work-people released on one of these holidays. They emerge into
the street. Everywhere there are drinking-shops, taverns, and loose
girls. And they, in their drunken state, drag by the hand each other,
and girls like the one whom I saw taken to the station-house; they drag
with them cabmen, and they ride and they walk from one tavern to another;
and they curse and stagger, and say they themselves know not what. I had
previously seen such unsteady gait on the part of factory-hands, and had
turned aside in disgust, and had been on the point of rebuking them; but
ever since I have been in the habit of hearing those whistles every day,
and understand their m