thinking that even a hardened factory hand might remember her
first day at the brassworks. Up three flights of stairs, through a
part of the men's factory, over a narrow bridge to a back building,
through two little bobbing doors, and there you were admitted to that
sanctuary where, according to the man who hired you, steady work and
advancement to a rosy future awaited one.

True, I had only the candy factory as a basis of comparison, as far as
working experience went. But I have been through factories and
factories of all sorts and descriptions, and nothing had I ever seen
like the brassworks. First was the smell--the stale smell of gas and
metal. (Perhaps there is no such smell as stale metal, but you go down
to the brassworks and describe it better!) Second, the darkness--a
single green-shaded electric light directly over where any girl was
working, but there were areas where there were no workers. Up the end
of the floor, among the power presses, all belts and machines and
whirring wheels, there were only three or four shaded lights. Windows
lined both sides of the floor, but they had never been washed since
the factory was built, surely. Anyhow, it was dark and rainy outside.
The walls once had been white, but were now black. Dim, dirty, uneven
boxes containing brass parts filled the spaces between the long tables
where the foot presses stood. Third, the noise--the clump of the foot
presses, the whirring of the pattern cutters--one sounded ever like a
lusty woodpecker with a metal beak pecking on metal; rollings and
rumblings from the floor above; jarrings and shakings from below.

Two-thirds of the entire floor was filled with long tables holding the
foot presses--tables which years ago were clean and new, tables which
now were worn, stained, and uneven, and permanently dirty. On each
side of each long table stood five black iron presses, but there
seemed to be never more than one or two girls working at a side. Each
press performed a different piece of work--cut wick holes, fitted or
clamped parts together, shaped the cones, and what not, but with only
two general types of operation so far as the foot part went. One type
took a long, firm, forward swing on the pedal; the other a short,
hard, downward "kick." With the end of the pressure the steel die cut
through the thin brass cone, or completed whatever the job was. As the
pedal and foot swung back to position the girl removed the brass part,
dropping it in a