women worked concerned
themselves with lamps--the old-fashioned kind, city folks are apt to
think. Yet goodness knows we seemed during even my sojourn to make
more lamp parts than creation ever had used in the heyday of lamps.
Well, all but five per cent of farm women still use kerosene lamps, so
the government tells us. Also fat Lizzie informed me, when I asked her
who in the world could ever use just them lamp cones I made some one
particular day, "Lor', child, they send them lamps all over the
world!" She made a majestic sweep with both arms. "Some of 'em goes as
far--as far--as _Philadelphia_!" Once we were working on a rush order
for fifty thousand lamps of one certain kind. Curiosity got the better
of me and I took occasion to see where the boxes were being addressed.
It was to a large mail-order house in Chicago.

The first noon whistle--work dropped--a rush for the washroom. Let no
one think his hands ever were dirty until he labors at a foot press in
a brassworks. Such sticky, grimy, oily, rough blackness never was--and
the factory supplies no soap nor towels. You are expected to bring
your own--which is all right the second day when you have found it out
and come prepared.

The third floor had seemed dark and dismal enough during the morning;
at noon all lights are turned off. Many of the workers went out for
lunch, the rest got around in dismal corners, most of them singly, and
ate by their machines, on the same hard seats they have been on since
a quarter to 8. What a bacchanal festival of color and beauty now
appeared the candy-factory whitewashed lunch room with the
marble-topped tables! The airy sociability of it! I wandered about
with my lunch in my hand, to see what I could see. Up amid the belts
and power machines sat one of the girls who began that morning--not
the cold, hatless one.

"You gonna stick it out?" she asked me.

"Sure. I guess it's all right."

"Oh gee! Ain't like no place I ever worked yet. Don't catch me
standin' this long."

She did stand it four days. Minnie suggested then she stick it out
till Christmas. "You'll need the money for Christmas y'know, an' you
might not get the next job so easy now."

"Damn Christmas!" was all the new girl had to say to that.

"Sure now," said Irish Minnie, "an' she's takin her chances. It's an
awful disgrace y'know, to be gettin' presents when y'ain't got none to
give back. Ain't it, now? I'd never take no chances on a job so close
to Christm