unless guarded. Enormous numbers of men were employed as
watchmen to protect property. The houses of the well-to-do
were a combination of safe deposit vault and fortress. The
appropriation of the personal belongings of others by our
own children of to-day is looked upon as a rudimentary
survival of the theft-characteristic that in those early
times was universal.

I got little out of him. He struck me as stupid, and yet the deftness
with which he worked with his one hand seemed to belie his stupidity.
This suggested an idea to me.

"How did you happen to get your arm caught in the machine?" I asked.

He looked at me in a slow and pondering way, and shook his head. "I
don't know. It just happened."

"Carelessness?" I prompted.

"No," he answered, "I ain't for callin' it that. I was workin' overtime,
an' I guess I was tired out some. I worked seventeen years in them
mills, an' I've took notice that most of the accidents happens just
before whistle-blow.* I'm willin' to bet that more accidents happens
in the hour before whistle-blow than in all the rest of the day. A man
ain't so quick after workin' steady for hours. I've seen too many of 'em
cut up an' gouged an' chawed not to know."

* The laborers were called to work and dismissed by savage,
screaming, nerve-racking steam-whistles.