blows! In a swarm we report; we put on our things and get away into the
cool night air. I have stood ten hours; I have fitted 1,300 corks; I
have hauled and loaded 4,000 jars of pickles. My pay is seventy cents.

The impressions of my first day crowd pell-mell upon my mind. The sound
of the machinery dins in my ears. I can hear the sharp, nasal voices of
the forewoman and the girls shouting questions and answers.

A sudden recollection comes to me of a Dahomayan family I had watched at
work in their hut during the Paris Exhibition. There was a magic spell
in their voices as they talked together; the sounds they made had the
cadence of the wind in the trees, the running of water, the song of
birds: they echoed unconsciously the caressing melodies of nature. My
factory companions drew their vocal inspiration from the bedlam of
civilization, the rasping and pounding of machinery, the din which they
must out-din to be heard.

For the two days following my first experience I am unable to resume
work. Fatigue has swept through my blood like a fever. Every bone and
joint has a clamouring ache. I pass the time visiting other factories
and hunting for a place to board in the neighbourhood of the pickling
house. At the cork works they do not need girls; at the cracker company
I can get a job, but the hours are longer, the advantages less than
where I am; at the broom factory they employ only men. I decide to
continue with tin caps and pickle jars.

My whole effort now is to find a respectable boarding-house. I start
out, the thermometer near zero, the snow falling. I wander and ask,
wander and ask. Up and down the black streets running parallel and at
right angles with the factory I tap and ring at one after another of the