The clock in the factory yard pointed to the hour of ten, and four hundred toilers were sweating out their lives in one of Manufacture’s minting-shops of wealth.  Overhead the shafting ran in rapid revolutions, communicating its power and speed by lengths of swaying, sagging belts to the machinery that stood so closely packed on the vibrating floors, and between which passed, and behind which stood, the operatives, unconscious of danger, and with scarce a care than how to keep pace with the speed of steam and the flying hours.  Every eye was strained, and every nerve as highly strung as the gearing of the revolving wheels, the keen glances of the overlookers seeing to it that none paused until the hour of release.

The atmosphere was heavy, the temperature high, and flecks of ‘fly’ floated on the stifling air, wafted by the breath born of whirring wheels, and finding rest on the hair of women and the beards of men until the workers looked as though they were whitened by the snows of a premature decay.

Women and girls sang snatches of songs, and bits of old familiar airs, with no accompaniment but the roar and rattle around, their voices unheard save when some high-pitched note was struck; and others found odd moments when by lip-signs and dumb show they communicated with their fellow-workers.

Men and women, boys and girls, passed and repassed one another in narrow alleys and between revolving machinery, crushing together without sense of decency, and whispering hastily in one another’s ear some lewd joke or impure word, the moisture from their warm flesh mingling with the smell of oil and cotton, and their semi-nude forms offering pictures for the realistic pen of a Zola or a Moore.

It was but one of the laps in the great race of competition where steam contends with human breath, and iron is pitted against flesh and blood.  Over the hills were other factories where the same race was going on, where other masters were competing, and other hands were laying down life that they themselves and their little ones might live—­examples of the strange paradox that only those can save their lives who lose them.  Outside was pasturage and moorlands, and the dear, sweet breath of heaven, the flowers of the field, the song of birds, the yearning bosom of Nature warm with love towards her children.  Yet here, within, was a reeking house of flesh—­not the lazar ward of the city slum, but the sweating den of a competitive age.

In the top story of the factory Amos was walking to and fro among his roving frames, and dividing his time between hurried glances at his workers and a small greasy tract he held in his hand, entitled ‘An Everlasting Task for Arminians.’  Turning aside for a moment to drive some weary operative with a word as rough as a driver uses to his over-driven horse, he would return to the ‘Everlasting Task,’ and cull some choice sentence or read some twisted text used to buttress up the Calvinistic creed.