The house is in the hands of twenty Sisters, under a Mother Superior. In my conversation with the lady boarder I learned that the poor there are always discontented, and never cease to long for their liberty and for the old life of begging at the street corners--where they had neither shelter nor warm clothing nor food to eat. I really thought, after seeing them huddled together in groups in the great, cheerful, but _monotonous_ rooms, that while I had a spark of vitality and endurance left in me I should feel as they did, and prefer the life of the street with all its risks and privations to that deathly sameness. Monotony is a slow and sure poison; it can undermine even the constitution of a pauper. As for the poor of Coruña, they are chiefly fisher-folk, and the coast being, as I have said, the most dangerous in Spain, cases of drowning occur with painful frequency, so that the industry is a very precarious one, and the number of the destitute is continually increasing. Corpses of fishermen are constantly being washed ashore, and there is nearly always a body lying in the mortuary to be identified. There are only eleven tobacco factories in Spain. These are most of them palatial; they all belong to the Government. The one at Coruña, like the rest, is managed for the Government by a private Company, which is allowed to appropriate 10 per cent. of the net profits. It was once a very large factory, with six thousand women workers, mostly the wives, widows, and daughters of fishermen, or men who have emigrated to South America.[191] On the occasion of my visit, I found three thousand women at work. Besides these, there were forty men employed in carrying the heavy cases to the warehouse. The tobacco was supplied from various places, chiefly from Kentucky, Mexico, Brazil, St. Domingo, Cuba, and the Philippine Islands. In Ford’s day, an enormous amount of tobacco was smuggled into Spain from Gibraltar, but that is not the case now. Common cigars sell at about three a penny. Some of the workers have very nimble fingers, and can prepare nine bundles, of forty cigars each, in a day, while the slowest workers only manage about five bundles. They begin work at 7 a.m., and continue till 8 p.m., bringing their dinner with them, and leaving it in a neighbouring house, where it can be warmed up if they wish. The women with whom it is left bring it in baskets to the workers, who eat it where they sit, without leaving their seats. In the factory at Seville they have a separate dining-room, but none is provided at Coruña. Every fortnight the women are paid according to the quality and quantity of the work they have done. We walked among them as they worked, sixteen at a table, with coloured handkerchiefs over their heads and tied tightly under the chin, with a three-cornered shawl crossed over the breast.