In a large feeding-box, a tangled mass of small steel pins, banded at one end, were rising and falling, settling and readjusting themselves. A thin grooved plate rose and fell into the mass, sucking into its groove, or catching in its upward progress, from one to six of the pins, which, perpendicularly arranged, slid down to a new crisis. Steel fingers caught each pin as released, threw it with a half turn into another groove, where it was again passed forward and fixed in shape for the crushing hammer blow that was to flatten the head. A safety-device based on exact tension stopped the machine instantly in case of accident. "Suffering Moses, is it possible!" said Bojo, staring like a schoolboy. "Never saw anything like it." "Gives you an idea what can be done, doesn't it?" "It does!" Then he began to see these strangely human machines and these mechanical human beings in a larger perspective, in a constant warfare, each ceaselessly struggling with the other, each unconsciously being fashioned in the likeness of his enemy. "When we've got the human element down to the lowest terms, then we'll fight machines with machinery, I suppose," said Garnett. "Makes you sort of wonder what'll be done fifty years from now," said Bojo. "Doesn't it?" said Garnett. "I wouldn't dare tell you what the Governor talks about. You'd think he's plum crazy." "By George, I feel like starting now." "Same way I did," said Garnett, nodding. "I suppose what you'll want will be to follow the whole process from the beginning. It gives you a general idea. I say, that's a great machine your father's just installed." He began to expatiate enthusiastically on an article he had read in a technical paper, assuming full knowledge on Bojo's part, who listened in wonder, already beginning to feel, beyond the horizon of these animated iron shapes, the mysterious realms of human invention he had so long misunderstood. The next morning, in overalls and flannels, he took his place in the moving throngs and found his own time-card, a numbered part of a great industrial battalion. He was apprenticed to Mike Monahan, a grizzled, good-humored veteran, whose early attitude of suspicion disappeared with Bojo's plunge into grime and grease. He was himself conscious of a strange bashfulness which he had never experienced in his contact with Wall Street men. It seemed to him that these earnest, life-giving hordes of labor must look down on him as a useless, unimportant specimen. When he came to take his place in the early morning, sorting out his time-card, he was conscious of their glances and always felt awkward as he passed from room to room. Gradually, being essentially simple and manly in his instincts, he won his way into the friendly comprehension of his associates, living on their terms, seeking their company, talking their talk, with a dawning avid curiosity in their points of view, their needs, and their opinions of his own class.