When I have become expert in the corking art I am raised to a better table, with a bright boy, and a girl who is dignified and indifferent with the indifference of those who have had too much responsibility. She never hurries; the work slips easily through her fingers. She keeps a steady bearing over the morning's ups and downs. Under her load of trials there is something big in the steady way she sails. "Used to hard work?" she asks me. "Not much," I answer; "are you?" "Oh, yes. I began at thirteen in a bakery. I had a place near the oven and the heat overcame me." Her shoulders are bowed, her chest is hollow. "Looking for a boarding place near the factory, I hear," she continues. "Yes. You live at home, I suppose." "Yes. There's four of us: mamma, papa, my sister and myself. Papa's blind." "Can't he work?" "Oh, yes, he creeps to his job every morning, and he's got so much experience he kind o' does things by instinct." "Does your mother work?" "Oh, my, no. My sister's an invalid. She hasn't been out o' the door for three years. She's got enlargement of the heart and consumption, too, I guess; she 'takes' hemorrhages. Sometimes she has twelve in one night. Every time she coughs the blood comes foaming out of her mouth. She can't lie down. I guess she'd die if she lay down, and she gets so tired sittin' up all night. She used to be a tailoress, but I guess her job didn't agree with her." "How many checks have we got," I ask toward the close of the day. "Thirteen," Ella answers. "An unlucky number," I venture, hoping to arouse an opinion. "Are you superstitious?" she asks, continuing to twist tin caps on the pickle jars. "I am. If anything's going to happen I can't help having presentiments, and they come true, too." Here is a mystic, I thought; so I continued: "And what about dreams?" "Oh!" she cried. "Dreams! I have the queerest of anybody!" I was all attention. "Why, last night," she drew near to me, and spoke slowly, "I dreamed that mamma was drunk, and that she was stealing chickens!" Such is the imagination of this weary worker. The whole problem in mechanical labour rests upon economy of force. The purpose of each, I learned by experience, was to accomplish as much as possible with one single stroke. In this respect the machine is superior to man, and man to woman. Sometimes I tried original ways of doing the work given me. I soon found in every case that the methods proposed by the forewoman were in the end those whereby I could do the greatest amount of work with the least effort. A mustard machine had recently been introduced to the factory. It replaced three girls; it filled as many bottles with a single stroke as the girls could fill with twelve. This machine and all the others used were run by boys or men; the girls had not strength enough to manipulate them methodically.