The opened door revealed the customary sight of a room perhaps twenty feet square, with daylight entering faintly through two unwashed windows, which looked out upon the level of the street. The dampness showed itself in dew-like beads along the walls and on the ceiling, which I could easily reach as I stood erect. In spite of its being winter, the dingy walls were dotted with black flies, which swarmed most about a cooking-stove, over which, stirring a steaming pot, stood a ragged, dishevelled woman, who looked as though she could never have known any but extreme old age. In the remaining floor-space were crowded a dozen machines or more, over which, in the thick, unventilated atmosphere, were the bending figures of the workers. Oil-lamps lit up the inner recesses of the room, and seemed to lend consistency to the heavy air. From an eye here and there, which caught his in a single movement, the Unionist received a look of recognition, but not a head was turned to see who had entered, and the whir of feverish work went on, unchecked for an instant by our coming. While the Unionist was talking to the sweater, I walked between the close lines of machines over a floor covered with deep accumulations of dirt, and shreds of cloth, and broken threads, to where, in a corner, a group of girls were sewing. The oldest among them may have been twelve, and the youngest could have been a little over eight, and their wages averaged about seventy-five cents a week for hours that varied widely according to the stress of work. Near the corner was a passage, and through it I could see into a small room which had no window, nor any opening but the door; there, in perpetual darkness lit up by one oil-lamp, was a man who, for twelve (and sometimes fifteen) hours a day, pressed the new-made clothing for a living. It was ladies’ cloaks that the sewers were making; of course, they worked by the piece, and the best among them could earn a dollar in the day, and sometimes more by working over-time. They were very smart-looking garments, and their air of jaunty stylishness was a most incongruous intrusion upon their surroundings. When I asked the Unionist for whose trade they were being made, he seemed to think nothing of the fact that he mentioned, in answer, one of the foremost merchant-citizens of the town. We were on the point of leaving, when a heavy foot-fall sounded on the wooden steps, and the door opened to the touch of an inspecting officer, whose glowing health and neat, warm uniform were as though a prosperous breeze were sweeping the stagnant room. The work, however, was as unaffected by his coming as it had been by ours. Not a sewer noticed him, and the stitching of machines went racing on with unabated swiftness. Only “the old man” watched nervously the movements of the officer, as he walked about the shop, making note of the bad air, and the filth upon the floors, and the group of little girls, and the dark, unventilated chamber beyond.