Besides these elements of personal interest in piece-work as a scheme of labor and the gratification of the sense of effective workmanship, there entered here the stimulus of ambition based upon excellent chances of promotion. The factory system of production creates strong demand for manual skill, and stronger still for the capacity of administration and control. Why the realization of these facts did not possess more thoroughly the minds of the common laborers, I could not understand. They were strangely impervious to their force, for nothing could have been more noticeable than the alertness of the managing staff in watching for evidences of unusual ability among the men. It was not at all uncommon for a hand who had been taken on as a day-laborer to be promoted, as a result of his intelligence and industry, to some department of piece-work. Nearly every foreman in the factory is said to have begun far down the scale, and Barry’s account of the career of the assistant manager I have heard confirmed. During my short stay I was actually witness to the progress of two men who came in as day-laborers, the young Englishman from Jamaica and a stalwart, handsome Swede who secured a job and joined us at the boarding-house about a fortnight ago. Clarence earned a promotion and got it at the time of my coming to the factory, and I have seen Albert’s rise from a position removed by very little from that of unskilled labor to that of a workman whose skill commands the sum of fifteen dollars a week. Dennis is a type of craftsman whose future it is not difficult to predict. Conscientious and industrious and persevering, endowed with rare ability and real capacity for work, his progress seems assured, and a well-paid, authoritative position an ultimate logical certainty.