Within the buildings, almost in a moment, would rise the turmoil of production. You heard the deafening uproar of far-reaching machinery, as, with wheels whirling in dizzy motion and the straps humming in their flight, it beat time in deep, low throbs to the remorseless measures of a tireless energy. Cleaving the tumult of the sounding air you heard at frequent intervals the buzz-saws as they bit hard with flying teeth into multiple layers of wood, rising to piercing crescendo and then dying away in a sob. There was the din of many hammers, and over the wooden floors and along the run-ways, and through the dark, damp passages of the warehouses, and down the deep vistas of the covered platforms, was the almost constant rumble of hand-trucks pushed by men and boys. All this unceasingly for five continuous hours, which always seem unending, and then the abrupt signal for twelve o’clock, and the sound of the machinery running down while the men are hastening to their mid-day meal. About the factory-gate are always at this hour groups of women and young children who have brought in pails and baskets hot dinners for their men. On brighter days you can see long lines of operatives sitting along the curbs or with their backs against the high board fence, basking in the sunlight, as they eat their dinners in the open air and converse among themselves and with their wives or children. [Illustration: THE NOON HOUR.] Then back to your place in the afternoon while the machinery is slowly working up to its accustomed pace and the men about you reassembling to take up again, on the stroke of the hour, the work of the afternoon. Five more hours of the thundering rush of factory labor follow, and you leave the gate at night almost too tired to walk. A wash is first in your recovery, and it rests you more than would sleep. Then supper brings its deep satisfaction and a smoke its peaceful content, and you go to bed better off by a day’s wages. CHAPTER V AMONG THE REVOLUTIONARIES No. -- SANGAMON STREET, CHICAGO, ILL., February 27, 1892. Again I am in the army of the unemployed, and have been there for the past three weeks and more, but on other than the terms of my first experience in Chicago. I have been looking for work and testing many phases of this lurid life of enforced idleness, but with a wide difference from the original venture here. My savings from wages earned in the factory have put me on quite another footing. The room in which I am writing has been an adequate shelter, and I have paid for it only one dollar and a half a week. Odd jobs have helped me often in the matter of securing food, and, when these failed, I have had my dwindling store of savings to fall back upon; and I have a not inconsiderable knowledge of the cheap eating-houses of the town.