At one end of the building are the offices, where the freight agent and his clerks labour with reports and receipts and bills of lading—a mass and complexity of documents appalling and seemingly inextricable. The offices are crowded and gloomy and ill-smelling, for here, too, the road economizes at the expense of its employees’ health; but their condition is order and cleanliness itself when compared with that of the great echoing freight-shed which occupies three-fourths of the building. No light penetrates to it except from the doors, for there is no room for windows, and the doors are overhung by the wide, low roof which covers the surrounding platform. As a result, the freight-shed resembles a cavern in everything but atmosphere. In that, it resembles only itself; for its atmosphere is a thing apart, a thing to be encountered nowhere else, compounded as it is of a variety of odours which defy enumeration. You have seen composite photographs? Well, the freight-house atmosphere reminded one of a composite photograph of particularly ugly people. It was something to flee from and wonder at and remember with awe. A wide platform the height of a freight car door runs all around this portion of the building, abutting on one side on the yards and on the other on the street. Behind it, and stretching along between the yards and the street, is a long platform, an extension of the one running around the building. Beside this platform, a long line of freight cars is always standing—loaded cars from which the freight is being yanked out into the freight-house, or empties into which freight from the house is being hustled. And so various it is—crates, boxes, barrels, kegs, baskets, loose pieces of steel and iron, great sacks of burlap—it is impossible to give any idea of it here. Imagine, if you can, all the things you ever saw in all the stores in town, and all the raw material which is used in your town’s manufactures, and you will find that nearly all of it came through the freight depot; to say nothing of your town’s products which go out again. It is a strenuous place, the freight depot, and the men who labour there are big-armed and strong-backed and deep-chested. For theirs is a job that demands brawn. It was the echoing cavern of the freight-shed at Wadsworth which had been selected by Mr. Round as headquarters for the strike-breakers, not because it was particularly adapted to that use, but because it was the only place available. So the freight on hand had to be carefully sorted over, the larger articles taken out and stacked on the platform, the smaller ones stacked up at the end of the room nearest the offices, behind a flimsy board partition which had been hastily nailed up. Behind this barrier the freight men were instructed to transact their business, and orders were issued that on no account should any of them be permitted any intercourse with the strike-breakers.