ENTERING.
"Hallo, Katie, wake up, wake up!" and Eric rattled the knob of his
sister's door. But he was compelled to do so many times before he heard
a sleepy "What's the matter?"
"Matter? Why, it's high time you were up if you mean to get to the
factory this morning."
"It's the middle of the night," said Katie, yawning.
"Indeed, it is not. It's after five o'clock, and work begins at
half-past six. You haven't a moment to spare if you want to dress
yourself, get your breakfast, and get to the mill in time; it's farther
off than the bindery. Come, be a brave girl, and jump up quickly."
Thus adjured, the little girl jumped out of bed--but how cold and dark
it was! although Eric had left the lamp in the hall outside. One of
Katie's failings--not an uncommon one among girls and boys--was a great
dislike to getting up early in the morning, and her mother had always
humored her in the matter, getting up herself and giving the boys their
breakfast early, and then waking her little girl just in time to eat her
own and get to school at nine o'clock. Even then it was sometimes a
difficult task.
The young work-woman had not included the necessity of getting up so
very early in the morning as one of the many anticipated delights of her
new position. This first taste of it seemed, on the contrary, quite a
hardship. Still, when she was once out of bed, there was a certain
romance in dressing by lamplight, and she knelt down by her bedside to
offer her morning prayer, with a strange feeling of mingled awe and
thankfulness.
Katie Robertson was a Christian girl, and was really desirous to please
the blessed Saviour who had done so much for her. She could not remember
the time when she did not love him; but for the last few years, since
she had grown older and begun to understand things better, she had felt
a longing desire to be like him and to please him in her life and
actions. She found time to open her little Bible this morning and read
one or two verses by the light of the lamp. They were these:--
"In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths";
"Whether, therefore, ye eat or drink, or _whatsoever_ ye do, do all to
the glory of God," and "I can do all things through Christ who
strengthens me."
And then she prayed earnestly that she might in these "ways" upon which
she was entering always "acknowledge" God, be faithful to her work, do
it "to the glory of God," and have the strength which the Lord Jesus
Christ has promised to give to those who ask him, to resist temptation
and stand up for truth and righteousness in the new life which lay
before her. She prayed, also, that her heavenly Father would give her
some work to do for him among her companions in the mill, and then she
went downstairs.
Breakfast was all ready, and it seemed quite funny to eat it by
lamplight; but by the time it was over it was pretty light outside, and
when, warmly wrapped up, Katie left the house with her brothers there
was a rosy flush over the snow which sparkled and glistened, and the
young factory-girl set out in high spirits for her first day's work.
The boys escorted her as far as the great gates, where a good many other
girls and boys were waiting among a crowd of men and women, and then ran
back to be in time at the bindery, which was a little nearer home.
It was rather cold waiting outside, and, if the truth must be told, our
little girl felt just a trifle homesick among so many strangers, for as
yet she had not seen a familiar face, and something seemed to rise in
her throat that she found hard to swallow; but just as she felt that she
_must_ have a good cry, and at the same time resolved that she wouldn't,
the great steam-whistle shrieked, the bell in the tower rang, the gates
opened from the inside, the gathered crowd rushed in, and all along the
road might be seen flying figures of men, women, boys, and girls,
hurrying to be in their places at the commencement of work and thus
avoid the fine imposed upon stragglers. There was a pause of a few
moments in the paved inside court while the inner doors of the great
brick building were opened, and then the incoming crowd entering in
various directions, scattered among the different corridors and left the
"new girl" standing alone and bewildered at the entrance.
In front of her stretched a long, narrow hall, clean and fresh
(Squantown Paper Mills were new and built after the most approved
models), with doors opening from it at intervals on both sides. Some of
these doors were open and some were shut; into some the work-people were
constantly disappearing, as though the doors were mouths that opened
suddenly and swallowed them up, and into some of the open ones Katie
peeped timidly and turned back disconsolately as she discovered that
they only afforded entrance to similar corridors, pierced by similar
rows of doors.
At length the last straggler had entered, gone his way, and disappeared,
and dead silence reigned. Katie felt as though she were alone in the
universe, and almost wondered if she were to be left there forever, when
a short, sharp, deafening whistle echoed through the hall, and at the
same instant the great building vibrated from top to bottom, the roar of
machinery swallowed up the silence, and the day's work began.
Immediately afterward a side door, close to where our little girl was
standing, opened, and out of it came the foreman of the mill, who had
been up to this moment in the office, receiving his orders for the day.
"Hallo, you!" he said crossly, seeing a girl standing idle in the hall;
"why don't you go about your business? Go to work if you belong here; go
home if you don't! No idlers or beggars allowed here, so close to the
office door, too. Come, run away quickly."
"If you please, Mr. Thornton, I've come to work in the mill, in the
rag-room, but I don't know which way to go."
"Oh!" said the foreman, "you're a new hand, eh? Rather a small one. It
seems to me Mr. Mountjoy will end by having a nursery rather than a
mill, but he knows his own business best, I suppose. New hands are not
in my department, however. Mr. James," he called, reopening the office
door and putting his head in again, "here's some work for you."
The "new hand" expected now to have an interview with the awful Mr.
Mountjoy, Miss Etta's father, of whom she had heard so much, but had
never yet seen, and began to tremble a little in anticipation. But,
instead, a rosy-faced, light-haired young man appeared, to whom the
foreman made a slight bow, and then went away. This was Mr. James
Mountjoy, Miss Etta's brother, and the only son of the proprietor of the
mill. Katie had heard her brothers, who were in his Sunday-school class,
talk about him, but had never seen him before.
"Your name, little girl," he said pleasantly, as he ushered her into the
office.
"Katie Robertson, sir. Mr. Sanderson"--
"Oh, I know; Mr. Sanderson recommended you to my father. You look almost
too small to work. Can you do anything?"
"I can cook, and wash dishes, and help mother, and sew; I was in the
first class at school"--
"That is not any of it precisely the kind of work we do here," said the
young gentleman, pleasantly; "but no doubt you are a quick little girl,
and if you are used to doing some kinds of work others will not come so
hard to you. But you must understand in the beginning that work in a
factory is work, not play; work that cannot be laid aside when one is
tired of it, or when one wants to go on an excursion or to do something
else. It is work, too, for which you are to be paid, and it would be
dishonesty not to do it faithfully as in the sight of God. Our rules are
no stricter than they must be for the best good of the work and the
comfort and protection of all, but we _expect_ them to be obeyed. You
will remember that. There must be no playing or whispering in work
hours, and you must always be on time. We want all our work-people to be
happy, and I am sure that the best kind of happiness comes from fidelity
to duty. Can you be a _faithful_ little girl?"
"Yes, sir," said Katie, with a slight blush, though she did not feel at
all afraid of him; "I am trying to please God everywhere, and I am sure
he will help me to do so here."
"I am glad to hear you say that," said the young man, with a smile. "If
every man, woman, and child in this factory were really trusting in God
and trying to please him, we wouldn't need so many rules and the work
would not be so hard. One thing more: I believe you are to be in the
rag-room; that is a dirty place, in spite of all our efforts to keep it
clean and well ventilated; you won't find it very pleasant there always,
but perhaps you can learn to _endure_ for Christ's and duty's sake; and
every one has to begin at the bottom, you know, who means to climb to
the top of the ladder."
During the latter part of this talk the gentleman and the child had been
ascending flight after flight of broad, open staircases, as well as
several narrow, spiral ones, crossing machinery-rooms, where great arms
and wheels and screws, in constant motion, made the little girl shudder,
and threading narrow passages and outside balconies, where the broad
raceway foamed and roared fifty or sixty feet beneath them. Katie had
never been inside of the great paper-mill before, though she had always
admired its fine proportions and handsome architecture from the outside.
She was surprised now to see how really beautiful everything was. The
floors were laid in wood of two contrasting colors; the balusters were
of solid black walnut; there were rows and rows of clear glass windows
in the rooms and corridors, while the machinery was either of shining
steel or polished brass. In some of the rooms were girls tending the
ruling and cutting and folding machines, and occasionally one would nod
to Katie, but no one spoke except where the work rendered it necessary.
At last the room next to the top of the vast building was reached, and
there Mr. James opened a door and ushered Katie into a room which
extended the whole length of one side of the building. The windows, of
which there were fifteen, were wide open, but for all that the air was
so thick with dust that at first Katie drew back with a sense of
suffocation.
"I told you it would not be pleasant," said Mr. James, "but this is your
appointed place. Be a brave girl, and when you are used to it it won't
seem so bad."
The sense of suffocation was caused by the particles of dust with which
the air was heavily laden, and which flew from the piles of rags which
over fifty girls were busily engaged in sorting, putting the
dark-colored ones by themselves, the medium-colored by themselves, and
the white ones--or those that had been white--into large boxes. As soon
as these boxes were filled they were placed on wheelbarrows and emptied
into long slides by men who waited for them and returned the boxes. Mr.
James explained to his young companion that these slides emptied their
contents into great vats in the room below, where after lying some days
in a certain purifying solution they were boiled with soda to loosen the
dirt, thoroughly washed by machinery, and passed into great copper
kettles, where they were boiled to a pulp and ground at the same time,
horizontal grindstones reducing them to the finest powder. He also
showed her that the dust was rendered much less hurtful than it would
otherwise have been by a great fan kept constantly at work on one side
of the room, which drove it out of the windows in front of the girls,
who were thus not compelled to breathe it unless they turned directly
around facing the blast, as Katie had done on entering the room. He then
put her under the care of a pleasant-faced woman, whose duty it was to
oversee the little girls, saw that she had a comfortable seat, shook
hands with her, and went away.
Mr. James was by no means called upon to be so polite to a "new hand";
most employers would have told the child which way to go and then left
her to shift for herself, or at best have sent a man or boy to show her
the way. Perhaps he would have done so with some girls, but he saw that
the child was timid and homesick, and knew that a few kind words would
go a great way toward making her feel at home and happy, and would serve
as an offset against the disagreeable first impressions of the rag-room,
and the weariness of regular work undertaken for the first time.
Why should he care to have one of his factory girls "feel at home and
happy"? some one will say; his relations with them are only those of
business: so much work for so much money; it was nothing to him what
they thought or felt. Mr. James Mountjoy did not feel so. He thought
that his father and he were placed in this responsible position and
given the care of several hundred human souls expressly that some good
work might be done for them. He felt that human beings are more
precious than machinery, and that happiness is an important factor in
goodness. He looked upon his work-people as those for whom he must give
account, and tried to act in all his dealings with them "to the glory of
God." Had he been actuated by the purest selfishness and the most
approved business principles, he could not have chosen a wiser course;
for men and women treated as friends become almost of necessity
friendly, and seeing their own interests cared for were all the more
likely to care for those of their employer. Katie Robertson certainly
never forgot Mr. James's judicious kindness on the morning of her
entrance into the mill; he was to her the kindest, sweetest, and most
lovable of gentlemen. She felt ready to do anything he should tell her
and to keep every rule he might make. Then, too, he was a Christian, and
understood all about what she meant when she had said God would help
her; surely it must be very easy to be good and resist temptation in a
place with such a master, and she felt like thanking God that, in spite
of the suffocating dust, "the lines had fallen to her in such very
pleasant places."