In about a year Darius's increasing knowledge of the world enabled him
to rise in it. He became a handle-maker in another manufactory, and
also he went about with the pride of one who could form the letters of
the alphabet with a pen. In his new work he had to put a bit of clay
between two moulds, and then force the top mould on to the bottom one by
means of his stomach which it was necessary to press downwards and at
the same time to wriggle with a peculiar movement. The workman to whom
he was assigned, his new `master,' attached these handles, with strange
rapid skill, to beer-mugs. For Darius the labour was much lighter than
that of mould-running and clay-wedging, and the pay was somewhat higher.
But there were minor disadvantages. He descended by twenty steps to
his toil, and worked in a long cellar which never received any air
except by way of the steps and a passage, and never any daylight at all.
Its sole illumination was a stove used for drying. The `throwers'' and
the `turners'' rooms were also subterranean dungeons. When in full
activity all these stinking cellars were full of men, boys, and young
women, working close together in a hot twilight. Certain boys were
trained contrabandists of beer, and beer came as steadily into the
dungeons as though it had been laid on by a main pipe. It was not
honourable even on the part of a young woman, to refuse beer,
particularly when the beer happened to arrive in the late afternoon. On
such occasions young men and women would often entirely omit to go home
of a night, and seasoned men of the world aged eight, on descending into
the dungeons early the next morning, would have a full view of
pandemonium, and they would witness during the day salutary scenes of
remorse, and proofs of the existence of a profound belief in the
homeopathic properties of beer.
But perhaps the worst drawback of Darius's new position was the long and
irregular hours, due partly to the influences of Saint Monday and of the
scenes above indicated but not described, and partly to the fact that
the employes were on piece-work and entirely unhampered by grandmotherly
legislation. The result was that six days' work was generally done in
four. And as the younger the workman the earlier he had to start in the
morning, Darius saw scarcely enough of his bed. It was not of course to
be expected that a self-supporting man of the world should rigorously
confine himself to an eight-hour day or even a twelve-hour day, but
Darius's day would sometimes stretch to eighteen and nineteen hours:
which on hygienic grounds could not be unreservedly defended.
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