"Yes."
(What they were I didn't deem it needful to say!) The stenographer nodded: "Go upstairs, then; ask the forelady on the fifth floor."
Through the big building and the shipping-room, where cases of shoes were being crated for the market, I went, at length really within a factory's walls. From the first to the fifth floor I went in an elevator—a freight elevator; there are no others,
of course. This lift was a terrifying affair; it shook and rattled in its shaft, shook and rattled in pitch darkness as it rose between "safety doors"—continuations of the building's floors. These doors open to receive the ascending elevator, then slowly close, in order that the shaft may be covered and the operatives in no danger of stepping inadvertently to sudden death.
I reached the fifth floor and entered into pandemonium. The workroom was in full working swing. At least five hundred machines were in operation and the noise was startling and deafening.
I made my way to a high desk where a woman stood writing. I knew her for the forelady by her "air"; nothing else distinguished her from the employees. No one looked up as I entered. I was nowhere a figure to attract attention; evidently nothing in my voice or manner or aspect aroused supposition that I was not of the class I simulated.
Now, into my tone, as I spoke to the forelady bending over her account book, I put all the force I knew. I determined she should give me something to do! Work was everywhere: some of it should fall to my hand.
"Say, I've got to work. Give me anything, anything; I'm green."
She didn't even look at me, but called—shrieked, rather—above the machine din to her colleagues:
"Got anything for a green hand?"