was healthy, and long life for all who handled it a forgone conclusion.
A tour among the workers seemed to confirm this impression, though here
and there one found the factory face, with its dead paleness and
dark-ringed eyes. Children as small as can be held to be consistent with
the assumption of their thirteen years are preferred, their work as
"doffers" or spool-changers requiring small quick hands. So, too, in
fixing the pattern for carpets, where the threads must be manipulated
with speed and light touch. It is preferred that children should grow up
in the mill, passing from one room to another as they master processes,
and the employees thus stay on and regard themselves as portions of the
business. Some three or four thousand women and girls find occupation
here. The waste from the carding-rooms is sent to the paper-mills and
enters into manila paper and pasteboard, and this brings one to the
paper-box makers, of whom there are several thousand at work.

This trade, while nominally one of the steadiest, has its short periods
of depression. Competition is also as severe here as in every other
present form of industry, and thus prices are kept down, the highest
rate of wages earned being nine dollars, while seven dollars is
considered fair. There must be a certain apprenticeship, not less than
six months being required to master details and understand each stage of
the work. In one of the best of these establishments, where space was
plenty and ventilation and other conditions all good, one woman had
been in the firm's employ for eighteen years and was practically
forewoman, though no such office is recognized. Beginners were placed in
her hands and did not leave her till a perfect box could be turned off.
Cutting is all done by special machines, and the paper for covering is
prepared in the same way, glue or paste being used according to the
degree of strength desired in the box. The work is all piece-work, from
fifty to seventy cents a hundred being paid; a fair worker making two
hundred a day and an expert nearly or quite three hundred. But
competition governs the price and cuts are often made. A firm will
underbid and an order be transferred to it, unless the girls will
consent to do the work five or, it may be, ten cents less on the
hundred, and thus wages can seldom pass beyond nine dollars a week, dull
seasons and cuts reducing the average to seven and a half. Many even
good workers fall far below this, as