the machinery had a more powerful note.

"These are the oscillating grinders," said Mary, raising her voice above
the skirling symphony. "It isn't everybody who can run them."

She wondered whether her visitors caught the unconscious air of pride
which many of the women wore in this department. At one end of the room a
steady stream of rough castings came flowing in, while at the other end
an equally steady volume of finished cones went flowing out. Mary had
always liked to watch the oscillators and as she stood there, her guests
temporarily forgotten, her eyes filled with the almost human movements of
the whirling machines, her ears with the triumphant music of the abrasive
wheels biting into the metal, that same unconscious air of pride fell
upon her, too, and although she didn't know it, her glance deepened and
her head went up--quite in the old Spencer manner.

"Is their work fairly accurate?" asked one of the visitors, breaking the
spell.

"Let's go and see," said Mary, leading the way.

The cones left the grinders upon an endless conveyor which carried them
to an inspection room. Here at long tables were lines of attentive women,
each with a set of gauges in front of her. The visitors stopped behind
one of these inspectors just as she picked up a cone to put it through
its course of tests.

First she slipped it into a gauge to see if it was too large. A pointer
on a dial before her swung to "O.K." Almost without stopping the motion
of her hand, she inserted it into another gauge to see if it was too
small. Again the pointer swung to "O.K." The third test was to verify the
angle of the cone, and for the third time the pointer said "O.K." The
next moment the cone had been dropped into a box and another was going
through the same course.

"How many have been rejected today?" asked one of the visitors.

"Two," said the inspector.

These two unfortunates lay on a rack in front of her. Interrupting her
work she picked up one of them. At the second operation the pointer
turned to a red segment of the dial and a bell rang.

"I don't hear many bells ringing," commented the visitor, quizzically
looking around the room.

Mary smiled with quiet pleasure.

"Next," she said, "I'm going to take you to a department where women
never worked before."

She led the way to one of the tempering buildings--a building equipped
with long lines of ovens--each as large as a baker's oven--where metal
cones were heated instead