freight yards. Hereabouts a lot of supremely ugly flats had gone up, two
families to each floor and three stories high; and in J.W.'s eyes the
rubbish and disorder and generally slattern appearance of the region was
no great addition to Delafield's attractions.

Still more did the tumbledown shacks in the neighborhood of the cannery
offend the eyes and, to be frank, the ears and nose as well. It was a
forlorn-looking lot of hovels, occupied by listless, frowsy adults and
noisy children. Here existence seemed to be a grim caricature of life;
the children, the only symbol of abundance to be seen, continued to be
grotesque in their very dirt. What clothes they had were second or
third-hand garments too large for them, which they seemed to be
perpetually in danger of losing altogether.

To J.W., Delafield had always been a town of homes; but in these dismal
quarters there was little to answer to the home idea. They were merely
places where people contrived to camp for a time, longer or shorter;
none but a Gradgrind could call them homes.

One of the factory foremen was a great admirer of Mr. Drury, who
introduced him to J.W. one day when the foreman had come to the store
for some tools. He had talked with J.W., and in time a rather casual
friendliness developed between them. It was this same Foreman Angus
MacPherson, a Scot with a name for shrewdness, who gave the boy his
first glimpse of what the factory and the cannery meant to
Delafield--especially the factory.

J.W. was down at the factory to see about some new band-saws that had
been installed; and, his errand finished, he stopped for a chat with
Angus.

"This factory wasn't here when I went off to college," he said. "What
ever brought it to Delafield?"

At that MacPherson was off to a perfect start.

"Ye see, my boy," he began, "Delafield is so central it is a good town
for a good-working plant; freights on lumber and finished stuff are not
so high as in some places. And then there's labor. Lots of husky fellows
around here want better than farm wages, and they want a chance at town
life as well. Men from the big cities, with families, hope to find a
quieter, cheaper place to live. So we've had no trouble getting help.
Skill isn't essential for most of the work. It's not much of a trick
nowadays to get by in most factories--the machines do most of the
thinking for you, and that's good in some ways. Only the men that 'tend
the machines can't work up much pride