three dollars a week. My task, to hang the thin sheets of composite, cut
from three to fifteen hundredths of an inch in thickness, on metal clips
to dry.

In the Composite Works I discovered a new world--the world of factory
life.

I liked to be sent to the other departments on errands. There were
whirling wheels and steadily recurring, ever-lapsing belts ... and men
and women working and working in thin fine dust, or among a strong smell
as of rubbed amber--the characteristic smell of composite when subjected
to friction....

And these men and women were continually joking and jesting and making
horse-play at one another's expense, as rough people in their social
unease do.

They seemed part and adjunct to the machines, the workers! Strong,
sturdy, bared forearms flashed regularly like moving, rhythmic shafts
... deft hands clasped and reached, making only necessary movements.

Each department housed a different kind of worker. In the grinding,
squealing, squeaking, buzzing machine shop the men were not mixed with
women.

They were alert, well-muscled; their faces were streaked with paleness
and a black smutch like dancers made up for a masquerade. Always they
were seeking for a vigorous joke to play on someone. And, if the trick
were perpetrated within the code, the foreman himself enjoyed it,
laughing grimly with the "boys."