And small wonder. There had never been a time when he had not been in
intimate relationship with machines. Machinery had almost been bred into
him, and at any rate he had been brought up on it. Twelve years before,
there had been a small flutter of excitement in the loom room of this very
mill. Johnny's mother had fainted. They stretched her out on the floor in
the midst of the shrieking machines. A couple of elderly women were called
from their looms. The foreman assisted. And in a few minutes there was
one more soul in the loom room than had entered by the doors. It was
Johnny, born with the pounding, crashing roar of the looms in his ears,
drawing with his first breath the warm, moist air that was thick with
flying lint. He had coughed that first day in order to rid his lungs of
the lint; and for the same reason he had coughed ever since.

The boy alongside of Johnny whimpered and sniffed. The boy's face was
convulsed with hatred for the overseer who kept a threatening eye on him
from a distance; but every bobbin was running full. The boy yelled
terrible oaths into the whirling bobbins before him; but the sound did not
carry half a dozen feet, the roaring of the room holding it in and
containing it like a wall.

Of all this Johnny took no notice. He had a way of accepting things.
Besides, things grow monotonous by repetition, and this particular
happening he had witnessed many times. It seemed to him as useless to
oppose the overseer as to defy the will of a machine. Machines were made
to go in certain ways and to perform certain tasks. It was the same with
the overseer.

But at eleven o'clock there was excitement in the room. In an apparently
occult way the excitement instantly permeated everywhere. The one-legged
boy who worked on the other side of Johnny bobbed swiftly across the floor