bespangled uniforms poured over charts and plans.

In all this colossal business there was everywhere the atmosphere of
perfect order, perfect system, perfect discipline. Go as I might among
the electrical works, among the vast factories of chemicals and goods,
the lighter labor of the textile mills, or the heavier, noisier business
of the mineral works and machine shops the same system of colossal
coordinate mechanism of production throbbed ceaselessly. Materials
flowed in endless streams, feeding electric furnaces, mills, machines;
passing out to packing tables and thence to vast store rooms. Industry
here seemed endless and perfect. The bovine humanity fitted to the
machinery as the ox to the treadmill. Everywhere was the ceaseless
throbbing of the machine. Of the human variation and the free action of
man in labour, there was no evidence, and no opportunity for its
existence.

Turning from the mere monotonous endlessness of the workshops I made my
way to the levels above where the workers lived in those hours when they
ceased to be a part of the industrial mechanism of production; and
everywhere were drab-coloured men for these shifts of labour were
arranged so that no space at any time was wholly idle. I now passed by
miles of sleeping dormitories, and other miles of gymnasiums, picture
theatres and gaming tables, and, strikingly incongruous with the
atmosphere of the place, huge assembly rooms which were labelled "Free
Speech Halls." I started to enter one of these, where some kind of a
meeting was in progress, but I was thrust back by a great fellow who
grinned foolishly and said: "Pardon, Herr Captain, it is forbidden you."

Through half-darkened streets, I again passed by the bunk-shelved
sleeping chambers with their cavernous aisles walled with orderly rows