Probation

You, at any rate, Lancashire reader, know this place; the large somewhat low room; the long lines of looms; the wheels, straps, and beams; the rows of standing work-people, men, women, and children; the dimness of the dust-laden atmosphere. You know, too, the roar of noise—how deafening, stunning, and overwhelming it is to the stranger who may happen casually to encounter it, yet how easily those in the habit of working in it can make themselves intelligible to one another. You know all this, and your accustomed eye recognises at once one division of the ‘weaving shed’ of a large cotton factory; which forms, with its perfect mechanism, the ‘metallic and the human,’ a most wonderful sight to any eyes but the too careless or the too accustomed.