"Mr. Nebett?" queried the boy, and in response to an affirmative nod, he continued, "Yes, sir, I'm very anxious to see part of it at any rate. I can see that it's a huge place, but gun-making must be so interesting that I'd like to see how it's done."

"I think Mr. Arverne said something to me about your writing up a special report, a summary or something of that kind."

"That was just a suggestion, Mr. Nebett," the boy replied. "I told Mr. Arverne that the Census Bureau did issue special bulletins on selected industries, and that perhaps I might have an opportunity to make use of some information. But that's a personal idea of mine only, because most of those bulletins are written by experts in the Bureau."

"Well," was the reply, "I don't see that it can do us any harm, anyway, and if you are so interested you can come along with me. I like to go through the works every once in so often, and perhaps I can tell you more about these things than any other man in the place, because I get a chance to see it as a whole."

"If you would," began the boy.

"Come along, then," said the official, without further parley, and he led the way out of the general offices and across the street to the first of a huge group of buildings. Walking through the yard the two came presently to a long structure running alongside the railroad sidings. "This," Hamilton was informed, "is just the storeroom for raw material as it comes off the cars."

He turned half round as though to leave the building, but Hamilton stopped him with a question.

"Steel, principally?" he asked.

"Steel."

"What kind of steel?" persisted Hamilton.

"Oh, different kinds."

"Why different kinds?" continued the boy, working his eyebrows, as was his habit when in earnest. "For different kinds of guns?"

"Yes," answered the older man, evidently deciding that he would have to go into the matter thoroughly with Hamilton, and passing on into the storehouse. "We get mostly three kinds of steel, nickel steel, carbon steel, and soft steel, with a small proportion of other forms. We do that for the very reason you mentioned, that they are used for different kinds of work. Nickel steel we do not use for the cheaper grades of guns, because it is so much harder, and costs so much more to work. Indeed, very few gun-makers use nickel steel for barrels at all, but we do on all our high-grade work."

"I notice," Hamilton said, "that all the steel here is stored in bars and rods. Do you buy it that way, or have you a rolling mill in connection with the plant?"

"Buy it," the other said immediately. "You can't run a rolling mill at a profit except on a large scale, and, anyway, this is too far from the source of supply. We get our copper in ingots, but not our steel."

"I notice," the boy continued, fingering a long ticket attached to a bundle of steel rods by a wire, "that you say here, 'Do not disturb until report from laboratory is received.'"

"Certainly," said the other, "every order as it comes in is tested. We have two laboratories, a physical and a chemical, and not a scrap of material is used until it is found to be fully up to the specifications. There's no guesswork there, but the most rigid scientific tests. That keeps any poor material from slipping through.

"Now," he continued, "I'll show you what happens to those bars."

He led the way to a small building where the bars were cut into certain recognized lengths for the men at the drop forges to handle.

"This forging shop," the manufacturer said, entering it as he spoke, "is where most of the metal parts of the gun are first roughly shaped, and this man is working on part of a cartridge ejector. Watch him now," he went on, following the action of the workman; "he takes a piece of steel out of the furnace behind him, lays it on the die, touches a lever, and the big drop-hammer comes down,—once, twice. He turns it over, brings the drop-hammer down again, once, twice, and the piece is shaped. It has rough edges all round, of course, and so he takes it, while it is still glowing red, to a more exact die, and brings the drop-hammer down once, and turns it over, then brings down the hammer again once. Now the shape is almost perfect but for that fringe of metal all round. He picks it up, puts it on that die on this next machine close by his hand, touches a lever, and a knife, exactly the shape of the die comes down, crunch! shaving off the iron clean all round, and there is your forging done, and all with the one heating. Of course it isn't finished off, but you can see for yourself that the rough work is done, and all in the space of a few moments."

Hamilton found it hard to tear himself away, for while the principle was the same, all the different forges were turning out different parts, and it was a fascination to the boy to see those glowing lumps of steel come out of the furnace and with the few strokes of the drop-hammer, fall a few seconds later, the shaped part of a rifle. Some of the machines were making receivers for the stock, the largest piece of metal, and other small parts like the trigger or the hammer, while still others were preparing the barrels of the gun for drilling.

"It is not likely to occur to you," said his guide, "that it would not do to let all those various parts cool off by chance. For example, in winter they would cool more rapidly than in summer, and those near the door more quickly than those in the inner part of the forging house. That would make them of varying hardness. So, in order to make sure that they shall be the same, all those pieces you have seen being made are annealed."

"How is the annealing done?" asked Hamilton.

"That is simple enough," was the reply. "All that has to be done is to heat them again all to the same degree of heat, then let the oven cool at a certain rate. Here are the annealing ovens."

"This is certainly a hot place," said the boy, as he stepped into the next building. "Whew! I wonder any one stays in here."

"No one does," his conductor answered. "We have this arranged so that all the furnaces are filled in the morning, when they are cold, and there are pyrometers to tell when the right heat is reached. All the ovens, you see, are managed by these switches near the door. Look here—"

He slipped one of the switches into place, and the pyrometer needle swung around and pointed to the degree of heat in the oven which it was supposed to register.

"What are those little clocks for?"

"One for each oven," Mr. Nebett answered; "the keeper of the furnaces sets them when an oven is up to the required heat. Then, you see, it is easy to tell when they have been cooling long enough."

"I should think," said Hamilton, "that making the barrel was the most important part of a gun, because, after all, that is the only part a bullet touches, and it must have to be exact. I've often thought of that, how the tiniest difference at the mouth of the barrel would at a thousand yards range cause it to be away off the mark."

"It does have to be exact," his guide answered, "but that is a matter of care rather than of difficulty. In this next building we bore the rifle-barrels, just a simple boring process, as you see, but there are all sorts of precautions taken to insure absolute steadiness. As soon as a barrel is taken from the boring machine it is put through a test, to determine whether it is correct in size to the one-half of one-thousandth of an inch in diameter. If it is not as exact as that, it is set aside. That is only the first of a long series of tests, too. You would be surprised at the number of barrels that are rejected from the time of the first selection until the gun is completed. Here, for example, is perhaps the most sensational one."

He led the boy to a small building, standing by itself in the middle of the yard, heavily built, and looking almost like a log cabin of the old type, made of great timbers. It was just a bit of a place, divided into two parts by a heavy timber wall.

"What in the wide world is this for?" asked the boy.

"I'll show you in a minute, I think we're just in time," the official said, as he led the way in. Hamilton followed him into the inner chamber. A long row of gun barrels was the first thing the boy noticed, the barrels all lying in slots. A gray-haired man was filling a heavy charge of powder behind each one. The guns were pointing into a bank of sand.

"If you notice," said his guide, "you'll see that a little device, like the old percussion cap is right by each of those charges of powder. Are you all ready, Jim?" he queried, as the old man straightened up.

"Yes, Mr. Nebett," was the reply.

"All right," the other said, "we'll go into the room." He pointed out to Hamilton, as they passed from one part of this little building to the other, that each of these percussion caps was attached to a wire which ran through the wall to the little room into which they were going.

"Look out, Mr. Nebett," said the old man, after he had closed and fastened the heavy door, "and you, young sir, don't be frightened," and he pulled the wire hanging overhead.

There was a terrific explosion and a roar, and though Hamilton had been half expecting it, he jumped. Then he laughed.

"I guess I did jump, after all," he said. "What was that for?"

"To test the strength of the barrels," said his friend, as the old workman slid back the heavy door. "There, you see," he added, "one of them did burst." He pointed to one of the gun barrels rent at the side. "Once in a while," he continued, "they just go up in pieces, and if you look at the walls and the ceiling you'll see any number of bits of metal driven in deeply."

"But he seemed to be putting in an awfully heavy charge," said the boy.

"We do that in order to be sure that we shall not expend a great deal of labor on a barrel which in the end would fail to pass inspection, and also to safeguard against accident," the other explained. "We do use a very heavy charge because our guns sell all over the world, and in some countries—England, for instance—the test is extremely severe. It's a costly process, as it spoils a lot of barrels, but it is better to lose material than to put out a piece of work which might not be trustworthy."

Hamilton looked around the proof-room carefully. Certainly it seemed to have gone through the wars. From the thick wood huge gashes had been rent, and the entire interior was jagged and splintered.

"How much of a charge do you put to each barrel?" he asked; and when the formula was given him for each of the different styles of rifle, the boy whistled in amazement.

"I should think that any barrels that stood that test could stand anything afterwards," he said admiringly.

"Well, they do," the other said. "It's very seldom that you hear of a first-class gun exploding. I don't recall a case of one of ours for years and years. And even if by some chance flaw they did, the good ones, being nickel steel, would just make a hole in the barrel,—not fly to pieces. But, as a matter of fact, any barrel that has been through that 'proof-room' will have been subjected to the greatest strain it will ever have to undergo, for there is no cartridge made that would have one-half the power in proportion to the size of the barrel."

From the proof-room Hamilton's guide led him through different parts of the works, where various machines were employed in preparing and finishing the rough forgings he had seen made and annealed. Thus, for example, in a receiver for a gun stock, one machine worked a bevel edge on it, another bored it to the size of the gun barrel, accurate to the thousandth part of an inch, another pierced the tiny screw holes, and yet other machines made even the minute screw, done, as was explained to Hamilton, so that the threads in each should fit with absolute exactness.

"But do you really mean to say," queried Hamilton in surprise, "that every one of these fifty or more parts of each gun is inspected and tested?"

The official led him to a number of long rows of tables.

"Here," he said, "are girls doing nothing else all day long. Here is a testing die for a part of the ejector of one of our 1911 models. You see that there are two spaces for all of them. It must fit into this one, it must not fit into that, which is a thousandth of an inch smaller. If too big, you see it won't fit into either, if too small, it would fit into the one where it ought not. Every tiny piece is gauged on all its sides and in every hole and at all points with this double gauge system."

"That doesn't leave much for guesswork," said Hamilton. "But there is something that's been puzzling me."

"What is that?" asked his guide.

"I've always heard a lot about gun-metal," Hamilton answered, "and yet all the way through, these parts have been nothing but steel. And all the guns I ever saw had that bluish look, as gun-metal has. For example, my watch is what they call gun-metal," and he took it from his pocket and showed the back of it.

"Gun-metal," said the other, "is an alloy of copper and tin and once was used almost exclusively for cannon and big guns generally. But you're right about all guns having a bluish tinge. That is all steel, but it is treated by a process called coloring or bluing. I'll show you—both the old way and the new."

Going down the stairs and crossing the yard, he took Hamilton into a small building where there were a couple of open charcoal furnaces, in which the charcoal was intensely hot, but not hot enough to catch fire. The pieces of finished steel were buried in this charcoal, and every few minutes the men in charge would draw them out, wipe them over with a bunch of oiled waste, and thrust them back into the fire. It was about the dirtiest, blackest, grimiest work the boy had ever seen.

"That is the old way," Hamilton was told, "and although it is handwork instead of machine work it is not a bit better in its results than the new way. The modern system, besides, is much simpler and cleaner."

In the next building was a row of charcoal ovens, revolving in such a way that the parts to be blued were alternately covered and released from the superheated charcoal, the effect of the greasing also being done at every automatic revolution Each furnace door bore an asbestos clock.

"What are those clocks for?" asked Hamilton. "The same as those others, I suppose, so that the man in charge can put in a number of certain parts of a gun and leave them in for a regular length of time at a certain heat, and pull them out all done?"

"Just that," was the reply. "The only gain in the old style is that each part being handled separately, if there is ever so little difference in the metal, the bluer can give it a shorter or a longer time, whereas the machine treats all alike."

"Then when the gun is assembled, all the work is done?" queried Hamilton, who was becoming a little tired from his long tramp through the works and among the furnace-heated shops.

"No," said the other. "That wouldn't do at all. A gun has not only got to shoot, but it has got to shoot straight."

"But how in the world," said Hamilton, "can you tell whether a gun will shoot straight or not?"

"One of the most important ways," said his informant, "is to let an expert look through the barrel. One of our best men, for example, has done nothing else all his life; his father before him was a barrel-sighter and his son has just entered the works. He does it this way—here, you try," and he handed a barrel to Hamilton. "Rest the barrel in this crotch," he continued, "and look at the window. You see there is a piece of ground glass with a thin black line running across it. Point the barrel so that it is aimed just below that line, and if you get it right, you will see a reflection of that line running lengthways up the barrel."



Hamilton put the barrel up and looked and looked, but for a minute or two he could not get the direction, then he caught the line. But the reflection in the barrel was confusing, and it seemed to him that he saw several lines.

"It's awfully hard just to get that straight," the boy said, "and it's dazzling, too."

"That man you saw there," answered his guide, as they moved away, "can tell almost to the width of a thread of a spider's web if a barrel is straight. Here, too, is another barrel test going on. You see this man is pushing a soft lead slug which fits the barrel snugly through the barrel by means of a brass rod. It takes a certain amount of pressure to push the lead slug through the barrel. Such slight variations in diameter of the bore as one-tenth of a thousandth can be readily detected, for if the barrel is smaller at any point than where it entered, the slug will stick, and if it is the least bit larger at any point, the slug will slide through too easily. Men accustomed to this class of work can readily detect an increase or decrease in diameter of one ten-thousandth part of an inch."

"You certainly have it down fine, Mr. Nebett," Hamilton commented.

"We try to," responded his guide. "Then when the barrel experts have had their turn, the gun is assembled and goes to the action men."

"Who are they?" asked the boy.

"They test the trigger pull, the cartridge ejection, the fall of the hammer, the filling of the magazine, and all such points. They have two sets of dummies, such as were used for testing the parts. One must fit, the other not, and so any fault in the mechanism is detected. The same with ejection,—we must be sure that a cartridge will not stick. Then after that—"

"Still more tests!"

"Didn't I tell you that we had to be sure that a gun could be made not only to shoot but to shoot straight? Our crack shots get the guns next."

"What do they do?" asked the boy, "fire at targets?"

"Yes. But first a man, incased in an armored barricade, shoots a few extra heavy cartridges in each rifle, in order to make sure that no weakness has been caused by the various processes through which all the parts have passed. Then he turns it over to the crack shots. They fire half a dozen shots at a target, then look at the target through a telescope. Those men know that they can hit the bull's eye every time, so that if the shots are wide of the mark, either there is a defect in the gun or the sights are not true. In nine cases out of ten it is the fault of the sights, and they file them true."

"Then really every gun has been fired before being sold?"

"We turn out about sixteen hundred guns a day, and each one has been fired several times."

"Shotguns, too?"

"The same standard of accuracy is needed in those. It is just as important that a shotgun should throw a certain percentage of its shot within a certain radius as it is that a rifle bullet should go straight. Down in this little room," he continued, "a man stands all day shooting down this gallery, forty yards range, and each target is brought back and measured. In a circle with a fifteen-inch radius a boy counts the numbers of holes made in the paper by the tiny shot. There should be 300. If there are 290 the gun is passed, but if less it is rejected. Sometimes you get very queer shot patterns without knowing why."

"Do all shotguns throw as evenly as that?"

"All good ones should. It is astonishing to see how regularly the 'scatter' of a barrel will work out. Every barrel, of course, is stamped with the number of shots it has put into the fifteen-inch circle."

"And you make cartridges, too, don't you?" Hamilton asked.

"That's one of the largest branches of our business," his guide replied, "but there's not very much in that to show you, except of course the making of the metal caps, and this is simply the punching of circular pieces of copper or brass, turning up the edges, or 'cupping' them, as it is called, drawing them to length, inserting the primer pocket and heading—the filling is done in a building perpetually closed to visitors. We think too much of our visitors," he added with a smile, "to risk blowing them up. I don't suppose really, that there would be any danger,—we have not had an accident for years,—but it's a business in which accident is only prevented by extreme care, and we believe in being thorough."

Chatting pleasantly, Mr. Nebett showed Hamilton through the various general offices, the payroll department, and the draughting and designing room, and finally returned to the business manager's office, where they found the schedule awaiting him, filled out in almost every detail. A few spaces had been left blank until the boy's return, some trifling explanation being readily answered by him.



"I must thank you ever so much," said the boy, turning to the director of the company who had taken so much trouble in showing him around, "it has been one of the most interesting afternoons I have had in all my life. I feel quite as though I had been witnessing the equipping of the world's armies on the eve of a great war."

"That would be all right," said the business manager, "if we were making military rifles, but ninety-five per cent of our work is for sporting purposes."

"But how about your cartridges?"

"There, perhaps," Mr. Nebett said, "The Hague tribunal would look askance at us."

Hamilton had his portfolio under his arm, but at the door he turned.

"How many cartridges do you put out?" he asked.

"Six million a day," was the reply.



CHAPTER IV

THE BOY LEADER OF A CRUSADE

So long as Hamilton's work dealt with the larger manufactories of the district he encountered comparatively little trouble, as he knew enough of the desires of the Census Bureau to be able to help those business men whose books did not specifically divide receipts, expenses, and so forth in the same order as the government required. Indeed, he made several very pleasant acquaintanceships during the weeks in New Haven, and it was not until he was "checking up," going to all the small places that had not been listed, that he really found himself in difficulties. He anticipated trouble with the dressmakers, and consequently his delight was great when he learned that this had been omitted from the census since 1904 because it is a "neighborhood industry." But the milliners proved just as bad.

In the first place, Hamilton could not work up any enthusiasm over a millinery establishment, and although he had definite instructions that each one was to be considered as a factory and entered upon the schedules as one, he thought such an idea was stretching the point a little far. Fortunately he had covered a large number of them during the first weeks of the work, visiting the places in the early morning and in the evening when the offices of the larger factories were closed. His worst clash occurred at almost the very last one to which he went.

It was a little after five o'clock, just as it was beginning to get dark, that Hamilton, having ascertained from the Business Telephone Directory the address of a milliner not down on his lists, who did work for wholesale as well as retail trade, went up the steps of a really handsome house, and rang the bell. He did so reluctantly, for there was no plate on the door, and he did not wish to annoy strangers. But the address seemed straight enough.

The door was opened by a becapped maid, and Hamilton was shown into a handsomely furnished drawing room. On a table in the corner, the boy caught sight of a pile of fashion magazines, and he was sure that he was on the right track. After a few moments' delay, a richly dressed little Frenchwoman bustled in. She seemed surprised to see the boy, and halted on the threshold. Hamilton rose.

"I understand, Madame," he said, "that you are an 'exclusive' milliner?"

The woman looked bewildered.

"You make hats?" Hamilton continued, perceiving at a glance that the woman was foreign-born.

"Is it a hatter zat you want?" she asked.

"No, no," the boy replied, "I just want to know if you are a milliner?"

The Frenchwoman, not at all enlightened by this explanation, answered:

"I do not make ze hats; I design zem, and ze ozzers make zem."

"Oh, I thought you were the proprietor," said Hamilton; "then you don't own this place!"

"I am ze proprietor, but I do not own ze house," she said; "I pay ze rent. But why you ask? I pay my rent!"

"Oh, of course," answered Hamilton, "but that has nothing to do with it. I did not wish to trouble you that way. I come from the census, and wanted to make sure that this was the place I was looking for."

"What is zat—ze census?"

"That is the way the government finds out about all the people in the country," explained Hamilton, "their names and how old they are, what they work at and how many people they employ, the wages they pay or are paid, and all sorts of things."

The Frenchwoman's eyes had been getting bigger and rounder at every sentence, and when Hamilton had finished, she said with an air of regretful surprise:

"An' they tol' me zere was no police spy in America!"

"There isn't, so far as I know," the boy answered.

"But you—"

"I'm not a police spy," the boy said, a little nettled at being misunderstood.

"No? Zen zat is all ze more strange. In my country zose are ze questions ze gendarmes ask. An' if you are not policeman, why do you wear badge?" she queried, pointing to the little census shield on Hamilton's coat.

"That has nothing to do with the police," the boy insisted, "that's a census badge. Madame," he added, "do I look like a policeman?"

The Frenchwoman, remembering the military appearance of the gendarmes of her native land and the burly make-up of the American policeman, shook her head.

"Perhaps you are disguise'?" she said, with a smile.

"No, I'm not disguised," Hamilton responded, "and the badge is just to show that I have the right to ask you these questions."

"I do not know anyzing at all about it," the milliner objected, "but if you say you have ze right!" she shrugged her shoulders and sat down.

Hamilton promptly picked up his portfolio, opened it on his knee, and began to put some of the queries required. He got along well enough while the formal questions about name, address, nature of work, and so forth were in hand, but the question about the number of hours worked during the year made the woman most indignant.

"What is ze good of a question like zat?" she asked. "What does it matter if ze girls work all ze night to finish ze hat for ze gr-rand occasion, ze wedding, ze garden party? When zey work more, zey get more pay!"

"Of course," said Hamilton diplomatically, "with such a number of society people as you deal with that must happen very often."

It was a successful move. The Frenchwoman beamed on him.

"In ze season, yes, perhaps twenty or thirty evenings, but even zen ze girl go home by twelve o'clock."

Hamilton smiled to himself as he did a little figuring and filled up the schedule to show the prevailing practice followed in the establishment during the year. He was a little dubious about asking the questions concerning the wages paid, but he found no trouble.

"In your kind of work," he said, "I suppose the girls get good wages."

"Ze very best," the woman answered, and Hamilton found that this was true. Indeed, so anxious was she to impress on him how much better were the wages paid by her than those in other establishments that the boy secured a large amount of unexpected valuable information. But he came to a dead stop on the question of raw material used during the year. For the material used in wholesale work the figures were easily secured, but the retail trade was another matter. This the milliner really could not give, for, as she pointed out, most of the few especial customers she had, brought the materials to her to be made up, and she had no means of knowing what had been paid for them. Nor would she even try to make an estimate.

"But I must know," said Hamilton, in despair. "See for yourself,—here it says that every factory must state the total cost of all material used during the year and the value of the products."

"Factory!" the milliner jumped to her feet. "What you say—a factory! Zis establishment a factory! And me, one of ze designers of ze great Maison Chic in Paris! Zis is insult!"

For a moment Hamilton was amazed at the tempest he had so suddenly evoked; then he tried to pacify the woman.

"That's just a general word," he said, "and it is used for every place where things are made."

"No, no, no," she cried, "I know bezzer zan zat. A factory has chimney, high, high, and smoke, an' nasty smells, an' machines. I have seen zem!"

"That's one kind of factory," answered the boy, "but it is only one kind. But if you like we won't use the word at all."

This time, however, Hamilton's persuasions were of no avail. The milliner had taken offense at the word "factory," and not another word could the boy get out of her on any subject; the deadlock had become absolute when the door opened and the maid showed in a young girl, evidently a customer. The proprietress immediately greeted her in voluble French, recounting as nearly as Hamilton could judge from her gestures her sorrows and trials at the boy's hands.

As soon as there was a lull, Hamilton said to the newcomer:

"I beg your pardon, but since you seem to know French, would you mind explaining to Madame what the census is? She seems to think I am a police spy, or something."

"Oh, the census!" the girl exclaimed. "I could not make out what it was all about. I thought it must be some question of taxes."

"No," Hamilton explained, "it is the Census of Manufactures, and millinery places have to be counted. I got along all right, and have finished my schedule but for one thing, and that I cannot get hold of. If you would just ask her the cost of the materials in the hats she made last year, I'll be through and then I won't be delaying you."

But not even the girl's fluent French could bring any light on this subject, and laughingly she had to admit to the boy that her success had been no greater than his own.

"I'll tell you," said Hamilton; "I've got an idea how we could get at it."

"How?" asked the girl interestedly, for having taken a part in it, she was American enough to be unwilling to give up; "what have you to suggest—what is your plan?"

"You are one of Madame's customers?"

"Yes."

"And, of course, whatever kind of books are kept here, there must be some sort of ledger, so that your bills can go to you every month."

The girl made a little grimace.

"The bills certainly come," she assured him.

"Well, then," said Hamilton triumphantly, "if we can find out from Madame what proportion of all her trade your account is, and if you can make a guess as to what the material you have brought her cost you, we shall come pretty close to being able to make an estimate on the cost of goods of all her customers."

"That's an excellent scheme," the girl said. "I don't know that I can give very exact figures, but you want just a rough idea?"

"I'd like it exact, of course," the boy answered, "but since that doesn't seem easy to get, the next best thing is a close estimate."

With this device in mind, very few minutes elapsed before the required information was secured, a rough guess made at the result, and the schedule finally filled out. As Hamilton rose to go, the girl said laughingly: "I think I should at least receive 'honorable mention' in the dispatches as a census-taker, the same as soldiers do in war."

"Very well," said Hamilton, smiling in return, "I'll bear it in mind," and thanking her heartily, he went on his way, greatly relieved that the difficulty was over.

In a piece of extra territory that Mr. Burns had assigned to the boy, there were several factories in which there had been some difficulty in securing properly filled schedules, partly because much of the work was done on the night shift. Because of this, Hamilton had got in touch with some of these factories—they were principally glass works—on the night side first. He frequently found it necessary to work thus in the evenings, especially after this added work, which was given him because the district proved too large for the agent having it in charge.

Little by little he worked these down until but one remained, owned by Germans, where the boy experienced great difficulty in securing any sort of attention. The night superintendent, however, was ready to help, and Hamilton went to him constantly in the endeavor to have the schedule for that factory filled. This was the easier, as the night superintendent in question had recently been promoted to that position from head bookkeeper.

One night, waiting for the superintendent to work out these figures, he sauntered through the works. A phrase from Edwin Markham's "The Hoe-Man in the Making" kept ringing through his head. It ran as follows—"It is in the glass-factory perhaps, that the child is pushed most hopelessly under the blind hammer of greed," and the boy wondered whether this especial works was one of those which the poet-author had visited. Owing to the number of times Hamilton had been forced to go to this factory, two or three of the men had come to know him by sight, and they nodded now as he passed through. Noticing a boy that looked even younger than himself,—for unconsciously his eye was seeking that of which he was thinking,—he turned to one of the men who had nodded to him, and said casually, and with an air of surprise:

"Why, that chap there doesn't look any older than me!"

"I don't suppose he is so very old," the man replied, "sixteen, maybe."

"Seems a shame to have to start in so young," Hamilton went on, with an assumed air of carelessness, "and I suppose he's been here some years."

"Probably about four or five," was the reply.

"You know," continued Hamilton, in a conversational tone, "I should think it would be hard for a boy to start in working like that, and at night especially."

The man paused in his work an instant, and looked at the lad, passing his hand over his forehead as he did so.

"I was just ten years old when I began," he said. "I'm only thirty now. I look fifty, don't I?"

"You certainly look over thirty," Hamilton admitted.

"Oh, I look fifty all right, I know that, and I'm as nearly played out as a man of fifty. And it's all due to work when I was a youngster. Every year that a boy is put to hard physical work before he is sixteen is equal to five years taken off his life."

"I wonder that any employer does it, and that any State permits it," said Hamilton.

"There's not as much of it in Connecticut as in other States, although the figures show that it is growing here," was the reply. "But you talk as though you had been having a session with 'the crusader,'" the workman continued.

"Who's the crusader?" asked Hamilton.

"Haven't you seen him, then? With your ideas, you ought to get along well together. And," he added, more seriously, "'the crusader' will be heard of yet."

"Why?"

"He's a boy who started at work in this place when he was only seven years old," the workman answered. "He's been here eight years now, and he's an odd genius. He taught himself to read and write, but he doesn't read anything except about labor conditions all over the world, and he knows all there is to know, I guess, about this business of children working. All the labor union people and the socialists know 'the crusader,' young as he is, and they send him, free, nearly every book and paper that's published."



"But why do you call him 'the crusader'?" asked Hamilton.

"Because he has some crusade idea on the brain,—thinks he can start a revolution or something that will put a stop to child labor, and he talks all the time of getting ready for this 'crusade' as he calls it. But everybody likes him just the same, and he's a good worker—when he's not talking."

"Which is he?" asked Hamilton. "I'd like to talk to him, if I might."

"No reason why you shouldn't," the other answered "he's kept busy of course, but there are minutes in which he can talk, and 'the crusader' is given special favors, anyway. That's the boy, 'carrying in' over there."

Hamilton looked with interest at the boy thus pointed out. He would have been noticeable, even without the knowledge of his peculiar position, but with it, his difference from his fellows became most marked. Hamilton had a couple of large apples in his pocket, and he thought this might be a good opening. Taking one of them out of his pocket, he started to eat it, and sauntered leisurely over to where the boy was working. He watched him for a minute or two; then, when the boy looked up, he said casually:

"Have an apple?"

Almost wolfishly the work-boy took the fruit from Hamilton and commenced to devour it. It was clear either that he was hungry or that such a luxury as an apple seldom fell to his lot. A few sentences passed, and then Hamilton asked:

"How long have you been in the factory here?"

"Eight years," 'the crusader' replied.

"You must have been just a youngster when you first came, then?"

"Seven years old," was the answer, "and small at that!"

"It's a shame to let little children work like that, I think," said Hamilton, wondering whether this would have the effect of rousing the other, "it must do them harm."

But even though expecting some fiery retort, Hamilton was unprepared for the transformation in the lad. A moment before he had been a stooped childish figure with an old and weary face, carrying trays of hot glass from furnace to bench and bench to furnace, but at the word he turned. The air of weariness fell from him, his back straightened, life and passion flamed into his eyes, and despite the grime and sordidness of his surroundings, despite the rags in which he was clothed, under the dull glow of the furnaces and the flickering violet play of a distant arc light he seemed the bearer of some high message as his boyish treble, rich in the tones of a familiar despair, rang through the factory.

"The land is filled with the voice o' cryin'," he began, "an' no one seems to hear. Tens o' thousands o' children cry themselves to sleep every night, knowin' that the mornin' only brings another day o' misery. Think of a little boy or girl o' ten years old, sufferin' already so much that hope is gone, an' tired enough to die! There are twenty-five thousand children less than ten years old in the fact'ries of America."

"Perhaps the people who could help don't know about it," suggested Hamilton.

"They know," the other continued, "but they don't care. They stop their ears to the cryin' o' the children an' talk about America as the land of opportunity. It is the land of opportunity—opportunity for the children to starve, opportunity to suffer, opportunity to die wretched an' to be glad to die. There's no country in the world where children are tortured as they are in the fact'ries of the United States."

"Oh, surely it can't be as bad as that," protested Hamilton.

The objection only increased the "crusader's" vehemence.

"There don't any children have to work anywhere as they do here," he fairly shouted, "here where they rob the cradle for workers, where the little voices become sad and bitter 'most as soon as they can lisp, where the brightness o' childhood fades out before its time, an' where its only world is the mill, the shop, an' the fact'ry. Their tiny bones unset, they make them stand in one position all day long until you hear the children moanin' hour after hour, moanin' and no one hears, or hearin', cares.

"They send missionaries to China," cried the lad further, "but there's no child labor there; they try to reform the 'unspeakable Turk' but there's no atrocity upon the children there; they call the heathen lost, though in the worst an' wildes' tribes the children have a home an' lovin', if savage care; Russia cries shame on what goes on in our fact'ries here, an' even an Indian chief that they were showin' the sights of our great cities to, when asked what had surprised him most, answered, 'Little—children—workin'.'"

"You mean it is peculiar to America? That there is really more of it here than in Europe?" asked Hamilton incredulously.

"More? There's none there like there is here. An' it's gettin' worse all the time, worse this year than last year, worse last year than ten years ago. 'Child-labor,' somebody says, 'has about it no halo of antiquity. It is a thing of yesterday, a sudden toadstool in the infernal garden.' It is all our own," he laughed harshly, "let us be proud of it."

"How many children did you say?" asked Hamilton tersely, staggered and shocked by this statement of the facts of the case.

"Enough to sink the land in shame," the speaker declared. "There were a trifle over a hundred thousand children between the ages of six and fourteen workin' in the fact'ries of America last year. The figures showed that over half of 'em were workin' more'n eight hours a day, that a large percentage were workin' twelve to sixteen hours, an' twenty-two thousand of 'em are at night work."

As he said the last words, the "crusader" hurried away in response to a call from one of the men. He resumed his carrying in of the red-hot bottles from the benches where the men had been molding them, to the annealing oven, and for a time Hamilton watched him. The work was a fearful strain. Sitting where he was, Hamilton could see all the way to the annealing oven. Counting the number of steps the "crusader" had to take, Hamilton found the distance to be about one hundred feet, and watching another boy, who was working regularly, not intermittently as was the city lad's new acquaintance, he found that seventy-two trips an hour were made, making the distance covered in eight hours nearly twenty-two miles.

The red-hot bottles were carried in asbestos shovels, and these had to be kept fairly straight, imposing a terrific strain upon the back. In addition to this, the boys were compelled to face the furnace each time they came back, passing from the heat of the melting oven, in front of a draughty open door, to the heat of the annealing oven.

In order to keep up with the work, the boys had to run, for it could not be done at a walk, and thus were alternately greatly overheated and chilled with icy draughts.

Seeing that the "crusader" would be busy for a while, but wanting to take the matter up with him further, Hamilton strolled over to where the glass-blowers were working. This particular factory was turning out cheap glass bottles, and there was little of the fascination that exists in factories where high-grade glass is made into many curious shapes and blown with great skill into marvelous thinness. In the middle of the room was a large round furnace containing a number of small doors not quite four feet from the ground, and a glass-blower was stationed before each of these. With long iron blowpipes these men, by giving the blowpipe a little twirl as they thrust it into the semi-molten metal, drew out on the end of it a small mass of glass, of about the consistency of nearly melted sealing wax, and holding this mass on the end of the blowpipe by keeping it in motion, they blew it into balls and rolled the ball of soft, red-hot glass on their rolling boards. Then they lifted the blowpipe and blew again, sharp and hard, forcing the soft glass to its proper form. The now cooling glass was broken from the end of the blowpipe with a sharp, snapping sound, and the blowpipe was plunged in the furnace again for another bottle. The whole had taken but a few seconds.

"Why do they have so many boys around these places?" queried Hamilton of the workman he had been watching.

"Have to, they say," the glass-blower replied, "cheap bottles mean cheap labor. No one ever expects to pay anything for a bottle—that is thrown in with everything liquid you buy. The manufacturer's got to make his little profit somewhere an' in a cheap bottle he makes it by employin' young boys cheap an' workin' 'em till they drop."

"Is it done this way everywhere?"

The workman shook his head.

"No need to do it even here," he said. "It takes money, though, to put in an endless belt to carry the bottles to the annealin' oven. The big fact'ries mostly have 'em, but there are plenty o' places like this in small towns where everythin' is done on a cheap scale, an' a boy's labor is about the cheapes' thing in the United States—unless it's a girl's."

Seeing that the glass-blower was being delayed in his task, Hamilton sauntered away, and went back to the place where the "crusader" worked. The latter broke out again as soon as he saw the boy coming.

"I've been talkin' to you about children workin'," he said, "but you haven't thought of babies bein' made to work?"

"Babies!"

"Of four an' five years old."

"But they couldn't do any real work!" exclaimed Hamilton.

"Do you know what one factory owner in the South said, not knowin' he was talkin' to a member o' the child-labor commission? He said 'A kid three year old can soon learn to straighten out tobacco leaves for wrappers, and a little worker of four is good help in stripping.'"

"In a cigar factory?"

"Of course,—an' the children find it so hard to keep up that they are taught to chew snuff—as a stimulant—before they are six year old. Jane Addams, writin' o' the torture chambers they call cotton mills in parts o' the South, said she saw on the night shift, with her teeth all blackened and decayed from excessive snuff chewin', a little girl o' five year old, busily and clumsily tyin' threads in coarse muslin, an' answerin' a question she said she had been there every night throughout the hot summer excep' two, when 'her legs and back wouldn't let her get up.' An' what do you suppose the fact'ry owner did—send a physician? No, he docked her the two days' wages for the time she'd been away ill, an' another day's fine as a punishment."

"That's brutal!" cried Hamilton. "Didn't the parents protest?"

"The parents? That's where the mill-owners have their strongest help. They threaten to discharge the parents if the children don't work an' work hard, and they force the father or mother into whippin' the child to compel it to stay at the loom. The whole country went to war once over the question of a negro havin' to work under compulsion,—or at least, that had quite a bit to do with the war,—but you can enslave white children, you can starve 'em, you can shut 'em up in rooms without air, you can surround 'em with dangerous machinery, you can force 'em to be whipped, you can snatch 'em from their cradles in their homes, you can snap your fingers at the schools, an' you can fill churchyards with a worse Massacre o' the Innocents than history ever tells about, an' the men and women of America don't care."



"Oh, yes, they do," again protested Hamilton. "It must be that they don't know."

"How can they help but know? There are a few that have heard what Spargo calls 'The Bitter Cry of the Children,' but those few are very few, an' the misery an' shame goes on, gettin' worse with ev'ry year."

"What's going to be done?"

"The children will have to rescue the children," the boy cried. "If men's hearts are cold and women's hearts are asleep, at least the boys can hear. There's no power like a boy's, an' a boy will do anythin' that's big and brave and worth the doin'. In a year from now I'm goin' to start a crusade, like the Children's Crusade in hist'ry, an' march to every mill an' fact'ry in the United States where a child is workin', and make the owner sign a paper pledgin' himself not to employ a child again. Give me an army of American boys an' I'll sweep the country like a flight o' locusts."

"But who would join?"

"Every boy worth his salt. S'pose I came to you an' said 'In that mill at the end o' your street, little children are bein' slaved and driven to death because no one has the nerve to say what they think. We'll rescue those children. Join us, we're five hundred strong!' Would you go along?"

"Guess I'd have to join," the boy agreed, "but you'd get into all sorts of trouble."

"Can I get into a worse trouble than any o' those babies have?" the other asked indignantly. "What right have I to go on, even as I do, knowin' how they are sufferin'. I don't care about trouble, I've had nothin' else all my life. But if by gettin' into trouble myself, I could get even one hollow-eyed shadow of a child to run about and play like other folks, I'd be willin' to take anythin' that come after. I don't see that carryin' bottles is goin' to help the world much, but if I can carry hope an' health to some little boy or girl, I'm goin' to do it. How, I don't know. But I ain't goin' to die without bein' able to remember some poor child that's better off because lived."

"What can I do to help?" asked Hamilton eagerly and aggressively, as though he expected instant marching orders to some distant factory.

"You can do somethin',—every boy can do somethin'. If nothin' else, you can help to wake a sleepin' an' selfish nation. If the cryin' o' the children has ever rung in your ears, it'll never stop till you're doin' somethin' to help. Do you think I could dream every day, as I do, o' that 'spectral army of pygmy people sucked in from the hills to dance beside the crazing wheel' and not do somethin'?"

"But—"

"Could I hear trampin' round me day an' night, the laggin' step of a 'gaunt goblin army that outwatches the sun by day an' the stars by night, an' work an' sleep in peace? An' there's one thing more to say, an' then I must go,—that there's a stain o' shame 'pon the honor of America that'll never be wiped away until child labor is put down!"

Thoughtful and subdued in spirit, Hamilton strolled back to the night superintendent's office, where he found the figures done at last and the completed schedule awaiting him. He gratefully accepted the offer of a cup of coffee, from some which had just been sent in, and sat down beside the desk.

"I've been talking with the 'crusader,'" he remarked.

The night superintendent looked up interestedly.

"What do you think of him?" he asked, a little sharply, Hamilton thought.

"I think there's no question about his being sincere," the boy answered, "but I can hardly believe that the figures he gives and the facts he talks about are true."

"They're true enough, I'm sorry to say," said the older man, sighing, "but the 'crusader' usually isn't fair to the South. He blames the South for the cotton mill horrors, when, as a matter of fact, a very large proportion of the mills in which the worst conditions were found are owned by New England capitalists. I'm a New Englander by birth myself, 'naughty-two' at Yale, but I'm able to see the mistakes of the North just the same."

"I've always been taught that the North was more or less mixed up in it," answered Hamilton. "It was shown to me a long time ago that the slavery in the South wasn't started by the plantation owners. There were no Southern vessels in the slave trade, they were all New England skippers and New England bottoms. The shame of the slave traffic belongs originally to the North."

"And now a large share of the child labor, too," the other agreed. "But you've got to remember that it was the easy shiftlessness of the South that made such conditions possible. I guess the blame is about even."

"But is nothing being done on this child-labor business?" asked Hamilton. "I tried to find that out from the 'crusader' but he didn't answer."

"Yes," said the superintendent heartily, "a great deal is being done. The Bureau of the Census has been of immense service, and other bureaus of the Department of Commerce and Labor are working on it, largely through information gathered for them by the census. Then there have been thorough Congressional investigations, and the States are being checked up hard to insure that factory inspection shall be real, not nominal. Don't let the 'crusader' persuade you that everybody is asleep and that nothing is being done; the government is doing a good deal, although the country as a whole is unaware of it."

"Yet it is increasing?"

"In spite of all that is done to prevent it, it is increasing," the other said quietly, "that is the sad part. If it could be thought of as a passing thing, it would be bad enough, but to know that every month hundreds of children die from enforced labor and that greater numbers fill their places, is a sad reflection on the industrial life of to-day."

"Well, as the South progresses, that will probably take care of itself, won't it?" queried the boy.

The superintendent looked at him curiously.

"I think you told me last evening that you were a New York boy," he said.

"Yes, Mr. Wharton," answered Hamilton.

"I suppose you consider New York a fairly progressive city?"

"Greatest on earth!" affirmed the boy in true Gotham style.

"Yet that same progressive city," the older man declared, "is the headquarters of several forms of industry in which large percentages of the workers are children under fourteen years of age."

"What kinds of business can those be?" asked Hamilton in surprise.

"Making ostrich plumes and artificial flowers. It's not factory labor, of course, but that doesn't alter the point that at least half the output of artificial flowers is made by the cramped fingers of children, generally after school and far into the night. They are not officially reported, of course, but less than twenty per cent is done by men. The disgraceful fact that the New York schools are so crowded that many of them can only give 'half-time' to the children and consequently teach them in two sections is a great help to the sweat-shop managers. But every city has its own share of this child labor in the homes, although in some of the smaller places, civic associations and municipalities have taken the matter in hand with considerable success. Even that is but a drop in the ocean."

"Your 'crusader' will have to lead his crusade then, it seems," the boy suggested.

"Poor lad!" sighed the superintendent.

"Why?" asked Hamilton.

"He will never lead that crusade," the older man replied pensively.

"Why not?"

The man tapped his chest significantly.

"He is incurably ill," he said, "partly glass-blowers' disease from breathing the particles of glass dust. Men don't mind it so much, but it is fatal to children when the lungs are not yet strong. We keep the 'crusader' here in order to help him as much as we can, although he gives a lot of trouble in the works with his revolutionary theories. I haven't the heart to send him away; he couldn't get other work, and being all alone in the world, he might starve."

"You mean—"

"That he will not live six months. That army of boys of which he speaks so often will never go on the march, the banners he has designed for it will wave over no other battalions than those he has seen in dreams, and the drums will sound the final 'taps' for him before they roll for the advance. And in that sleep, the cries of the children shall all be happy ones."



CHAPTER V

"DON'T DEPORT MY OLD MOTHER!"

The "crusader's" talk on the child-labor question set Hamilton's mind working, and as soon as he got back to Washington and was busy tabulating the manufacturing statistics which had been gathered and sent in, he tried to learn something about the employment of children. He chanced to meet one of the photographers who had been with the Congressional commission, and the tales this man told were even more detailed. Hamilton found that the figures quoted had not been overstated, and he determined that just as soon as he grew old enough he would do all he could toward correcting this abuse.

But Hamilton found the actual statistical work not a little tedious, although it was work which usually he enjoyed, and this sense of the time dragging was largely due to the fact that the boy had not heard a word about his being considered in line for the population work. It was therefore a considerable relief to him when Mr. Burns said to him suddenly one morning:

"So you're going over to the population side, I hear?"

"Am I? I didn't know," Hamilton replied. "I had wanted to go, but not hearing anything about it, I was afraid the plan had been shelved."

"The Director told me this morning that you were going to be transferred."

"The Director himself?"

"Yes. I had a talk with him about the figures for the manufactures of the New England States, and we happened to mention you; he knew your name, so I told him that your schedules had averaged six and a third per cent better than those of any one else in that section. So he said, 'That reminds me, I had almost forgotten that I had decided to put Noble on the population work. I'll see that arrangements for that transfer are made,' and he scribbled something on a pad."

"That was awfully kind of you, Mr. Burns," said Hamilton, "to mention me to the Director in that way."

The statistician looked at him curiously.

"I wasn't dealing in kindness," he said dryly, "I was dealing in percentages. If that turned out well for you, it is yourself you have to thank, not me. I merely stated the figures, and they read in your favor."

The boy laughed outright.

"I believe, Mr. Burns," he said, "that you would more easily forgive a man who attacked you personally than one who gave you an incorrect list of figures."

"Certainly I would," the statistician replied. "I could hit back in the first case, but in the second who can tell how far I might be led astray!"

"Well," the boy answered, "I'm glad at any rate that my figures tallied up all right."

"I don't want to seem inquisitive," said the older man, "but when did you get in the population examination?"

"There was some talk of my being accepted without going through the exam," said Hamilton, "because of the fact that I was doing census work of a more difficult character already, but I thought I would rather feel that everything had been done in the usual manner. I took the exam at New Haven, one afternoon."

"But are you going to do the population work there?"

"No, Mr. Burns," the boy explained. "The Director wrote to me that I would be allowed to send in a formal application in the regular way through the supervisor of the enumeration district to which I had asked to be assigned. The supervisor of that district had said beforehand that he would be willing to appoint me, as the section was so sparse that enough qualified enumerators were hard to get."

"Well, where are you going, then?"

"I don't know, for sure yet, of course," the boy explained, "whether everything will go through as planned, but if so, I shall be going to Kentucky."

"In the mountains where you had been visiting?"

"Oh, no," the boy answered, "in another part of the State entirely,—down toward the black belt of Kentucky."

"Kentucky isn't a black belt State," his friend objected.

"No, Mr. Burns, but there are parts where the negroes are tolerably thickly settled. The supervisor is a friend of my older brother, and he says that is an interesting part of the country."

"But can a Board of Examiners in one district look over the papers for the supervisor of another district?"

"No, sir," explained the boy, "but they can allow the examination to be taken before them and have the papers sent to the supervisor of the other district. It was a little irregular, I suppose, but the Director knew all about it and it was for the good of the census, he thought, as he had been told there were not enough enumerators in the district to which I hoped to go."

"Well," the statistician replied, "if you're headed for Kentucky I should think you'd like to see your folks before going."

"I had planned to go up on Saturday afternoon," Hamilton said. "I can get to New York by evening and spend Saturday night and all day Sunday there, catching the midnight train back. It brings me in early enough for office hours."

"And this is Friday," said the other thoughtfully. "I'll tell you what to do. I can arrange for you to be off Saturday morning; it is only a half day, and you can catch the first train out after business hours to-day."

"That would be bully!"

"I estimate," the statistician said, rapidly dotting down some figures on a pad, "that the fractions of overtime you have worked recently, cumulatively considered, enable me to do that fairly, so that you've earned it."

"That's fine," said Hamilton, "for the family is going to Europe for the summer, and I shouldn't see any of them at all unless I ran up to New York now."

The older man nodded his confirmation of the suggested arrangement, and returned to his figures. During the noon hour Hamilton hurriedly packed a grip, and was back at the office without a minute lost, for he found a train leaving at a most advantageous hour, and by calling a taxi he was just able to catch it.

At breakfast the following morning, the conversation turned upon immigration, and Hamilton read in a newspaper the statement that two large liners were in New York harbor and would dock that morning, that each carried a record passenger list of immigrants, and that Ellis Island was making preparations for a busy day.

"I've never seen Ellis Island," the boy announced "Father, do you know if visitors are allowed over there?"

"I'm fairly sure of it," his father replied, "but in any case there ought to be no trouble for you, since the Bureau of the Census is a part of the Department of Commerce and Labor, just as is the Bureau of Immigration."

"I think I'd like to go."

"I think you ought to go," his father said. "Taking up the population business, you ought to try to get hold of all the information you can, ahead of time. I have been there several times, on business, and it is a most interesting place."

Accordingly, the eleven o'clock boat from the Barge Office, New York,—a pier near Castle Garden, the historic immigration station,—carried Hamilton to the famous Ellis Island. Preferring his request, the lad speedily found himself in the presence of the Commissioner. He stated his wants briefly.

"Mr. Commissioner," he said, "I'm an assistant agent of the Census Bureau in Washington, and I'm just going to my station as an enumerator for the population. I have two days in New York and I'd like to learn how things are done on the Island here. May I have a pass?"

The Commissioner answered briefly.

"Read this," he said, taking a sheaf of manuscript out of the drawer of his desk, "and here's a short review for the use of visitors, and I'll send you in to the Chief Clerk to get a pass, and if there's anything more you want, let me know." He touched a bell. "Show this gentleman to Mr. Tuckman, and let him be given a special pass," he said,—and Hamilton was ushered out promptly, thinking as he went that this was evidently one place where time was not wasted.

The Chief Clerk was equally ready to assist the lad, and armed with his special pass he started round the building, finding himself practically free of the island. Hamilton possessed the capacity of making friends readily, and with his alert manner and direct appeal, he usually secured attention. Walking sharply through the place he soon found himself down in what was called the Information Division. For the moment one of the clerks was not busy, and Hamilton, stepping up to him, began to ply him with questions. A tall young fellow, who was standing nearby, listened for a few moments, then turned to Hamilton.

"See here," he said, "you can't learn much about Ellis Island just by asking questions, you've got to go around and see for yourself."

"That's just what I propose doing," Hamilton answered, "but I thought it wouldn't be such a bad plan to get an idea of things first, and then I should understand what I saw. There's not much use in watching things unless you understand just what's going on. I have some knowledge of it, of course, because the Commissioner gave me some reading matter to look over, and I've got a special pass, so that I want to make the best use of it."

"Suppose you come along with me, then," said his new acquaintance, who was none other than the Chief of the Information Division, "and I'll show you round myself as far as I can spare the time. It so happens that there are a lot of scattering things I want to look after through the building to-day, and if you don't mind my leaving you alone, once in a while, I'll take you through systematically. Where do you want to begin?"

"Right at the very start," rejoined Hamilton "I always think the beginning is the most important part, and I'd hate to lose any of it."

"All right," said his conductor good-humoredly; "if you want it all, you shall have it. I notice, too," he said, as they walked along the hall and out of the door to the well-kept lawns that stretch between the main building and the sea wall, "that you're in good time, for there's a barge just pulling in."

"The barge is from one of the liners that came in this morning, I suppose?" queried the lad.

"Yes, one of the Hamburg boats," his guide replied.

"Are those barges run by the immigration authorities?"

"No," was the answer, "those are owned or managed by the steamboat companies. They bring all the steerage passengers who can't show that they are citizens, and all the cabin passengers who are being detained."

"Cabin passengers," echoed Hamilton in surprise; "I didn't think any cabin passengers came to Ellis Island. All second cabin, I suppose?"

"Not a bit of it," answered the immigration official; "there's quite a sprinkling of first-class passengers as well. Why, during a period of three months recently, nearly three thousand cabin passengers were detained on the island here, and I suppose twenty per cent of them had come over in the first-class saloon."

"But why should any first-class passengers be stopped and shipped to Ellis Island?" queried the boy. "I don't understand. I thought Ellis Island was to keep out people who were paupers, or diseased, or were undesirable citizens!"



"That's just exactly what it is for," the other replied, "but the United States government doesn't think that having money enough to pay for a first-class passage makes every man a desirable citizen! A first-class berth is no insurance against an incurable disease, for example, and there's nothing to prevent a criminal from coming over in the first cabin." He laughed. "Most of them do, I think," he said.

"It really never appealed to me just that way," the boy remarked; "I supposed always that first-class passengers went right through if they passed quarantine."

"That would mix things up," the older man said. "Why, in that case we should have all the mentally deficient, all the paupers, and all the freaks landing here in shoals. Any group of friends, or any government, for that matter, would find it cheap and easy to dump all the public charges of Europe on our shores for the price of a first-class ticket. Oh, no, that would never do. Once in a while, you hear passengers on the big liners complaining of the inquiries made before they land, but it's got to be done. You can see for yourself what would happen if we didn't."

"But if they bring plenty of money, they would not become public charges."

"No, and we can't exclude them on that ground. But money, for example, has nothing to do with crime or anarchism or things of that sort. I tell you, there's a big slice of our work done before ever a vessel reaches her dock at a New York pier. Of course, problems do come up nearly every day, such as circus freaks, for instance."

"You mean the living skeleton, the tattooed lady, the fat baby, the giant, and so forth?" asked Hamilton.

"Exactly. Are those people to be considered desirable citizens, or not? There is no question as to their inability to make a living by any customary kind of work, but on the other hand it is very difficult to prove that they could not get good money at a sideshow. If, however, they are able to show that they have been engaged in Europe by an American circus manager, they can come under the alien contract labor law."

"Then this string of people," said Hamilton, pointing to those who had just been unloaded from the barge, "may be from all classes of the ship."

"They might be," his guide replied, "but the chances are that they are all steerage. Cabin passengers that are detained usually come on the last boat, with the inspector. We have quarters here with a little more privacy for them, and they are kept together. But now watch this line. Suppose we go this way," and stepping over a low iron railing, the official, followed by Hamilton, walked briskly up beside the line. A few yards from the door of the building, this line of people passed into a long barred lane. At the entrance of this stood an inspector who checked off the large ticket each immigrant had pinned on him to show his identity, in order to prevent confusion further on. Passing before the inspector at brief but regularly measured intervals, the immigrants walked one by one up this barred lane to where it made a right angle.

"There's the first inspecting doctor," said Hamilton's conductor, pointing to a man standing just at the angle and watching carefully each immigrant as he walked up. After a moment Hamilton turned to his companion in surprise:

"But he isn't doing anything!" he said.

"Doctor," said the chief of the division, with a laugh, "I am afraid we shall have to investigate this matter. Here is a lad who says that you're doing nothing. He's watched you for a couple of minutes and you haven't made a move."

Hamilton began to protest, but the big doctor only laughed in reply, without taking his eyes, however, from the procession of figures which one by one walked up to him and made the turn round the angle.

"If he'll wait a minute or two more," he said, "perhaps I'll have a chance to do something, and save my reputation."

There was a pause; then the doctor continued:

"I think there's something doing now; watch this man coming up."

"He seems to limp just the merest trifle, that's all I can see," the boy replied.

"Bone disease of some kind, or maybe joint," the doctor said, "tuberculous hip, like as not," and as the man passed by he leaned forward and chalked a big "B" on the shoulder of his coat. "'B' for Bones," the doctor explained to Hamilton.

"What will happen to him?" asked the boy of the immigration official.

"Because of that mark?"

"Yes, sir."

"It simply means that he will be held for 'special inquiry.' He may be all right, but before he is passed, he will have to be examined physically—a thorough physical examination, I mean. Now here, you see, is another doctor."

Eight or ten yards further on stood another man, all in white as the first had been, who took up the inspection where the judge of bone malformations had left off. A sunken chest, he explained to Hamilton, a hectic flush, a pinched nostril, an evident difficulty in breathing, a certain carriage of the head, a blueness of the lips, certain types of pallor, all these and a number of little points which experience had shown to be symptoms of organic disease his trained eye could detect at a glance, and he, too, every few minutes, stooped forward and chalked upon the coat of the man or the blouse of the woman, as the case might be, a letter which told of a suspected disease.

"I suppose I ought not to say anything," said Hamilton, "but that looks a little 'hit-or-miss' to me. It's hard on an immigrant to be detained on the basis of a medical examination that barely takes ten seconds."

"If that were all," said the official, smiling, "it surely would be a hardship. But you don't quite get the point. All these passengers really are detained, and this arrangement is only a way to render the detention shorter by letting those go through unchecked who do not need further examination. This is not to delay the suspects, but to cause less trouble to the others. Here, however is where most of them get stopped."

He pointed to another doctor, standing close to the last, who examined the eyes quickly and deftly (principally for a chronic and contagious disease called "trachoma"), scrupulously cleansing fingers and instrument between each immigrant.

Passing the eye doctors the immigrants came to an inspector who stood at a place where a large grating was built midway in the passage, dividing it into two parts. All those who had been marked by any of the doctors, and, in the cases of families, all those in the party of any one so marked, passed up the right hand passage which led to the Special Inquiry; the others were guided to the left hand side of the grating, which led directly into the main primary inspection room.

"Do you suppose they understand anything of the meaning of that division," asked Hamilton, "why some go on this side and some on the other!"

"They don't at all," was the reply. "You will notice that there are no signs up, and that no attempt is made—at this point—to talk to the immigrant or to try to make him understand anything. Then, too, since all the members of a family or party are kept together, there is no reason why they should make a disturbance. They simply go where they are sent. If we separated the families, sending some on one side and some on the other, then there would be trouble!"

"That's true," said Hamilton, "in many cases they couldn't read the signs, and they don't know at all what the doctors' marks mean."

"Exactly, and once past the inspector, there is no getting out or coming back, for the two passages lead directly into two series of rooms from which there is no outlet except in a given direction."

"But the others who are all right,—where do they go?" asked the boy.

"They're not safe yet," his conductor answered "They have only passed a preliminary looking over. All that this first group of doctors does, remember, is to detect the questionable or to pass the obviously unquestionable—whichever way you like to put it, and thus avoid delay in the primary inspection room."

"Which group are we going to see first?"

"Those who have been passed," was the reply, "because most of them will go right out, and you can follow that more easily."

Going up the stairs, Hamilton found himself in an immense room all divided up into little lanes by bars and gratings. Each of these lanes bore a large number suspended over its entrance, corresponding to the number of one of the manifest sheets of the vessel, and likewise to the number pinned on the clothing of every immigrant while he was still on the vessel, when his name was tallied with the manifest sheet.

"I see the reason of those numbers they have pinned on them now," said Hamilton, "it's all the same principle, to avoid talk and questioning."

"Certainly," his friend said, "and if you look a little closely, you will see that in addition to the big number on the card that is pinned on, there is also a smaller number."

"I had noticed that," Hamilton answered, "and I was going to ask you what it was for."

"That is the number of the name on the manifest sheet," the other replied. "Thus, for example if Giordano Bruno is the tenth name on the seventh manifest sheet, this man at the top of the stairs will guide him into aisle number seven. Then, when his turn comes and he has moved up to the desk at the end of the line, the inspector doesn't have to waste time questioning him, and finding the place on the manifest sheet. He looks at the number, runs his finger down to the tenth name, and has him at once."

"It's a great system," said Hamilton admiringly.

"Why you're right at the start of it," said the official with a laugh; "wait till you get further on, if you want to find system."

"Here I see, too, the questioning begins," remarked Hamilton.

"Yes, some of the inspectors at the desk know several languages, and they are assisted by interpreters when necessary. They hold a responsible position, because they can decide to let an alien land. You see they ask the immigrant the same questions that are on the manifest sheet. If the answers tally all the way through, if the man understands and gives an apparently straight story, if he has a sufficiency of funds to keep him until he has a chance to get work, and especially if he has already a railroad ticket to friends at some inland point, he is given a blue ticket and allowed to pass directly through to the right into the railroad waiting rooms."

"But if he hasn't?"

"Then he goes down this passage which leads again to the special inquiry rooms where you saw the others going. He is given a different colored ticket, in accordance with the expected objection. You see, the inspector does not attempt to pass upon the merits of the case. He just affirms that the passenger has not made his title clear. Just as before, the aim is to enable the desirable immigrant to land as quickly and easily as possible. Supposing there were no crowd, an immigrant could land on the wharf, be looked over by the doctors, pass through the primary inspection, answer all questions, and be in the railroad waiting rooms ready for his train in less than four minutes. That's not much of a hardship!"

"It certainly isn't," Hamilton agreed. "And I notice that most of them seem entitled to land."

"That varies a great deal," his guide said. "I think it averages about ninety per cent. In a few ships, especially those handling little of the Continental traffic, those held for special inquiry drop as low as five per cent, while for the vessels bringing immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, the proportion held will rise to nearly one-third of the entire passenger list."

"All right," said Hamilton in a satisfied tone, "I guess I have that straight. But I notice there is a third stream of people. One, you say, is going to the railroad waiting rooms, one down to special inquiry, but how about the third?"

"That's the 'temporary detention' group. I'll take you there in a minute, but let us finish up with the man who is to be admitted. Here is the railroad waiting room."

A few feet further on Hamilton found an immense room, like a railroad ticket office, where tickets could be bought for any railroad or steamship route to any point in the United States or Canada. A money-changing booth was in the place, where foreign money could be turned into United States currency at the exact quotation for the day, even down to the fractions of a cent.

"Why are they pinning on more tickets?" asked Hamilton. "I thought when they took off the tickets upstairs that would be the end of it."

"That also is to make it easier for them," the other said. "Most of these people are poor, and we try to make traveling as cheap for them as possible. Nearly all the railroads run one train each day that carries special cars for the immigrant service. They give, accordingly, a cheaper rate to the government. Supposing, for example, that the regular number of the Lehigh Valley train was always numbered '9,' then every man who purchased a ticket for a point on the Lehigh Valley would be given the ticket '9.' Then, when the boat that was taking the passengers for Lehigh Valley points left Ellis Island, all the 9's would be gathered together and no one would be left behind."

"Nothing seems to have been forgotten," said Hamilton, "even food, for I see there's a big counter over there."

"That's quite a thing, too," the other said. "A man can get two days' food, six meals, for a dollar, or a little over sixteen cents a meal."

"And what in the wide world can he buy for that price?" exclaimed the boy.

"Here's a sample of the contents of one box," the other said; "read it, it tells you what there is. 'Four loaves of bread, two pounds of cooked beans, twelve ounces of sausage, one can of beef, one can of sardines, six ham sandwiches, three pies, and four oranges.' I'm sure you wouldn't starve on that."

"No," said Hamilton, "I think I could get along if I ate it all. But why is it that most of the immigrants here are men? Have the women been lost in the shuffle?"

The immigration official laughed.

"They're not lost," he said, "most of the women pass through the 'temporary detention' rooms. We're going to visit there now. Of course there are some women who will be able to take the train directly, but we try to see that they go with some one, or that their being met is assured. The tickets pinned on them are not given until an inspector has seen their railroad tickets, and they do not land in New York streets at all. A boat takes each group to the railroad pier, and they are escorted to the train by an inspector, who places them in charge of the conductor who is responsible for their arrival at their destination. Nearly all go West or South and start from the Jersey side. It is an entirely different matter with women and children who want to land in New York City. In every case they are detained until called for by some relative. And that relative has to prove to us that he really is the relative in question."

"How do they meet?"

"I'll show you right now. In this room," he continued, entering another large waiting room, "are all the people 'temporarily detained.' Most of them will he released shortly. If you listen you can hear just how it is done, because that clerk who has just come in has a list."

As he spoke a young fellow stepped forward and read a list of nine names. Seven of the nine were in the room and came to the front, the clerk ticking off their names on the sheet.

"Can we go on?" asked Hamilton. "I would like to see just how this works!"

"All right," responded his guide, smiling at the boy's eagerness, "go ahead."

As they reached the next room, Hamilton saw the clerk ushering the seven immigrants behind a grating. Outside the grate was a narrow open space and then a desk. On the farther side of the desk the friends of the seven in question were waiting. There was one lad, just about his own age, among the friends, and Hamilton waited curiously to see whom he was to meet. Among the immigrants was a sweet-faced old Frenchwoman, and Hamilton hoped that she might be the lad's relative. As it chanced, this boy was the first to come up.



"For whom are you calling?" he was asked.

The young lad answered clearly and promptly, and the clerk nodded approvingly as the questions proceeded.

"You say you have an older brother," the clerk said, "and the two of you are able to keep your grandmother?"

"Yes, indeed, sir," was the reply.

"You are young to have come. Why didn't your brother come instead?"

"He has been a waiter in a French hotel," answered the boy, "and has not learned much English He asked me to come."

A few short, sharp queries established the relationship without question and the boy was released from the desk. The door in the grating was opened, and to Hamilton's delight it was the old Frenchwoman who came out. After a most affectionate greeting, they went off together, the boy coming back to thank the clerk profusely, with true French courtesy.

"I suppose all that is necessary," said Hamilton "but I'll admit I don't see why. No one would be likely to call for some one else's grandmother!"

"We want to be sure that women who land here are really with their own people," said the official, evading a more direct statement, "and sometimes if the chief of the 'temporary detention' work is not satisfied, the immigrant is sent back to 'special inquiry.'"

"How long are they detained?"

"Nearly all go out the same day. A few, however, have to telegraph for their friends to meet them, and we look after that on their behalf. They are never temporarily detained over five days, except in the case where a child has been held in quarantine and some member of the family has to remain until the patient is released in order to take charge of him. That covers, you see, all those who come here except the 'special inquiry' cases."

"May I see those?" asked Hamilton.

"That's not so easy," his friend replied, "and you wouldn't get much out of it. They are handled, one by one, in Courts of Special Inquiry, each court consisting of three inspectors, an interpreter, and a stenographer, while doctors are always on call. Special Inquiry, remember, does not mean that there is any reason for excluding the immigrant, merely that his inclusion is not self-evident. In most cases, answers to a few questions settle all difficulties, and the decisions to exclude are rare. In doubtful cases, a Court of Special Inquiry takes great pains to investigate the whole condition closely. When a decision to exclude is reached, the immigrant is given an opportunity to 'appeal' to the Commissioner, and these appeals vary from fifteen to seventy a day. Further appeals may be taken in rare cases."

"And when all appeals are lost?"

"Then the immigrant must be deported at the expense of the steamship company that brought him."

"What are the usual grounds for deportation?" asked Hamilton.

"Principally persons of unsound mind, insane, diseased, paupers likely to become a public charge, criminals, anarchists, contract laborers, and those who by physical defect are unable to make a living."

"It seems to me that you go to a great deal of trouble here," Hamilton said, "and it must be a big expense keeping and looking after such a mob of people."

"We don't pay for their keep," the official answered; "we make the steamship companies do that. They are expected to bring desirable, not undesirable immigrants here, and if they bring people whom we cannot accept, they must take the consequences and bear the expense of deporting them. Our deporting division looks after that, and it is one of the hardest parts of our work. We've a pathetic case there now."

"You mean that Bridget Mahoney case," said an inspector, who had just stepped up. "I beg your pardon for interrupting, but I was just going to ask you to come and see about that case. There are some new developments."

"I'll go right in," said Hamilton's guide interestedly. "I think you might come along, too," he added, turning to the boy.

"Who is Bridget Mahoney?" Hamilton asked. "That's a good old Irish name."

"And she's a good old Irish soul," the other answered. "She landed here about three weeks ago, fully expecting her son to meet her, but during the five days when she was in temporary detention he failed to show up."

"But why didn't you telegraph to the son?" asked Hamilton, who was beginning to feel as though he knew all the ropes.

"We couldn't find his right address."

"Was he a traveling man?"

"It wasn't that. The woman said she knew he lived in a town called Johnson, or Johnston, or something like that, but she didn't know in what State. Now there are nearly forty post-offices with that name in America, and we sent telegrams or letters to every one of these. But we never received a definite reply."

"Well, if she's all right, as you say she is," said Hamilton, "why can't she land and wait until her son is reached?"

"Bridget's over seventy," the chief replied, "and not very strong; she'd be a public charge, sure."

"And yet she's all right?"

"Oh, perfectly," he said as soon as they reached the building.

"We got this telegram yesterday and I took it to your office this morning," the newcomer answered, "to talk it over with you, but you weren't there."

The chief of the Information Division glanced at the telegram and then turned it over to Hamilton.

"Read that," he said. "That's the way it came, without signature or anything."

Hamilton read it eagerly, and as soon as he had finished, "that's from Bridget Mahoney's son," he announced, with as absolute assurance as though it had been signed.

The deportation official looked up in surprise, but Hamilton's guide made a hasty explanatory introduction.

"We should like to be as sure as you are," said the deportation chief, "although I think we all rather hope it is from him. But you see it isn't dated Johnstown or anything like that, and it isn't signed. Just simply the words:

"'Don't—deport—my—old—mother.'"

"If you notice," he continued, "it comes from away out West, and it might apply to any one of thousands of cases. 'My Old Mother' might have been deported weeks ago."

"But this is yesterday's wire," Hamilton's friend interjected, "you said there were new developments in the case."

"There are," Farrell replied, drawing another telegram out of his pocket. "This one came this morning, and it's just about as intelligent as the one you have. Notice, though, that it's dated from Chicago early yesterday evening."

"What does it say?" burst out Hamilton, too eager to wait until it was read.

"It's very short," was the answer, "it just reads:

"'—Hold—Mother—'"

"Unsigned?"

"Unsigned, just as before."

"It must be from the same person," Hamilton suggested.

"I think there's little doubt of that," the deportation chief agreed.