In the factory is a rattling and clacking of apparatus;
Bobbins are gliding back and forth; spools wound with colored silks, woolen or cotton
Whirl to deliver the thread; the fabric grows as by magic.
Machines with almost human intelligence shift the combinations;
Marvellous patterns are followed — flowers and symmetrical designs.
Colors, such as the Greeks never imagined could be transferred from the sunset,
Are woven into the costly rolls and splendidly blended.
Weary-eyed children kept alert by fear tend the tireless machines;
They deftly tie the broken thread, replace the empty spools on the instant.

A vast manufactory of watches turns out a million a year,
With specially-individualized machinery to manipulate, to create.
Ribbons of steel run through cylinders and come forth microscopic screws,
Cut and chipped and grooved and polished and ready for service;
Plates of solid nickel are seized by miraculous arms and shaped;
Dials of every size are cooked and enamelled or painted;
Delicate hair-springs are poised and carefully tested;
Jewels are sorted and bored for pinions; hands are put into place,
And the watch goes forth so perfect as scarcely to vary a second,
To count the pulse of the dying by, to start the train for its journey,
To measure the speed of the trotting stallions on the crowded race-course
When a thousand wagers depend on the accurate instant,
Or for the eager yachts to start on their dash for an international prize.
Here is the vast spreading foundry of the Steel Trust,
Where thousands of brawny men are day and night in relays
Engaged in puddling the great rough bars of crude iron,
Turning it into steel by some miraculous process,
To be cast into myriad forms, — thick armor plates for warships,
For fire-vomiting guns to salute or destroy with,
Framework of buildings to rise forty stories above the street-pavement,
Straight heavy rails for continent-girdling roads,
Or huge polished shafts for the propellers of ocean-racing liners.
The white metal, glowing like the incandescent surface of the sun,
Pours into the moulds, lighting the dark rafters with an unearthly glow,
Threatening to burn the hurrying workmen into cinders.
There is a rumble and deafening clangor of mighty hammers;
A roar, as if a volcano had emptied its fiery lava into the ocean.
Far below into the furnaces, conjuring steam, the soot-dingied stokers
Incessantly shovel the anthracite or the crumbling heaps of bituminous coal;
The grimy sweat pours from their foreheads, but the fires must not cease devouring.

The engines are going at full speed; the engineer walks up and down
With his long-nosed oil-can; he watches each motion,
Studies the pressure-gauge, turns a screw, eases a tension;
Wheels revolve noiselessly;
The dynamo snaps with green sparks; the electric bulbs glow.

As the great siren with its sonorous chromatic finale,
Or the full choir of multitudinous whistles like a vast organ
With all its stops playing with powerful bellows,
Or the clanging bell in the cupola high above the factory sounds at noon,
Suddenly the machinery ceases; the hands pour out for the rest-hour;
At early morning, likewise at the closing-time, the streets
Fill with a human tide; there is laughter and chatter;
Young men seek the maidens; in pairs they linger behind;
Hands are blissfully claspt; men unhappily wedded,
Dreading the termagant tongue at home, drift to the gaudy saloons;
There with foaming stein, with elbows leaning on the bright brass railing,
Cronies gossip and relate broad stories; the laugh goes round.

Thus every day, year in, year out, the picture repeats itself;
Faces may change as the old drop away, but new take their places.