Page:Our Girls.pdf/29

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AT WOOLWICH
21

(or, indeed, any machinery more formidable than a sewing-machine), that for a moment, as you stand at the entrance, the sight is scarcely believable. But you go in and move around and after a while the astonishing fact seems perfectly natural. Although most of the machines in this shop are small, some are large and a few are alarming. Here is a slip of a girl working one of the latter kind, a huge thing that has two large wheels like mill-wheels revolving at either side of her, and though she looks like a child in the jaws of some great black monster, she does not seem to be the least afraid. Here is another young girl who is feeding a round disc with bits of metal that look like discoloured farthings, and as her own particular Caliban eats them up it utters from its interior a hoarse grunt that hits you like a blow on the brain, yet she does not seem to hear.

But most of the work done by the women looks simple enough, and seems perfectly natural to their sex, although it has always