NIGHT VISIT TO GUNTHORPES CENTRAL FACTORY 71 



details of our immediate surroundings. We are now 

 driving along a road that is bordered by dignified- 

 looking wooden houses ; these are the headquarters 

 of the manager, chief engineer, overseers, and chemist 

 at the Gunthorpes Factory. At the manager's house 

 we alight, and are welcomed by its hospitable host and 

 hostess, under whose escort we walk over towards the 

 goal of our expedition. 



Passing through wide entrance gates, we find our- 

 selves in the extensive grounds known as the mill- 

 yard. We approach the works through an avenue of 

 palms, which threads its way through a garden 

 beautiful. In tones of warmest enthusiasm, the 

 manager tells us about the capabilities, the possibilities 

 of the works, their excellent sanitary arrangements, 

 their well-devised accommodation for the workpeople, 

 and he constantly goes off at a tangent into an equally 

 enthusiastic sketch of plans for making the site still 

 more pleasing to the eye ; the more we hear about Gun- 

 thorpes, the more we see of it, the more strongly we 

 are convinced that it is justly entitled to rank as a 

 Model Factory. 



We are taken first to the office, the gallery of which 

 commands a wide view of the mill-yard. Facing us 

 is the actual factory, and all aroimd sweeps a busy 

 railway station. What a rival collection of lights 

 reveals the scene — there is electric light streaming 

 through the factory windows in company with the 

 scorching glow of red-hot furnaces ; there is electric 

 light flashing through the mill-yard from gigantic 

 lamps ; there are signal lights and sentinel hghts along 

 the railway line, gradually being dwarfed and dimmed 

 by distance until they look like tiny fireflies in the 



