CIGARETTES IN SPAIN. The Row of Babies' Cradles in a Tobacco Factory.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 207, 18 June 1887, Page 3

CIGARETTES IN SPAIN. The Row of Babies' Cradles in a Tobacco Factory.

When you enter the endrmous rooms, crowded with girls dressed in bright colours, the coup d'ceil is striking in the extreme. In one immense, low-vaulted room there are 1,500 girls. They sit in endless rows, about twenty girls to the row on either side of the room, all at little tables, all rolling cigarettes. There is a blaze and a blur of colour, a babel of tongues. Every girl has a gay handkerchief about her neck, every girl has a bright flower stuck in her ham All along the walls hang the gay outdoor dresses of ftie little cigarette makers. As I walk, blushing and nervous, down an endless avenue of flashing eyes, I grow almost giddy. I* is sea of flower-heads. One has to pick one's way carefully down the central avenue, for it is blocked all along the line with cradles. The married cigarette-makers are allowed to bring their babies with them to the factory. They rock the cradle with one foot while their busy fingers roll the cigarettes. " Silence !" is called by the forewoman as the visitor passes down the line, but there is a " thut-chut " every second from some dark-eyed wench who points to a cradle and holds out hand. It is the habit of visitors to bestow occasional coppers on the babies, and so all the young mothers are on the alert for the visitor's charity. The girls earn good wages. At many of the tables whole families are working together. But the hourt are long, and the atmosphere awful. The damp, warm odour of the tobacco in the long, low-roofed rooms is in itself stupefying. But there is no ventilation, and the atmosphere is absolutely indescribable. Many of the girls smoke cigarettes at their work. I was very glad to light one myself long before I had done the round of the factory.

" Lost time," said the pastor solemnly, "is lost for ever. " "So is anything else that you lose," said the new boy from Bitter Creek. " Oh, no," replied the pastor. " You may lose anything else and find it again." "Thent'ain't lost," said the new boy, and somehow the minister didn't just exactly know how tfl go on with the conversation. And yefc he had been warned against that very boy.