When I was in seventh grade, we took a field trip from our small southern Maine town to Lowell, Massachusetts to learn about the working conditions of early 19th Century textile mills. It was awful.
They packed us into a sweltering old factory, windows nailed shut to trap the heat. Our tour guide pulled a lever to activate just half the antique machines around us, assaulting our eardrums with a deafening racket. It lasted only a few seconds before he switched them off and, smirking, invited us to imagine working in an environment twice as ear-splitting for 12 hours straight.
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