It was a perfectly appointed, small steam laundry, wherein the most modern machinery did everything that was possible for machinery to do.  Martin, after a few instructions, sorted the great heaps of soiled clothes, while Joe started the masher and made up fresh supplies of soft-soap, compounded of biting chemicals that compelled him to swathe his mouth and nostrils and eyes in bath-towels till he resembled a mummy.  Finished the sorting, Martin lent a hand in wringing the clothes.  This was done by dumping them into a spinning receptacle that went at a rate of a few thousand revolutions a minute, tearing the matter from the clothes by centrifugal force.  Then Martin began to alternate between the dryer and the wringer, between times “shaking out” socks and stockings.  By the afternoon, one feeding and one, stacking up, they were running socks and stockings through the mangle while the irons were heating.  Then it was hot irons and underclothes till six o’clock, at which time Joe shook his head dubiously.

“Way behind,” he said.  “Got to work after supper.”  And after supper they worked until ten o’clock, under the blazing electric lights, until the last piece of under-clothing was ironed and folded away in the distributing room.  It was a hot California night, and though the windows were thrown wide, the room, with its red-hot ironing-stove, was a furnace.  Martin and Joe, down to undershirts, bare armed, sweated and panted for air.

“Like trimming cargo in the tropics,” Martin said, when they went upstairs.

“You’ll do,” Joe answered.  “You take hold like a good fellow.  If you keep up the pace, you’ll be on thirty dollars only one month.  The second month you’ll be gettin’ your forty.  But don’t tell me you never ironed before.  I know better.”

“Never ironed a rag in my life, honestly, until to-day,” Martin protested.

He was surprised at his weariness when he act into his room, forgetful of the fact that he had been on his feet and working without let up for fourteen hours.  He set the alarm clock at six, and measured back five hours to one o’clock.  He could read until then.  Slipping off his shoes, to ease his swollen feet, he sat down at the table with his books.  He opened Fiske, where he had left off to read.  But he found trouble began to read it through a second time.  Then he awoke, in pain from his stiffened muscles and chilled by the mountain wind that had begun to blow in through the window.  He looked at the clock.  It marked two.  He had been asleep four hours.  He pulled off his clothes and crawled into bed, where he was asleep the moment after his head touched the pillow.