[Illustration—­Black and White Plate:  Girls’ Dining Hall, Bournville.]

Before proceeding to study the manufacture of cocoa essence and chocolate from the bean as it is imported, it will be interesting to see the careful provision that is made for the health and cleanliness of the workers, for in connection with any food nothing is of greater importance than the circumstances attending its preparation.  A gratuitous sick club is provided by the firm for the employees, including the services of a doctor and three trained nurses.  A special retiring room, comfortably furnished, is provided for girls needing a quiet hour’s rest.

We are taken into the girls’ dining-hall, capable of seating over two thousand at a time, fitted with benches, the backs of which are convertible into table tops.  The far end of the dining-hall leads into the huge kitchen, to which the girls can bring their own dinners to be cooked, or where they can buy a large variety of things at coffee-house prices.  Here again the health of the workers is carefully studied.  Fruit is made a speciality, an experienced buyer being employed to insure its better supply.  A private dining-room is provided for the forewomen.

Returning to the dining-hall, we descend a flight of steps into the spacious dressing-rooms, with vistas of wooden screens, filled on each side with numbered hooks.  Here every morning the thousands of girls not only divest themselves of their outer garments, but change their dresses for washing frocks of white holland.  The material for these is provided by the firm, free for the first, and afterwards at less than cost price, and the girls are required to start work in a clean frock every Monday morning.  It will be seen at once how this helps them to keep neat and respectable; their strong white washing frocks only being soiled by their work, after which they change back into their own unstained clothes, and turn out looking as great a contrast to the usually pictured type of factory girl as can be imagined.  The forewomen also conform to this arrangement, but wear washing dresses of blue cotton to distinguish them from the girls.  Round the walls of this vast dressing-room hot-water pipes are placed, and over these are shelves where on a rainy day wet boots can be deposited to dry.  Specially thoughtful is the provision of rubber snow-shoes, imported from America for their use, and supplied under cost price.  Beneath each stool, too, is a shelf for heavy boots, which can be replaced in the factory by slippers.

[Illustration—­Drawing:  BOOT-SHELF ON STOOL.]