Page:The Working and Management of an English Railway.djvu/162

 Before leaving the works we must pay a visit to the laundry, where some half-dozen women are engaged in washing the linen and towels used in the saloon carriages, all of which are sent to Wolverton daily to be washed, in exchange for a clean supply, about 4,500 articles being thus dealt with every week. Most of the work is done by steam, supplied by a small vertical boiler, the linen being dried in a hot closet, and very scrupulously aired before being sent away, so that passengers never need have before their eyes the fear of damp sheets, in the sleeping saloons.

It is a somewhat interesting sight to watch the operation of paying the large number of men engaged in these works; and the method employed to facilitate the task, and avoid mistakes or disputes, is not without ingenuity. The whole of the men employed are numbered consecutively from one upwards, and at pay-time they arrange themselves in numerical order in a large yard, so as to form a queue, and pass the pay-window in single file. Each man, as he passes the window, hands in his pay check, and receives in return a tin box stamped with his number, and containing his wages. At the end of the passage is a receptacle, into which he throws the empty box, this being considered his receipt for the money; since any question as to the correctness of the amount must be raised before he parts with the box. The money is, of course, counted out and placed in the boxes beforehand, and so simple is the process, and so expert are the clerks employed, that the whole of the men, upwards of 2,000 in number, are paid and the business is at an end in less than half-an-hour.

The physical and moral welfare of the men are not lost sight of, but are promoted in many ways. There is,