Into this important commercial region the timid Carrie went. Shewalked east along Van Buren Street through a region of lesseningimportance, until it deteriorated into a mass of shanties andcoal-yards, and finally verged upon the river. She walkedbravely forward, led by an honest desire to find employment anddelayed at every step by the interest of the unfolding scene, anda sense of helplessness amid so much evidence of power and forcewhich she did not understand. These vast buildings, what werethey? These strange energies and huge interests, for whatpurposes were they there? She could have understood the meaningof a little stone-cutter's yard at Columbia City, carving littlepieces of marble for individual use, but when the yards of somehuge stone corporation came into view, filled with spur tracksand flat cars, transpierced by docks from the river and traversedoverhead by immense trundling cranes of wood and steel, it lostall significance in her little world.…