Credit by Clark W. Bryan

Pausing momentarily on the midway staircase-landing, which
has prominent place between the second and third stories of the
Bradstreet establishment at 279, 281 and 283 Broadway, New York,
an undefined sensation, which attains almost to inspiration, comes to
the hand that traces these lines as the eye falls upon the army of
busy workers below—an inspiration creating an intense desire to
learn, if possible, what battle of life that army is engaged in fighting
so earnestly—whether the cause in which its daily engagements are
being made is a just or an unjust, a noble or an ignoble, one; whether
engendered in generous or selfish-minded motives, and also whether
the day is being lost or won by the serried ranks of men and women
there drawn up in battle array.