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diff --git a/38932.txt b/38932.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..654e5dc --- /dev/null +++ b/38932.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5044 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Steel, by Charles Rumford Walker + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Steel + The Diary of a Furnace Worker + +Author: Charles Rumford Walker + +Release Date: February 19, 2012 [EBook #38932] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STEEL *** + + + + +Produced by Odessa Paige Turner, Martin Pettit and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net +(This book was produced from scanned images of public +domain material from the Google Print project.) + + + + + + +STEEL + +The Diary of a Furnace Worker + +_By_ + +CHARLES RUMFORD WALKER + +[Illustration: Logo] + +THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS +BOSTON + + +_Copyright, 1922, by_ CHARLES RUMFORD WALKER + +PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA + + + + +Foreword + + +In the summer of 1919, a few weeks before the Great Steel Strike, I +bought some second-hand clothes and went to work on an open-hearth +furnace near Pittsburgh to learn the steel business. I was a graduate of +Yale, and a few weeks before had resigned a commission as +first-lieutenant in the regular army. Clean-up man in the pit was my +first job, which I held until I passed to third-helper on the +open-hearth. Later I worked in the cast-house, became a member of the +stove-gang, and at length achieved the semi-skilled job of hot-blast man +on the blast-furnace. I acquired the current Anglo-Hunky language and +knew speedily the grind and the camaraderie of American steel-making. In +these chapters I have put down what I saw, felt, and thought as a +steel-worker in 1919. + +Steel is perhaps the basic industry of America. In a sense it is the +industry that props our complex industrial civilization, since it +supplies the steel frame, the steel rail, the steel tool without which +locomotives and skyscrapers would be impossible. And in America it +contains the largest known combination of management and capital, the +United States Steel Corporation. Some appreciation of these things I had +when I went to work in the steel business. It was clear that steel had +become something of a barometer not only for American business but for +American labor. I was keenly interested to know what would happen, and +believed that basic industries like steel and coal were cast for leading +roles either in the breaking-up or the making-over of society. + +The book is written from a diary of notes put down in the evenings when +I was working on day shifts of ten hours. Alternate weeks, I worked the +fourteen-hour night shift, and spent my time off eating or asleep. + +The book is a narrative--heat, fatigue, rough-house, pay, as they came +in an uncharted wave throughout the twenty-four hours. + +But it is in a sense raw material, I believe, that suggests the +beginnings of several studies both human and economic. Mr. Walter +Lippmann has recently pointed out that men do not act in accordance with +the facts and forces of the world as it is, but in accordance with the +"picture" of it they have in their heads.[1] Nowhere does the form and +pressure of the real world differ more sharply from the picture in men's +heads than among different social and racial groups in industry. Nor is +anywhere the accuracy of the picture of more importance. An open-hearth +furnace helper, working the twelve-hour day, and a Boston broker, owning +fifty shares of Steel Preferred, hold, as a rule, strikingly different +pictures of the same forces and conditions. But what is of greater +importance is that director, manager, foreman, by reason of training, +interest, or tradition, are often quite as unable to guess at the +picture in the worker's head, and hence to understand his actions, as +the more distant stockholder. + +Perhaps a technique may some day arise which will supply the executives +of industry not only with the facts about employees in their varied +racial and social groups but supply the facts with _due emphasis_ and in +_three dimensions_ so that the controller of power may be able to see +them as descriptive of men of like mind with himself. The conclusion +most burned into my consciousness was the lack of such knowledge or +understanding in the steel industry and the imperative need of securing +it, in order to escape continual industrial war, and perhaps disaster. + +There are certain inferences, I think, like the above, that can be made +from this record. But no thesis has been introduced and no argument +developed. I have recorded the impressions of a complex environment, +putting into words sight, sound, feeling, and thought. The book may be +read as a story of men and machines and a personal adventure among them +no less than as a study of conditions and a system. + +C. R. W. + +FOOTNOTE: + +[1] _Public Opinion_: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1922. + + + + +Contents + + + I CAMP EUSTIS + Bouton, Pennsylvania 1 + + II MOLTEN STEEL IN THE "PIT" + An Initiation 16 + + III THE OPEN-HEARTH FURNACE + Night-Shifts 30 + + IV EVERYDAY LIFE 45 + + V WORKING THE TWENTY-FOUR-HOUR SHIFT 62 + + VI BLAST-FURNACE APPRENTICESHIP 81 + + VII DUST, HEAT, AND COMRADESHIP 96 + +VIII I TAKE A DAY OFF 114 + + IX "NO CAN LIVE" 127 + + EPILOGUE 141 + + + + +STEEL + + + + +I + +CAMP EUSTIS--BOUTON, PENNSYLVANIA + + +A small torrent of khaki swept on to the ferryboat that was taking +troops to the special train for Camp Merritt. They stood all over her +deck, in uncomfortably small areas; there seemed to be no room for the +pack, which perhaps you were expected to swallow. Faces were a little +pale from seasickness, but carried a uniformly radiant expression, which +proceeded from a lively anticipation of civilian happiness. The +conversation was ejaculatory, and included slapping and digging and +squeezing your neighbor. Men were saying over and over again: "This is +about the last li'l war they'll ketch me for." + +I succeeded in getting beside the civilian pilot. + +"What's happening in America?" I asked. + +"Oh," he said, "it's a mess over here. There ain't any jobs, and labor +is raisin' hell. Everybody that hez a job strikes." He looked out over +the water at a tug hurrying past. "I don't know what we're comin' out +at. Russia, mebbe." + + +In the spring of the year Camp Eustis was an island of concrete roads +and wooden barracks salvaged from an encroaching sea of mud. Its site +had been selected at an immense distance from any village, or even any +collection of human dwellings, for particular reasons. It was to contain +the longest artillery range in the United States. + +After wallowing in bog road through Virginian forest, one came with a +shock of relief to a wide, raised, concrete roadbed, which passed newly +built warehouses and, after an eighth of a mile, curved into the centre +of the camp. + +It was like any one of the score of mushroom military centres that grew +up on American soil in the years from 1917 to 1919, except that there +was an unusual abundance of heavy guns. They covered field upon field, +opposite the ordnance warehouses, and their yellow and green camouflage +looked absurdly showy in the spring sunshine. Mornings, there was apt to +be a captive balloon or two afloat from the balloon school, against blue +sky and white clouds; and the landscape held several gaunt observation +towers, constructed of steel girders and rising from the forest to a +height of seventy-five or eighty feet. + +The camp was crowded with returning overseas units, awaiting +demobilization and praying earnestly for it day by day, as men pray for +pardon. + +In a few weeks I should be out of this, going to work somewhere, wearing +cits. What a variety of moods the world had split into, from the +enormous tension that relaxed on the eleventh of November. +Geographically the training-camp was two thousand miles from the +devastations of Europe; and from the new forces that were destroying or +renewing civilization, how many more? It seemed like the aftermath of an +exciting play that had just been acted; waiting here was like staying +to put away properties, and dismiss the actors. It occurred to me that +the camp was at least ten thousand miles from America. + +There was one consolation in this interminable lingering amid the spring +muds and rains of Virginia. Duties were light, and there were a hundred +and fifty cavalry horses in the stables, needing exercise. Sometimes we +went out on the drill-ground and were taught tricks by an old cavalry +officer; or hurdles were set up and we practised jumping our horses. The +roads were deeply gutted by spring rains and the pressure of heavy +trucks, but there were wood-trails good to explore, and interesting +objectives like Williamstown or Yorktown. I fell into doing my thinking +in the saddle. + +Naturally I wondered about my new job--my civilian job. It was not just +an ordinary change from one breadwinning place to another. It was a new +job in a world never convertible quite to the one that had kindled the +war. It was impossible not to feel that the civilized structure had +shaken and disintegrated a bit, or to escape the sense of great powers +released. I was unable to decide whether the powers were cast for a role +of great destruction or of great renewal. + +Even in Eustis we received newspapers. The urge and groan of those +powers naturally worked into phrases now and then, and even into special +tightly worded formulae. I remember newspaper ejaculations, professorial +dissertations, orators' exaggerations: "Capital and labor--Labor in its +place--The proletariat--A new order"--and so forth. I felt confused and +distrustful in the face of phrases and of the implied doctrines, old and +new. + +Besides the business of demobilizing the national army, the remaining +regular officers and non-coms went into the school of fire, and +practised observation of shots over a beautiful relief map of the +"Chemin-des-Dames." This was the most warlike thing we did and continued +for several months. + + +One day I took a walk beside the ordnance warehouses, and looked over at +the rows of guns stretching for a quarter of a mile beside railroad +tracks. In a short time I would be turning my back on these complicated +engines. I was even sorry about it, a little; I had spent so much sweat +and brain learning about their crankinesses. + +In that civil life to follow, I began to see that I wanted two things: +1, a job to give me a living; 2, a chance to discover and build under +the new social and economic conditions. + +I was twenty-five, a college graduate, a first-lieutenant in the army. +In the civilian world into which I was about to jump, most of my +connections were with the university I had recently left, few or none in +the business world. Why not enlist, then, in one of the basic +industries, coal, oil, or steel? I liked steel--it was the basic +American industry, and technically and economically it interested me. +Why not enlist in steel? Get a laborer's job? Learn the business? And, +besides, the chemical forces of change, I meditated, were at work at the +_bottom_ of society-- + +The next day I sent in the resignation of my commission in the regular +army of the United States. + + +Outside the car window, ore piles were visible, black stacks and sooty +sheet-iron mills, coal dumps and jagged cuts in the hills against +greenness and the meadows and mountains beyond. There were farms, here +and there, but they seemed to have been let in by sufferance amid the +primary apparatus of the steel-makers. + +What an amazingly primary thing steel had become in the civilization we +called modern! Steel was the basic industry of America; but, more than +that, it was, in a sense, the buttress, the essential frame, rather, of +present-day life. It made rails, surgical instruments, the girders of +skyscrapers, the tools which cut, bored, and filed all the other tools +that made, in their turn, the material basis of our living. It was +interesting to think that it contained America's biggest "trust," the +greatest example of integration, of financial, of managerial +combination, anywhere to be found. Steel was critical in America's +future, wasn't it--critical for business, critical for labor? + +I met a salesman on the train, who was about to go into business for +himself. "I intend to start out on a new tack," he said. + +He told me briefly his life-story, and how things were forcing him to +start a new enterprise, alone. He was very much excited by the idea. He +was going to quit his employer, having been with him twenty-nine years. + +"I'm getting a new job myself," I said; "I've just got out of the +army." + +We both fell into silence, and thought of our own separate futures. + +What were a young man's chances in American business to-day? I thought +of a book I had just been reading called, "The Age of Big Business." In +it was the story of the first captains who saw a vision of immense +material development, and with the utmost vigor and hardihood pushed on +and marked the leading trails. But apparently the affair had been too +roughly done, the structure too crudely wrought: machinery jarred, +broke, threatened to bring life down in a rusty heap. "No, you are +wrong," I fancied the business leader saying; "it is the agitator who, +by dwelling on imaginary ills, has stirred up the masses of mankind." + +I gazed out of the window at the black mills as we passed them. I was +about to learn the steel business. I knew perfectly well that the men +who built this basic structure were as hardy and intelligent--no less +and no more so, I hazarded--as this new generation of mine. But the +job--difficult technical job though it was--appeared too simple in their +eyes. "Build up business, and society will take care of itself," they +had said. A partial breakdown, a partial revolution had resulted. +Perhaps a thoroughgoing revolution threatened. I didn't know. + +I knew there was no "solution." There was nothing so neat as that for +this multiform condition. But an _adjustment_, a _working arrangement_ +would be found out, somehow, by my generation. I expected to discover +no specific--no formula with ribbons--after working at the bottom of the +mill. I did expect to learn something of the practical technique of +making steel, and alongside it,--despite, or perhaps because of, an +outsider's fresh vision,--some sense of the forces getting ready at the +bottom of things to make or break society. Both kinds of education were +certainly up to my generation. + +The train jarred under its brakes, and began to slow down. + +"Good luck," I said to the salesman; "I hope you make it all right." + +"Good luck," he said. + +The train stopped and I found the Bouton station, small and neatly +built, of a gray stone, with deeply overhanging roof and Gothicized +windows. It seemed unrelated to the rest of the steel community. On the +right, across tracks, loomed a dark gathering of stacks arising from +irregular acres of sheet-iron roofs. Smoke-columns of various texture, +some colored gold from an interior light, streaked the sky immediately +above the mill stacks. The town spread itself along a valley and on the +sides of encircling hills on my left. In the foreground was Main Street, +with stores and restaurants and a fruit-seller. I went across the street +to explore for breakfast. + + +"Can I look at the job?" I asked. + +"Sure," he said, "you can look at the job." + +I walked out of the square, brick office of the open-hearth foreman, +and lost my way in a maze of railroad tracks, trestles, and small brick +shanties, at last pushing inside a blackened sheet-iron shell, the mill. +I entered by the side, following fierce white lights shining from the +half-twilight interior. They seemed immensely brighter than the warm sun +in the heavens. + +I was first conscious of the blaring mouths of furnaces. There were five +of them, and men with shovels in line, marching within a yard, hurling a +white gravel down red throats. Two of the men were stripped, and their +backs were shiny in the red flare. I tried to feel perfectly at home, +but discovered a deep consciousness of being overdressed. My straw hat I +could have hurled into a ladle of steel. + +Some one yelled, "Watch yourself!" and I looked up, with some horror, to +note half the mill moving slowly but resolutely onward, bent on my +annihilation. I was mistaken. It was the charging-machine, rattling and +grinding past furnace No. 7. + +The machine is a monster, some forty feet from head to rear, stretching +nearly the width of the central open space in the mill. The tracks on +which it proceeds go the whole length, in front of all the furnaces. I +dodged it, or rather ran from it, toward what appeared open water, but +found there more tracks for stumbling. An annoyed whistle lifted itself +against the general background of noise. I looked over my shoulder. It +relieved me to find a mere locomotive. I knew how to cope with +locomotives. It was coming at me leisurely, so I gave it an interested +inspection before leaving the track. It dragged a cauldron of +exaggerated proportions on a car fitted to hold it easily. A dull glow +showed from inside, and a swirl of sparks and smoke shot up and lost +themselves among girders. + +The annoyed whistle recurred. By now the charging affair had lumbered +past, was still threatening noisily, but was two furnaces below. I +stepped back into the central spaces of the mill. + +The foreman had told me to see the melter, Peter Grayson. I asked a +short Italian, with a blazing face and weeping eyes, where the melter +was. + +He stared hostilely at me. + +"Pete Grayson," I said. + +"Oh, Pete," he returned; "there!" + +I followed his eyes past a pile of coal, along a pipe, up to Pete. He +was a Russian, of Atlas build, bent, vast-shouldered, a square head like +a box. He was lounging slowly toward me with short steps. Coming into +the furnace light, I could see he was an old man with white hair under +his cap, and a wooden face which, I was certain, kept a uniform +expression in all weathers. + +"What does a third-helper do?" I asked when he came alongside. + +Pete spat and turned away, as if the question disgusted him profoundly. +But I noticed in a moment that he was giving the matter thought. + +We waited two minutes. Finally he said, looking at me, "Why a +third-helper has got a hell of a lot to do." + +He seemed to regard this quantitative answer as entirely satisfying. + +"I know," I said, "but _what_ in hell does he do?" + +He again looked at the floor, considered, and spat. "He works around +the furnace," he said. + +I saw that I should have to accept this as a prospectus. So I began +negotiations. "I want a job," I said. "I come from Mr. Towers. Have you +got anything now?" + +He looked away again and said, "They want a man on the night-shift. Can +you come at five?" + +My heart leaped a bit at "the night-shift." I thought over the +hours-schedule the employment manager had rehearsed: "Five to seven, +fourteen hours, on the night-week." + +"Yes," I said. + +We had just about concluded this verbal contract, when a chorus of +"Heows" hit our eardrums. Men make such a sound in a queer, startling, +warning way, difficult to describe. I looked around for the charging +machine, or locomotive, but neither was in range. + +"What are they 'Heowing' about?" I thought violently to myself. + +But Pete had already grabbed my arm with a hand like a crane-hook. "Want +to watch y'self," he said; "get hurt." + +I saw what it was, now: the overhead crane, about to carry over our +heads a couple of tons of coal in a huge swaying box. + +I looked around a little more before I left, trying to organize some +meaning into the operations I observed; trying to wonder how it would be +to take a shovel and hurl that white gravel into those red throats. I +said to myself: "Hell! I guess I can handle it," and thought strongly +on the worst things I had known in the army. + +As I stood, a locomotive entered the mill from the other end, and went +down the track before the furnaces. It was dragging flat-cars, with iron +boxes laid crosswise on them, as big as coffins. I went over and looked +carefully at the train load, and at one or two of the boxes. They were +filled with irregular shapes of iron, wire coils, bars, weights, sheets, +fragments of machines, in short--scrap. + +"This is what they eat," I thought, glancing at the glowing doors; "I +wonder how many tons a day." I waited till the locomotive came to a +shaken stop in front of the middle furnace, then left the mill by the +tracks along which it had entered. + +I followed them out and along a short bridge. A little way to my right +was solid ground--the yards, where I had been. Back of Mr. Towers's +little office were more mills. I picked out the power house--half a city +block. Behind them all were five cone-shaped towers, against the sky, +and a little smoke curling over the top--the blast-furnaces. Behind me +the Bessemer furnace threw off a cloud of fire that had changed while I +was in the mill from brown to brownish gold. In front, and to my left, +the tracks ran on the edge of a sloping embankment that fell away +quickly to a lower level. Fifty yards from the base was the +blooming-mill, where the metal was being rolled into great oblong shapes +called "blooms." A vague red glow came out of its interior twilights. + +Down through the railroad ties on which I walked was open space, twenty +feet below. Two workmen were coming out with dinner-buckets. It must be +nearly twelve. I had a curiosity to know the arrangement and workings of +the dark mill-cellar from which they came. + +Turning back on the open-hearth mill, when I had crossed the bridge, I +could see that it extended itself, in a sort of gigantic lean-to +shelter, over what the melter had called the "pit." There was a crane +moving about there, and more centres of light, which I took to be molten +steel. I wondered about that area, too, and what sort of work the men +did. + +When I reached the end of the track, I thought to myself: "I go to work +at five o'clock. How about clothes?" + +No one in the mill wore overalls, except carpenters and millwrights, and +so on. The helpers on the furnaces were clad in shapeless, baggy, gray +affairs for trousers, and shirts were blue or gray, with a rare khaki. +Hats were either degraded felts, or those black-visor effects--like +locomotive engineers. + +The twelve-o'clock whistle blew. A few men had been moving toward the +gate slowly for minutes. The whistle sent them at top walking-speed. I +stared at them to assure myself as to the correct dress for steel +makers. + + +Main Street began at the tracks, and ran straight through the town, +mounting the hills as it went. At the railroad end was the Hotel Bouton, +where I had breakfasted. Beside it was an Italian fruit store sprawling +leisurely over the sidewalk, and a Greek restaurant, one of four. The +Greeks monopolized the feeding of Bouton. A block farther, on the right, +I ran into a clothing-store, a barber-shop, and two rudimentary +department stores. Then, on the same side, a finished city block, +looking queer and haughty amid its village companions. + +"What's that?" I asked a strolling, raw-boned Slav. + +"Comp'ny store," he said. + +I passed a one-story movie "palace," almost concealed behind chromatic +advertising, and then the street twisted and I entered the "American +quarter." Half a mile of neat, slightly varying brick houses, with lawns +fifteen by twenty, and children in such quantity as seriously to menace +automobiles. + +I looked at the numbers with growing interest, to discover in which I +should go to bed to-morrow morning at 7.30. The employment manager had +given me the number 343 to try. Here it was, on the right, quite like +the others, and, I guessed, about twenty minutes from the mill. +Calculation of the rising-times for future night-shifts came into my +mind. + +I was shown the back room on the second floor--a very good room, with a +big bed, and two windows. + +"You can see our garden," said Mrs. Farrell standing at one of the +windows. + +I looked out and found the most intensively cultivated twenty-foot plot +I had ever seen or imagined. Behind was the back road and a mud cliff. +The room seemed a little extravagant for a third-helper, but I took it, +in order to have a place for the night, and contracted to pay four +dollars a week. + + +I walked through a street where the prices of clothing were moderate, +but where there seemed a dearth of second-hand shops. In one store were +green suits, belted, and hung on forms. They had the close-fitting +waist, and were marked, "Style Plus Garments: Our Special Price, +$15.00." The proprietor, who stood in the doorway, to be handy for +collaring the prospective customer, rushed out at me, hands threatening. +He was of the prevailing racial type. + +"Fix you up wid a dandy suit," he said. + +"What I am looking for," I said, "is something second-hand. Do you have +any?" I shot this out partly as a check. + +"Old man upstairs, fix you up. That door." + +I went through that door and up two flights, to a room containing an old +man, a sewing machine, and a large table covered with old clothing. + +"I'm looking for something for working-clothes," I said; "second-hand +coat and pants." + +He lifted a number from the tangled mass of garments, and displayed +them. They appeared to me too clean, too new, too dressy. + +"No," I said, "not that." + +He searched again and came up with a highly respectable blue coat, with +a mere raveling on one sleeve. + +"No," I said, "I'll find one." + +I fished very deeply, and caught some green pants, evidently "old" and +spattered with white paint on the knees. He hastened to point out the +white paint. + +I tried to explain that I liked a little white paint on my clothes, but +saw I was unconvincing. I finally bought the suit with a sort of +violence for two dollars, and left with a sense of fortunate escape. + +Now for a hat. Two blocks down the street I found one, somewhat soiled +and misshapen. + +"I'll take that," I said. + +The clerk lifted it, and, when I was fumbling for money, brushed off a +vast portion of the dirt, and reshaped it into smooth, luxuriant curves. +But still I bought the hat. + +"At any rate," I thought, "I can restore the thing." + + + + +II + +MOLTEN STEEL--AN INITIATION + + +At four o'clock I put on my paint-spattered pants, the coat with a +conspicuous hole near one of the buttons, and my green hat. I climbed +the little hill before the gate, among leisurely first arrivals, and +found myself attracting no attention whatsoever. I felt for the brass +check in my shirt pocket, found it, and rebuttoned the pocket. The guard +peered into my face, as if he were going to ask for a pass, but didn't. + +I walked the four hundred yards to the open-hearth, and noticed clearly +for the first time the yard of the blooming-mill. Here varied shapes of +steel, looking as if they weighed several thousand pounds each, were +issuing from the mill on continuous treads, and moving about the yard in +a most orderly, but complex manner. Electric cranes were sweeping over +the quarter-acre of yard-space, and lifting and piling the steel swiftly +and precisely on flat cars. + +I entered the open-hearth mill by the tracks that ran close to the +furnaces. The mill noises broke on me: a moan and rattle of cranes +overhead, fifty-ton ones; the jarring of the train-loads of charge-boxes +stopping suddenly in front of Number 4; and minor sounds like chains +jangling on being dropped, or gravel swishing out of a box. I was +conscious of muscles growing tense, in the face of this violent +environment, a somewhat artificial and eager calm. I walked with +excessive firmness, and felt my personality contracting itself into the +mere sense of sight and sound. + +I looked for Pete. + +"He's in his shanty--over there," said an American furnace-helper, who +was getting into his mill clothes. + +I went after Pete's shanty. It was a sheet-iron box, 12 by 12, midway +down the floor, near a steel beam. Pete was coming out, buttoning the +lower buttons of a blue shirt. He looked through my head and passed me, +much as he had passed the steel beam. With two or three steps I moved +out and blocked his way. He looked at me, loosened his face, and said +very cheerfully: "Hello." + +"I've come to work," I said. + +"Here," he said, "you'll work th' pit t' night. Few days, y' know, get +used ter things." + +He led the way to some iron stairs, and we went down together into that +darkened region under the furnaces, about whose function I had +speculated. + +To the left I could make out tracks. Railroads seem to run through a +steel mill from cellar to attic. And at intervals, from above the +tracks, torrents of sparks swept into the dark, with now and then a +small stream of yellow fire. + +We stumbled over bricks, mud, clay, a shovel, and the railroad track. In +front of a narrow curtain of molten slag, falling on the floor, we +waited for some moments. We were under the middle furnaces, I +calculated. Gradually the curtain ceased, and Pete leaped under the hole +from which it had come. + +"Watch yourself," he said. + +I followed him with a broad jump, and a prayer about the falling slag. + +We came out into the pit, which had so many bright centres of molten +steel that it was lighter than outdoors. I watched Pete's back chiefly, +and my own feet. We kept stepping between little chunks of dark slag, +which made your feet hot, and close to a bucket, ten feet high, which +gave forth smoke. Wheelbarrows we met, with and without men, and metal +boxes, as large as wagons, dropped about a dirt floor. We avoided a hole +with a fire at its centre. + +At last, at the edge of the pit, near more tracks, we ran into the pit +gang: eight or ten men, leaning on shovels and forks and blinking at the +molten metal falling into a huge bucket-like ladle. + +"Y' work _here_," said Pete, and moved on. + +I remember feeling a half-pleasurable glow as I looked about the +strenuous environment, of which I was to become a part--a glow mixed +with a touch of anxiety as to what I was up against for the next +fourteen hours. + +Two of the eight men looked at me, and grinned. I grinned back and put +on my gloves. + +"No. 6 furnace?" I asked, nodding toward the stream. + +"Ye-ah," said the man next me. + +He was a cleanly built person, in loose corduroy pants, blue shirt open +at his neck. Italian. + +He grinned with extraordinary friendliness, and said, "First night, +this place?" + +"Yes," I returned. + +"Goddam hell of a ---- job," he said, very genially. + +We both turned to look at the stream again. + +For ten minutes we stood and stared. Two men lit cigarettes, and sat on +a wheelbarrow; four of the others had nodded to me; the other three +stared. + +I was eager to organize into reasonableness a little of this strenuous +process that was going forward with a hiss and a roar about me. + +"That's the ladle?" I said, to start things. + +"Ye-ah, w'ere yer see metal come, dat's spout, crane tak' him over pour +platform, see; pour man mak li'l hole in ladle, fill up moul'--see de +moul' on de flat cars?" + +The Italian was a professor to me. I got the place named and charted in +good shape before the night was out. The pit was an area of perhaps half +an acre, with open sides and a roof. Two cranes traversed its entire +extent, and a railway passed through its outer edge, bearing mammoth +moulds, seven feet high above their flat cars. Every furnace protruded a +spout, and, when the molten steel inside was "cooked," tilted backward +slightly and poured into a ladle. A bunch of things happened before that +pouring. Men appeared on a narrow platform with a very twisted railing, +near the spout, and worked for a time with rods. They prodded up inside, +till a tiny stream of fire broke through. Then you could see them start +back in the nick of time to escape the deluge of molten steel. The +stream in the spout would swell to the circumference of a man's body, +and fall into the ladle, that oversized bucket thing, hung conveniently +for it by the electric crane. A dizzy tide of sparks accompanied the +stream, and shot out quite far into the pit, at times causing men to +slap themselves to keep their clothing from breaking out into a blaze. +There were always staccato human voices against the mechanical noise, +and you distinguished by inflection, whether you heard command, or +assent, or warning, or simply the lubrications of profanity. + +As the molten stuff rose toward the top of the ladle, curdling like a +gigantic pot of oatmeal, somebody gave a yell, and slowly, by an +entirely concealed power, the 250-ton furnace lifted itself erect, and +the steel stopped flowing down the spout. + +But it splashed and slobbered enormously in the ladle at this juncture; +a few hundred pounds ran over the edge to the floor of the pit. This, +when it had cooled a little, it would be our job to clean up, separating +steel scrap from the slag, and putting it into boxes for remelting. + +When a ladle was full, the crane took it gingerly in a sweep of a +hundred feet through mid-air, and, as Fritz said, the men on the pouring +platform released a stopper from a hole in the bottom, to let out the +steel. It flowed out in a spurting stream three or four inches thick, +into moulds that stood some seven feet high on flat cars. + +"Clean off the track on Number 7, an' make it fast," from the pit boss, +accompanied by a neat stream of tobacco juice, which began to steam +vigorously when it struck the hot slag at his feet. + +We passed through to the other side of the furnaces, by going under +Number 6, a bright fall of sparks from the slag-hole just missing the +heels of the last man. + +"Isn't that dangerous and unnecessary?" I said to myself, angrily. "Why +do we have to dodge under that slag-hole?" + +We moved in the dark along a track that turned in under Seven, into a +region of great heat. Before us was a small hill of partially cooled +slag, blocking the track. It was like a tiny volcano, actively fluid in +the centre, with the edges blackened and hard. + +I found out very quickly the why of this mess. The furnace is made to +rock forward, and spill out a few hundred pounds of the slag that floats +on top. A short "buggy" car runs under, to catch the flow. But somebody +had blundered--no buggy was there when the slag came. + +"Get him up queek, and let buggy come back for nex' time," explained an +Italian with moustachios, who carried the pick. "Huh, whatze matter +goddam first-helper, letta furnace go?" he added angrily. "Lotza work." + +This job took us three hours. The Italian went in at once with the pick, +and loosened a mass of cinder near one of the rails. Fritz and I +followed up with shovels, hurling the stuff away from the tracks. + +The slag is light, and you can swing a fat shovelful with ease; but +mixed with it are clumps of steel that follow the slag over the furnace +doors. It grew hotter as we worked in--three inches of red heat, to a +slag cake six inches thick. + +"Hose," said someone. The Italian found it in back of the next furnace, +and screwed it to a spigot between the two. We became drowned in steam. + +We had been at it about an hour and a half, and I was shoveling back +loose cinder, with a little speed to get it over with. "Rest yourself," +commanded Moustachios. "Lotza time, lotza time." + +I leaned on my shovel and found rather mixed feelings rising inside me. +I was a little resentful at being told what to do; a little pleased that +I was up, at least, to the gang standard; a little in doubt as to +whether we ought not to be working harder; but, on the whole, tired +enough to dismiss the question and lean on my shovel. + +The heat was bad at times (from 120 to 130 degrees when you're right in +it, I should guess). It was like constantly sticking your head into the +fireplace. When you had a cake or two of newly turned slag, glowing on +both sides, you worked like hell to get your pick work done and come +out. I found a given amount of work in heat fatigued at three times the +rate of the same work in a cooler atmosphere. But it was exciting, at +all events, and preferable to monotony. + +We used the crowbar and sledge on the harder ledges of the stuff, +putting a loose piece under the bar and prying. + +When it was well cleared, a puffy switch-engine came out of the dark +from the direction of Number 4, and pushed a buggy under the furnace. +The engineer was short and jolly-looking, and asked the Italians a few +very personal questions in a loud ringing voice. Everyone laughed, and +all but Fritz and I undertook a new cheekful of "Honest Scrap." I smoked +a Camel and gave Fritz one. + +Then Al, the pit boss, came through. He was an American, medium husky, +cap on one ear, and spat through his teeth. I guessed that Al somehow +wasn't as hard-boiled as he looked, and found later that he was new as a +boss. I concluded that he adopted this exterior in imitation of bosses +of greater natural gifts in those lines, and to give substance to his +authority. He used to be a workman in the tin mill. + +"All done? If the son of a ---- of a first-helper on the furnace had any +brains ..." and so forth. "Now get through and clean out the goddam mess +in front." + +We went through, and Fritz used the pick against some very dusty cinder +that was entirely cool, and was massed in great piles on the front side +of the slag-hole. + +"Getta wheelbarrow, _you_." + +I started for the wheelbarrow, just the ghost of a resentment rising at +being "ordered about" by a "Wop" and then fading out into the +difficulties I had in finding the wheelbarrow. Two or three things that +day I had been sent for--things whose whereabouts were a closed book. +"Where the devil," I muttered to myself, violently disturbed, "are +wheelbarrows?" I found one, at last, near the masons under Number 4, and +started off. + +"Hey, what the hell? what the hell?" + +So much for that wheelbarrow. + +I found another, behind a box, near Number 8, and pushed it back over +mud, slag, scrap, and pipes and things. I never knew before what a +bother a wheelbarrow is on an open-hearth pit floor. Only four of us +stayed for work under Number 7, a German laborer and I cooperating with +shovel and wheelbarrow on the right-hand cinder pile. + +We had been digging and hauling an hour, and it was necessary to reach +underneath the slag-hole to get at what was left. I always glanced +upward for sparks and slag when shoveling, and allowed only my right +hand and shovel to pass under. Just as arm and shovel went in for a new +lot Fritz yelled, "Watch out!" I pulled back with a frog's leap, and +dodged a shaft of fat sparks, spattering on the pit floor. A second +later, the sparks became a tiny stream, the size of a finger, and then a +torrent of molten slag, the size of an arm. The stuff bounded and +splashed vigorously when it struck the ground. + +It didn't get us, and in a second we both laughed from a safe distance. + +"Goddam slag come queek," said Fritz, grinning. "How you like job?" he +added. + +Before I had any chance to discuss the nuances of a clean-up's walk in +life, Fritz was pointing out a new source of molten danger. + +We were standing now in the main pit, beyond the overhanging edge of the +furnace. + +"Look out now, zee!" said Fritz, pointing upward. Almost over our head +was Number 7's spout, and, dribbling off the end, another small rope of +sparks. + +We fell over each other to the pit's edge, stopping when we reached +tracks. Looking back at once, we saw that the stream had thickened like +the other in the slag-hole. But here it was molten steel, and with a +long drop of thirty feet. The rebound of the thudding molten metal sent +it off twenty-five or thirty feet in all directions. Three different +groups of men were backing off toward the edge of the pit. + +The stream swelled steadily till it reached the circumference of a man's +body, and fell in a thudding shaft of metallic flame to the pit's floor. +Spatterings went out in a moderately symmetrical circle forty feet +across. The smaller gobs of molten stuff made minor centres of spatter +of their own. It was a spectacle that burned easily into memory. + +The gang of men at the edge of the pit watched the thing with apparent +enjoyment. I wondered slowly two things: one, whether anyone ever got +caught under such a molten Niagara, and two, whether the pit was going +to have a steel floor before it could be stopped. How could it be +stopped, anyway? + +The craneman had been busy for some minutes picking up a ladle from +Number 4, and at that instant he swung it under, and the process of +steel-flooring ceased.[2] + +What the devil had happened? I talked with everybody I could as they +broke up at the pit's edge. It was a rare thing I learned: the mud and +dolomite (a limestone substance) in the tap-hole had not been properly +packed, and broke through. My companions told me about another occasion, +some years before, when molten steel got loose. It happened on the +Bessemer furnaces, and the workers hadn't either the luck or agility of +ourselves. It caught twenty-four men in the flow--killed and buried +them. The company, with a sense of the proprieties, waited until the +families of the men moved before putting the scrap, which contained +them, back into the furnace for remelting. + + +As I ate three bowls of oatmeal at the Greek's, at 7.15, I thought, +"Those fellows do these shifts, year after year. What does the heat, and +the danger, and the work do to them? Maybe they 'get used to' the whole +business. Will I?" + +I went to bed at 8.05, and all impressions faded from consciousness, +except weariness, and lame arms, and a burn on each ankle. + + +After two or three days in the pit, I began to know the gang a little by +name and character. There was Marco, a young Croat of twenty-four, who +had started to teach me Croatian in return for some necessary American; +Fritz, a German with the Wanderlust; Adam, an aristocratic person, very +mature, and with branching moustachios; Peter, a Russian of infinite +good-nature; and a quiet-eyed Pole, who was saving up two hundred +dollars to go to the old country. + +For several days it was impossible to break into Adam's circle of +friends; he would talk and work only with veteran clean-ups, and showed +immense pomposity in a knowing way of hooking up slag and scrap to the +crane. One day, however, I found him working alone with a wheelbarrow, +cleaning cinder from around a buggy car under furnace No. 8. He looked +over at me as I passed, and yelled: "Hey, you!" + +He wanted my assistance on the wheelbarrow. We worked together for an +hour or so, and I felt that perhaps the ice was broken. + +"Did you ever work on the floor?" I asked. + +"Two years," he said; "no good." + +A little later I talked to Marco about him. + +"Hell," he said, "he got fired from furnace, for too goddam lazy." I +felt less hurt at his snobbishness after that. + +Marco and I became good chums. We sat on a wheelbarrow one day, after +finishing a job on the track under Six. + +"You teach me American," he said; "I teach you Croatian." + +"Damn right," I said; and we began on the parts of our body, and the +clothing we wore, drawing out some of the words in the dirt with a +stick, or marking them with charcoal on a board. + +"Did you ever go to school in America?" I asked. + +"Three month, night school, Pittsburgh. Too much, work all day, twelve +hour, go to school night," he said. + +"Do you save any money? Got any in the bank?" I asked, feeling a little +fatherly, and wondering on the state of his economic virtues. + +"Hell, no," he said; "I don' want money in bank, jes nuff get along on." + +I talked to a good many on the savings question, and found the young men +very often didn't save, but "bummed round," while practically all the +"Hunkies" of twenty-eight or thirty and over saved very successfully. A +German who put scrap in the charge-boxes, after the magnet had dropped +it, had saved $4000 and invested it. One man said to me: "A good job, +save money, work all time, go home, sleep, no spend." Speaking of the +German, "He no drink, no spend." The savers, I think, are apt to be the +single men who return to their own country in ten or fifteen years. + +I came out of the mill one morning after a night-shift, with an appetite +that made me run from the railroad bridge to Main Street. I went to the +Hotel Bouton, where the second-helper on Eight usually eats, and started +at the beginning, with pears. I ate the cereal, eggs, potatoes, toast, +coffee, and griddle-cakes, taking seconds and thirds when I could +negotiate them--the Bouton is stingy under a new management, probably +finding that steel-workers eat up the profit. I got up from the table +feeling as hungry as when I sat down, and went to the restaurant just +two doors below--unpalatable, but serving fairly large portions. There I +had another breakfast: coffee, oatmeal, eggs. I felt decidedly better +after that, and started home in good humor. But by the time I reached +the window of Tom, the Wiener man, I felt that there was room for +improvement, and looked in my pocketbook to see if I had any breakfast +money left. I hadn't a cent, but there were quantities of two-cent +stamps. I went in and sat down at Tom's counter, where I ate a bowl of +cereal and a glass of milk. Then I opened my purse. In a moment or two I +convinced Tom that two-cent stamps were good legal tender, and went +home. + +FOOTNOTE: + +[2] I learned later the flow could have been stopped by simply tilting +back the furnace, but the craneman was ready and so brought the ladle +up. + + + + +III + +THE OPEN-HEARTH--NIGHT-SHIFTS + + +"Have a cigarette, Pete," I said, offering a Camel to a very fat and +boyish-looking Russian. + +"No t'ank." + +"What, no smoke?" I asked, incredulous. + +"No, no smoke." + +"No drink?" I asked, wondering if I had found a Puritan. + +"Oh, _drink_" he said with profound emphasis; and continuing, he told me +of other solaces he found in this mortal life. + +"Look!" cried some one. + +Herb, the craneman, in a fit of extreme playfulness had thrown some wet +green paint forty feet through the air at the pit boss, greening the +whole side of his face. Al was doing a long backward dodge, and slapping +a hand to his painted face, supposing it a draught of hot metal. When he +perceived that he wasn't killed, he picked up cinder-hunks and bombarded +the crane-box. It sounded like hail on tin. + +Pete, the Russian melter, came out on the gallery behind the furnaces, +and I could see by the way he looked the pit over, that he was picking a +man for furnace work. Somebody had stayed out and they were short a +helper. He looked at the fat workman beside me, and then grunted. + +This was the third time he had picked Russians in preference to the +rest of us, who are Serbian, Austrian, and American. + +The next day I went on the floor, and tackled Pete. + +"How about a chance on the floor?" I said, standing in front of him to +keep him from lurching away. + +"Y' get chance 'nuff, don' worry." + +"If I can't get a crack at learning this game in Bouton, I'll go +somewhere I can," I said, boiling up a little. + +Dick Reber, the Pennsylvania-Dutch melter, came up. + +"I want a chance on the floor," I said. + +"All right, boy, go on Number 7 to-day." + +I made all speed to Number 7. "Is he doing that," I thought, as I picked +up my shovel, "because I'm an American?" + +I looked up and saw the big ladle-bucket pouring hot metal into a spout +in the furnace-door, accompanied by a great swirl of sparks and flame, +spurting upward with a sizzle. + +"At last," I said, "I'm going to make steel." + + +The steel starts in as "scrap" in the mill-yard. Scrap from anywhere in +America; a broken casting, the size of a man's trunk, down to corroded +pipe, or strips the thickness of your nail, salvaged in bales. The +overhead crane gathers them all from arriving flat cars by a magnet as +big as a cart wheel, and the pieces of steel leap to meet it with +apparent joy, stick stoutly for a moment, and fall released into iron +charge-boxes. By trainloads they pass out of the stockyard and into the +mill, where the track runs directly in front of the furnace-doors. There +the charging-machine dumps them quickly into the belly of the furnace. +It does its work with a single iron finger, about ten feet long and +nearly a foot thick, lifting the box by a cleat on the end, and poking +it swiftly into the flaming door. Old furnaces charged by hand hold from +twenty-five to thirty-five tons; new ones, up to two hundred and fifty. + +That is the first step in starting to make a "heat," which means cook a +bellyful to the proper temperature for steel, ready to tap into a ladle +for ingot-making. Next comes "making front-wall," which signifies that +no self-respecting brick, clay, or any other substance, can stand a load +of metal up to steel-heat without being temporarily relined right away +for the next draft of flame. We do that relining by shoveling dolomite +into the furnace. The official known as second-helper wields a +Brobdingnag spoon, about two inches larger than a dinner-plate and +fifteen feet long, which a couple of third-helpers, among them myself, +fill with dolomite. By use of the spoon, he carefully spreads the +protection over the front-wall. + +But the sporting job on the open-hearth comes a bit later, and consists +in "making back-wall." Then all the men on the furnace and all the men +on your neighbor's furnace form a dolomite line, and marching in file to +the open door, fling their shovelfuls across the flaming void to the +back-wall. It's not a beginner's job. You must swing your weapon +through a wide arc, to give it "wing," and the stuff must hop off just +behind the furnace-door and rise high enough to top the scrap between, +and land high. I say it's not a beginner's job, though it's like +golf--the first shovelful may be a winner. What lends life to the sport +is the fact that everybody's in it--it's the team play of the +open-hearth, like a house-raising in the community. + +Another thing giving life is the heat. The mouth of the furnace gapes +its widest, and you must hug close in order to get the stuff across. +Every man has deeply smoked glasses on his nose when he faces the +furnace. He's got to stare down her throat, to watch where the dolomite +lands. It's up to him to place his stuff--the line isn't marching +through the heat to warm its hands. Here's a tip I didn't "savvy" on my +first back-wall. Throw your left arm high at the end of your arc, and in +front of your face; it will cut the heat an instant, and allow you to +see if you have "placed" without flinching. It's really not +brawn,--making back-wall,--but a nimble swing and a good eye, and the +art of not minding heat. + +After that is done, she can cook for a while and needs only watching. +The first-helper gives her that, passing up and down every few minutes +to look through the peepholes in her furnace-doors. He puts his glasses +down on his nose, inspects the brew, and notices if her stomach's in +good shape. If the bricks get as red as the gas flame, she's burning the +living lining out of her. But he keeps the gas blowing in her ends, as +hot as she'll stand it without a holler. On either end the gas, and on +top of it the air. The first-helper, who is cook of the furnace, makes a +proper mixture out of them. The hotter he can let the gas through, the +quicker the brew is cooked, and the more "tonnage" he'll make that week. + +"Get me thirty thousand pounds," said the first-helper when I was on the +furnace that first night. Fifteen tons of molten metal! I was undecided +whether to bring it in a dipper or in my hat. But it's no more than +running upstairs for a handkerchief in the bureau. You climb to a +platform near the blower, where the stuff is made, and find a man there +with a book. Punch him in the arm and say, "Thirty thou' for Number 7." +He will swear moderately and blow a whistle. You return to the furnace, +and on your heels follows a locomotive dragging a bucket, the ladle, ten +feet high. Out of it arise the fumes of your fifteen tons of hot metal. +The overhead crane picks it up and pours it through a spout into the +furnace. As it goes in, you stand and direct the pouring. The craneman, +as he tilts or raises the bucket, watches you for directions, and you +stand and make gentle motions with one hand, thus easily and simply +controlling the flux of the fifteen tons. That part of the job always +pleased me. It was like modeling Niagara with a wave of the hand. +Sometimes he spills a little, and there is a vortex of sparks, and much +molten metal in front of the door to step on. + +She cooks in anywhere from ten hours to twenty-four. The record on this +floor is ten, which was put over by Jock. He has worked on most of the +open-hearths, I learn, from Scotland to Colorado. + +When it's time for a test, the first-helper will take a spoon about the +size of your hand and scoop up some of the soup. But not to taste. He +pours it into a mould, and when the little ingot is cool, breaks it with +a sledge. Everyone on the furnace, barring myself, looks at the broken +metal and gives a wise smile. I'm not enough of a cook. They know by the +grain if she has too much carbon or needs more, or is ready to tap, or +isn't. With too much carbon, she'll need a "jigger," which is a few more +tons of hot metal, to thin her out. + +That's about the whole game--abbreviated--up to tap-time. It takes, on +an average, eighteen hours, and your shift may be anything from ten to +twenty-four. Of course, there are details, like shoveling in fluor-spar +to thin out the slag. Be sure you clear the breast of the furnace, with +your shovelful, when you put that into her. Spar eats the dolomite as +mice eat cheese. + +At intervals the first-helper tilts the whole furnace forward, and she +runs out at the doors, which is to drain off the slag that floats on top +of the brew. But after much weariness it's tap-time and the "big boss" +comes to supervise. + +Move aside the shutters covering the round peepholes on her doors, at +this time, and you'll see the brew bubbling away like malt +breakfast-food ready to eat. But there's a lot of testing before +serving. When it is ready, you run to the place where you hid your +little flat manganese shovel and take it to the gallery back of the +furnace, near the tap-spout. There you can look down on the pit strewn +with those giant bucket-ladles and sprinkled with the clean-up men, who +gather painfully all that's spilled or slobbered of hot metal, and save +it for a second melting. The whole is swept by the omnipresent crane. + +At a proper and chosen instant, the senior melter shouts, "Heow!" and +the great furnace rolls on its side on a pair of mammoth rockers, and +points a clay spout into the ladle held for it by the crane. Before the +hot soup comes rushing, the second-helper has to "ravel her out." That +function of his almost destroyed my ambition to learn the steel +business. Raveling is poking a pointed rod up the tap-spout, till the +stopping is prodded away. You never know when the desired but terrific +result is accomplished. When it is, he retires as you would from an +exploding oil-well. The brew is loose. It comes out, red and hurling +flame. Into the ladle it falls with a hiss and a terrifying "splunch." +The first and second helpers immediately make matters worse. They +stagger up with bags (containing fine anthracite) and drop them into the +mess. They have a most damning effect. The flames hit the roof of the +pit, and sway and curl angrily along the frail platform on which you +stand. Some occult reasoning tells them how many of these bags to drop +in, whether to make a conflagration or a moderate house-burning. + +The melter waits a few minutes and then shouts your cue. You and +another helper run swiftly along the gallery to the side of the spout. +At your feet is a pile of manganese, one of the heaviest substances in +the world, and seeming heavier than that. It's your job and your +helper's to put the pile into the cauldron. And you do it with all +manner of speed. The tap stream--at steel heat--is three feet from your +face, and gas and sparks come up as the stream hits the ladle. You're +expected to get it in fast. You do. + +There are almost always two ladles to fill, but you have a "spell" +between. When she's tapped, you pick up a piece of sheet iron and cover +the spout with it. That's another job to warm frost-bitten fingers. Use +gloves and wet burlap--it preserves the hands for future use. + +One more step, and the brew is an ingot. There are several tracks +entering the pit, and at proper seasons a train of cars swings in, +bringing the upright ingot moulds. They stand about seven feet high from +their flats. When the ladle is full and slobbering a bit, the craneman +swings her gingerly over the first mould. Level with the ladle's base, +and above the train of moulds, runs the pouring platform, on which the +ingot-men stand. + +By means of rods a stopper is released from a small hole in the bottom +of the ladle. In a few seconds the stream fills a mould, and the +attendant shuts off the steel like a boy at a spigot. The ladle swings +gently down the line, and the proper measure of metallic flame squirts +into each mould. A trainload of steel is poured in a few minutes. + +But this is when all omens are propitious. It's when the stopper-man +has made no mistakes. But when rods jam and the stopper won't stop, +watch your step, and cover your face. That fierce little stream keeps +coming, and nothing that the desperate men on the pouring platform can +do seems likely to stem it. Soon one mould is full. But the ladle +continues to pour, with twenty tons of steel to go. It can't be allowed +to make a steel floor for the pit. It must get into those moulds. + +So the craneman swings her on to the next mould, with the stream aspurt. +It's like taking water from the teakettle to the sink with a punctured +dipper: half goes on the kitchen floor. But the spattering of molten +metal is much more exciting. A few little clots affect the flesh like +hot bullets. So, when the craneman gets ready to swing the little stream +down the line, the workers on the platform behave like frightened fishes +in a mill pond. Then, while the mould fills, they come back, to throw +certain ingredients into the cooling metal. + +These ingots, when they come from the moulds virgin steel, are +impressive things--especially on the night turn. Then each stands up +against the night air like a massive monument of hardened fire. Pass +near them, and see what colossal radiators of heat they are. Trainloads +of them pass daily out of the pit to the blooming-mill, to catch their +first transformation. But my spell with them is done. + + +I stood behind the furnace near the spout, which still spread a wave of +heat about it, and Nick, the second-helper, beside me yelling things in +Anglo-Serbian, into my face. He was a loose-limbed, sallow-faced +Serbian, with black hair under a green-visored cap, always on the back +of his head. His shirt was torn on both sleeves and open nearly to his +waist, and in the uncertain lights of the mill his chest and abdomen +shone with sweat. + +"Goddam you, what you think. Get me"--a long blur of Serbian, +here--"spout, quick mak a"--more Serbian with tremendous volume of +voice--"furnace, see? You get that goddam mud!" + +When a man says that to you with profound emotion, it seems insulting, +to say, "What" to it. But that was what I did. + +"All right, all right," he said; "what the hell, me get myself, all the +work"--blurred here--"son of a--third-helper--wheelbarrow, why don' you +---- _quick now when I say!_" + +"All right, all right, I'll do it," I said, and went away. I was never +in my life so much impressed with the necessity of _doing it_. His +language and gesture had been profoundly expressive--of what? I tried to +concentrate on the phrases that seeped through emotion and Serbian into +English. "Wheelbarrow"--hang on to that; "mud"--that's easy: a +wheelbarrow of mud. Good! + +I got it at the other end of the mill--opposite Number 4. + +"Hey! don't use that shovel for mud!" said the second-helper on Number +4. + +So I didn't. + +I wheeled back to the gallery behind Seven, and found Nick coming out +at me. When he saw that hard-won mud of mine, I thought he was going to +snap the cords in his throat. + +"Goddam it!" he said, when articulation returned, "I tell you, get +wheelbarrow dolomite, and half-wheelbarrow clay, and pail of water, and +look what you bring, goddam it!" + +So that was it--he probably said pail of water with his feet. + +"Oh, all right," I said, smiling like a skull; "I thought you said mud. +I'll get it, I'll get it." + +This is amusing enough on the first day; you can go off and laugh in a +superior way to yourself about the queer words the foreigners use. But +after seven days of it, fourteen hours each, it gets under the skin, it +burns along the nerves, as the furnace heat burns along the arms when +you make back-wall. It suddenly occurred to me one day, after someone +had bawled me out picturesquely for not knowing where something was that +I had never heard of, that this was what every immigrant Hunky endured; +it was a matter of language largely, of understanding, of knowing the +names of things, the uses of things, the language of the boss. Here was +this Serbian second-helper bossing his third-helper largely in an +unknown tongue, and the latter getting the full emotional experience of +the immigrant. I thought of Bill, the pit boss, telling a Hunky to do a +clean-up job for him; and when the Hunky said, "What?" he turned to me +and said: "Lord! but these Hunkies are dumb." + +Most of the false starts, waste motion, misunderstandings, fights, +burnings, accidents, nerve-wrack, and desperation of soul would fall +away if there were understanding--a common language, of mind as well as +tongue. + +But then, I thought, all this may be because I'm oversensitive. I had +this qualm till one day I met Jack. He was an old regular-army sergeant, +a man about thirty. He had come back from fixing a bad spout. They had +sledged it out--sledged through the steel that had crept into the +dolomite and closed the tap-hole. + +"Do you ever feel low?" he said, sitting down on the back of a shovel. +"Every once'n while I feel like telling 'em to take their job and go to +hell with it; you strain your guts out, and then they swear at you." + +"I sometimes feel like a worm," I said, "with no right to be living any +way, or so mad I want to lick the bosses and the president." + +"If you were first-helper, it wouldn't be so bad," he mused; "you +wouldn't have to bring up that damn manganese in a wheelbarrow--and they +wouldn't kick you round so much." "Will I ever get that job?" + + +We were washing up at one end of the mill, near the Bessemers. There was +plenty of hot water, and good broad sinks. I took off my shirt and threw +it on top of a locker; the cinder on the front and sleeves had become +mud. + +Forty men stood up to the sinks, also with their shirts off, their arms +and faces and bodies covered with soap, and saying: "Ah, ooh," and +"ffu," with the other noises a man makes when getting clean. Every now +and then somebody would look into a three-cornered fragment of +looking-glass on one of the lockers, and return to apply soap and a +scrubbing-brush to the bridge of his nose. + +A group of Slovene boys, who worked on the Bessemer, picked on one of +their number, and covered him with soap and American oaths. Somebody +told an obscene story loudly in broken English. + +The men who had had a long turn or a hard one washed up silently, except +for excessive outbreaks if anybody took their soap. Some few hurried, +and left grease or soot on their hands or under their eyes. + +"I wash up a little here," said Fred, the American first-helper on +Number 7, "and the rest at home. Once after a twenty-four hour shift, I +fell asleep in the bathtub, and woke up to find the water cold. Of +course, you can't really get this stuff off in one or two washups. It +gets under your skin. When the furnace used to get down for repairs, and +we were laid off, I'd be clean at the end of a week." He laughed and +went off. + +I had scraped most of the soot from arms and chest, and was struggling +desperately with the small of my back. A thick-chested workman at the +next bowl, with fringes of gray hair, and a scar on his cheek, grabbed +the brush out of my hand. + +"Me show you how we do in coal-mine," he said; and proceeded vigorously +to grind the bristles into my back, and get up a tremendous lather, +that dripped down on my trousers to the floor. + +"You wash your buddy's back, buddy wash yours," he said. + + +I went out of the open-hearth shelter slowly, and watched the +line--nearly a quarter of a mile long--of swinging dinner-buckets. Some +were large and round, and had a place on top for coffee; some were +circular and long; some were flat and square. I looked at the men. They +were the day-shift coming in. + +"I have finished," I said to myself automatically. "I'm going to eat and +go to bed. I don't have to work now." + +I looked at the men again. Most of them were hurrying; their faces +carried yesterday's fatigue and last year's. Now and then I saw a man +who looked as if he could work the turn and then box a little in the +evening for exercise. There were a few men like that. The rest made me +think strongly of a man holding himself from falling over a cliff, with +fingers that paralyzed slowly. + +I stepped on a stone and felt the place on my heel where the limestone +and sweat had worked together, to make a burn. I'd be hurrying in at +5.00 o'clock that day, and they'd be going home. It was now 7.20. That +would be nine and a half hours hence. I had to eat twice, and buy a pair +of gloves, and sew up my shirt, and get sleep before then. I lived +twenty minutes from the mill. If I walk home, as fast as I can drive my +legs and bolt breakfast, seven hours is all I can work in before 3.30. +I'll have to get up then to get time for dinner, fixing up my shirt, and +the walk to the mill. + +I wonder how long this night-shift of gray-faced men, with +different-sized dinner-buckets, will be moving out toward the green +gate, and the day-shift coming in at the green gate--how many years? + +The car up from the nail mill stopped just before it dove under the +railroad bridge. + +"I'm in luck." + +I suddenly had a vision of how the New York subway looked: its crush, +its noise, its overdressed Jews, its speed, its subway smell. I looked +around inside the clattering trolley-car. Nobody was talking. The car +was filled for the most part with Slavs, a few Italians, and some +negroes from the nail mill. Everyone, except two old men of unknown age, +was under thirty-five. They held their buckets on their laps, or put +them on the floor between their legs. Six or eight were asleep. The rest +sat quiet, with legs and neck loose, with their eyes open, steady, dull, +fixed upon nothing at all. + + + + +IV + +EVERYDAY LIFE + + +I came into the mill five minutes late one morning, and went to the +green check-house at the gate, to pick 1611, the numerical me, from the +hook. A stumpy man in a chair looked up and said: "What number?" + +I gave it. "An easy way to lose forty-three cents," I thought, feeling a +little sore at the stumpy man, and going out through the door slowly. + +I increased my step along the road to the open-hearth, and reached my +locker just as the Pole who shared it was leaving. + +"Goddam gloves!" he was saying. "Pay thirty-five cents--three +days--goddam it--all gone--too much. What you think?" + +"I think the leather ones at fifty cents last better," I said. + +He made a guttural noise, signifying disgust, and left. + +I opened the locker, and disentangled my working-clothes, still damp +from the last shift, from the Pole's. I removed all my "good" clothes, +and stood for a minute naked and comfortable. The thermometer had +registered 95 deg. when I got up, at 4.00. + +For the past few days I had been demoted to the pit; there had been no +jobs open on the floor. As I took up my gloves and smoked glasses, I +wondered how I could get back to furnace work. + +Pete was moving with his lurching short steps past Six. + +"How about helping to-day on the floor?" I said. + +He snapped back quickly in his blurred voice, "You work th' pit, tell +y'--goddam quick, want y' on the floor." + +I looked back at him, swore to myself, and went slowly down the pit +stairs. + +I couldn't find the gang at first, but later found half of them: Peter +the Russian, the short Wop, the Aristocrat, and a couple more, all under +furnace Eight, cleaning out cinder. The Aristocrat was trying to get the +craneman to bring up one of the long boxes with curved bottoms for slag. +The craneman was damning him. There was one too many at the job,--four +is enough to clean cinder,--so I threw a bit of slag at Peter (for old +time's sake) and passed on. + +I met Al, and said, "Where are they working?" + +"Clean up the pipes," he said. + +The Croat, Marco, Joe, and Fritz were at Number 6, with forks. You see, +the pipes run up the ladle's side and release a stopper for pouring the +steel. They are covered with fire clay, which is destroyed after one or +two ladlings and has to be knocked off and replaced. We loosened the +clay with sledges, and Marco watered down the pipes with a hose, to cool +them. They were moderately warm when Fritz and I started piling them on +the truck. Once or twice the pipe touched Fritz's hand through a hole +in his glove, and he yowled, and then laughed. Once or twice I yowled +and laughed also. + +When we piled near the top, we swung in unison, and tossed the pipe into +the air. It was like piling wood. + +I caught a torn piece of my pants on a sharp bit of slag while carrying +two pipes, and acquired a rip halfway from pocket to knee. Marco had a +safety pin for me at once; he kept emergency ones in his shirt-front. + +We finished the job in half an hour, and pushed the truck till it came +under jurisdiction of a crane. Marco fixed the hooks rather officiously, +pushing Fritz and me aside. There is, I suppose, more snobbishness +induced by the manner of crane-hooking than in any other pit function. +The crane swung the pipes on holders and dropped them in front of the +blacksmith shop. We carried them into the shop, Marco and I working +together. Inside there were half a dozen small forges, some benches, and +a drop hammer. It was the place where ladles and spoons were repaired. +The blacksmiths and helpers gave us friendly, but condescending glances. + +As we walked back, we saw the crane swing a ladle from the moulds into +which it had been pouring toward the dumping pit in front of Five. When +the giant bucket approached, the chain hooked to the bottom lifted +slowly, and dregs half-steel, half-ash, rolled out into the dump. After +a little cooling, we would clean up there. With the chain released, the +bucket righted itself with a shuddering clank, and swayed in the air +scattering bits of slag and burnt fire clay. + +A little later, we did a three-hour job on those dregs. We loosened the +slag with picks first, and then lifted forkfuls and shovelfuls into the +crane-carried boxes. A good deal of scrap was in the lot, probably the +makings of half a ton of steel. This, of course, went into a separate +box. I hooked up a couple of big scrap-hunks, weighing perhaps 500 +pounds each, and took some sport out of it. That is one small matter, at +least, where a grain of judgment and ingenuity has place. A badly hooked +scrap-hunk may fall and break a neck, or simply tumble and waste +everybody's time. Loosening up with the pick, too, demands a slight +knack and smacks faintly of the miner's skill. We had to go down into a +pit, where there was heated slag on all sides, using boards to save +scorching our shoe leather. In turning up fractures eight or ten inches +thick, there would be an inner four inches still red-hot. + +At eleven o'clock, I was working at a fair pace, flinging moderately +husky forkfuls over a ten-foot space into the box, when Marco looked up. + +"Hey," he called. + +I glanced at him for a moment. He was smiling. "Rest yourself," he said; +"we work hard when de big bosses come." + +During the next fifty shovelfuls, the remark went the rounds of my head, +trying to get condemned. My memory threw up articles in the "Quarterly +Journal of Economics," with "inefficiency and the labor-slackers," and +"moral irresponsibility of the worker on the job," and so forth, in +them. A couple of sermons and a vista of editorial denunciations of the +laboring man who is no longer willing to do "an honest day's work for an +honest day's pay," seemed to bring additional pressure for righteous +indignation. I asked the following questions of myself, one for every +two forkfuls:-- + +"Isn't it morally a bad thing to soldier, anyway? + +"Is Marco a moral enormity? + +"Do business men soldier? + +"Isn't 'Get to hell out of here if you don't want to work' the answer? +Or has the twelve-hour day something to do with it? + +"Can these five or six thousand unskilled workmen take any interest in +their work, or must they go at it with a consciousness similar to that +of the slaves who put up the Pyramids?" + +I had to use the pick at this point, which broke up the inquiry, and I +left the questions unanswered. + + +I saw wheelbarrowing ahead for the afternoon, and corralled the only one +properly balanced, when I started work at 1.00 P.M., keeping it near me +during a scrap-picking hour, until the job should break. At 2.15, it +did. Al said: "Get over and clean out under Seven. If we can ever get +this goddam stuff cleaned out--" That was an optimism of Al's. + +One of the new men and I worked together all afternoon: pick at the +slag, shovel, wheelbarrow, dump in the box, hook up to crane. Start +over. There was a lot of dolomite and old fine cinder, very dusty, but +not hot. This change in discomfort furnished a sensation almost +pleasurable. I found out that everyone hid his shovel at the end of the +shift, beside piles of brick in the cellar of the mill, under dark +stairways, and so forth. I hadn't yet acquired one, but used mostly a +fork, which isn't so personal an instrument, and of which there seemed +to be a common supply. I felt keen to "acquire" though. + + +After supper, I wrote in my diary and thought a bit before going to bed. +There's a genuine technique of the shovel, the pick, and especially of +the wheelbarrow, I thought. That damn plank from the ground to the +cinder-box! It takes all I can muster to teeter the wheelbarrow up, dump +without losing the thing quite, and bring it down backward without +barking my shins. There's a bit of technique, too, in pairing off +properly for a job, selecting your lick of work promptly and not getting +left jobless to the eyes of the boss, capturing your shovel and hiding +it at the end of the turn, keeping the good will of the men you're with +on team-work, distinguishing scrap from cinder and putting them into the +proper boxes, not digging for slag too deeply in the pit floor, and so +forth and so on. + +I wonder if I shall learn Serbian, or Russian, or Hungarian? There seems +to be a Slavic polyglot that any one of a half-dozen nationalities +understands. That word, "Tchekai!--Watch out!"--even the Americans use +it. It's a word that is crying in your ears all night. Watch out for +the crane that is taking a ladle of hot metal over your head, or a load +of scrap, or a bundle of pipes; watch out for the hot cinder coming down +the hole from the furnace-doors; watch out for "me" while I get this +wheelbarrow by; and "Heow! Tchekai!" for the trainload of hot ingots +that passes your shoulder. + +I set my alarm for five o'clock, and got into bed with the good-night +thought of "The devil with Pete Grayson! I'll get on that furnace!" + + +Another day went by, hewing cinders in the pit. I tried to figure to +myself persuasive or threatening things I could say to the melters, to +let me work on the floor. A shrewd-looking little man with moustachios +worked near me. + +"Did you ever work on the floor?" I asked. + +"Oh, yes," he said: "too much hot; to hell with the money!" + +They pay you two cents more an hour on the floor. At twenty minutes to +five I went upstairs to my locker. Dick Reber, senior melter, stopped +me. + +"Need a man to-night; want to work?" he said; "always short, you know, +on this ---- long turn." + +"Sure," I said. + +That was one way to get promoted, I thought, and wondered how I'd stand +fourteen more hours on top of the ten I had had. + + +"Beat it," yelled the melter. + +Jack and I got our flat manganese shovels, and went on the run to the +gallery. We were tapping at last. This furnaceful had cooked twenty-two +hours. Nick was kneeling on water-soaked bagging, on the edge of the hot +spout. He dug out the mud in the tap-hole with a pointed rod and +sputtered oaths at the heat. Every few minutes the spout would burn +through the bagging to his knees. He would get up, refold the bagging, +and kneel again to the job. + +Finally the metal gurgled out, a small stream the size of two fingers. +Nick dodged back, and it swelled to a six-inch torrent. + +"Heow, crane!" + +Pete Grayson had come out, and was bawling something very urgently at +the pit crane. The ladle swung closer; we could feel the increased wave +of heat. + +He looked over at us and held up two fingers. That meant both piles of +manganese that lay on the gallery next the crane were to be shoveled +in--double time for us, in the heat. + +"Heow!" yelled the melter. + +Jack and I leaped forward to the manganese, and our shovels scraped on +the iron gallery. I saw Jack slapping his head to put out a little fire +that had started on the handkerchief wound round his neck. I slapped a +few sparks that stung my right leg. We finished half the pile. + +There was something queer about this heat. The soles of my feet--why in +hell should the gallery burn so! There was a blazing gas in the air--my +nostrils seemed to flame as they took it in. This was different from +most manganese shoveling. My face glowed all over in single +concentrated pain. What was it? I saw Jack shoveling wildly in the +middle of that second pile. We finished it in a panic. + +"What was the matter with that damn ladle?" I asked as we got our breath +in the opening between the furnaces. + +"Spout had a goddam hole in the middle," he said; "ladle underneath, +see?" + +I did. The fire-clay of the spout had given way, and a hole forming in +the middle let the metal through. That made it necessary, in order to +catch the steel, to bring the ladle close, till part of it was under the +platform on which we worked. The heat and gas from the hot steel in the +ladle had been warming the soles of our feet, and rising into our faces. + +"Here's a funny thing," I said, looking down. One of the sparks which +had struck my pants burned around, very neatly taking off the cuff and +an inch or two of the pant-leg. The thing might have been done with a +pair of shears. + +I came out of the mill whistling and feeling pretty much "on the crest." +I'd worked their damn "long turn," and stood it. It wasn't so bad, all +except that ladle that got under the manganese. I ate a huge breakfast, +with a calm sense of virtue rewarded, and climbed into bed with a smile +on my lips. + +The alarm clock had been ringing several minutes before I realized what +it was up to. I turned over to shut it off, and found needles running +into all the muscles of my back. I struggled up on an elbow. I had a +"hell of a head." The alarm was still going. + +I fought myself out of bed and shut it off; stood up and tried to +think. Pretty soon a thought came over me like an ache: it was "Fourteen +hours!" That was beginning in fifty-five minutes--fourteen hours of +back-walls, and hot ladles, and--Oh, hell!--I sat down again on the bed, +and prepared to lift my feet back in. + +Then I got up, and washed fiercely, threw on my clothes, and went +downstairs, and out into the afternoon sun. + +Down by the restaurant, I met the third-helper on Eight. + +"Long turn wouldn't be so bad, if there weren't no next day," he said, +with a sort of smile. + +In the mill was a gang of malignant men; things all went wrong; +everybody was angry and tired; their nerves made mistakes for them. + +"I only wish it were next Sunday!" I said to someone. + +"There aren't any goddam Sundays in this place," he returned. +"Twenty-four hours off between two working days ain't Sunday." + +I thought that over. The company says they give you one day off every +two weeks. But it's not like a day off anywhere else. It's twenty-four +hours sandwiched between two work-days. You finish your night-week at +7.00 Sunday morning, having just done a week of one twenty-four hour +shift, and six fourteens. You've got all the time from then till the +next morning! Hurrah! How will you use it? If you do the normal +thing,--eat breakfast, and go to bed for eight hours,--that brings you +to 5.00 o'clock. Will you stay up all night? you've had your sleep. Yes, +but there's a ten-hour turn coming at 7.00. You go to bed at 11.00, to +sleep up for your turn. There's an evening-out of it! Hurrah again! But +who in hell does the normal thing? Either you go on a tear for +twenty-four hours,--you only have it twice a month,--or you sleep the +twenty-four, if the week's been a bad one. Or--and this is common in +Bouton--you get sore at the system and stay away a week--if you can +afford it. + +"Hey, you, get me a jigger, quick. Ten thou'." + +"All right," I said, and shut off my mind for the day. + + +I usually had bad words and bad looks from "Shorty." Jack calls him +"that dirty Wop." Late one afternoon he produced a knife and fingered it +suggestively while he talked. So I always watched him with all the eyes +I had. + +One day we had shoveled in manganese together over a hot ladle, and I +noticed that he was in a bad mood. We finished and leaned against the +rail. + +"Six days more," he said very quietly. + +I looked up, surprised at his voice. + +"What do you mean?" + +"Six days more, this week, me quit this goddam job." + +"What's the matter?" + +"Oh, ---- me lose thirteen pound this job, what the hell!" + +"What job will you get now?" + +"I don't know, I don't know; any damn job better than this," he said +very bitterly. + +Having adopted the quitting idea, these six days were too much to +endure. A little later, Jock was ready to make front-wall. He saw Shorty +and said, "Get me that hook and spoon." + +Shorty stood and looked at Jock, with the utmost malignity in his face, +and said finally, "Get your goddam hook and spoon yourself." + +Jock was greatly surprised, and returned, "Who the hell are you?" + +Shorty snapped instantly, "Who the hell are you?" + +And then he was fired. + +This is the second "quitting mad" I've seen. The feeling seems to be +something like the irrepressible desire that gets piled up sometimes in +the ranks of the army to "tell 'em to go to hell" and take the +consequences. It's the result of accumulated poisons of overfatigue, +long hours, overwrought nerves, "the military discipline of the mills." + +The practical advantage of being "given the hook" is that you can draw +your pay immediately; whereas, if you simply leave, you have to wait for +the end of the two weeks' period. + +I ate my dinner at the Greek's. + +"Make me some tea that's hot, George. This wasn't. Oh, and a double bowl +of shredded; I've got a hole to fill up." + +George kept the best of the four Greek restaurants. It had a certain +variety. It splurged into potato salad, and a few other kinds, and went +into omelets that were very acceptable. The others confined themselves +to fried things, with a few cereals and skimmed milk. I looked up from +my shredded wheat. George was wiping up a rill of gravy and milk from +the porcelain table, and a man was getting ready to sit down opposite. +It was Herb, the pit craneman. + +"Always feed here?" he asked. + +"Yes," I said, "best place in town, isn't it?" + +He nodded. + +"How big is Bouton? how many people has it?" I asked. + +He grinned slowly, and put his elbows on the table. He was a +Pennsylvania Dutchman, with worry settling over good nature in a square +face. + +"Twenty thousand," he said. + +"It seems small for twenty thousand," I returned; "like a little +village. There's really only one store, isn't there,--the company +store,--where they keep anything? Only one empty newspaper, no theatre, +unless you count that one-story movie place, no enterprise--" + +"A one-man town," he said, quickly. "Nearly every house in town is owned +by Mr. Burnham. Now look here, suppose a man works like hell to fix +things up, to work around and get a pretty damn good garden, puts a lot +of money into making his house right. Suppose he does, and then gets +into a scrap with his boss. What can he do? The company owns his house, +the company owns every other damn thing in town. He's got to beat +it--all his work shot to hell. That's why nobody does anything.--Hey, +ham and--Where you workin' now? Ain't seen yer in the pit." + +"I'm on the floor, helpin' on Number 7." + +"Att-a-boy!" + + +At last, Saturday night. Everyone felt Sunday coming, with twenty-four +hours of drunkenness or sleep alluringly ahead. The other shift had +tapped the furnace at three o'clock. We might not tap again, and that +was nice to think about. A front-wall and a hot back-wall we went +through as if it were better fun than billiards. + +"Look out for me, I've got the de'il in me," from Jock, Scotch First on +Number 8. I looked up, and the crazy fool had a spoon--they weigh over a +hundred--between his legs, dragging it like a kid with a broomstick. As +it bounced on the broken brick floor, he yelled like a man after a Hun. + +"Who's the maun amang ye, can lick a Scotchman?" he cried, dropping the +spoon to the floor. + +"Is this the best stuff you can show on Number 8?" said Fred slowly. He +dived for Jock's waist, and drew it to him, though the Scotchman tried +to break his grip with one of his hands and with the other thrust off +his opponent's face. When Fred had him tight, he caught one of Jock's +straying arms, bent it slowly behind his back, and contrived a +hammerlock. + +"You're no gentlemen,"--in pain; "you're interruptin' my work." + +Fred relaxed, and Jock jumped away. + +"Come over to a good furnace, goddam it, and fight it out!" he yelled, +from a distance that protected his words. + +The charging-machine, in its perpetual machine-tremolo, shook past and +stopped. George slid down from his seat, and came over to Number 8's +gang. + +"Well, Fred, how in hell's the world usin' yer?" + +"Ask me that to-morrow." + +"Well, guys, good night; I'm dead for forty minutes." + +He picked up a board some six feet long and about six inches in width. +He laid himself carefully on it, and was sleeping inside of a minute. + +I looked at him enviously for a few minutes. Suddenly it occurred to me +that the board lay over a slit in the floor. It was the opening through +which the pipes that attach to the gas-valve rise and fall. When gas is +shifted from one end of the furnace to the other, the pipes emerge +through the slit to a height several feet from the floor. Finally Fred +made the same discovery, and a broad smile spread over his face. He +continued to watch George, his grin deepening. At last he turned to the +second-helper. + +"Throw her over," he said. + +Nick threw the switch. Slowly and easily the valve-pipes rose, lifting +George and the head of his bed into the air, perilously. An immense and +ill-controlled shout swelled up and got ready to burst inside the +witnesses. George slept on, and the bed passed forty-five degrees. In +another second it rolled off the side of the pipes, and George, scared, +half-asleep, and much crumpled, rolled over on the furnace floor. It +was several seconds before he recovered profanity. + +The pure joy of that event spread itself over the entire shift. + + +When the light from the melting scrap-iron inside the furnace shot back, +it lit up the hills and valleys in Nick's face. I noticed how sharp the +slope was from his cheek-bones to the pit of his cheeks, and the round +holes in which his eyes were a pool at the bottom. His lips moved off +his white teeth, and twisted themselves, as a man's do with effort. He +looked as if he were smiling. I picked up my shovel, and shoved it into +the dolomite pile, with a slight pressure of knee against right forearm +that eases your back. The thermometer in the shade outside was 95 deg. I +wondered vaguely how much it was where Nick stood, with the doors open +in his face. + +We walked back together after the front-wall to the trough of water. + +"Not bad when you get good furnace, good first-helper," he said. "Fred +good boy, but furnace no good. A man got to watch himself on this job," +he went on bitterly; "he pull himself to pieces." + +"I can't manage quite enough sleep," I said, wondering if that was the +remark of a tenderfoot. + +"Sometime--maybe one day a month--I feel all right, good, no sleepy," he +went on. "Daytime work, ten hour, all right, feel good; fourteen hour +always too much tired. Sometime, goddam, I go home, I go to bed, throw +myself down this way." He threw both arms backward and to the side in a +gesture of desperate exhaustion, allowing his head to fall back at the +same time. "Goddam, think I no work no more. No day nuff sleep for +work," he concluded. + +Later on in the day, I saw Jimmy let the charge-up man, George, take the +spoon and make front-wall. The heat "got his goat." "I lose about ten or +fifteen pounds every summer," he said, "but I get it back in the winter. +My wife is after me the whole time to leave this game. I tell her every +year I will. Better quit this business, buddy, while you're young, +before you get stuck like me." + + +I walked home with Stanley, the Pole. He always called me Joe, the +generic name for non-Hunky helpers. + +"Say, Joe," he said, as we came under the railroad bridge, "what's your +name right?" + +"Charlie," I answered. "By the way, where have you been?" + +"Drunk, Charlie," he answered, smiling cheerfully. + +"Ever since I saw you in the pit?" + +"Three week," he stated, with satisfaction; "beer, whiskey, everyt'ing. +What the hell, work all time goddam job, what the hell?" + + + + +V + +WORKING THE TWENTY-FOUR-HOUR SHIFT + + +7 A.M. _Sunday_ + +I tried to get a lot of sleep last night for handling the long turn; +managed about nine hours. When I came to the locker, Stanley was there, +dressed, cleaning his smoked glasses. + +"How much sleep last night?" I asked. + +"Oh, six, seven hour," said Stanley. + +"You're a damned fool," I said; "this is the long turn." + +"I know, I know," he returned, "I have t'ing to do. No have time sleep." + +I looked at him. He had a big frame, but his limbs were hung on it, like +clothes on hooks. His face was a gray pallor, sharply caving in under +the cheek-bones. His eyes were very dull, and steady. I'd noticed those +eyes of his before, and never could decide whether they showed a kind of +sullen defiance, or resignation, or were just extraordinarily tired. + +"Two month more," he said. + +"Two month more what?" + +"Two month more this work every Sunday--goddam work all day like hell, +all night like hell. Pretty soon go back to good job." + +I knew what he meant now. He had told me weeks before, when we had +hewed cinders together in the pit, how he was a rougher in a Pittsburgh +mill. Worked only twelve hours a day and no Sundays. + +"No more goddam long turn," he concluded; "work of rougher slack now, +all right October." + +He moved off slowly, with no spring in his step, and no energy expended +beyond what was absolutely necessary to move him. + +I walked out on the floor to look at the clock. The night gang on every +furnace was washing up, very cheerfully and with an extraordinary +thoroughness. They were slicking up for the once a fortnight +twenty-four-hour party. Nearly everyone drank through his day off, or +raised hell in some extraordinary manner. It was too precious and rare +to spend in less violent reaction to the two weeks' fatigue. I looked at +them and tried not to be envious. The first-helper on Seven was taking a +last look through the peepholes as he put on his collar. A great Slavic +hulk on Number 5 was brushing his clothes with unheard of violence. + +Dick Reber passed by. He saw me leaning against a girder buttoning my +shirt. + +"Front-wall, Number 5, you!" he bawled. + +I was sore at myself for having been seen standing about doing nothing. +But I was sore at Dick also, unreasonably. I went back to my locker, got +my gloves, and went to Number 5. I began filling the spoon, with the +help of "Marty," the Wop. He glared at me, and interfered with my shovel +twice when we went together to the dolomite pile. Marty had made enemies +widely on the furnaces because of a loud mouth, and an officiousness +that sat ridiculously on his stature and his ignorance of steel-making. + +I was glad when the front-wall was done. I took the hook down, and went +over to the fountain in back of Five, cooled my head, neck, and arms, +and went over to Seven, without taking a swallow. I had decided to have +only two drinks of water in the half-day. + +Dick Reber saw me coming up and, I think in punishment for loafing, +said: "Clean up under there. I want you to clean all that filth out, all +of it, from behind that girder." + +It was near the locker and under the flooring, in a sort of shelf, where +lime, dolomite, dirt, old gloves, shoes, filth of all sorts had +accumulated. I cleaned it out with a broom and a stick. It took me half +an hour. + +"All right," said the first-helper; "now get me ten thousand." + +So I went off to the Bessemer, rather glad of the walk. I climbed the +stairs to the pouring platform, and watched the recorder, who had left +his book, operate the levers. The shifting engine backed a ladle under, +and slowly the huge pig-iron mixer, bubbling and shooting out a tide of +sparks, dipped and allowed about 20,000 pounds to drop into the ladle. + +"Ten thou' for Seven," I said. + +In another five minutes, the engine brought up a ladle for my ten +thousand, and the boy dipped it out for me with the miraculous levers. + +"All right," I said; and ran down the stairs fast enough to catch a +ride back past the furnaces, on the step of the locomotive. + +The second-helper grabbed the big hook which came down slowly on a chain +from the crane, and stuck it into the bottom of the ladle. As the chain +lifted, the ladle tipped, and poured the ten thousand pounds with a +hiss. But the craneman was careless, which isn't usual. Fred kept +saying, "Whoop, whoop!" but he went right on spilling for quite a spell +before he recovered control. + +"Dolomite," said the first-helper to me, after the "jigger" was poured. + +I went to a box full of the white gravel, at the end of the mill, and +yelled at Herb, the craneman. A box of dolomite is about eight feet +square and three high. This one was perched on top of a dolomite pile, +ten feet off the ground. I struggled up on top, and took the hooks Herb +gave me from the crane,--eight-inch hooks,--and put them into the +corners of the box, using both hands. Then I slid down, and the box rose +and swung over my head. + +Herb settled it neatly on our own little dolomite pile in front of +Seven. I slipped out the front hooks, and the back ones lifted and +dumped the load, with a soft swish, nearly on the low part of the old +pile. + +There was a little time to sit down after this--perhaps ten minutes. I +smoked a Camel, which had spent the last shift in my shirt pocket. It +was a melancholy Camel, and tended to twist up in my nose, but it tasted +sweet. I sat on Seven's bench, and watched Fred take his rod and move +aside the shutters of the peepholes, to give final looks at the furnace. +She must be nearly ready. He looked back at me, and I knew that meant +"test." + +I grabbed tongs, lying spread out by the anvil, clamped hold of the +mould, and ran with them to about ten feet from number two door of the +furnace. Fred had the test-spoon lifted and shoved into the door; he +moved it around in the molten steel, and brought it out full, straining +his body tense to hold it level and not lose the test. I shifted the +mould a little on the ground, and closed my hands as tight as I could on +the tongs, so the mould wouldn't slip and turn. He poured easily and +neatly, just filling the mould, and flung the spoon violently on the +floor, to shake off the crusting steel on the handle. + +I ran with mould and tongs to the water-trough in front of Eight, and +plunged it in, the steam coming up in a small cloud. I brought it out +and held it on the anvil, end-wise, with the tongs, while Nick flattened +in the top slightly on both edges, to make it break easily. Nick broke +the ingot in two blows, and Fred and the melter consulted over the +fragments. + +"All right," said Dick. + +We were about to tap. I went after my flat manganese shovel, but it was +gone from the locker. Some dog-gone helper has nailed it. I took out an +ordinary flat shovel. + +In back of the furnace Nick was already busy with a "picker," prodding +away the stopping from the tap. He burned his hands once, swore, gave it +up, went halfway along the platform away from the tap, returned, and +went at it again. Finally, the steel escaped, with its usual roar of +flame and its usual splunch as it fell into the ladle. + +I stepped back, and nearly into "Shorty," who had come to help shovel +manganese. "Where you get shovel?" he said, with his eyes blazing, +pointing to mine. + +"Out of my locker," I said. + +He started toward it, and I held it away from him. + +"I tell you that goddam shovel mine--" he began; but Dick, from the +other side of the spout, shouted at us how many piles to shovel, and +Shorty shut up. We were to get in the first big pile and the next little +one. + +The ladle was beginning to fill. "Heow!" yelled Dick. + +Shorty and I went forward and put in the manganese. It was hot, but I +took too much interest in shoveling faster than Shorty, to care. Then +came the second ladle, during which Shorty's handkerchief caught on +fire, and made him sputter a lot, and rid himself of some profanity in +Anglo-Italian. + +I went to that trough by Eight afterward, to wash off the soot and +cinder, and put my head under water, straight down. I knew back-wall was +coming, and sat down a minute, wondering, rather vaguely, how I was +going to feel at six or seven the next morning. + +Back-wall came. I had bad luck with it, trying too hard. It was too hot +for one thing. There are times when a back-wall will be so cool you can +hesitate a long second, as you fling your shovelful, and make sure of +your aim; at others, your face scorches when you first swing back, and +you let the stuff off any fashion, to get out of the heat. There's a +third-helper on Five, I'm glad to say, who is worse than I. They put him +out of the line this time; he was just throwing into the bottom of the +furnace. + +Everyone develops an individual technique. Jimmy's is bending his knees, +and getting his shovel so low that it looks like scooping off the floor. +Fred's is graceful, with a smart snap at the end. + +Then front-wall. I start in search of a spoon and a hook. It's not easy +to get one to suit the taste of my first-helper. There's one that looks +twenty feet,--I haven't any technical figures on spoons,--but it's too +long, I know, for Fred. There's a spoon three feet shorter, just right. +Hell--with two inches melted off the end! I pick a short one in good +repair,--he can use the thing or get his own,--and drag it to Seven, +giving the scoop a ride on the railroad track, to ease the weight. Fred +has put a hook over number one door; so I hurry, and lift the spoon +handle with gloved hands to slip it on the hook. If it's not done +quickly, you'll get a burn; you're an arm's length from molten steel, +and no door between. I get it on, and pick up a shovel. + +Front-wall can be very easy,--you can nearly enjoy it, like any of the +jobs,--if the furnace is cool, and there's a breeze blowing down the +open spaces of the mill. And, too, if the spoon hangs right in the hook, +and the first-helper turns it a little for you, then you can stand off, +six feet from the flame, and toss your gravel straight into the spoon's +scoop. You hardly go to the water fountain to cool your head when the +stunt's over. On number one the hook hung wrong, the spoon wouldn't turn +in it, and you had to hug close, and pour, not toss. I tried a toss on +my second shovel, and half of it skated on the floor. + +"Get it on the spoon, goddam you!" from Nick. + +So I did. + +After that, we sat around for twenty minutes. Fred looked at the furnace +once or twice, and changed the gas. Several gathered in front of +Seven--Jock, Dick, the melter, Fred, and Nick. + +"Do you know what my next job's going to be?" said Fred. + +The others looked up. + +"In a bank." + +"Nine to five," said Dick. "Huh! gentlemen's hours." + +"Saturday afternoons, and Sundays," said Fred. + +The other faces glowed and said nothing. + +"This wouldn't be so bad if there were Sundays," said Fred. + +"I'll tell you, there'll come a time," broke in the melter, "when Gary +and all the other big fellers will have to work it themselves--no one +else will." + +"Now in the old country, a man can have a bit of fun," said the +Scotchman. "Picnics, a little singin' and drinkin',--and the like. What +can a man do here? We work eight hours in Scotland. They work eight +hours in France, in Italy, in Germany--all the steel mills work eight +hours, except in this bloody free country." + +The melter broke in again. "It's the dollar they're after--the sucking +dollar. They say they're going to cut out the long turn. I heard they +were going to cut out the long turn when I went to work in the mill, as +a kid. I'm workin' it, ain't I? Christ!" + +I left, to shovel in fluor spar with Fred. + +When we finished, Fred said: "You better get your lunch now, if you want +it. Then help Nick on the spout." + +I ate in the mill restaurant. My order was roast beef, which included +mashed potato, peas, and a cup of coffee--for thirty-five cents. Then I +had apple pie and a glass of milk. The waiters are a fresh Jew, named +Beck, and a short, fat Irish boy, called Pop. There is a counter, no +tables; the food is clean. + + +I went back to help Nick on the spout, and found him already back on the +gallery with a wheelbarrow of mud. He looked up gloomily and said: "One +more." + +I dumped the wheelbarrow, and went after more, bounced it over tracks +and a hose, and up and down a little board runway to where the mud-box +stands. After filling up, I went back slowly, dangerously, swayingly, +over bits of dolomite and coal, navigated the corner of the gallery by a +hair's tolerance, and dropped the handles of the wheelbarrow by Nick +with relief. It's bad on my back, that's it. I'd rather do two +back-walls, and tap three times in high heat, than wheel these exacting +loads of mud. + +Nick knelt on the other side of the spout, and I gave him the mud with +my shovel, to repair the holes and broken places of the spout, which the +last flow of molten steel had carried away. When he finished the big +holes, I gave him small gobs of mud, dipping my hands in a bucket of +water between each two, to keep the stuff from sticking. A wave of +weakening heat rose constantly from the spout still hot from the last +flow. I prayed God Nick would hurry. He made a smooth neat surface on +the whole seven-feet of spout, rounding the edges with his hands. + +When I came back from the spout, Fred was in front of the furnace, blue +glasses on his nose, inspecting the brew. He put his glasses back on his +cap, glanced at me, and pointed to a pile of dolomite and slag which had +been growing in front of Number 3 door. + +"All right," I said, and picked up a shovel from the dolomite pile. For +a couple of minutes, I shoveled the stuff down the slag hole, and +remembered vividly the bygone pit-days. Then I would have been cleaning +up around the buggy. For a minute I felt vastly superior to pit people. +I earned two cents more an hour, and threw down a hole the dolomite and +dirt they cleared away. + +I began to feel a little tired in back and legs, and repeated Fred's +formula on how to get away with a long turn: "Take it like any other day +to five o'clock. Then work for midnight. Anyone can stand it from +midnight to morning." I did a front-wall on that basis. + +"Watch those buggies!" + +I ran over to the furnace and glanced down the slag hole, yelling back, +"Half full." Then Fred went to an electric switch, and the whole furnace +tilted till the hot running slag flowed over at the doors, and dripped +into the buggy-car beneath, in the pit. I held my hand up as one of them +filled, and Fred caught the pitching furnace with the switch, and +stopped the flow of slag. + + +4 P.M. _Sunday_ + +Number 8 furnace tapped, and I shoveled manganese into the ladle with +that man from Akron, who is new, and who, I noticed, burned his fingers +in the same way I did on my first day. Then back-wall and front-wall, +and Jock saying all the while, "It's a third gone, lads." + + +5 P.M. _Sunday_ + +I felt much more tired after this first ten hours than later; it was the +limp fatigue that comes from too much heat. I ate fried eggs and a glass +of milk, and then my appetite took a start and I ordered cold lamb and +vegetables. When I finished, I went back into the mill to my locker, and +took out a cigarette. I sat on a pile of pipes against a main girder, +intending to smoke; the cigarette went out, and I slept a half hour. + +Things were going first-rate from six to nine. Jigger, clean up scrap, +front-wall Number 6, front-wall Number 8. I couldn't distinguish between +this and any other night shift; the food must have acted for sleep. But +after nine the hours dragged. From 9.20 to 10.00 was a couple of hours. + +In the middle of a front-wall, I saw the efficiency man, Mr. Lever, +come through and stare at the furnace, walk around a little, and stare +profoundly at the furnace. Mr. Lever was pointed in two places, I +noticed for the first time. He had a pointed stomach, and his face +worked into a point at his nose. I noticed carefully that he had a +receding chin and a receding forehead. As he watched us scoop the +dolomite, drag up to the spoon, dump, scoop up the dolomite, and do it +over, for three quarters of an hour, I thought about him. I wanted to go +up to him, and give him my shovel. I had to struggle against that +impulse--to go up to him and give him my shovel. + +The evening dragged. I fought myself, to keep from looking at the clock. +I fought for several hours after ten o'clock, and then, when I thought +dawn must be breaking, went up and found it ten minutes of eleven. + +I did feel relieved at twelve, and went out to the restaurant, saying: +"Hell, anyone can wait till morning." + +Sometimes, when things are hurried, when tapping is near or a spout is +to be fixed, you have to eat still drenched in sweat. But to-night I had +time, and at quarter of twelve hung my shirt on the hot bricks at the +side of the furnace, and stood near the doors in the heat, to dry my +back and legs. I then washed soot and dolomite dust from ears and neck, +and dipped my left arm, which was burned, in cold water. At twelve I put +on the dried shirt, and went to eat. + +Half the men wash, half don't. There were a number of open-hearth +helpers in the restaurant, with black hands and faces, two eating soup, +two with their arms on the counter. Their faces lacked any expression +beyond a sullen fatigue; but their eyes roved, following Beck about. +Lefflin had his arms on the counter and his face on them. + +I ate ham and eggs, which included coffee, fried potatoes, two slices of +bread, and a glass of milk. + +Walking back to the furnaces was an effort of will. I climbed the +embankment to the tracks very slowly, the stones and gravel loosening +and tumbling downhill at each step. I tried hard to concentrate on a +calculation of the probable number of front-walls to come. Then I +wondered if it wouldn't pay to cut out breakfast in the morning, and get +nine hours of sleep instead of eight and a quarter. Friselli came up the +bank behind me. He is third on Number 6. + +"Well," I said, "make lots of money to-night." + +"What's the good money, kill yourself?" he said, and went past me along +the tracks. + + +Number 8 was preparing to make front-wall. I felt weary, and full of ham +and eggs, and very desirous of sitting down right there on the floor. +But Jock, the first-helper on Eight, said, "Oh, Walker!" when he saw me, +and we began. + +Through that front-wall Jock was tiring. He worked in little spurts. For +"half a door" he would sing, and goad us on in half-Scotch, and for the +next half he would be silent, and wipe his face with his sleeve. After +that door, he came up to us and said with profound conviction, "It's a +lang turn, it's a lang turn." + +When we finished, Jock lay down on a bench. + +It's a part of a third-helper's duties to keep five or six bags of fine +anthracite coal on the little gallery back of the furnace, near the +spout. I went after that little job now. Fifty pounds of coal in a thick +paper bag isn't much to carry, till you get doing it a couple of days +running. + + +I sat on the seat where the Wop stays who works the furnace-doors; they +call him the "pull up." That had some sacks and a cushion, and was +broad, with a girder for back. I fell asleep. + +Something twisting and pinching my foot woke me up. It was the +first-helper. "Fifteen thousand, quick!" he said. I got up with a jerk, +feeling not so sleepy as I expected, but immeasurably stiff. I moved in +a wobbly fashion down toward the Bessemer. I felt as if I were limping +in four or five directions. Very vigorously and insistently I thought of +one thing. I would look at the clock opposite Number 6 when I went by, +and possibly, very probably, a whole pile of hours had been knocked off. +Then I thought with a sting that we had not tapped, and it couldn't be +more than three o'clock. It was two! + +"Fifteen thousand," I said to myself, "quick"; and climbed the iron +stairs to the Bessemer platform. + +When I came back, I walked beside the locomotive as it dragged the ladle +and the fifteen thousand pounds of molten pig iron. Through closing eyes +I watched the charging-machine thrust in the spout. That long finger +lifted the clay thing from its resting-place on the big saw-horses +between furnaces. Then, moving on the rails, the machine adjusted itself +in front of number two door, and shoved the spout in with a jar. + +I stood lazily watching the pouring of the molten steel. Fred motioned +slowly with his hands, with "Up a little, whoop!" as the stream flowed +very cleanly into the spout and furnace. Then came the noise of lifting, +that characteristic crane grind, with a rising inflection as it gained +speed and moved off. "Pretty soon tapping, after tapping back-wall, +front-wall, the spout, morning," I meditated. + +"Well, how in hell are you?" It was Al, the pit boss. + +"Fine!" I said as loudly as I could; and went and sat down at once. My +chin hit my chest. I stopped thinking, but didn't go to sleep. + +"Test!" yelled Fred. + +We tested three times, and then tapped. There were two ladles, with four +piles of manganese, to shovel in. A third-helper from Number 4, a short +stocky Italian, shoveled with me. The ladle swung slightly closer to the +gallery than usual, and sent up a bit more gas and sparks. We put out +little fires on our clothes six or seven times. After the first ladle, +the Italian put back the sheet iron over the red-hot spout, and after +the second ladle, I put it on. We rested between ladles, in a little +breeze that came through between furnaces. + +"What you think of this job?" he asked. + +"Pretty bad," I said, "but pretty good money." + +He looked up, and the veins swelled on his forehead. His cheeks were +inflamed, and his eyes showed the effects of the twenty hours of +continuous labor. + +"To hell with the money!" he said, with quiet passion; "no can live." + +The words sank into my memory for all time. + +The back-wall was, I think, no hotter than usual, but men's nerves made +them mind things they would have smirked at the previous morning. The +third-helper on Eight and Nick quarreled over a shovel, and Nick sulked +till Fred went over and spoke to him. Once the third-helper got in +Nick's way. "Get out, or I'll break your goddam neck!" And so on-- + +I felt outrageously sore at everyone present--not least, myself. After +that back-wall all except Fred threw their shovels with violence on the +floor, and went to the edge of the mill. They stood about in the little +breeze that had come up there, in a state of fatigue and jangled nerves, +looking out on a pale streak of morning just visible over freight cars +and piles of scrap. + +We made front-wall, and when it was over, I went to the bench by the +locker and sat down, to try to forget about the spout. I had been +forgetting about it for twenty minutes when Nick came up, and shook me, +thinking I had fallen asleep. + +"Mud," he said. + +I got him mud. + +Nick fixed up the spout amid an inclination to cursing in Serbian, and +gave me commands in loud tones in the same language. I felt exceedingly +indifferent to Nick and to the spout, and finished up in a state of +enormous indifference to all things save the chance of sleep. Jack, the +second-helper of Eight, was making tea, having dipped out some hot steel +with a test-spoon, and set a tea-pot on it. + +"Want some?" he said. + +I nodded. + +Watching him make it, and drinking the tea woke me up. + +"What time is it?" I asked. + +"Four-thirty," said he. + +"Thanks for the tea." + +Then the summoning signal for a third-helper rang out--a sledge-hammer +pounding on sheet iron. They were "spooning up," that is, making +front-wall, on Number 6. All through that stunt I was wide awake, quite +refreshed, though with the sense, the conviction, that I had been in the +mill, doing this sort of thing, for a week at the inside. + +Coming back to Seven from that, I found Fred flat on his back, looking +"all in." Jock came up for a drink of water, and looked over at me. + +"You look to me," he remarked, "like the breaking up of a bad winter." +He laughed. + + +5 A.M. _Monday_ + +The sun came into the mill, looking very pallid and sick beside the +bright light from the metal. I watched the men on Eight make back-wall, +and heard the sounds; I sat on the bench, my legs as loose as I could +make them, my head forward, eyes just raised. + +"Lower, lower, goddam you, lower!" came a desperate command to the +"pull-up" man to close the furnace doors. + +"Get out--" + +"One more--" + +"Up, up, goddam it! where are your ears?" + +"Come on, men, last door." + +"My shovel you son-of-a--!" + +Now they were tapping on Number 6. The melter came out of his shanty; he +had had a sleep since the last furnace tapped. He rubbed his eyes, and +went out on the gallery. I could hear his "Heow." Four poor devils were +standing in the flame, putting in manganese. Thank God, I don't shovel +for Six. + +"A jigger," from Fred. + +"Sure." + +When I went for it, the sores on the bottom of my feet hurt, so that I +walked on the edges of my shoes. I was so delighted with the idea of its +being six o'clock, with no back-walls ahead, that I almost took pleasure +in that foot. I stopped in front of a fountain and put my right arm +under the water. + +The recorder in the Bessemer was asleep. He was a boy of twenty. I woke +him up, and grinned in his face. + +"Fifteen thou' for Number 7." + +"You go to hell, with your goddam Number 7!" + +I grinned at him again, knew it was just the long turn, knew he'd give +me that fifteen thousand pounds; went down stairs again-- + + +Twenty minutes of seven. It's light. Nobody talks, but everyone dresses +in a hurry. Everyone's face looks grave from fatigue--eyes dead. We +leave at ten minutes of seven. + + +7 A.M. _Monday_ + +It's a problem--a damn problem--whether to walk fast and get home quick, +or walk slow and sort of rest. I try to go fast, and have the sense of +lifting my legs, not with the muscles, but with something else. I shake +my head to get it clearer. One bowl of oatmeal. Coffee. "I feel all +right." I get up and am conscious of walking home quietly and evenly, +without any further worry about the difficulty of lifting my feet. "The +long turns, they're not so bad," I say out loud, and stumble the same +second on the stairs. I get up, angry, and with my feet stinging with +pain. Old thought comes back: "Only seven to eight hours sleep. Bed. +Quick." I push into my room--the sun is all over my bed. Pull the +curtain; shut out a little. Take off my shoes. It's hard work trying to +be careful about it, and it's darn painful when I'm not careful. Sit on +the bed, lift up my feet. Feel burning all over; wonder if I'll ever +sleep. Sleep. + + + + +VI + +BLAST-FURNACE APPRENTICESHIP + + +At the end of every shift, when I walked toward the green mill-gate just +past the edge of the power house, I could look over toward the +blast-furnaces. There were five of them, standing up like mammoth cigars +some hundred feet in height. A maze of pipes, large as tunnels, twisted +about them, and passed into great boilers, three or four of which arose +between each two furnaces. These, I learned, were "stoves" for heating +the blast. I had had in mind for several days asking for a transfer to +this interesting apparatus. There was less lifting of dead weight on the +blast-furnace jobs than on the open-hearth. Besides, I wanted to see the +beginning of the making of steel--the first transformation the ore +catches, on its way toward becoming a steel rail, or a surgical +instrument. + +I went to see the blast-furnace superintendent, Mr. Beck, at his house +on Superintendent's Hill. + +"I'm working on the open-hearth," I said, "and want very much to get +transferred to the blast-furnace. I intend to learn the steel business, +and want to see the beginnings of things." + +"How much education?" he asked. + +"I graduated from college," I said, "Yale College." Would that +complicate the thing, I wondered, or get in the way? I wanted badly to +sit down for a talk, tell him the whole story--army, Washington, hopes +and fears; I liked him a good deal. But he was in a hurry--perhaps that +might come on a later day. + +We talked a little. He said I ought to come into the office for a while +and "learn to figure burdens." I replied that I wanted the experience of +the outside, and a start at the bottom. + +"All right," he said, "I'll put you outside. Come Monday morning." + +On Monday morning I followed the cindered road inside the gate for three +hundred yards, turned off across a railroad track, and passed a +machine-shop. The concrete bases of the blast-furnaces rose before me. +Somebody had just turned a wheel on the side of one of the boiler-like +"stoves," and a deafening blare, like tons of steam getting away, broke +on my eardrums. I asked where the office was. + +"Through there." + +Up some steps, over a concrete platform, past the blaring "stove," I +went, to the other side of the furnaces, and found there a flat dirty +building--the office. Inside was Mr. Beck, who turned me over at once to +Adolph, the "stove-gang boss." + +I was a little anxious over this introduction to things, and thought it +might embarrass or prevent comradeships. But it didn't. No one knew, or +if he did, ever gave it a thought. It may perhaps have accounted for +Adolph's letting me keep my clothes in his shanty that night, and for +considerable conversation he vouchsafed me on the first day. But my +individuality passed quickly, very quickly; I became no more than a part +of that rather dingy unit, the stove-gang. + +While I was putting on my clothes in Adolph's sheet-iron shanty, he +grinned and said: "Last time, pretty dirty job, too, eh?" + +"Yes," I said, "open-hearth." + +He led me out of the shanty, past three stoves, up an iron staircase, +past a blast-furnace, and through a "cast-house." That is not as +interesting as I hoped. It is merely a place of many ditches, or +run-ways, that lead the molten iron from the furnace to the ladle. Very +little iron is ever "cast," since the blast-furnaces here make iron only +for the sake of swiftly transporting it, while still hot, to the +Bessemer and open-hearth, for further metamorphosis into steel. + +We came at last to more stoves, a set of three for No. 4 blast-furnace. +Near the middle one was a little group of seven men, three of them with +a bar, which they thrust and withdrew constantly in an open door of the +stove. Inside were shelving masses and gobs of glowing cinder. + +"You work with these feller," Adolph said; and passed out of sight along +the stoves. + +I watched carefully for a long time, which was a cardinal rule of +practice with me on joining up with a new gang. It was best, I thought, +to shut up, and study for a spell the characters of the men, the +movements and knacks of the job. I think this reserve helped, for the +men were first to make advances, and before the day was out, I had a +life-history from most of them. + +"Where you work, las' job?" asked a little Italian with a thin blond +moustache, after he had finished his turn on the crowbar. + +"Open-hearth," I said, "third-helper." + +"I work three week open-hearth," he said, "too hot, no good." + +"Hot all right," I said; "how's this job?" + +"Oh, pretty good, this not'ing," he said; "sometime we go in stove, +clean 'em up, hot in there like hell. Some day all right, some day no +good." + +I had been watching the stove, and caught the simple order of movements. +Two or three men, with long lunging thrusts, loosened the glowing cinder +inside a fire-box; another pulled it out with a hoe into a steel +wheelbarrow; another dumped the load on a growing pile of cinder over +the edge of the platform. When one of the men disappeared for a chew, I +grabbed the wheelbarrow at hauling-out time, and worked into the job. + +In fifteen minutes that fire-box was cleared out, and we moved to the +next stove. We skipped that; the door was locked and wedged. I learned +later that, if we had opened it, the blast (being "on" in the stove) +would in all likelihood have killed us. It blows out with sufficient +pressure to carry a man forty yards. But the next stove we tackled. I +tried the thrusting of the bar this time. The trick is to aim well at a +likely crack, thrust in hard and together, and with all the weight on +the bar, spring it up and down till the cinder gives. It was good +exercise without strain, and so cool in comparison with open-hearth work +that I took real joy in the hot cinder. The heat was comparable to a +wood fire, and only occasionally was it necessary to hug close. + +We did five stoves, taking the wheelbarrow with us, and carrying it up +the steps, when we passed from one level to another. After the five came +a lull. Two of the men rolled cigarettes, the rest reinforced a chew +that already looked as big as an apple in the cheek. For both these +comforting acts "Honest Scrap" was used, a tobacco that is stringy and +dark, and is carried in great bulk, in a paper package. + +The men sat on steps or leaned against girders. A short Italian near me, +with quick movements, and full of unending talk, looked up and asked the +familiar question, "What job you work at last time?" + +"Open-hearth," I said. + +"How much pay?" + +"Forty-five cents an hour." + +"No like job?" + +"No, like this job better," I returned. + +He paused. Then, "What job you work at before open-hearth?" + +"Oh," I said, "I was in the army." + +His face became alert at once, and interested. The others stopped +talking, also, and looked over at me. + +"Me have broder in de American army; no in army, mysel'; me one time +Italian army. How long time you?" + +"Nearly two years," I said. + +"Oversea?" + +"Yes, but didn't get to front, before war over. No fight," I answered, +adopting abbreviated style, as I sometimes did. It seemed unnecessary +and a little discourteous to use a rounded phrase, with all the adorning +English particles. + +He jumped down from the steps and took up a broom, executing a shoulder +arms or two, and the flat-hand Italian salute, performed with a +tremendous air. + +"Here," I said, "bayonet." + +I took the broomstick, and did the bayonet exercises. The gang stood up +and watched with delight, making comments in several languages. +Especially the eyes of the Italians danced. The incident left a genial +social atmosphere. + +Adolph came in from behind one of the stoves as I was concluding a "long +point." + +"Come on," he said, looking at me with a grin; and when I had followed +him, "I show you furnace, li'l bit." + +He took me to a stair-ladder near the skip that ascended to the top of +Number 5. For every furnace, a skip carries up the ore and other +ingredients for melting inside. It is a funicular-like thing, a +continuous belt, with boxes attached, running from the "hopper" at the +top of the furnace to the "stockroom" underground. + +We started to climb the steps at the left of the belt. There was a +little rail between us and the moving boxes of ore. + +"See dat," said Adolph, pointing through at the boxes. "Keep head +inside," he said, "keep hand inside, cut 'em off quick." He illustrated +the amputation, with great vivacity, on his throat and wrists. + +It was a climb of five minutes to the furnace-top. We paused to look at +the mounting boxes. + +"Ore?" I asked. + +He nodded. + +Pretty soon the iron ceased coming, and a white stone took its place in +the boxes. + +"What's that?" + +"Limestone," he said. "Next come coke. Look." + +We were near enough to the top to see the boxes tilt, and the hopper +open and swallow the dumping of stone. In a minute or two, we stepped +out on the platform on top of the furnace. + +Adolph looked at me and grinned. "You smell dat gas?" he asked. + +I nodded. He referred to the carbon monoxide that I knew issued from the +top of all blast-furnaces. + +"You stay li'l bit, pretty soon you drunk," he said. + +"Let's not," I returned. + +"You stay li'l bit more," he continued, his grin broadening, "pretty +soon you dead." + +I learned in later days that this was perfectly accurate. + +We stood on a little round platform fifteen or twenty feet across, with +the hopper in the centre gobbling iron ore and limestone. A layer of ore +dust, an inch thick, covered the flooring, and a faint odor of gas was +in the air. Each of the other five furnaces had a similar lookout, and +a narrow passageway connected them with the tops of the stoves. The top +of these gigantic shafts likewise had a diameter of some fifteen feet; +there were little railings about them, and in the centre a trapdoor. + +"What's that for?" I asked. + +"Go inside to clean 'em out," he returned. + +I wondered, with a few flights of imagination, what that job would be +like, and remembered that the Italian with the blond moustache had +spoken of the duty in uncomplimentary terms. + +We could look forth from this eminence and see the whole mill yard, +which was nearly a mile in extent. Over the "gas house"--a large +building I hadn't noticed before, the source of gas for the +open-hearth--and far to the left, were the Bessemers, spouting red gold +against a very blue sky. On their right rose the familiar stacks of the +open-hearth. I looked intently at them and wondered what Number 7 did at +that moment--front-wall, back-wall, or tapping its periodic deluge of +hot steel? + +In the foreground, a variety of gables, and then the irregular roof, far +beyond, that I knew must be the blooming-mill, because of the +interesting yard with the muscular cranes, tossing about bars and shapes +and sheets of steel. An immense system of railways everywhere, running +down as far as the river bank, where were piles of cinder, and a +trainload of ladles moving there to dump. A half-mile away another +ironclad cluster of buildings, the tube mill, the nail mill, and the +rest, with convenient rails running up to them. + +I turned around. Near by, slightly beyond the foot of the skips, was +that impressive hill of red dust, the ore pile. Iron ore was being taken +away for the skips with one of those spider-like mechanisms that combine +crane, derrick, and steam-shovel. It was built hugely, two uprights +forty or fifty feet high, at a distance, I estimate, of a hundred yards, +with their bases secured to railway cars. A crossbeam joined them, which +was itself a monorail, along which a man-carrying car ran. From that car +dropped chains, attaching themselves at the bottom to the familiar +automatic shovel or scoop. + +First the whole arrangement moved--the uprights, the crosspiece, and the +monorail car--very slowly over the whole hill of ore, to a good spot for +digging. Then the monorail car sped to the chosen position, and the +shovel fell rapidly into the ore. With a mouthful secure, the chains +lifted a little, enough to clear the remaining ore, and the car ran its +mouthful to the hill's edge, to dump into special gondolas on railroad +tracks. The whole gigantic ore-hill was within easy reach of a single +instrument. + +"Ought to last a while," I said. + +"Will be gone in a month," he returned. + +We went down the ladder-steps, and stopped near one of the furnaces. I +rather hoped the stove-gang boss would talk. He did. + +"Ever work blast-furnace before?" he began. + +"No," I said; "I have worked on the open-hearth furnaces a little. But +before that I spent about two years in the army." + +"Me in Austrian army," he said musingly, "fifteen year ago. Sergeant +artillery." + +I thought about that, and it occurred to me that he retained something +of the artillery sergeant still, necessarily adapted a little to the +exigencies of American blast-stoves. I found he knew about ordnance, and +boasted of Budapest cannon-makers. + +"How do you like this country?" I asked. + +"America, all right," he said. + +"Good country?" I pushed him a little. + +"Mak' money America," he explained; "no good live. Old country fine +place live." + +We developed that a little. We discussed cities. He asked me about +London and Paris, and other European cities. Which did I like best, +cities over there or American cities? I said American cities. He asked +what was the difference. I thought a minute, comparing New York and +London. European cities did not have the impressive forty-story edifices +of American, and looked puny with four or five. + +"Ah," he said, "tall buildings no look good. Budapest good city, no can +build over five story." + +Here was unlooked-for discrimination. I began feeling provincial. He +went on to describe the cleanliness of Budapest, and to contrast it with +Pennsylvania cities of his acquaintance. He certainly had me hands down. + +He continued: "No can build stack that t'row smoke into neighbor's +house. Look at dis place," he said, pointing to Bouton, "look at +Pittsburgh." + +I said no more, but nodded swift agreement. + +He was a little more encouraging about the United States when it came +to government. + +"You have a man president; that no good, after four year you kick him +out. My country sometime get king, that's all right, sometime get damn +bad one. No can kick him out." + +But he relapsed into censure again when he came to American women. +"Women," he said, "in my country do more work than men this country." + +"They have more time, here," I said, "and don't have to work so hard." + +"American women, when you meet 'em, always ask: 'How much money in de +pock?' What they do? Dress up,--hat, dress, shoe,--walk all time Main +Street. Bah!" + +It was a refreshing shock to receive this outspoken critique of America +from a Hunky, a Hungarian stove-gang boss of a blast-furnace. I was +amused very much by it, except the phrase "America all right mak' money, +old country place live." I coupled it up with some talks I had had with +men on the open-hearth. America, steel-America, which was all they knew, +was very largely a place of long hours, gas, heat, Sunday work, dirty +homes, big pay. There was a connection in that, I thought, with the +gigantic turnover figures of laborers in steel, the restless moving from +job to job that had been growing in recent years so fast. Too many men +were treating America as a good place for taking a fortune out of. The +impulse toward learning English, building a home, and becoming American, +certainly wasn't strong in steel-America. But I left these questions in +the back of my head, and returned to the stove gang at Adolph's command. + +In a few days I was well in the midst of my gang-novitiate. We got +formally introduced by name one day in front of No. 12 stove. The little +Italian with the black moustache said: "What's your name?" + +"Charlie," I said, knowing that first names were the thing. + +"All right," he said, "that's Jimmy, Tony, Joe. Mike not here. You know +Mike? Slavish. John, that's me. That's John too wid de bar.--Hey!" with +an arresting yell, that made the others look up, "_Dis is Charlie!_" + + +I became a part of an exclusive group of seven men, who had worked +together for about two years. There is a cohesiveness and a structure of +tradition about a semipermanent mill-group of this sort that marks it +off from the casual-labor gang. The physical surroundings remain +unaltered, and methods and ways of thought grow up upon them. I was +struck by the amount of character a man laid bare in twelve hours of +common labor. There are habits of temper, of cunning and strength, of +generosity and comradeship, of indifference, that it is capable of +throwing into relief beyond any a priori reasoning. It begins by being +extensively intimate in personal and physical ways; you know every man's +idiosyncrasies in handling a sledge or a bar or a shovel, and the +expression of his face under all phases of a week's work; you know +naturally the various garments he wears on all parts of his body. You +proceed to acquaint yourself, as the work throws up opportunity, with +the mannerisms and qualities of his spirit. It is astonishing, with the +barrier of a different language, only partly broken down by a +dialect-American, how little is ultimately concealed or kept out of the +common understanding. + +I was impressed by the precise practices established in doing the work. +Every motion and every interval of the job had been selected by long +trial. If you didn't think the formula best, try it out. Many +considerations went into its selection--to-day's fatigue, to-morrow's, +and next month's. It had an eye for gas effect, for the boss's peculiar +character, and for all material obstacles, many of which were far from +obvious. + +When the flue dust had been removed from the blast-stoves, I found +wheeling and dumping it an easy and congenial set of movements, and +consequently took off my loads at a great speed. + +At once I became a target, "Tak' it eas'--What's the matter with you; +tak' it eas'." + +John--Slovene, and Stoic--put in an explanation: "Me work on this job +two year, me know; take it easy. You have plenty work to do." + +"Take it easy," I said, "and no get tired, eh? feel good every day?" + +"You no can feel good every day," he amended quickly. "Gas bad, make +your stomach bad." + +So I slowed up on my wheelbarrow loads, sat on the handles, and spat and +talked, till I found I was going too slow. There was a work-rhythm that +was neither a dawdle nor a drive; if you expected any comfort in your +gang life of twelve hours daily, you had best discover and obey its +laws. It might be, from several points of view, an incorrect rhythm, +but, at all events, it was a part of the gang _mores_. And some of its +inward reasonableness often appeared before the day was out, or the +month, or the year. + + +Everybody wore good clothes to work, and changed in the shanty to their +furnace outfit. I usually came in a brown suit, which had been out in +the rain a good many times and was fairly shapeless. One day I entered +the mill in a gray suit, which fitted and was moderately pressed. + +At the dinner-bucket hour in the shanty, I was asked by John the +Italian: "How much you pay for suit, Charlie?" + +I was embarrassed, fearing vaguely explanations that might have to +follow a declaration of price. I suddenly recalled the fact that the +suit had been given me by my brother, so that I didn't know the price, +and said so. + +"My brother give me suit, I don't know how much he pay," I said. That +dumped me into another quandary. + +"What job your brother have?" I was immediately asked. + +I thought a moment and answered truthfully again. + +"My brother, priest," I said. + +That arrested immediate attention, and I was looked at with respect and +curiosity. + +Tony finally said, "Why you no be priest, Charlie?" + +"Oh," I answered, laughing, "I run away; I like raise hell too much be +priest." This was pretty accurate, too. + +"O Charlie!" they bellowed. + +After that, the gang were friends to the death. + + + + +VII + +DUST, HEAT, AND COMRADESHIP + + +One day I was promoted to stove-tender or hot-blast man on Number 6. + +The keeper of the furnace was a negro. When he was rebuilding the +runways for the tapped metal, I noticed that his movements were sure and +practised. He patted and shaped the mud-clay in the runway, like a +potter moulding a vessel. When it was tap time, he bored the tap hole +with the electric drill easily and neatly; when the metal flowed, he +knew the exact moment to lift the gates for drawing away slag. I watched +him to see how he managed the four white men that worked for him. They +were Austrians, and I found they joked together and showed no resentment +of status. Commands were given with a nod or gesture. With the Americans +on the furnace, the relation was the traditional one. The negro was +light and seemed too slightly built for the job, but he performed it +very efficiently, and so did his gang. + +The blower was Old McLanahan, a man somewhere between thirty-five and +sixty. A long, successful life of inebriety had given him a certain +resignation to the ills of man, and enabled him to keep the heart of a +viveur throughout his life. His skin appeared thrown like a bag over an +assemblage of loosely fitted bones--the only considerable part of him +being a paunch which coursed forward into a moderate point. + +He was rather proud of being a blower on furnace No. 6. + +After the slag had been sampled he said: "Where d'ye eat, boy?" + +"I eat at Mrs. Farrell's." + +"How much?" + +"Seven a week." + +"Too much. Pretty goddam good is it?" + +"Damn good food," I said. + +"Is Mrs. Farrell a widder woman?" + +"No," I said, "she's not." + +"Well," he said, "if you hear of a damn fine little widder woman, let me +know will yer?" + +"Sure," I said. + +"I'm lookin' for a place ter board, and most of all I'm lookin' for a +little widder woman ter honor wid holy matrimony." + +After tapping that morning at 8.00, McLanahan took a silver dollar out +of his pocket. "If it comes heads," he said, "I'm goin' out to-night, +see, I'm goin' out ter find a woman." + +He flipped the coin and it fell tails. "Don't count," said he, "two out +of three." + +This flip fell heads. + +"Hah," he said, "if this comes heads, I'm goin' out to-night ter find a +woman." + +It fell tails. + +"Hell!" he said, "Don't count, flipped it with the wrong hand." + +He kept this up all day. Finally at 5.30 the coin came heads. He picked +the coin up and put it in his pocket. + +"Goin' out, to-night," he said. + + +"Boss wants to keep Number 6 lookin' right. Go down below, and clean out +all that flue dust." + +I shoveled between the stone arches of the furnace base, that curved +overhead like the culverts of a bridge. Sometimes the flue dust was wet +and clotted with mud, and came up in cakes on the shovel; sometimes it +was light, and flew in your nose and eyes. I made a pile of it six feet +high, and shaped it into a brick-red pyramid with my shovel. I washed +the arches white with a hose. + +"Change 'em before we tap," McLanahan ordered, nodding at the stoves. + +I went among the rangy hundred-foot shafts with a certain sense of +control over great forces. Every set differs in its special crankiness. +Number 9's have stiff-working valves, but are powerful heaters; Number +8's are cool stoves, but their valves slide genially into place. I +always a little dreaded "blowing her off." Resting my arms on the edge +of the wheel, and grabbing the top with my hands, I wrenched it over to +the left, and the blast began. The immense volumes of compressed air +escaped with a gradually accelerated blare. I gritted my teeth a little, +and my ears sang. + +Then came "putting on the gas." I climbed to a little platform near the +combustion chamber, and with a hunk of iron scrap for hammer, knocked +out some wedges that held tight a door. By now I knew just the pressure +for making the iron slab creep on its rollers. I braced my feet and +pulled with back and arms. + +Through the door, the combustion chamber glowed red. I went down the +steps and slowly turned the gas-pipe crank, bringing an eight-inch pipe +close to the red opening. I dodged the back flare as it ignited. + +When the "new" stove was on, and the "old" one lit for reheating, I went +to the pyrometer shanty. In a little hut among the furnaces were +tell-tale discs, that let you know if you were keeping your heat right. +I found my heat curve was smooth with only a tiny hump.... Two Hunkies +were inside the shanty. + +"Nine-thirty," said one. + +"How do you know?" I asked. + +He pointed to the end of the curve on the disc, that was opposite the +9.30 mark on the circumference. + +"Saves me a watch," he said, with a grin. + +After supper that evening, I mended a sleeve of my shirt that had been +torn on a piece of cinder in the cast-house. Sounds of conversation were +rising from the porch. I went out and found Mr. Farrell sitting in a +rocker with one leg on the railing and his face screwed into an attitude +of thinking. Mrs. Farrell, having done the dishes, had come out to knit, +and a lanky visitor, who leaned uncomfortably against the railing, was +doing the talking. The conversation was political. + +"Before I came to this town, nobody had the guts to vote Democratic," +said the visitor. "I'm from Democratic parts," he went on, "and when I +first come here I used to go round. 'Come, come,' I said, 'you fellers +is Democrats, you know you is. Sign up.' 'We know it,' they'd say, 'but +we can't afford ter, there's the wife and kids--we can't afford ter, +we've got a job and we're goin' to keep it.' That's how bad it was." + +"You mean--" + +"I mean you voted with the Company or pretty quick you moved out of +Bouton, for you hadn't any job to work at.... I used ter work at glass +blowin', that's a real business--" + +"Mr. Herder is always telling us how much better the glass business is +than the steel business," said Mrs. Farrell. "You'll have to get used to +that." She gave everybody a smoothing-out smile. + + +It was fun when you could pick up "dope" in the course of a morning's +sweat. I learned one Sunday a few pointers about judging conditions +through the peepholes. If there is a lot of movement, your furnace is +O.K. If the cinder begins to settle into the tuyere, your furnace is +cold. If she looks reddish, cold; blue, O.K. Don't be fooled by +different colored glasses in the peepholes. + +One day we kept the stoves on "all heat" for the furnace was cold. "All +you can give her, goddam it," McLanahan said, looking through the +peepholes. McLanahan was always a little ridiculous. Anxiety made him +hop about and waddle from peephole to peephole, like a hen looking for +grain. + +I heaved on the hot-blast chain, and the indicator climbed. + +We had a pleasant, light brown chocolaty slag, that day, which meant +good iron. When the metal runs out with large white speckles, she has +too much sulphur; when she smokes, you'll get good iron. + +The other day they had too large a load of ore for the coke and stone in +her. + +"Sledge!" yelled the keeper. + +A cinder-snapper brought up two, and held the bar while the keeper and +first-helper sledged. They worked well, and I watched with fascination +the hammer head whirl dizzily, and land true at the bar. + +At last the liquid slag broke through, jet-black as if it were molten +coal, flowing thickly down the clay spout. The clay notch was hammered +and eaten away, and had to be remade. + +I watched the stove-tender on Number 7 as he opened the cold-air valve. +His motions were exactly calculated--the precise blow, to an ounce, to +loosen that wedge. + +"How long have you been stove-tender?" I asked. + +"Ten years," he said. + + +"Go down to the stockroom and tell the skip-man, one more coke," said +McLanahan. + +I was glad to get a glimpse of that part of the blast-furnace operation. +Gondola cars bring up ore and the other ingredients of blast-furnace +digestion, and run over tracks with gaps between the sleepers. The cars, +by means of their collapsible bottoms, drop the loads down through, and +the material falls into an underground "stockroom." + +I entered it by climbing down two ladders, and found the skip-man at the +base of one of the endless chains. The chamber had the appearance of a +mine gallery de luxe. I looked at the tons of ore moving upward neatly, +efficiently. What an incalculable saving of labor and time, this endless +chain affair with its continually moving boxes, over the old manner of +hoisting painfully, in few-pound lots, by hand! + +I gave McLanahan's order to the skip-man and went up the ladders. + +You've got to tap, "when the iron's right," and when a little later the +keeper held the steam drill in front of the mud wall of the tap hole, +the steam stayed at home. There was no time for a steam-fitter. + +Young Lonergan and I beat it for the electric drill. It was heavy enough +to make us waddle as we carried it on the run. + +"That's bludy funny," said McLanahan. The electric drill wouldn't +electrify. A hurry call followed for the electrician. He smiled benignly +while twelve sweaty men looked on. And in thirty seconds he fixed the +connection, and we tapped in time to save the iron. + +When the drill had almost bored through the hard mud in the tap hole, +the keeper shoved in a crowbar, and a couple of helpers sledged +rhythmically for one minute. Then the molten iron broke the mud into +bits, and tumbled out. Little sheets of flame from the slag skated along +the top of the red river. It rose in the runway with bubbles and smoke +on top. The keeper grabbed a scraper--an exaggerated hoe--and started +the slag through a side ditch. + +"Now try it," said Old Mac. + +By then, I had the test spoon ready, scooped up a bubbling ten pounds, +carried it carefully, and poured it into two moulds. + +When I had broken the little ingots, still red, Mac said, "Too much +sulphur." + +By now the metal stream had run to the edge of the cast-house and was +falling spatteringly into a ladle ten feet below. + +Somebody said, "Whoop!" The negro keeper opened the iron gate of a new +runway, and the metal rolled on its way to a second ladle. There were +five to fill, each on a railway car. I noticed the switch engine was +getting ready to drag the trainload of molten metal to the Bessemer. + +"Heow!" out of Old Lonergan's throat. The bottom of one ladle had fallen +out and was letting down molten iron on the track. There was nothing to +do but watch it. We did that. It covered the track like a red +blood-clot, and ran off sizzling, and curdling in the sand. It cooled, +blackened, and clotted over one rail--about 10,000 pounds. + +"Who clean dat up?" I heard a Sicilian cinder-snapper say with a blank +smile. + + +After the furnaceful of metal had all flowed forth, we prepared to plug +that tap. + +I went over to the other side of the tap hole, and picked up a piece of +sheet iron. A shallow puddle of iron was still molten in the runway. The +tap hole was crusting over with cooling iron, still aglow. I dropped the +sheet iron over the runway. The helpers came up behind and dropped +others. + +"Hey, you," said the keeper summoning a helper. They swung out the "mud +gun" on a kind of crane and pointed its muzzle into the glowing +aperture. It was a real gun, looked like a six-inch fieldpiece, but +fired projectiles of mud by steam instead of powder. + +"Quick," said the keeper. + +I pushed a wheelbarrow towering with mud up to the sheet iron; then, +with a long scoop-shovel standing against the furnace, shoveled mud in +the gun. The keeper stood almost over the runway with only the rapidly +heating sheet-iron between himself and the liquid-metal puddle beneath. +He operated a little lever that shot mud charges by steam into the hole. +Every time he shot the gun, I took a new scoop of mud. We worked as fast +as our arms let us. Some of the helpers kick at this part of their +duties, but it is cooler by several degrees than the open-hearth, and +thinking of those sizzling nights lightens it for me. Besides, it has +excitement and requires a streak of skill. + + +I spent several days with young Lonergan helping the water-tender, +Ralph. + +"Water connections damn important thing," said Lonergan. I was beginning +to see why. The whole wall of the great cone-shaped furnace was covered +with cooling water-conduits. Without these the furnace would melt away. + +We ranged from furnace to furnace, climbing up to a platform that ran +around the fattest part and spending long quarter-hours on our bellies +unscrewing valves. There was always something leaking. Ralph could come +and take a look at the furnace, and send us after tools. + +"Ralph's all right," said Lonergan, "has new names though for +everything. Doesn't call a goddam wrench a wrench, calls it a 'jigger.' +Have to learn all your tools over again by his goddam Hunky names." + +Young Lonergan was very "white" to me, as they say. "I'll show you how +to clean that peephole." And he grabs a cleaning rod, and imparts the +knack of knocking cinder out of that important little observation post. + +"I used to work stove-tender," he explained. + +"If you want to know anything ask Dippy, he'll talk, don't McLanahan, he +don't know he's livin'.... Have a chew?" + +"No, I'll smoke." + +One day we had been discussing the bosses, and how they had got their +start, till the talk drifted to young Lonergan and his own very typical +career of youth. + +"Used to work on the open-hearth," he began. "I used to test the +metal--you know in the little shanty where 'Whiskers' is now. Chemist!" +he grinned. + +"Then, by God, I went to work in the blooming-mill, chasing steel--you +know; keepin' track of all the ingots comin' in. A hell of a job--by God +you didn't stop a second--you knew you'd been workin', boy, when you +pulled out in the mornin'. I worked my head off at that job. + +"Then I fought with Towers. He gave me a week. After I came back I had +another run-in.... When I carried my bucket out o' that place, I was off +work entirely. Didn't go to work for three months, thought I never would +work again. + +"But after a hell of a spell, gotta job, pipe mill New Naples--eight +hours--a good job, but the mill's shut down now. Then the suckers +drafted me. Balloon comp'ny a bloody year and a half." + +There followed a very vast series of parties in the army, and explicit +views on all the officers he'd had. There was usually a new army story +whenever I met him. He was extraordinarily clever in getting away with +A. W. O. L.'s. + +"When I got my discharge, father wanted me to come to work here, so I +did. Worked on those stoves where you are, for a while--stove-tender +helper, then stove-tender. Then I got this job.... Don't you chew?... +I'll lose it too if I take many more days off for sickness. Last time I +was 'sick'"--he grinned--"Bert Cahill and the bunch and I took three +skirts in Bill's car to Monaca. Had six quarts of damn good whiskey. I +was out a week. Ralph says, when I come back: 'Pretty damn sick, you!' +But to hell with 'em! I'm not afraid of my job." + + +That little blower called Dippy, I found, knew the furnace game in all +its phases with great practical thoroughness. I used to try to get +chances of talking with him on questions of technique. + +"What about those jobs in the cast-house?" I said one day, "the helper's +jobs? Isn't it a good thing to know about those if you're learning the +iron game?" + +"You don't want to work there," he said quickly, "only Hunkies work on +those jobs, they're too damn dirty and too damn hot for a 'white' man." + +So I got thinking over the "Hunky" business, and several other +conversations came into my mind. Dick Reber, senior melter on the +open-hearth, had once said, "There are a few of these Hunkies that are +all right, and damn few. If I had my way, I'd ship the whole lot back to +where they came from." + +Then I thought of the incident of my getting chosen from the pit for +floor work on the furnaces. Several times Pete, who was a Russian, +discriminated against me in favor of Russians. Until Dick came along and +began discriminating in my favor against the Hunkies. + +How many Hunkies have risen to foremen's jobs, I thought, in the two +departments where I have worked? One in the open-hearth--a fellow who +"stuck with the company" in the Homestead Strike--and none on the +blast-furnaces except Adolph, the stove-gang boss. + +My recollections were broken into by a call for violent action. + +"Cooler," yelled McLanahan, his voice going up into a husky shriek. + +That meant molten iron inside, melting the cone-shaped water-chamber +around the blast pipe. If let alone, the cooling at that place would +cease, and in a short time there would follow an escape of molten metal. + +"Cooler!" yelled on a blast-furnace means "Hurry like hell." + +I grabbed a wrench to take the nut off the "bridle"--the first step in +taking out a sort of outside cooler, the tuyere. + +"Bar," said the Serbian stove-tender very quietly, picking up a +specially curved one, and McLanahan took the other end. + +Somebody knocked out some keys with a sledge, and the blowpipe fell on +the curved bar, making the holders of it grunt. They took it off fast, +for the instant the thing loosens, a flame shoots through the hole and +licks its edges. + +Then the tuyere comes loose with a few strokes of a pull bar. All of +these moves are fast; a tuyere goes bad every other day and men work +fast like soldiers at a gun drill. + +But coolers don't break a lead but once in three months or so; and the +cone's heavier, the gang bigger, there's less efficiency and more holler +and sweat. + +When the pull bar gets into action it looks a little like a mediaeval mob +with a battering ram. A "pull bar" is a tool designed to translate the +muscle of many men into pull, on a small gripping edge against which +sledging is impossible. At one end a thick hook grips the edge of the +cooler, at the other a weight is brought against a flange that runs +around the bar. Everybody on the gang has a piece of a rope attaching +to that weight. + +The stove gang moving between stoves Thirteen and Fourteen were caught +and brought into this for muscle, and a couple of passing millwrights +drafted. + +"Hold up the goddam end," from Steve, boss by common consent. + +"A little beef this time!" from a blower. "What the hell's the matter, +_sick_?" + +We all swear between breaths, and take a grip higher on the rope--the +weight cracks the flange again, and makes the bar shiver. + +When the new cooler, which resembles more nearly a gigantic flower pot, +without any bottom, than anything else, is in place, there's a cry of: +"Big Dolly!" + +That involves four or five men, lifting a kind of ramrod with a square +hammer-end, from the rack, and lugging it to the cooler. + +I get near the ramming end this time; Tony is near me on the other side. +Together we hold the hammer against the cooler. As the end strikes, the +jar goes back through the men's hands. + +"Now top." + +Arms raise the bar painfully, and hold it poised a little unsteadily, +sway back, tense, and drive. + +"Hold it, hold it on the cooler, goddam you." + +Tony and I had let our arms shake a fraction, and the hammer fell +glancing on the cooler's edge. + +"Now!" + +Seated this time. Arms relax and stretch. + +When things are ready, Adolph makes the water connections. + +"Hold de goddam shovel, what you t'ink, I burn up." + +A cinder-snapper holds a shovel in front of the hole to keep the flame +from his hands. + +"All right, all right." + +The job's done; the millwrights pick up their tools, and the stove gang +moves off leisurely to their cleaning. I hear the superintendent talking +with a blower near the sample box. + +"They did that in pretty good time," he says. + + +I used to eat my lunch and kept my clothes in a little brick shanty near +Number 4, sharing it with the Italians of the stove gang. Although by +the bosses' arrangement it was a mixed gang, Italian and Slav, the +mixture did not extend to shanty arrangements, and race lines prevailed. +I felt that I should learn low Italian in a few weeks if I continued +with this group; the flow of it against my ear drums was incessant and +some of it had already forced an entrance. Besides I was learning a +great deal about: how to live, what to wear on your head, on your feet, +and next your skin; where to get it--good material to resist the +blast-furnace, and cheap as well; wisdom in eating and drinking, and +saving money, in resting, in working, in getting a job and keeping it. + +There was a whole store of industrial _mores_. In some respects the ways +of living of these workmen seemed as rooted and traditional as the +manners of monarchs, and as wise. I won considerable merit, when I +brought in a kersey cap that I got for seventy-five cents, and lost much +when I reluctantly admitted the price of my brown suit. + +Everyone on the gang performed the washing up after work with the +greatest thoroughness and success. They devoted minute attention to the +appearance of clothes worn home. Rips and holes got a neat patch at +once, and shoes were tapped at the proper period--before holes appeared. +I have seen only one or two men in the mill who were not clean in their +going-home clothes. + +I talked to John one day on the subject of neatness. He asked, "You have +to clean up good in the army?" + +I dilated on the necessity of policing when wearing khaki. + +He said: "Man that no look neat, no good. I no like him, girls no look +at him. Bah!" + +I was almost always offered some food from the bursting dinner buckets +of my friends: a tomato, some sausage, a green pepper, some lettuce and +cucumbers. I accepted gladly for it was always superior to my restaurant +provender. + +Tony told me one day that Jimmy had come over "too late from old +country, to learn speak English and be American." He was thirty-one +years old. He was going back this Christmas. And Tony was going too, but +just for a visit. They were going to Rome. We had talked it over a good +many times, all Italy in fact, people, women, farms. Tony turned to me: +"You come Italy with Jimmy and me this Christmas? We go see Rome." + +I assented quickly, wishing I somehow could, and was extraordinarily +proud of that invitation. + +I must not forget the occasion of the green pepper. One noon I sat +beside Jimmy during the lunch hour. The whole Italian wing were +together, sitting on benches in the brick shanty. Jimmy reached among +the loaves of bread in his bucket, and hauled out a green pepper as big +as an orange. He offered it to me and I accepted. + +Treating it like my old friends the stuffed peppers, I bit deep. The +whole shanty watched eagerly for results. I hadn't reckoned its raw +strength and instantly felt like a blast-furnace on all heat. Despite +all efforts I couldn't keep my face in shape, or resist putting out the +fire with the water jug. The pleasure I furnished the Roman mob was +enormous. + +After that I learned to eat green peppers rationally and agree with my +friends that they are beneficial. Beyond their health qualities they +have an economic justification. With their help you can make a meal of +cheap dry bread. Plain and unbuttered it costs you but six cents a half +loaf which is a full meal, and hot green peppers will compel you to stow +it away in self-defense. As Tony phrases it:-- + +"Pepper, make you eat bread like hell!" + +Tony thinks that Americans eat too much that is sweet; it makes them +logy and sleepy. I think he is right. Joe claims that the people in +America do not know how to make bread; the wheat he says is cut when it +is too green. The gang, of course, bring Italian bread in their buckets. +It is certain that the American lunch of a soggy sandwich and piece of +pie leaves a man heavy for the afternoon. The average dinner bucket in +the shanty contains: a loaf of bread, a piece of meat,--lamb, beef, +chicken, or sausage,--three or four green peppers, a couple of tomatoes, +a bunch of grapes, and some vegetable mixture like tomatoes chopped with +cucumbers and lettuce. + +One day the gang got absorbed in stunts, climbing a ladder with the +hands, giving a complete twist to a hammer with grip the same, the usual +turning trick of a broomstick held to the floor, etc. My contribution +was squatting slowly on the right leg with the left stiff and parallel +with the floor. John complained of a lame thigh for three days after, I +am gratified to say. + +With Tony I occasionally picked a wrestling quarrel; he has a terrific +grip and one day very nearly squeezed the life out of me in a fit of +playfulness. I called him "Orso" afterward for his squeezing attribute. +Tony's make-up includes a sense of humor. One day when he had rolled +about on the floor in front of Number 3, he said: "Ain't you 'shamed, +Charlie, you young man, fight old man like me. You twenty-two, +twenty-three, me thirty-seven!" + +Tony could put me beyond this vale of tears with his left hand. + + + + +VIII + +I TAKE A DAY OFF + + +I decided on a day off. John had lately taken one for the festival at +New Naples, and had come in to work the next morning with the wine still +at festivals in his head. Sitting atop the blast-furnaces the other day, +looking at the blue rivers and the three hills, and speculating about +men going down to the sea in ships--because of the fat river-boat we +could see--had made me sicken of the smell of flue-dust. I decided to +take a day off. + +Sometimes the foreman, when you got back after cutting a turn, would +say, "I don't believe you want this job; you like loafing better; I'll +give it to Jimmy." But with a seven-day week, only the mean ones +hollered. Men took an occasional holiday. + +I ate breakfast with a very conscious leisure at George's, putting down +scrambled eggs, at 8.00 o'clock, instead of the coffee and toast at 5.15 +A.M. + +"No work to-day," said George; "lotza mon', eh?" + +"Wrong," said I. + +"Mebbe you see best girl to-day." + +"Guess again." + +"Married?" + +"No." + +"Mr. Vincent's wife is sick," said George, changing the subject. + +"Oh, I'm sorry." + +"He no work to-day; come in here for breakfast, ten minutes before you." + +Vincent was a young American, twenty-one or two, whose brother I had +known in college. He had not gone himself, but took a straw boss's job +in the pipe mill. He had married six months before, and his wife lived +with him in two rooms in Bickford Lodge--the other hotel in Bouton. We +went to the movies together sometimes, and often met for supper at the +Greek's. + +I looked for Vincent, and found him reading the "Saturday Evening Post" +in the front room. + +"Elizabeth is sick," he explained. "I'm sticking around to-day." + +We fell to talking mill. + +"What hours do you work now?" I asked. + +"Six to six." + +"You get up at five." + +"Yes, about that." + +"That's not true, Philip," came over the transom from the sick room. "I +set the alarm at four-thirty, Phil sleeps till five-thirty, drinks one +cup of coffee, leaves his eggs, and catches the twenty-of-six car." + +"You now have the story," said Phil. "It's a stinking long day, isn't +it?" + +"Phil has it all figured out," Elizabeth shouted from the back room. +"From six to nine, he pays his rent--" + +"Yes, I've figured it that way," he said. "The money I earn between +nine and one is enough to pay my day's board and my wife's; one to three +is clothes and shoes; three to five, all other expenses; five to six I +work for myself!" + +"That's bully; I think I'll figure mine." + +"But there aren't any evenings, are there," he went on, "or any +Sundays?" + +Suddenly he looked up at the chandelier. "See all the pipes in that," he +said; "I find pipes and tubes everywhere, since I've worked in the mill. +It's darn interesting to pick them out. The radiator in this room is +made of pipe, see; the bed in the back room; notice those banisters +outside. I see them everywhere I look. If I had a little money, I'd put +it in a pipe mill. 'S money in that game, once you get the market; +Coglin and I have it all doped out." + +For fifteen minutes, Phil's enthusiasm for pipe-manufacture built the +mills of the future. + + +Toward noon I went to George's. The pit craneman, Herb, was there, +eating George's roast beef and boiled potato, and looking half asleep. + +"I'll fire you," I said. + +"I'm on nights this week," he returned, with a slow smile; "I couldn't +sleep, so I thought I'd get up and eat some. Besides, I've got to go to +the bank. You're with the blast-furnaces now, huh?" + +"Yes." + +"Like 'em?" + +"Yes, I think I'll like blast-furnace work," I said, "if I get to be +stove-tender or something. Good boss, Beck." + +"They say so. Pete's as crabby as ever in our place. He fired one of the +second-helpers last week, Eric--d'you know him? Used to come in drunk +every day, worked for Jock on Eight." + +"That's too bad," I said; "he gave everyone a good time. Let me tell you +how I amuse the gang on the blast-furnace. You know the way they break +ingots for a test on the open-hearth?" + +"Yes." + +"It's not like that with us. I gave everybody on Five a treat because I +thought it was." + +Herb looked interested. + +"Of course, on the open-hearth you pick them up with a tongs, when +they're red-hot, and cool them in water." + +Herb nodded. + +"So there are always halves of test-ingots on the floor, _cold_. On the +blast-furnace the stove-tender pours the test and knocks it out of the +mould. Iron breaks easier than steel, so he never bothers to cool the +ingot, but breaks it red-hot. Last Wednesday I wander up from the stoves +when the furnace is ready to tap. The blower kicks busted halves of a +test-ingot out of the way, and somebody says, 'A little too much +sulphur.' I'm ambitious to learn iron smelting, too, and think I'll +study the fracture. I walk in front of the blower and pick up the test." + +Herb grinned. + +"It wasn't red-hot," I went on; "but it had blackened over--_just_. I +dropped it, and snapped my hand three feet behind me. The blower, the +stove-tender, the first, second, and third helpers, and the assistant +superintendent, who were all gathered, enjoyed the thing all over the +place for several minutes. It gave them a good time for the afternoon." + +When I left Herb, I took a walk through the Greek and Slavic quarters, +and stopped a while on Superintendent's Hill, to study the graded +superiority of foremen and superintendents. There were excellent little +houses here, though too young and new to express any other character +than moderate prosperity. Perhaps it was an ungracious thing to demand +more. + +I walked on, past farms, and up and down considerable hills. I lay down +on the ground, in high grass, under apple trees which were near a +tumble-down stone wall. It was enormously satisfactory to lie in the +high grass, under an apple tree, listening to the small August +noises--for a swift hour and a half. + +After supper, I wanted badly to take a look at furnace fires against a +night sky, and stepped out alone to do it. Close to the railroad station +I set foot on the hill, and climbed past a Greek hotel and staggering +tenements to a ridge. From there I could look over multitudinous roofs +to the flat spaces by the river, where the mills roared and shone. + +I heard heavy things dropped here and there over acres of plate +flooring; they melted into a roar. The even whirr of the power house +increased it, and the shrieks of machinery gave it a streaky quality. +There were staccato punctuations, of course, by the whistles, and when +a distant "blaw" came to me, I thought how loudly it drove into the ears +of the hot-blast man, turning his wheel by a stove. But it was mostly +the summed-up roar that occupied your head--an insistent thing, that +made you excited and weary at the same time. The mills had been running +for ten years; they always had a night-shift in Bouton. + +It is easy to get excited about a steel-mill sky at night. I like to +look at them. There weren't many lights at the nail mill but just enough +to show broken outlines of a sheet-iron village there. The rolling-mills +gave some of the brightness of hot billets through the windows, and over +the stacks of the open-hearth were sparks. By closing my eyes, I could +see curdling flame in the belly of Number 7. The open-hearth fires +showed themselves, a confused glow under a tin roof. + +Some little light came on the mills out of the night itself, though thin +clouds kept washing the face of the moon, and now and then a +blast-furnace got into the moonlight and looked perfectly confused with +its pipe labyrinth and its stoves. + +From where I stood, I could see the Bessemer converter pouring a fluid +rope of white light; I knew it for a stream the thickness of a hydrant. +A rusty, glowing cloud rose over the converter, changing always, and +turning that patch of sky into gold. The pattern of smoke the blower +knows like a textbook, and follows the progress of his steel by the +color of the cloud. + +My mind swept over many memories as I looked at the yellow fire of the +Bessemers. There was no order or arrangement in them. They were a +stream, thick in some passages, shallow in others, with scraps of all +sorts riding over the top. One scrap was the price the Wop cobbler +charged for soling, and another, Dick's words when he damned me for +forgetting a bag of coal. Then there were things that wrung me and made +the palms of my hands wet, as if thoughts went over nerves and not +brain. + +I looked over at the eight stacks of the open-hearth, closed my eyes, +and saw Seven tapping. The second-helper broke the mud stoppage with his +"picker," and liquid steel belched. Pete held up two fingers. Stanley +the Pole was third-helper with me. We shoveled in the two piles. I could +feel heat in my nose and throat and sparks light on the blue +handkerchief I had tied around my neck. We cooled off in a breeze +between the two furnaces, and as we caught our breath, watched Herb +swing the ladleful, over the moulds for pouring. + +I lived through the dragged hours in the morning of a long turn. Between +two and four is worst--I remembered "fixing the spout" with Nick at +three--wheelbarrow loads of mud and dolomite--a pitched battle with +sleep-- + +At intervals in my memories, I grew conscious of the steady roar the +mills sent me from the river; then forgot it, quite. + +Finished ladles of iron came into mind, and I tried to follow in the +dark the path they would take along tracks to the Bessemer. Thick red +ingots of steel, big as gravestones, I knew, were coming from "soaking +pits" to rolls, and getting flattened into blooms and billets. I could +see trainloads of even steel shapes moving out of the freight yard to +become the steel framework of the world. + +"It is perfectly certain that civilization is kept from slipping, by a +battle," I said to myself, beginning a line of thought. + +An express train shot into view in the black valley at my feet, and +passed the Bouton station, with that quickly accelerating screech that +motion gives. I thought of the steel in the locomotive, and thought it +back quickly into sheets, bars, blooms, back then into the monumental +ingots as they stood, fiery from the open-hearth pouring, against a +night sky. Then the glow left, and went out of my thinking. Each ingot +became a number of wheelbarrow loads of mud, pushed over a rough floor, +Fred's judgment of the carbon content, and his watching through furnace +peepholes. The ladlefuls ceased as steel, becoming thirty minutes' +sledging through stoppage for four men, the weight of manganese in my +shovel, and the clatter of the pieces that hit the rail, sparks on my +neck burning through a blue handkerchief, and the cup of tea I had with +Jock, cooked over hot slag at 4.00 A.M. + +A battle certainly, to make an ingot--trench work in a quiet sector, +perhaps, but a year-after-year affair. The multiform steel prop which +civilization hung upon came to me for a moment--rails, skyscrapers, the +locomotive just passed, machinery that was making the ornament and +substance of the environment of men. It rested on muscle and the will to +push through "long turns," I thought. It could slip so easily. A huge +mistaken calculation: not enough coal or cars to carry it. Or what if +the habitual movements of the muscles were broken, or the will fallen +into distemper? Suppose men thought it not worth the candle, and stopped +to look on? + +Were we to get more of the kind of civilization we knew, conquer more +ground, or have less of it? It depended on the battle. And that hung, I +was sure, on the morale of the fighter. I wondered if it wasn't cracking +badly-- + +But at this point I considered how late it was, and whether it was not +time for bed, that I might not have bad morale myself, with a headache +added to it, at 6.00 A.M. + +The roar again--I began breaking it up once more into the fragments of +grind and rattle that composed it. In imagination I jumped on the step +of the charging-machine as it moved on its rails past Seven. It shook +and jarred grumpily about its business, I thought. + +Near Five I got off, and started to make front-wall. I remembered how I +felt on a front-wall a few weeks ago. I had tried to throw my mind into +the unsleeping numbness that protects a little against the load of +monotony. Other men I had seen do it, drawing a curtain over nine tenths +of their brain; not thinking, but only day-dreaming faintly behind the +curtain, leaving enough attention to the fore for plunging the shovel +into dolomite, and keeping the arms out of heat. + +Other passages from open-hearth shifts came into my mind in violent +contrast. Shorty, who was always clearly to be distinguished anywhere on +the floor because he wore his khaki shirt outside his pants, quarreled +with me one day, and showed his temper, as one shows temper in Italy. He +stood by the drinking fountain back of Number 4, hair on end, chest +bare, his eyes a little bloodshot, and his mouth sullen and drawn at the +corners, as it always was. The argument was about a shovel. Shorty took +out a long knife from his pocket and explained its use in argument. + +I remembered how the mill stayed in your mind when you left it. In the +hour or so in which you washed up, walked home, ate, and went to bed, it +loomed as a black sheet-iron foreman, demanding that you get to bed and +prepare for the noise and jar it had in store for you at 5.00 o'clock. +That sense of imminence was a thing to bear, especially if you wondered +whether sleep would come at all. + +Then there were long strings of neutral days when you did not think well +of life, or ill of it. And there were the occasional satisfactions. The +keen pleasure of acquiring a knack, as when I learned to "get it across" +in back-wall. And the pleasures of rough-house. Jock, the first-helper +on Seven, had once told me in a burst of enthusiasm for furnace work +that he "liked the game because there was so much hell-raisin' in it." + + +In the midst of listening to the roar, and thinking of shifts, good and +bad, it occurred to me abruptly that men would make front-walls in +front of hot furnaces for several hundred years, in all likelihood. I +wondered. Perhaps Mr. Wells's army of inventors would alter that. For +several hundred years, thousands of men had labored without imagination +or hope in Egypt, and built the Pyramids. There were similarities. +Civilization rested on the uninspired, unimaginative drudgery of nine +tenths of mankind. "There have always been hewers of wood, and drawers +of water," I heard some elderly person say at me, in a voice of +finality. + +I did not stop to reply to the implications of that sentence in my own +mind, but thought more closely of the Pyramid-builders I had known in +the pit. + +Marco drew Croatian words for me with a piece of chalk on his shovel, +and I put down English ones for him. He had attended night school after +working twelve hours a day in Pittsburgh. But Marco was, perhaps, +exceptionally gifted. + +The jobs we did were pick-and-shovel jobs. But have you ever used a pick +on hot slag? There is judgment and knack, and he is a fool who says that +"anyone can do the job." Whenever the chance for special skill happened +by, as in hooking the crane to a difficult piece of scrap, there was an +abundance, and much rivalry to show it off. Could such substance of +"knacks" ever grow into anything more for this "nine tenths of mankind?" +I wonder. + +How much of strength, of skill, of possible loyalty, does modern +industry tap from the average Hunky? + +I asked the question, but did not answer it--for modern industry. I +answered it for the gang in the pit and the crew on the stoves of the +blast-furnace. + +Not half. + +There were vast unused areas of men's minds and of their muscles, as +well as of their powers of will, that were wholly unreached in the rough +job adjustment of modern industry. I mean among the so-called groups of +"lower intelligence." It was an interesting speculation whether any +engineer would ever find a means of tapping this unused voltage. + +I suddenly thought how inconceivable the stoppage of that roar would be. +A silent valley, with all those ordered but gigantic forces stopped, +would be almost terrible. But just such a silence was likely to happen. +By a walk-out. + +The great strike had been going a week, in other towns--tying up the +steel production of the country. Meetings had followed, and riots, with +an occasional bloody conflict with the "mud guard" of Pennsylvania. + +Part of that untapped force! I said to myself--dynamos of power of all +sorts. Would it bludgeon over a change in steel conditions, or flow +back, waste voltage, into the ground? + +The rumble in the valley again. Could I hear the shake of the +charging-machine at this distance? The Bessemer glow had changed. The +nail mill roar seemed to increase. + +I went down the hill. When I reached Mrs. Farrell's and climbed into my +back room, I set the alarm for 4.00 o'clock, putting the clock a foot +and a half from the bed. It has a knob on top, and you can stop it by +knocking down the knob with the palm of your hand. I went to sleep, to +dream about the men who built the Pyramids. + + + + +IX + +"NO CAN LIVE" + + +I went into the employment office one day, to fix up the papers of my +transfer to the blast-furnace, and got into a talk with Burke, the +employment manager, about personnel work. + +"What do you think of the game?" I asked. + +"It's great," he returned; "it's working with human material--that's +what it is; there's nothing like it. But," he added, "if you have any +ideas about unions keep them in the back of your head--that is, if you +want a job in steel. They won't stand for that sort of thing." + +He looked down on his desk, where there was a news-clipping of the +demands of the American Federation of Labor's Strike Committee--the +twelve demands. He pointed to it. + +"We give them practically all of these here in Bouton," he said, "all +but two or three." + +"The eight-hour day?" I queried. + +"Yes, we give them the eight-hour day. Overtime for everything over +eight hours." + +"Could I stop work to-day after eight hours' work on the furnace?" I +asked. "Could anyone before six o'clock, and hold his job?" + +"Oh, no," he returned. + +"I should call that a twelve-hour day," I said. + +The "safety man" came in, and interrupted. He was a stocky young man +with the intelligent face of an engineer. + +"That man might do something for the steel-worker," I thought. + + +The men on the furnaces were talking about the strike that day. One +young American said: "Well, strike starts Monday. Damned if I won't go +if the rest do." + +There were no leaders about, and it was unlikely, perhaps, that any +would appear. There seemed to be a current opinion that any organizers +"get taken off the train before they get to Bouton." + +The Old Home Week Carnival had been called off through the influence of +the mill authorities. They were afraid of a strike committee coming from +the next town, and having a parade to lead the men out. + +A special train went through Bouton that day at about five o'clock. +Everyone watched it from the furnaces, and speculated what it meant. It +was a double-header and passed through at top speed. + +"Troops going to quell strike riots," the Assistant Superintendent, +Lonergan, suggested. "A lot of those fellers are overseas men of the +National Guard. They're havin' trouble with 'em. I don't blame the boys +a damn bit for not wantin' 'to preserve order in the steel towns,' as +the papers call it," he concluded, with a grin. + +Haverly, an American blower, came up. "Fight for democracy overseas and +against it over here," he said. + +It is difficult to say what the men here would have done if they had had +leadership. They had none, since no organizers whatever appeared, and no +speechmaking occurred in town. There was pretty good feeling toward the +company itself, which is, I believe, one of the best. A deep-seated +hatred, however, existed against the whole system of steel. There was +anger and resentment that ran straight through, from the cinder-snapper +to the high-paid blowers, melters, and, in some cases, to the +superintendents. + +I was quite amazed--because of what the newspapers were continually +saying--at the absence of any sociological ideas whatever. I remember +one day I met my first and only Socialist. He was a stove-tender of +great skill and long experience; he told me how bad he thought war was, +and how he couldn't understand why people didn't live in peace and be +sociable with one another. But, though there were few doctrines, except +in rare instances, there was a mighty stream of complaint against +certain things such as the company-owned town, the twelve-hour day, the +twenty-four-hour shift, the seven-day week, and certain remediable +dangers. It pervaded all ranks. + + +There were certain days in my summer in the mills that burned among the +others like a hot ingot of steel on the night-shift. One of them was the +cleaning out of No. 15 stove early in my gang apprenticeship. +Ordinarily, the duties of the stove gang were to move leisurely from +stove to stove while they were alight, and remove cinder from the +combustion chambers. It was pried up with a crowbar, and hoed out on to +a wheelbarrow. But when a stove was cooled for thorough cleaning, we did +our real work. + +The gas was turned off in the combustion chamber on the night-shift, and +the stove allowed to cool for several hours. We prepared to go inside +her, the next morning, to cut away the hardened cinder. John, the Slav, +went in first, with pick and shovel, and worked an hour. Then Tony +turned to me. + +"You go in with me, I show you," he said. + +We put on wooden sandals, foot-shaped blocks an inch thick, with lacing +straps, donned jackets that buttoned very tight in the neck, and pulled +down the ear-flaps of our kersey caps. Over our eyes we wore +close-fitting goggles. We looked like Dutch peasants dressed for +motoring. The combustion chamber is a space eight or ten feet long by +three or four wide. It was partly filled with cooling cinder, some of it +yielding to the pick, some only to the bar and sledge. Someone shoved an +electric light through the hot-blast valve, and the appearance of the +place was like a mine gallery. The chamber was hot and gaseous, but it +was quite possible to work inside over an hour. After Tony had loosened +several shovelfuls, I could see that the pick failed against a great +shelf of the stuff that glowed red along its base. + +"Bar," he called. + +The bar came in through the little round door in three or four minutes. +He held it for me, and I sledged. It needed a little work like this to +make you yearn for real air. The heat weakened you quickly. We worked +about forty minutes, and then lay on our bellies and wriggled out. The +means of entrance and egress is a small door, about fourteen inches in +diameter, which means absorbing a good deal of cinder when you +caterpillar through. + +We finished the whole job in three hours, and then went to the other +side of the stove and cleared out half a carload of flue-dust from the +brick arches that compose the groundwork of that side of the stove. The +dust lay a foot or two thick, and one man worked with a shovel in each +archway. Here it was hardly hot at all, but merely thick with the red +iron-dust. As you bent over inside the archways, knee-deep in the stuff, +it would rise and settle on your arms and shoulders; you kept up a +blowing with your nose to keep it out. Some of it was hard and soggy, +and pleasanter shoveling. Five or six of us could work inside the stove +at once, in the different archways, each with a teapot lamp near by, and +a large, light shovel. Men at the entrances hoed the stuff out as we +threw back. + +But it was the next day's cleaning that I remember most strongly. The +word went about that we were to "poke her out," to-morrow. That night +the gang, and especially John, the Italian, instructed me very seriously +to bring a selected list of clothing the next morning: a jacket, a cap +with flaps for the ears, two pairs of gloves, and two bandanna +handkerchiefs. + +We went on top of Number 15, and started to dress for the job of poking +her out. Over our faces we tied the handkerchiefs, leaving only our eyes +exposed. Our necks and ears were covered with the winter caps, our hands +with two pairs of gloves. + +The stove, as I said, looked like a very tall boiler: half was a long +brick-lined flue, where the gas burned; half, a mass of brick +checkerwork for retaining the heat. Masses of flue-dust had clogged the +holes in the checkerwork and reduced its power for holding heat. It was +our job to poke out that dust. + +John and Mike and I unscrewed the trap at the top very deliberately, and +dropped a ladder down. There was a space left at the top of the +checkerwork for cleaning purposes. We worked on top of that. + +Jimmy, I think, went in first, taking a teapot lamp with him and a rod. +In three minutes he was out again, and Mike down. I began to wonder what +the devil they faced for three minutes in the chamber. Tony looked at me +and said, "I teach you, now." + +I tied the handkerchiefs around my face, sticking the end of one in my +collar, and followed Tony. + +My first sensation, as I stepped off the ladder to the checkerwork +inside the stove, was relief. It was hot, but quite bearable. I picked +my way slowly to Tony, and tried to study in the dull light his motions +with the rod. The dust was too thick and the lamp guttered too violently +for me to follow his hand. I bent over to watch the end of his rod, and +recoiled. I felt as I had when the ladle got under me on the manganese +platform--flame seemed to go in with breath. It was the hot blast that +continued to rise from the checkerwork, and made it impossible to work +beyond three minutes in the stove. + +When I mounted the ladder, and moved out into the air, I thought, "I +haven't learned much from Tony, except that he somehow cleaned the +checkerwork, and it's best to keep the head high; no more bending." + +Five minutes passed, and I was scheduled to take my turn alone. Every +man poked three holes and came up. I was full of resolutions for glory +and poked four, coming up rather elated. John looked at me sadly when I +stepped off the ladder. + +"What's the matter, Charlie? You only poke 'em half out." He simulated +my motions with the rod. I hadn't qualified. + +John, the Slav, was tying his handkerchief back of his ears. + +"I show him; you come with me, Charlie, I show you all right." + +I wasn't gleeful. The last time I had done a job with John, we had +carried pipes, many more at a time than anyone else. John, I +anticipated, would stay in the stove, poking away, till ordinary mortals +lost their lungs. + +He picked up a poking rod, after very carefully putting on his gloves, +and went over to the ladder, descending slowly. I followed him with my +teeth in my lips, feeling for the rungs of the ladder with my feet, and +holding my poking rod in my right hand. When I stepped off at the +bottom, I felt my fingers closing over the bent handle of the rod in a +death grip. I determined on no half-way poking. + +John set to work at once, and I after him, rattling my rod in the +checkerwork with all my strength, and pushing her in up to the hilt. I +did three holes, and John four. My lungs were like paper on fire, when +John turned to go up. We climbed out of the hole, and took down the +handkerchiefs. The gang looked at me, and then at John. + +"He do all right," he cried rather loudly, "every time all right." + +I felt extraordinarily elated, and much as if John had given me a +diploma, with a cum laude inscribed in gold letters. + +There was later a trip down inside with Jimmy. He shouted a great many +things at me in Anglo-Italian, which caused me a good deal of anxiety +but no understanding. I learned on coming up that he was trying to tell +me not to approach the combustion chamber adjoining the checkerwork. +That is a clear shaft to the bottom. I was given in some detail the +story of the man who fell down a year ago, and was found with no life in +him at the bottom. + +"Kill him quick," said John the Italian; "take him out through hot-blast +valve." + +Two burns on my wrists were an embarrassing legacy of this affair, for +they required an explanation whenever I took off my coat. My arms were +too long and shot from my sleeves, when poking out, and got exposed to +the gas and flame, which were still rising in the checkerwork. + +This incident put me into good standing with John, the Slav, I am +delighted to say. He was a stoical person, without much conversational +warmth, but he approached me at the foot of the furnace steps in the +late afternoon; "Some people, no show new man; I show him, I Slovene, no +Italian, been in this country eighteen year." That was about all, but +enough for a basis of friendship. + + +I sat on my bed and sewed up a rip in my trousers, eleven inches long. +It was lucky I had salvaged that khaki "housewife" from the army. My +gray flannel shirt lay on the bed. There were little holes, you could +pass matches through, all over it, with brown edges that sparks had +made. + +Would that sleeve last? + +I made it last. + +Then there were the pants. + +That second-hand paint-spattered pair of mine had lasted five days. The +next, a sort of overally kind, had stood it a month, the last week in +entire disgrace; these mohair ones I got at the Company store were going +yet. But the seat needed emergency attention. + +After sewing-time, I got up and stared out of the window at Mrs. +Farrell's four stalks of corn. They were doing well. I looked across at +the back road, along which a junk-dealer's wagon jangled. The mud cliff +was the horizon of the prospect. I watched a little stream going down it +among roots, which I had watched a good many times before, and finally +picked up my army field-shoes, and took them out to a Greek cobbler for +resoling. + + +I shall remember for all time the "blowing in" of Number 9, which means +its first lighting up. A blast-furnace, once lit, remains burning till +the end of its existence. I got inside her, and was delighted to satisfy +a deep-seated curiosity: we crawled in the cinder notch. The hearth of +the furnace lay six or eight feet below the brick flooring, and the +effect of standing inside, with the fourteen round blowpipe holes +admitting a little sunlight, was like being in a round ship's cabin, +with fourteen portholes, except that the hollow furnace shot up to dark +distances that the light didn't penetrate. + +We built a scaffolding six or eight feet above the hearth to hold +firewood, and filled in beneath with shavings and kindling. Then we took +in cords upon cords of six-foot sticks and set them on end on top; there +were two or three layers of these, and on top of them, according to the +orthodox rule, were dumped quantities of coke, dumped down from the top, +of course, by skips; and above that, light charges of ore. Below the +scaffold, we spent half a day arranging kindling, with shavings placed +at each blowpipe hole. When the wood was arranged,--a three-days' +job,--the crane brought us some barrels of petrol, and we poured about +half a one in each blowpipe hole. The cinder notch was likewise +thoroughly provided with soaked shavings. That was to be the torch. + +Men assembled as at a house-raising. Nobody worked from 11.00 to 12.00 +on the day of blowing in Number 9. From all parts of the blast-furnace +they came, and arranged themselves about the cinder notch, and on the +girders above. The men and their bosses came. There was the labor +foreman, and the foreman of all the carpenters, of all the window-glass +fixers, all the blowers, the electricians, the master mechanic. Then +came the superintendent of the open-hearth and Bessemer, Mr. Towers, and +Mr. Brown his boss; and, finally, Mr. Erkeimer, the G. M., with an +unknown Mr. Clark from Pittsburgh. + +We waited from 11.00 to 12.00 for Mr. Clark to come and drop a spark +into the shavings. When he arrived the crowd parted quickly for him, +and, with Mr. Erkeimer and Mr. Swenson, he stood talking and smiling for +some minutes more at the notch. Mr. Clark was a tall slender person, +with glasses and an aspect of unfamiliarity with a blast-furnace +environment. No one knew, or ever found out, who he was. Mr. Swenson +showed him, very carefully, how to ignite the shavings with a teapot +lamp. Twice the photographer, who had come early, got focused for the +awful moment, and twice Mr. Clark deferred lighting the shavings and +went on talking with Mr. Swenson. Finally, he bent over and lit them. +Mr. Swenson rapidly turned to the gang behind him. + +"Three cheers for Mr. Clark!" he cried, raising his hand. When it is +recalled that none of us knew the man we cheered, it wasn't a bad noise. +The furnace smoked lustily in a few minutes, and several helpers rushed +around it to thrust red-hot tapping bars in the blow-holes. They +ignited at once the petroleum and shavings packed around them. + +Immediately after the cheers, Mr. Swenson's bright-looking office-boy +hurried through the gang with a box of cigars, another immemorial custom +in operation. The more aggressive got cigars, then disappeared. It was a +little odd during the afternoon to see a sweat-drenched cinder-snapper +at his work with a long black cigar between his teeth. When they were +burned out, the department settled back to normal production. + +Many years might pass before such another occasion in that place. During +that period there would be no slackening of the melting fires, or of the +work of the helpers who kept them alive. + + +I stood on the platform waiting for the 10.05 train, and turned for a +look at the landscape of brick and iron. I remembered a Hunky who had +worked in the tube-mill for eighteen years and at length decided to go +back to the old country. On the day he left, he went out the usual gate +at the tempered after-work pace, walked the gravel path to the railroad +embankment, and stopped for a moment to look back at the mill. He stood +like a stone-pile on the embankment for a quarter of an hour, looking at +the cluster of steel buildings and stacks. He had spent a life in them, +making pipe, and I haven't a doubt this was the first time it came to +him in perspective. From my own brief memories, I could guess at those +fifteen minutes: pain, struggle, monotony, rough-house, laughter, +endurance, but principally toil without imagination. + +I thought quickly over my summer in the mills, and it looked rather +pleasurable in retrospect. Things do. There's a verse on that sentiment +in Lucretius, I think. I thought of sizzling nights; of bosses, friendly +and unfriendly; of hot back-walls, and a good first-helper; of fighting +twenty-four-hour turns; of interesting days as hot-blast man; of dreaded +five-o'clock risings, and quiet satisfying suppers; of what men thought, +and didn't think-- And again, of how much the life was incident to a +flinty-hearted universe and how much to the stupidity of men. I knew +there were scores of matters arranging themselves in well-ordered data +and conclusion in my head. I had a cool sense that, when they came out +of the thinking, they would not be counsels of perfection, or +denunciations, but would have substance, be able to weather theorists, +both the hard-boiled and the sentimental, being compounded of good +ingredients--tools, and iron ore, and the experience of workmen. + +Is there any one thing though that stands out? I heard the train whistle +a warning of its arrival. Perhaps, if a very complicated matter like the +steel-life can be compounded in a phrase, it had been done by the +third-helper on Six. On the day we had thrown manganese into a boiling +ladle, in a temperature of 130 deg., he had turned to me slowly and summed +it all up. + +"To hell with the money," he said; "no can live!" + + + + +EPILOGUE + +A FURNACE-WORKER TALKS OVER THE TWELVE-HOUR DAY + + + + +EPILOGUE + + +I have tried to put down the record of the whole of my life, as I lived +it, and the whole of my environment, as I saw and felt it, among the +steel-workers in 1919. To me the book is the story of certain obscure +personalities, and the record of certain crude and vital experiences we +passed through together. I think it may be read as a story of men and +things. + +Many people, however, have asked me the questions: What were the +conditions in steel and what is your opinion of them? What do you think +of the twelve-hour day? or, How bad was the heat? and the like. And, +What do you suggest? Since no man who has worked in an American steel +mill, whatever his sympathies or his indifference, can fail to have +opinions on these points, I have decided to set down mine, for what they +are worth, as simply and informally as I can. + +There is a proper apology, I think, that can be made for the presumption +of conclusions based upon an individual experience. An intimate and +detailed record of processes and methods and the physical and mental +environment of the workers in any basic industry is rare enough, I +believe, except when it is heightened or foreshortened for a political +purpose. No industrial reform can rest upon a single narrative of +personal experience; but such a narrative, if genuine, can supply its +portion of data, and possibly point where scientific research or public +action can follow. + +Let me state my bias in the matter as well as I can. I was by no means +indifferent to economic and social values when I began my job; in fact, +I confess to being interested keenly in most of them. But I never sought +information as an "investigator." Most of my energy of mind and body was +spent upon doing the job in hand; and what impressions I received came +unsought in the course of a day's work. I began my job with an almost +equal interest in the process of steel-making, the administration of +business, and the problem of industrial relations. + +Some apology I owe to the several hundred steel-workers with whom I +worked, and the many thousands in other mills, since most of them know +from a far longer and deeper experience the conditions and policies of +which I speak. My sole reason for raising my own voice in the presence +of this multitude of authorities is that the Hunkies, who constitute the +major part, are unable either to find an audience or to be understood if +they find one. Again, they are like Pete, who, when I asked him what +were the duties of a third-helper, which I have described to the length +of several pages in this book, replied: "He has a hell of a lot to do." +And as to the American workers and bosses, most of them lack the +opportunity of any speaking that will be heard beyond their own +furnaces; and, again, they are too close to their environment to see +what is in it. They are natives, while I am more nearly a foreigner, +and can see their steel country with something of the freshness and +perspective that a foreigner brings. + +I want to add that the management of the mill where I worked was a body +of men exceedingly efficient and fair-minded, it appeared to me; and any +remarks upon the twelve-hour day, or other conditions, are critical of +an arrangement typical of American steel-management as a whole, and not +of individuals or a locality. + +The twelve-hour day makes the life of the steel-worker different in a +far-reaching manner from the life of the majority of his fellow workers. + +It makes the industry different in its fundamental organization and +temper from an eight-hour or a ten-hour industry. + +It transforms the community where men live whose day is twelve hours +long. + +"What is it really like? How much of the time do you actually work? Are +you 'all in' when you wash up in the morning after the shift, and go +home?" + +To tell it exactly, if I can: You go into the mill, a little before six, +and get into your mill clothes. There may be the call for a front-wall +while you're buttoning your shirt. You pick up a shovel and run into a +spell of fairly hot work for three quarters of an hour. On another day +you may loaf for fifteen minutes before anything starts. After +front-wall, you take a drink from the water fountain behind your +furnace, and wash your arms, which have got burned a little, and your +face, in a trough of water. A "clean-up" job follows in front of the +furnace, which means shoveling slag--still hot--down the slag-hole for +ten minutes, and loading cold pieces of scrap, which have fallen on the +floor, into a box. Pieces weigh twenty, forty, one hundred pounds; +anything over, you hook up with a chain and let the overhead crane move +it. This for a half-hour. + +Suddenly someone says, "Back-wall!" Lasts say thirty or forty minutes. +It's hot--temperature, 150 deg. or 160 deg. when you throw your shovelful +in--and lively work for back and legs. Everybody douses his face and +hands with water to cool off, and sits down for twenty minutes. Making +back-wall has affinities with stoking, only it's hotter while it lasts. +The day is made up of jobs like these--shoveling manganese at tap-time, +"making bottom," bringing up mud and dolomite in wheelbarrows for fixing +the spout, hauling fallen bricks out of the furnace. + +They vary in arduousness: all would be marked "heavy work" in a job +specification. They are all "hard-handed" jobs, and some of them done in +high heat. Between, run intervals from a few minutes to two or three +hours. From some of the jobs it is imperative to catch your breath for a +spell. Sledging a hard spout, making a hot back-wall, knocks a gang out +temporarily--for fifteen or twenty minutes; no man could do those things +steadily without interruption. It is like the crew resting on their oars +after a sprint. Again, some of the spells between are just leisure; the +furnace doesn't need attention, that's all; you're on guard, waiting for +action. Furnace work has similarities with cooking; any cook tends his +stove part of the time by watching to see that nothing burns up. + +I have had two or three hours' sleep on a "good" night-shift; two or +three "easy" days will follow one another. Then there will come steady +labor for nearly the whole fourteen hours, for a week. + +So, briefly, you don't work every minute of those twelve hours. Besides +the delays that arise out of the necessities of furnace work, men +automatically scale down their pace when they know there are twelve or +fourteen hours ahead of them: seven or eight hours of actual swinging of +sledge or shovel. But some of the extra time is utterly necessary for +immediate recuperation after a heavy job or a hot one. And none of the +spells, it should be noticed, are "your own time." You're under strain +for twelve hours. Nerves and will are the Company's the whole +shift--whether the muscles in your hands and feet move or are still. And +the existence of the long day makes possible unrelieved labor, hard and +hot, the whole turn of fourteen hours, if there is need for it. + +Inseparable from the twelve-hour day in the open-hearth where I worked +were the twenty-four-hour shift, and the seven-day week. + +What does it mean to make steel twenty-four hours a day? to your +muscles, to your thoughts, to the production of steel? Sunday morning, +at 7.00, you begin work. There is an hour off at 5.00 P.M. Front-wall, +fix spout, tap, back-wall, front-wall, fix spout, tap, back-wall--the +second half is something of a game between time and fatigue. For a hot +back-wall, or sledging out a bad tap-hole, may as easily come upon you +at 5.00 or 6.00 of the second morning as at noon of the first day. + +I've worked "long turns" that I didn't mind overmuch, and others that +ground my soul. If you are young and fit, you can work a steady +twenty-four hours at a hot and heavy job and "get away." But in my +judgment even the strongest of the Czechoslovaks, Serbs, and Croats who +work the American steel-furnaces cannot keep it up, twice a month, year +after year, without substantial physical injury. "A man got to watch +himself, this job, tear himself down," the second-helper on Seven told +me. He had worked at it six years, and was feeling the effects in nerves +and weight. Let me make an exception: one Hunky, a helper on Number 4, +was famed for having "a back like a mule." He could, I am sure, work +seven twenty-four-hour shifts _a week_ with comfort. But for all other +men, with the exception of Joe, the long turn is an unreasonable +overtaxing of human strength. Lastly, the effort of will, the "nerve" +that the thing calls for in the last hours before that second morning, +is too heavy a demand, for any wages whatever. The third-helper on +Number 8 took, I think, a reasonable attitude when he said: "To hell +with the money, no can live!" + +The "long turn" leaves a man thoroughly tired, "shot," for several +shifts following. As I said in the first part of this book, it is hardly +before Friday that the gang makes up sleep and comes into the mill in +normal temper. Here is the condition. You have ten hours for +recuperation after twenty-four hours' work. Washing up in a hurry, +getting breakfast, and walking home gets you in bed by 8.00. Eight +hours' sleep is the best you can get. At 4.00 o'clock you must dress, +eat, and walk to the mill. Men who live an hour or more from the mill, +as some do, must, of course, subtract that time as well from sleep. +After the ten hours off, you return to the mill at 5.00, to begin +another fourteen-hours' steel-making. That night is unquestionably the +worst of the two-weeks' cycle. The nervous excitement that helps any man +through the twenty-four turn has gone--quite. The seven or eight hours +of day sleep seem to have taken that away without substituting rest; and +what you have on your hands is an overfatigued body, refusing to be +goaded further. My observation was that, on this Monday after, men made +mistakes; there were arguments, bad temper, and fights, and a much +higher frequency of collision with the foreman. Efficiency, quality, +discipline dropped. + +The other accompaniment of the twelve-hour shift, the averaging of seven +working-days per week, has, I am convinced, an equally bad physiological +effect upon the healthiest of men. As I have said earlier, "the +twenty-four hours off," which comes once a fortnight on alternate weeks +to the twenty-four-hour shift, is a curiously contracted holiday. It +comes at the conclusion of fourteen hours' work on the night-shift, and +is immediately followed by ten hours' work on the day-shift. As far as I +could observe, men went on a long debauch for twenty-four hours, or, if +the week had been particularly heavy, slept the entire twenty-four. In +the first instance they deprived themselves of any sleep, and went to +work Monday in an extraordinarily jaded condition. In the second, they +forfeited their only holiday for two weeks. + +Another feature that impresses you when you actually work under the +system is that the sleep you get is troubled, at best. You are compelled +to go to bed one week by day, and the next by night. By about Friday, I +found my body getting itself adjusted to day sleep; but the change, of +course, was due again Monday. And yet, by comparing my sleeping hours +with those of my fellow workers, I found my day rest was averaging +better than theirs. Many of them, I found, went to bed at 9.00 in the +morning and got up about 2.00. They complained of being unable to sleep +properly by day. The body will adjust itself to continued day sleeping, +I know; but apparently not to the weekly shifts, from day sleep to night +sleep, customary in steel. + +The "long turn" of twenty-four hours and the "seven-day week" I have +never heard defended, either in the mill by any foreman or workman, or +outside by any member of the management, or even in a public statement. +If, by an arrangement of extra workers, it were possible to eliminate +these features and still keep the twelve-hour work-day for six days a +week, there would, I think, be a certain number of men ready enough to +work under that arrangement. I met one man, for example, who said: "Good +job, work all time, no spend, good job save." There are a few foreign +workers whose plan is to work steadily for ten or fifteen years, and +then carry the money back to the old country. These men are willing to +spend the maximum time within mill walls, since they have no intention +of marrying, settling down, and becoming Americans. But their numbers +are small, and the desirability of their type is questionable. It is +unwise, at any rate, to build the labor policy of a great industry in +their interest. + +On those first night-shifts I wondered if my feelings on the arrangement +of hours were not solely those of a sensitive novice. I'd "get used to +it," perhaps. But I found that first-helpers, melters, foremen, "old +timers," and "Company men" were for the most part against the long day. +They were all looking forward, with varying degrees of hope, to the time +when the daily toll of hours would be reduced. + +The twelve-hour day gives a special character to the industry itself as +well as to the men. I remember noticing the difference in pace, in +tempo, from that of a machine shop or a cotton mill. Men learn to +cultivate deliberate movement, with a view to the fourteen-hour stretch +they have before them. When I began work with a pickaxe on some hot +slag, on my first night, I was reproached at once: "Tak' it eas', lotza +time before seven o'clock." And the foremen fell in with the men. They +winked at sleeping, for they did it themselves. + +Another kind of inefficiency that flowed quite naturally from excessive +hours was "absenteeism," and a high "turnover" of labor. Men kept at +the job as long as they could stick it, and then relaxed into a two or +three weeks' drunk. Or they quit the Company and moved to another mill, +for the sake of change and a break in the drudgery. I remember an +Austrian with whom I worked in the "pit," who said he was going to get +drunk in Pittsburgh, go to the movies, and move to Johnstown the +following Monday. He had been on the job three weeks. New faces appeared +on the gangs constantly, and dropped out as quickly. I achieved my +promotion from common labor in the pit to the floor of the furnace by +supplying on a twenty-four-hour shift, when absentees are apt to be +numerous, and it is hard fully to man the furnaces. The company kept a +large number of extra men on its pay roll because of the number of +absentees, and the turnover percentage ran high. + +It is impossible to live under this loose regime--with high turnover, +and the work-pace necessarily keyed low because of the excessive burden +of hours spent under the roof of the mill--and not wonder if there isn't +an engineering problem in it. The impression was of a vast wastage of +man-hours. The question suggested itself: "Is it in the long run, good +business--an efficient thing?" An exhaustive investigation by engineers +and economists could surely be made to answer this question. + +People ask: "Is there any mechanical or metallurgical reason for the +twelve-hour day?" The answer is: No. There are several plants of +independent steel companies that run on a three-shift, eight-hour +basis; and the steel mills in England, France, Germany, and Italy +operate with three eight-hour shifts. The long day is not a +metallurgical _necessity_, therefore. The metallurgical _explanation_ of +the twelve-hour day, however, is this. The process of making iron or +steel is necessarily a continuous one, because the heat of the furnaces +must be conserved by keeping up the fires twenty-four hours a day. So +the division into either two shifts of twelve hours or three shifts of +eight becomes imperative. Other industries might reduce their hours +gradually from twelve to ten, and then to nine. With steel the full jump +from twelve to eight must be made. Without doubt, this metallurgical +factor accounts in some measure for the conservatism of the steel +companies in making the change. + +It is none of my business, in summing up a personal experience, to +review the story of steel mills which have undertaken a three-shift plan +of operation, of eight hours each, in place of the two shifts of twelve. +But the study has been made by engineers and economists, who have +collected figures as to the cost of operation on an eight-hour basis as +contrasted with a twelve. The increased cost in product which such a +change would entail is between three and five per cent.[3] + +The community of workers takes on a special character, where men live +whose day is twelve hours long. "We haven't any Sundays," the men said; +and "There isn't time enough at home." This is the most far-reaching +effect of "hours" in steel, I think, and easily transcends the others. + +"What do you do when you leave the mill?" people ask. "On my +night-week," I answer, "I wash up, go home, eat, and go to bed." +Anything that happens in your home or city that week is blotted out, as +if it occurred upon a distant continent; for every hour of the +twenty-four is accountable, in sleep, work, or food, for seven days; +unless a man prefers, as he often does, to cheat his sleep-time and have +his shoes tapped, or take a drink with a friend. + +The day-week is decidedly better. You work only ten hours, from seven to +five. Those evenings men spend with their families, or at the movies, or +going to bed early to rest up for the "long turn." It is not, however, +as if it were a "ten-hour industry." Some of the wear and tear of the +seven fourteen-hour shifts of the night-week protracts itself into the +day-week, and you hear men saying: "This ten-hour day seems to tire me +more than the fourteen; funny thing." However the week may be divided +up, it is impossible to keep the human body from recording the fact that +it averages seven twelve-hour days, or eighty-four hours of work, in the +week. + +For the men who did a straight twelve hours, "six to six," for seven +days, the sense of "no time off" was very strong. I worked these hours +for a time on the blast-furnace, and remember that the complaint was, +not so much that there wasn't some bit of an evening before you, but +that there was no _untired_ time when you were good for anything--work +or play. When you had sat about for perhaps an hour after supper, you +recovered enough to crave recreation. A movie was the very peak to which +you could stir yourself. There were men who went further. I knew a young +Croat in Pittsburgh who attended night-school after a twelve-hour day. +But he is the only one of all the steel-workers I met who attempted such +heroism. And he had to stop after a few weeks. + +Now it should be mentioned that some of the social life that most +workers find outside the mill gets squeezed somehow into it. In the +spells between front-walls we used to talk everything, from scandal +about the foreman to the presidential election. The daily news, labor +troubles, the late war, the second-helper's queer ways passed back and +forth when you washed up, or ate out of your bucket, or paused between +stunts. Then there was kidding, comradely boxing, and such playfulness +as hitching the crane-hooks to a man's belt. One first-helper remarked: +"I like the game because there's so much hell-raisin' in it." + +But this is hardly a substitute for a man's time to himself, for seeing +his wife, knowing his own children, and participating in the life of +larger groups. Soldiers have a faculty for taking so good-humoredly the +worst rigors of a campaign, that some people have made the mistake of +turning their admirable adaptability into a justification for war. + +The twelve-hour day, I believe, tends to discourage a man from marrying +and settling into a regular home life. Men complained that they didn't +see their wives, or get to know their children, since the schedule of +hours shrunk matters at home to food, sleep, and the necessities. "My +wife is always after me to leave this game," Jock used to say, the +first-helper on Seven. Mathematically, it figures something like this: +twelve hours of work, an hour going to and from the mill, an hour for +eating, eight hours of sleep--which leaves two hours for all the rest, +shaving, mowing the lawn, and the "civilizing influence of children." + +I have no brief to offer for the eight-hour day as a general panacea for +evils in industry. I merely bear witness to the fact that the +twelve-hour day, as I observed it, tended either to destroy, or to make +unreasonably difficult, that normal recreation and participation in the +doings of the family group, the church, or the community, which we +ordinarily suppose is reasonable and part of the American inheritance. + +Steel has often been described by its old timers as a "he-man's game." +That has even figured as an argument against any innovation that might +lighten the load of the workers in it, and against any change in the +twelve-hour day itself. The industry has certainly a rough-and-tumble +quality and a dangerous streak in it, that will always call for men with +some toughness of fibre. But I question whether the quality of the men +it attracts, and the type it moulds within its own ranks, will ever be +improved by the twelve-hour day. The excessive hours, I know, operate as +a check against many younger men, who would otherwise enter the +industry. The inherent fascination of making steel is, I think, very +great. It was for me. But the appeal is the mechanical achievement of +the industry, its size, power, and importance, even its dangers. The +twelve-hour day, on the other hand, tends to place a premium on +time-serving and drudgery, in lieu of the more masculine qualities of +adventure and initiative. + +FOOTNOTE: + +[3] The Three Shift System in Steel--Horace B. Drury: an address to the +Taylor Society and certain sections of the Am. Soc. Mech. Engineers and +of the Am. Inst. Electr. Engineers, Dec. 3, 1920. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Steel, by Charles Rumford Walker + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STEEL *** + +***** This file should be named 38932.txt or 38932.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/8/9/3/38932/ + +Produced by Odessa Paige Turner, Martin Pettit and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net +(This book was produced from scanned images of public +domain material from the Google Print project.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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