Life in a Railway Factory Part 9

Notwithstanding the old furnaceman's skill and general inoffensiveness, he could not escape a little practical joking at the hands of the youths. In the shed was an iron bogie, in the shape of a box, just big enough to contain his Falstaffian body. When he was on night duty he always seized upon this as a sleeping bunk for meal hours. Resting it upon the handles forward he sat in it, with his head at the back and his feet hanging over the front, and slept profoundly, with his arms folded and a coat drawn over his face. When he had fallen asleep several hard-hearted youths came up quietly and attached a strong rope to each handle of the bogie. They then raced off with it as fast as they could travel, going out of the shed and returning by a roundabout route to the furnace over bricks and stones, steel rails, and anything else that happened to be in the way. The jolting was terrific, but the bogie was drawn at such a rate that poor Tubby dared not attempt to get out and was forced to endure it as best he could. Arrived back at the furnace the youths speedily decamped and Tubby never knew for certain who had perpetrated the joke upon him in the darkness.

_Dominus vobisc.u.m. Et c.u.m spiritu tuo. Domine sanctorum._ The old ash-wheeler leans on his shovel and thus addresses you with profound gravity, as though he were the reverend Father himself ministering to his flock in the church. Boland is an Irishman and hails from far Tipperary. He brought his old mother over to England many years ago and has since dwelt in the railway town. He is a typical Hibernian. He is square-set and distinctive in feature, with heavy brows, thickish nose, strong eyes, and firm, expressive mouth. Notwithstanding the fact that he is slighted by the critical of the shed he has a good many virtues; underneath his rough exterior is concealed a wealth of kindness and good-nature. In common with the bulk of his race he is a Catholic in religion. If you should approach him on the subject you would be surprised at his interest in and affection for his Church and doctrine: he is immovable in his simple and childlike faith. In speaking of any matters connected with it his voice will be solemn and hushed; he is filled with reverence and awe. Though not a very constant church-goer he yet manages to attend at festival times and pays considerable attention to the sermon. He will always tell you the text, and in summing up the Father's oratorical abilities he tells you, as a climax, that he can "go back in history two hundred years."

The last and most important of all to be dealt with is Pinnell, of the Yankee Plant. He is by far the hardest working man in the stamping shed.

In the first place he cannot help being a hard worker, for it is his nature so to be. Rest and he are most inveterate enemies. He _must_ find something or other to do; he could not be idle though he tried never so hard. In the second place he is bound to work hard. The job requires it, or, at any rate, the "super" requires it, which is a slightly different matter. Pinnell used to work one of the small drop-stamps and was always remarkable for his conscientiousness and dogged perseverance. He was the first to start work and the last to finish. He would never take a moment's spell. If there had been no work he would promptly have made some, and have kept plodding away at his forge and stamp. Accordingly, when the miraculous tools from the other side of the Atlantic--which, in the opinion of the Yankee innovator, were going to smash up the other section altogether and displace half the men in the shed--were introduced, Pinnell was the man selected to start the process and lead the way for others. He had to demonstrate what the machines were capable of doing, and upon his output would be based the standard of prices for those to follow after or work beside him.

The introduction of the Yankee hammers and the oil furnaces for heating was the beginning of hustle in the shed. Everything was designed for the man to start as early as possible, to keep on mechanically to and from the furnace and hammer with not the slightest pause, except for meals, and to run till the very last moment. His prices were fixed accordingly.

Every operation was correctly timed. The manager and overseer stood together, watches in hand. It was so and so a minute; that would amount to so much in an hour, and so much total for the day. If Pinnell flagged a little--it is dreadful to have to keep hammering away for hours in an exhausted condition, with never a moment's pause--if he flagged a little, or checked the oil somewhat in the forge, the overseer promptly set it going again and p.r.i.c.ked him on to greater effort, answering his words--if he ever dared utter any--with a wheedling and plausible excuse, and telling him it was not at all hard; "Just a busy little job," and so forth. If nature required that he should leave the forge and walk across the shed, that was the subject of a note--"One minute and three-quarters gone." Did he think he could beat the records of all the other men at the stamps? The manager hoped he would try hard to do so, he wanted the machine to be quite first in output. The prices were weighed, chiselled, and pared with great exactness, even to the splitting of a farthing: "A halfpenny is too much for this job; I shall give you three-eighths." Moreover, the overseers only timed him in the morning, after breakfast, which is the most active part of every day, and when all are fresh and fit for work, or never, so that the prices were fixed at a time when everything was going at its best. It is impossible to maintain the same speed in the afternoon, or even during the latter part of the morning towards dinner-time, that one is capable of after breakfast.

So Pinnell was little by little broken in to the new conditions.

Whatever protests he made were of no avail. If the acute manager happened to make a slight misjudgment and give him a fair price for a job, one or other of the shed overseers--though always very flip with him to his face--rushed off privately and informed about it, and had it cut down to the dead level. Very often the overseers competed with each other to see which could make the lowest quotation in order to get into favour with the managers. Once, after playing an underhanded game in the fixing of prices, the foreman even induced Pinnell to leave his hammer and forge and go and protest to the manager himself, though he knew very well the matter was nothing but a farce. When the deluded one arrived at the office he was received with studied courtesy. A little arithmetic was entered into, and it was proved beyond all doubt that the job was well, and even generously, paid for. Accordingly, feeling rather foolish at his boldness in going to the manager and his failure to succeed in the matter, Pinnell returned to his work, while the overseer stood in hiding and watched him back to his hammer, laughing at his simplicity.

When at last he found that there was no escape for him, he settled down in despair, and decided to bury himself at the toil. So exacting is the labour it admits of no interest whatever in anything else. It is a body- and soul-racking business, just that which keeps the whole man in a crushed and subdued state, and makes him a very part of the machinery he operates. It was nothing but the man's natural zeal for work and grit that kept him at the task. Night after night he went home to his wife and children as tired as a dog, too tired even to read the newspaper, or write a letter. He simply sat in the chair or lay on the couch till bed-time, completely worn out with the terrible exertions.

Very soon the abject misery of his condition found expression in words to his workmates. He was continually wishing himself dead. He said he should like to die out of it. Life was nothing but a heavy burden, and there was nothing better in sight in the future; only the same killing toil day after day. He often wondered _when_ he should die. He had heart enough for anything, but somehow he felt he could never keep it up, and everyone told him he was "going home sharp." At the same time, nothing would prevent him from turning up at the hammer day after day; ill or well he was sure to be at his post. Sometimes, when his wife exhorted him to stay at home and recuperate and locked the doors against him, in the early morning he escaped to work through the window. There was no detaining him at all; he felt bound to come to the shed and endure the daily punishment. To intensify his sufferings everyone told him it was his own fault. He had no one to blame but himself; he should not have been such a fool as to lend himself so easily to it, they said.

So, eternally tired with the work--he has two forges to attend to, he heats all his own bars, drives his own hammer with the foot and operates the heavy trimmer by the side of it in the same manner--half-choked and blinded with the reeking smoke and fumes of the oil, sore-footed with using the treadle, his arms blistered and burnt with the scale and hot water from the glands and valves--they are very often in bandages--his hands cut and torn with the sharp ends of the bars, or burned with the hot ones that sometimes shoot out from the die and slip white-hot through his palm and fingers, beaten and distressed with the heat, the gazing-stock of everyone that pa.s.ses through the shed and who look upon him as a freak and a marvel, he keeps plodding away, a much be-fooled and over-worked individual, the utter victim of a cruel and callous system.

CHAPTER XII

FIRST QUARTER IN THE FORGE

"Hey-up!"

"What's up?"

"Wake up!"

"What's the matter?"

"Get up!"

"Go to h.e.l.l!"

"You-u-u! Tell me to go to h.e.l.l, will you? I'll smash you.

I'll--I'll----"

"Come on, then! Try it on! I'm not afraid of you! You're n.o.body!"

"Well, wake up! and jump about when I tell you."

"Wake up yourself, whitegut!"

"Who are you calling whitegut, eh? Who are you calling whitegut?"

"Who shot the sheep and had to pay for it?"

"Blast you! I've had enough of your jaw. I'll put your head in that bucket of oil."

"_Will_ ya? You got to spell able first."

Scuffle, in which the younger is thrown down to the ground, after which he gets up and runs away, crying:

"Baa-a-a!"

"I'll give you 'Baa-a-a!' Wait till I get hold of you!"

"Baa-a-a! Baa-a-a!"

"Take that! you-u-u!" throwing a lump of coal that misses him and goes flying through the office window.

"Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!

'Everybody's doing it, doing it, doing it; Everybody's doing it now.'"

"Yes, and you'll be doing it directly! 'Tis all your fault. If you was to look after your work instead of acting about so much that wouldn't have happened. Blasted well light that fire up!"

"Here's the gaffer comin'."

"A good job too! I don't trouble."

"What the h.e.l.l's up this end? Ya on a'ready this mornin'? I'll send the pair of you home directly."

"'Tis my mate here. He's the cause of everything. He's no good to me. He won't do nothing."

"D'ye hear this?"

"I allus does mi whack."

"Don't talk to me. h.e.l.lo! What's this 'ere? Who bin smashin' the window?

Ther'll be h.e.l.l to pop over this. If I reports ya you'll be done for, both on ya."

"Please, sir, I kicked a piece of c.o.ke and it went through the pane."

"Hey?"

"The hammer fled off the shaft and went through the window."

"Why the devil don't you look after the shaft then, and keep the wedges tight. You'll knock somebody's head off presently. I daresay you was at that blasted football again. The first I ketches at it I'll sack. Have un clean off the ground. I'll give un football!"

"Light that fire up, Laudy!"

"Got a job on over 'ere, gaffer."