Steel Part 10

"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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 gla.s.s 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 G.o.d 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 gla.s.ses on his nose, inspecting the brew. He put his gla.s.ses 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 gla.s.s of milk, and then my appet.i.te 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 sc.r.a.p, 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: "h.e.l.l, 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 gla.s.s 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 h.e.l.l 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 h.e.l.l with the money!" he said, with quiet pa.s.sion; "no can live."