Steel Part 13

"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 pa.s.sageway 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 cl.u.s.ter 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 d.a.m.n 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 embarra.s.sed, 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.