Steel Part 15

"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 gla.s.s blowin', that's a real business--"

"Mr. Herder is always telling us how much better the gla.s.s 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 gla.s.ses in the peepholes.

One day we kept the stoves on "all heat" for the furnace was cold. "All you can give her, G.o.ddam 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 c.o.ke 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 c.o.ke," 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 sc.r.a.per--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 d.a.m.n 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 uns.c.r.e.w.i.n.g 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 G.o.ddam wrench a wrench, calls it a 'jigger.'

Have to learn all your tools over again by his G.o.ddam 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 G.o.d, I went to work in the blooming-mill, chasing steel--you know; keepin' track of all the ingots comin' in. A h.e.l.l of a job--by G.o.d 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.