Steel Part 19

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. d.a.m.ned 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 pa.s.sed through at top speed.

"Troops going to quell strike riots," the a.s.sistant 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 d.a.m.n 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 b.u.t.toned 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 s.p.a.ce 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 ma.s.s of brick checkerwork for retaining the heat. Ma.s.ses 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 s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.sed, 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 antic.i.p.ated, 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."