Steel Part 2

I walked through a street where the prices of clothing were moderate, but where there seemed a dearth of second-hand shops. In one store were green suits, belted, and hung on forms. They had the close-fitting waist, and were marked, "Style Plus Garments: Our Special Price, $15.00." The proprietor, who stood in the doorway, to be handy for collaring the prospective customer, rushed out at me, hands threatening.

He was of the prevailing racial type.

"Fix you up wid a dandy suit," he said.

"What I am looking for," I said, "is something second-hand. Do you have any?" I shot this out partly as a check.

"Old man upstairs, fix you up. That door."

I went through that door and up two flights, to a room containing an old man, a sewing machine, and a large table covered with old clothing.

"I'm looking for something for working-clothes," I said; "second-hand coat and pants."

He lifted a number from the tangled ma.s.s of garments, and displayed them. They appeared to me too clean, too new, too dressy.

"No," I said, "not that."

He searched again and came up with a highly respectable blue coat, with a mere raveling on one sleeve.

"No," I said, "I'll find one."

I fished very deeply, and caught some green pants, evidently "old" and spattered with white paint on the knees. He hastened to point out the white paint.

I tried to explain that I liked a little white paint on my clothes, but saw I was unconvincing. I finally bought the suit with a sort of violence for two dollars, and left with a sense of fortunate escape.

Now for a hat. Two blocks down the street I found one, somewhat soiled and misshapen.

"I'll take that," I said.

The clerk lifted it, and, when I was fumbling for money, brushed off a vast portion of the dirt, and reshaped it into smooth, luxuriant curves.

But still I bought the hat.

"At any rate," I thought, "I can restore the thing."

II

MOLTEN STEEL--AN INITIATION

At four o'clock I put on my paint-spattered pants, the coat with a conspicuous hole near one of the b.u.t.tons, and my green hat. I climbed the little hill before the gate, among leisurely first arrivals, and found myself attracting no attention whatsoever. I felt for the bra.s.s check in my shirt pocket, found it, and reb.u.t.toned the pocket. The guard peered into my face, as if he were going to ask for a pa.s.s, but didn't.

I walked the four hundred yards to the open-hearth, and noticed clearly for the first time the yard of the blooming-mill. Here varied shapes of steel, looking as if they weighed several thousand pounds each, were issuing from the mill on continuous treads, and moving about the yard in a most orderly, but complex manner. Electric cranes were sweeping over the quarter-acre of yard-s.p.a.ce, and lifting and piling the steel swiftly and precisely on flat cars.

I entered the open-hearth mill by the tracks that ran close to the furnaces. The mill noises broke on me: a moan and rattle of cranes overhead, fifty-ton ones; the jarring of the train-loads of charge-boxes stopping suddenly in front of Number 4; and minor sounds like chains jangling on being dropped, or gravel swishing out of a box. I was conscious of muscles growing tense, in the face of this violent environment, a somewhat artificial and eager calm. I walked with excessive firmness, and felt my personality contracting itself into the mere sense of sight and sound.

I looked for Pete.

"He's in his shanty--over there," said an American furnace-helper, who was getting into his mill clothes.

I went after Pete's shanty. It was a sheet-iron box, 12 by 12, midway down the floor, near a steel beam. Pete was coming out, b.u.t.toning the lower b.u.t.tons of a blue shirt. He looked through my head and pa.s.sed me, much as he had pa.s.sed the steel beam. With two or three steps I moved out and blocked his way. He looked at me, loosened his face, and said very cheerfully: "h.e.l.lo."

"I've come to work," I said.

"Here," he said, "you'll work th' pit t' night. Few days, y' know, get used ter things."

He led the way to some iron stairs, and we went down together into that darkened region under the furnaces, about whose function I had speculated.

To the left I could make out tracks. Railroads seem to run through a steel mill from cellar to attic. And at intervals, from above the tracks, torrents of sparks swept into the dark, with now and then a small stream of yellow fire.

We stumbled over bricks, mud, clay, a shovel, and the railroad track. In front of a narrow curtain of molten slag, falling on the floor, we waited for some moments. We were under the middle furnaces, I calculated. Gradually the curtain ceased, and Pete leaped under the hole from which it had come.

"Watch yourself," he said.

I followed him with a broad jump, and a prayer about the falling slag.

We came out into the pit, which had so many bright centres of molten steel that it was lighter than outdoors. I watched Pete's back chiefly, and my own feet. We kept stepping between little chunks of dark slag, which made your feet hot, and close to a bucket, ten feet high, which gave forth smoke. Wheelbarrows we met, with and without men, and metal boxes, as large as wagons, dropped about a dirt floor. We avoided a hole with a fire at its centre.

At last, at the edge of the pit, near more tracks, we ran into the pit gang: eight or ten men, leaning on shovels and forks and blinking at the molten metal falling into a huge bucket-like ladle.

"Y' work _here_," said Pete, and moved on.

I remember feeling a half-pleasurable glow as I looked about the strenuous environment, of which I was to become a part--a glow mixed with a touch of anxiety as to what I was up against for the next fourteen hours.

Two of the eight men looked at me, and grinned. I grinned back and put on my gloves.

"No. 6 furnace?" I asked, nodding toward the stream.

"Ye-ah," said the man next me.

He was a cleanly built person, in loose corduroy pants, blue shirt open at his neck. Italian.

He grinned with extraordinary friendliness, and said, "First night, this place?"

"Yes," I returned.

"G.o.ddam h.e.l.l of a ---- job," he said, very genially.

We both turned to look at the stream again.

For ten minutes we stood and stared. Two men lit cigarettes, and sat on a wheelbarrow; four of the others had nodded to me; the other three stared.

I was eager to organize into reasonableness a little of this strenuous process that was going forward with a hiss and a roar about me.

"That's the ladle?" I said, to start things.