The Iron Puddler Part 16

The natural limit of population is starvation. The more bread the more mouths, less bread, fewer people. Europe and the Orient reached the starvation limit before America was settled. A bad crop meant a famine, and a famine started a plague. This plague and famine would sweep off a third of the population, and the rest could then raise food enough to thrive on. England and Wales have had famines, Ireland has had famines, France has had famines, Russia has a deadly famine after every bad crop year, while in India and China famine is a chronic condition.

America has never had a famine. But we are not exempt from famine.

In the year 1816, known as the year of "eighteen-hundred-and-froze-to-death," the crops failed throughout America because of freezing weather all summer long. Little or no food was raised and the Americans would have perished from famine had it not been for the wild meat in the woods. The people lived on deer and bear that winter. To-day if our food supply fails we can not live on venison.

No country is by natural law exempt from famine. Our famine will come when we fill this country as thickly as men can stand; China and India have so filled themselves. Famine awaits us when we repeat their folly.

That day will come soon unless we bar the unworthy from our gates.

But cold weather and crop failure are not the only things that could bring a famine in America. Slacking in production has the same effect as crop failure. A farmers' strike could bring a famine. A railroad strike could do the same. Many men advocate a combination farmers' strike and railroad strike to destroy capital (that is, to destroy the food supply). Don't get impatient, boys. You shall have your famine, if you will wait long enough. And the less work you do while you are waiting, the sooner it will come. Nature is never whipped. Nature will take a crack at you, if you leave an opening. The generation that went before you worked ten to fourteen hours a day; they battled face to face with a raw continent in their fight with Nature. And by their muscle they drove Nature back and she surrendered. She went down like crumpled Germany, and she signed a treaty. Hard were the treaty terms our fighting fathers made with Nature. They took an indemnity. She delivered to them more houses than her cyclones had destroyed, she furnished them millions of cattle in place of the wild deer and buffalo. She yielded up her coal regions to warm them in payment for the torture her winters had inflicted. By this treaty she gave them everything she had and promised to be good.

We are the inheritors of the good things of that peace treaty. We were born rich; we revel in the "reparations" that our fathers wrung from a conquered Nature. But Nature, like Germany, is not really whipped. If we relax, she will default on her payments. As long as Nature is not really whipped, her treaty is a sc.r.a.p of paper. Nature, right now, is preparing for a come-back. She will not arm openly, for we would then arm to meet her. She is planning to attack us by a method that is new. She will weaken us by propaganda, and when we are helpless she will march over us at will.

Who then are the propagandists that Nature is using to undermine the race that conquered her? Communists, slackers, sick men and fools.

The man who says let us "quit work and divide our cake and eat it" is opening the way for Nature to strike suddenly with a famine. The man who advocates "one big strike" to destroy our capital is the secret agent of starvation. Nature when up in arms can sweep men off like flies. She has always done it and she always will, unless man uses his intelligence and his cooperation to fight the evils in Nature and not to fight his fellow men.

"Capitalism," as the communists call it, is an imperfect system. But it is the only system that has banished famine. Under communism and feudalism there was hunger. Under capitalism the world has been able to feed twice as many mouths as could be fed before.

Capitalism found a world of wood and iron ore, and made it into a world of steel. How? It puddled the pig-iron until the dross was out, and the pure metal was bessemered into steel. Now the task is to purify men as we have purified metals. Men have dross in their nature. They break under civilization's load. A steel world is hopeless if men are pig-iron. There is greed and envy and malice in all of us. But also there is the real metal of brotherhood. Our task is to puddle out the impurities so that the true iron can be strong enough to hold our civilization up forever.

I have been a puddler of iron and I would be a puddler of men. Out of the best part of the iron I helped build a stronger world. Out of the best part of man's metal let us build a better society.

I have no new cure for the ills of humanity.

Life is a struggle, and rest is in the grave.

All nature is in commotion; there is wind and rain; and out of it comes seed harvest. The waters of the sea are poured in thunder wrack upon the hills and run in rivers back into the sea. The winds make weather, and weather profits man. When will man's turmoil cease, when will he find calm? I do not know. I only know that toil and struggle are sweet, and that life well lived is victory. And that calm is death.

Man must face an iron world, but he is iron to subdue it.

The lessons of my life were learned at the forge and I am grateful for my schooling.

"Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend, For the lesson thou hast taught!

Thus at the flaming forge of Life Our fortunes must be wrought, Thus on its sounding anvil shaped Each burning deed and thought."