THROUGH THE MELTING POT
"I've got a new job for you," said the head melter to Steve, when the
Iron Boys reported for duty on the following evening.
"Am I to be the monkey?"
"No, not to-day. I'll let you be the ladle man."
"What does he do?"
"Not much. He stands with a ladle in his hands, scooping from the molten
metal, as it bursts out through the clay dam, all the cinders and slag
he can pick up. Every little bit helps. You've got to watch lively, or
you will be burned to a crisp before you pick up the first ladle full,"
was the cheerful additional remark of the head melter.
"I was going to ask if you have a new job for me to-night," interrupted
Bob, "but I don't think I care very much for your promotions. That's
where I have the best of you, Steve. If anything happens in my
department I can jump down, but you can't jump up to get out of the way
of your troubles."
"At least, I am in little danger of breaking my neck in trying to jump
up," laughed Rush.
Bob was soon at the top of the furnace. He was still sore from the bump
he had gotten in collision with the train of flat cars. Jarvis walked
with a limp. One leg seemed to be shorter than the other, since the
accident, but of course this was not the case. He took up his work with
more confidence than he had begun it on the previous night, relieving
the monotony by alternately whistling and singing, though the latter was
usually attended with a severe coughing spell as he swallowed a mouthful
of gas and smoke.
Steve found his new occupation far from an improvement over what he had
begun with. His first effort to scoop cinders and slag from the yellow
stream resulted in his losing his eyebrows, much of the hair on his head
and nearly all the clothing he had on.
Had it not been for the quick action of the man with the hose he would
not have had a stitch of clothing left on him, and perhaps very little
skin-covering either.
"Dip and jump!" shouted the melter. "What are you trying to do?"
"Principally jumping, only I didn't jump quite quickly enough," laughed
Steve, the tears running from his smarting eyes. He bathed them
liberally in cold water, after which they felt better.
The next dip was not much of an improvement over the first, except that
there were fewer clothes to be burned and no eyebrows at all. Now, Rush
was shouting for water, as had the others before him. Being a raw hand
it was dashed over him by the pailful, in addition to the deluge he got
from the hose in the hands of the hoseman.
The Iron Boy staggered away, gasping for breath. His head was a-whirl
and he felt as though he were on fire.
"Water, water!" he gasped, settling down in a heap.
No one laughed. No one cared. They were used to such scenes of
suffering, and the rough furnace men felt no compassion for the
suffering boy. It was the water man's business to cool him off and no
concern of theirs.
In a short time Rush recovered and went staggering to his work again.
Once more he collapsed, and once more he was brought out of his partial
faint by a pail of water and hose.
This kept up for the greater part of the night, but each succeeding
collapse left him weaker and weaker. Still, Steve Rush clung doggedly to
his task. Only his iron will kept him up. Every pore in his body was the
outlet of a living stream of perspiration. Never in his life had he
suffered the excruciating or long-drawn-out agony that he experienced
as ladle man this night.
Pig-Iron Peel nodded approvingly. He was a rough man himself, but he
appreciated pluck and he knew pluck when he saw it.
"You had better lie down between casts," he advised, grasping an arm of
the Iron Boy, who was staggering about blindly after a successful
dipping, for even in his suffering he was rapidly getting the knack of
the work.
"I do--don't need to," gasped Steve.
"I don't care. I was simply telling you."
The next dip was worse than any that had preceded it. This time Steve
did not need to be told. He fell down without any effort of his own. He
simply collapsed, rolling over on his back on the hot brick flooring of
the platform, where he lay gasping for breath.
A pail of water was dashed over him and the hoseman played the hose up
and down his body. But Rush did not care. It is doubtful if he even felt
the cooling effect of the water. The boy was too nearly spent for
anything to matter. During this wait, however, he had more time to
recover himself, and by the time the men were ready for the next cast he
was on his feet. Steve's eyes were bloodshot, and seemed to stand out
from their sockets like two red balls. He worked automatically for the
rest of the night, not answering questions addressed to him and
probably not hearing any.
"They all have to go through the same experience," was the comforting
assurance of the head-melter. "You will come out all right in a day or
so, if you don't die in the meantime."
Steve went on with his work in silence. At the coming of the dawn Jarvis
came down from the charging platform, the whites of his eyes looking
twice their natural size in their frame of black soot, which was
plastered over the boy's face layer upon layer. Bob found Steve leaning
wearily against a pillar. The latter's face was drawn and haggard. Rush
looked years older. Jarvis gazed at him in astonishment.
"In the name of goodness what's the matter with you? Are you going to
die--are you sick, or----"
"Nothing is the matter with me," answered Steve, the harsh lines that
had grown on his face during the night smoothing out into a wan, but
sunny smile.
"Well, if there isn't there ought to be, for you are about the
worst-looking object I ever saw."
"You--you wouldn't take a prize yourself, at--at----"
"At a poultry show, no," finished Jarvis. "Come along; are you going
home, or would you rather hang around here?"
"Home?" answered Steve.
"I think you will have to be carried, if you get there to-day. Shall I
go get a rig for you? You're clean knocked out."
"I tell you I am all right," retorted Rush, with some show of
irritation. "Don't you trouble yourself about me."
Bob gazed at his companion in surprise. Steve had never spoken to him in
that tone before, so Jarvis kept still for a time as they went on across
the yards, over the hot metal bridge and to the lower exit from the
yards. As they were passing out they met Ignatz Brodsky coming in. The
Pole stopped short, peering into the face of Steve Rush.
"What the matter with you?"
"Nothing is the matter with me, Ignatz," answered Steve, by this time in
better control of himself. "I am a little tired--that's all."
"You stay by the house to-night. You no go to the furnace; you go by the
graveyard by and by."
"We expect to, you old croaker," scoffed Jarvis. "Go on, or else talk
about something pleasant. Where are you working now?"
"I work by the hot bed," answered Ignatz.
Bob laughed heartily.
"I guess we all do, though they are not exactly beds. Well, so long; we
must be going."
Brodsky bade them good-bye, Steve waving his hand; then the Pole stood
looking after them, his eyes fixed longingly on Rush, whose gait was
none too steady. Brodsky shook his head and went on to work.
"What's a hot bed, Steve?" questioned Bob.
"I don't know. I know a place that is hot enough to be called one."
"And I know two places, the one you work in and the one I work on top
of. Do you know, the waste gas that comes out of the top of that stove
is strong enough to light a whole town?"
"Goes up into the air, does it?"
"All that doesn't swoop down and suffocate me. I've been asphyxiated
every ten minutes since I have been up there."
"I wonder why they don't use the gas for something else?" mused Rush. He
lapsed into silence, pondering over this subject all the rest of the way
home. This was well, for it made him forget his weariness in a measure.
Reaching the widow Brodsky's, Steve was for going to bed without any
breakfast, but Bob was so insistent that the boy did sit down to his
meal after having taken his bath. Rush ate a fairly nourishing breakfast
and after that felt better. This, followed by a refreshing sleep put him
in very good condition.
Steve left the house a couple of hours before it was time to go to
work. He was still unsteady on his feet, but the color was returning to
his face and his wonderful vitality was asserting itself. He would be
himself again, in a few hours, if he were out in the open away from the
killing heat of the blast furnaces.
The boy wanted to see the furnaces by daylight so, that he might get a
better idea of them than was possible in the night. He stopped to
witness the work of the day shift as they made a cast. This was very
interesting, though a wave of pity welled up in the heart of the Iron
Boy for the suffering of the furnace men in the terrific heat to which
they were subjected while tapping the furnace.
The cast over, he walked to where the huge black stoves towered above
him, and through which the gas flamed and circulated to heat the air
that was driven in over the charge in the furnace itself.
The engineer nodded to him.
"Where does the waste gas go to?" asked the Iron Boy.
"Out into the air. Why?"
"I should think they would use it for something else."
"What else?"
"I don't know."
"Neither do I. We don't use gas for anything else, except running the
gas engines over on the other side of the yard. I guess you don't know
much about this business, or you wouldn't be asking such questions."
"One never learns much unless he does ask questions," answered the lad.
"I have learned more from asking questions that I ever have any other
way."
"That's right, so long as you can find anybody who's willing to answer
fool questions."
Steve walked away without replying. His mind was at work, what Jarvis
called working over time. The lad was thinking deeply over what he had
discovered, and, though he did not realize it at the time, he had come
upon an idea that was to work a great change in one department of the
great steel industry.