STAMPING--THE DROP-HAMMER STAFF--ALGY AND CECIL--PAUL AND
“PUMP”--“SMAMER”--BOILERS--A NEAR SHAVE
The drop-stamps stand in the corner, close under the wall. They are
supplied by three coke forges, and by the coal furnace before mentioned.
A drop-stamp, or drop-hammer, is a machine used for stamping out all
kinds of details and uses in wrought iron or steel, from an ounce to
several hundredweights. It differs from a steam-hammer properly so
called in that while it is raised by steam power it falls by gravity,
striking the metal in the dies by its own impetus, whereas the
steam-hammer head is driven down by a piston. Three hands are employed
at each machine. They are--the stamper, his hotter, and the small boy
who drives the hammer. A similar number compose the night shift; the
machines are in constant use by night and day. All the work is done at
the piece rate, and the prices are low; the men have to be very nimble
to earn sufficient money to pay them for the turn.
The hands employed on the drop-hammers are of a fairly uniform type,
though there are several distinguished above the others by reason of
their individual features and characteristics. Chief among them are the
two young hammer boys, Algy and Cecil, Paul the furnaceman, and a youth
who rejoices in the preposterous nickname of “Pump.” Algy drives the end
drop-stamp for the chargeman and Cecil the next one to it, larger and
heavier. Algy has several nicknames, one of which, from his diminutive
stature, being “Teddy Bear,” and the other, carrying with it a certain
amount of sarcasm, is plain “Jim.” Sometimes, also, he is called “Dolly”
or “Midget.” Cecil boasts of a string of christian names, the correct
list being Cecil Oswald Clarence. Questioned concerning the other
members of the family he informs you that his brother is named Reginald
Cuthbert, his schoolgirl sister May Alberta, and his baby sister Ena
Merle. From some cause or other he himself has not obtained a regular
nickname; he is rather summarily addressed by his surname. No one in the
shed ever deigns to call him by his christian name, it is too unusual
and high-sounding, too aristocratic and superb. Bob or Jack would have
been preferable; scarcely anyone at the works goes beyond a monosyllable
in the matter of names.
The boys are of the same age--fifteen or thereabout--but they are
dissimilar in stature and in almost every other respect. Algy is short
and small, plump and sturdy, while Cecil is inclined to run. He is tall
for his age, and very thin. His body is as flat as a man’s hand; he has
no more substance than a herring. Algy’s features are round, regular,
and pleasant; he is quite a handsome boy. His forehead slopes a little,
his nose is perfect in shape. He has frank, grey eyes sparkling with fun
and good-nature, a girlish mouth, and small, pretty teeth. Cecil, on the
other hand, is not what one would style handsome. He has thin, hollow
cheeks and small, hard features. His forehead is narrow, and his eyes
are rather large and searching--expressing strength and keenness. His
mouth is stern, and his lips pout a little: they are best represented by
the French _s’allonger--les lèvres s’allongent_, as Monsieur Jourdain’s
did in Molière, when he pronounced the vowel sound of u. He has a
particularly fine set of teeth, and he has a way of grizzing them
together and showing them when in the act of making a special exertion
that gives him a savage expression.
Both boys are pale. Algy’s face, when it is clean, shines like a glass
bottle; Cecil’s skin is inclined to be yellow. Both have dark rings
around the eyes, especially Cecil, who is the more delicate of the
two--they are neither very robust-looking. Their hair is very long, and
it stands out well from underneath their cloth caps and stretches down
the cheeks before the ears. They are consequently often assailed with
the cry--“Get yer ’air cut,” or--“You be robbin’ the barber of
tuppence,“ or--”Tell yer mother to use the basin,” suggesting that the
boys’ hair is cut at home. It is a common charge to lay to small boys in
the shed that their mothers used to put a basin over their heads and cut
the hair around the outside of it. Both boys wax indignant at being
taunted about the basin, and reply to the other remark with, “You gi’ me
the tuppence, then, an’ I’ll have it cut.” Occasionally, more by way of
being sarcastic than out of any desire to show good-nature, the stampers
will make a collection towards defraying the barber’s expenses, and the
next morning the boys will turn up at the shed nearly bald: they have
had their hair cut this time with a vengeance.
Several times Algy has come to the shed wearing a pair of wooden clogs,
but, as everyone teased him and called him “Cloggy,” he cast them aside
and would not wear them any more. Clogs belong rather to the Midlands
and the North of England, and are very rarely seen in the railway town.
The least respectable of all the boys’ clothing are their shirts. They
are usually full of big rents, being split from top to bottom, or torn
quite across the back, the lower part falling down and exposing the
naked flesh for a space of a foot, and they are of an inscrutable
colour. One day an entire sleeve of Algy’s shirt dropped clean away, and
Cecil’s was rent completely up one side so that his entire flank and
shoulder were visible. Though the stampers laugh at Cecil and sometimes
grip hold of whole handfuls of his flesh, where the shirt is torn, he is
not very much disconcerted. Algernon blushed considerably, however, when
his mate quietly told him one day that he could see his naked posterior
through a rent in his trousers.
Although the boys’ clothing is untidy and dilapidated they are not kept
short of food, and their appetites are truly enormous. They bring large
parcels of provisions to the shed--thick chunks of bread and butter,
rashers of raw bacon, an egg to boil or fry, and sometimes a couple of
polonies or succulent sausages. The whole is tied up in a red
dinner-handkerchief or wrapped in a newspaper; you would often have a
difficulty in getting it into an ordinary-sized bucket. The youngsters
have to stand a great deal of chaff over their parcels of provisions.
The men often take them in their hands and weigh them up and down,
showing them about the shed, and asking each other if they do not want
to buy a pair of old boots. At breakfast- or dinner-time the lads obtain
a roughly-made frying-pan, or take the coke shovel, and, after rubbing
it out with a piece of paper, cook their food, usually frying it
together and dipping their bread in the fat alternately. Then, if it is
fine, still stripped of their waistcoats, they go out in the yard and
sit down, or crouch by the furnace door and clear up the food to the
last morsel; they will often not have finished when the hooter sounds
the first time to warn the men to come back to the shed. When the meal
is over, if there is yet time, Algy will produce from his pocket some
literature of the Buffalo Bill type, or a school story, of which he is
fond, and read it. Cecil will not deign to look at “such stuff,” as he
calls it, but will borrow a newspaper, or some part of one, from his
mates, and greedily devour the contents of that.
Though neither of them has left school for more than a year, or, at the
outside, fifteen months, they have forgotten almost everything they
learned, even to the very rudiments in many cases. Their knowledge of
grammar, arithmetic, poetry, geography, and history has entirely lapsed,
or, if they remember anything at all, it will be but a smattering of
each. To test their memory and knowledge of these matters the boys’
chargeman occasionally offers them prizes, and enters them into
competition with other lads of the shed, some of whom have not been away
from school for more than five or six months, but one and all show a
deplorable lack of the faculty of retention. Whether it is the result of
too much cramming by the teacher, or whether it is that the rising
generation is really deficient in mental capacity, they are quite
incapable of answering the most simple and elementary questions. The
chargeman’s plan is to offer them pennies for the names of half-a-dozen
capitals of foreign countries, half-a-dozen foreign rivers, six names of
British kings or British rivers, the capitals of six English counties,
or the names of the counties themselves, six fish of English rivers, six
wild birds, half-a-dozen names of wild flowers, the capitals of British
colonies, the names of six English poets, or a few elementary points of
grammar, and so on.
The answers, when any are vouchsafed, are often ludicrous and amazing:
the intellectual capacity of the boys is certainly not very brilliant.
During these tests the chargeman was astonished to learn that Salisbury
is a county, Ceylon is the capital of China, and that Paris stands on
the banks of the river Liffey. As for the preterite tense, not one had
ever heard of it. Only one out of six could give the names of the six
counties and kings complete, though another of the lads had strong
impressions concerning a monarch he called the “ginger-headed” one, but
he could not think of his name. Not one could furnish the requisite list
of fish, fowl, and natural wild flowers, but little Jim, struck with a
sudden inspiration, shouted out “jack and perch,” for he had recently
been fishing in the clay-pits with his brother. The others frankly
confessed they did not know anything about the matter; if they had ever
learned it at school they had forgotten it now. Anyway, it was not of
much use to one, they said, though it was all right to know about it.
Not one of the half-dozen, though all were born in the town, could give
the name of a single Wiltshire river.
Paul is not permanently attached to the furnace in the corner, but came
to fill the place of one who had met with an accident. As a matter of
fact, Paul is everybody’s man; he is here, there, and everywhere. He can
turn his hand to almost anything in the second degree, and is a very
useful stop-gap. Forge he cannot, stamp he cannot, though he is a
capital heater of iron, and makes a good furnaceman; he is a fair
all-round, inside man. But somehow or other, everyone persists in making
fun of Paul, and contrives to play pranks and practical jokes upon him.
Whatever job he is engaged upon his mates address ridiculous remarks to
him; they will never take him seriously. Some one or other, in passing
by, will knock off his hat; this one gravely takes him by the wrist and
feels his pulse, and that one will give him a rough push. Another puts
water over him from the pipe, pretending it was by accident; whatever
reply he makes his mates only laugh at him. As a rule, Paul takes it
all in good part, though sometimes he will lose his temper and retaliate
with a lump of coal, or any other missile upon which he can lay his
hands.
Paul would be the tallest man in the shed if it were not that he stoops
slightly as the result of having had rheumatics. As it is, he is quite
six feet in height, bony, but not fleshy, with broad shoulders and large
limbs. As he walks his head is thrown forward; he goes heavily upon his
feet. His features are regular and pleasant; he has grey eyes and bushy
brows. His skin is dark with the heat and grime of the furnace; his
expression is one of marked good-nature. In appearance he is a perfect
rustic; there is no need to look at him the second time to know that he
dwells without the municipal border. It is this air of rusticity,
combined with his simplicity of character and behaviour, that makes Paul
the butt of the other workmen. They would not think of practising their
clownish tricks upon others, for there are many upon whom it would be
very inadvisable to attempt a jest without being prepared for a sudden
and violent reprisal.
Paul’s home is in the village, about three miles from the town. There he
passes his leisure in comparative quiet, and, in his spare time from the
shed, cultivates a large plot of land and keeps pigs. This finds him
employment all the year round, so that he has no time to go to the
public-house or the football match, though he sometimes plays in the
local cricket eleven. He takes great interest in his roots and crops,
and almost worships his forty perch of garden. During the summer and
autumn he brings the choicest specimens of his produce in his pocket and
shows them to his mates in the shed; he usually manages to beat all
comers with his potatoes and onions.
In spite of Paul’s simplicity of behaviour, one cannot help being
attracted to him by reason of his frankness and open-heartedness; he
would not think of doing anything that is not strictly above board.
Though rough and rude, blunt and unpolished, he is yet very honest and
conscientious. Certainly he is not as sharp and intelligent as are many
of the town workmen, but he is a better mate than most of them, and when
it comes to work he will stand by you to the last; he is not one to back
out at the slightest difficulty.
How Pump came to be Pump is a mystery; no one knows the origin of the
nickname. “They called I Pump a long time ago,” says he. Very likely it
was given to him extemporaneously, with no particular relation to
anything; someone or other said “Pump,” and the name stuck there at
once. Pump is just under eighteen years of age. He drives the heavy
drop-stamp on the day-shift, and, owing to certain characteristics of
which he is possessed, he always attracts attention. He is very loud and
noisy, full of strong words and forcible language, though he is
extraordinarily cheerful and good-natured. He is short in stature, very
strong and much given to sweating; in the least heat his face will be
very red and covered with great drops of perspiration. His forehead is
broad and sloping, he has immense blue eyes, tapered nose, bronze
complexion, a solid, square countenance, and a tremendous shock of hair.
In driving the hammer he has acquired the unusual habit of following the
heavy monkey up and down with his eyes, and the expression on his face,
as he peers up into the roof, induces many to stop and take a peep at
him as they pass by. To all such Pump addresses certain phrases much
more forcible than polite, and warns them to “clear out” without delay
if they do not “want something.” They usually respond with an
extra-special grimace, or work their arms up and down as though they
were manipulating the engine from which he derives his nickname.
As a mate Pump is variable. With the men of one shift he can agree very
well, but with the others he is nearly always at loggerheads. The fact
is that Pump’s stamper on one shift does not like him, and will not try
to like him, either. He quite misunderstands his driver’s
characteristics, and will not see his good qualities underneath a
certain rugged exterior. Accordingly, they quarrel and call each other
evil names all day. Very often the stamper will throw down his tongs and
walk off. Thereupon Pump lowers the hammer defiantly, folds his arms,
and tosses his head with disgust, while the furnaceman, waiting with his
heat, calls to them to “come on.” Now the stamper picks up his tongs
quickly, shouts loudly to Pump, “Hammer up, there!” and on they go
again, the stamper snorting and muttering to himself, and glaring
fiercely from side to side, while Pump bursts into song, with a broad
grin on his countenance. Sometimes the stamper, in a towering fury, will
come to the chargeman and swear that he will not hit another stroke with
“that thing there,” and demand another mate forthwith, but with a little
tact and the happy application of a spice of good-humour, the situation
will be saved, and everything will go on right merrily, though the old
trouble will certainly recur. Pump confides all his troubles to the
chargeman and sheds a few tears now and then. He is full of good
intentions and tries to do his level best to please, but he cannot avoid
friction with his fiery and short-tempered mates of the fortnightly
shift.
He has one very special and ardent desire, which is to go on night
duty; he is for ever counting up the days and weeks that must pass
before his birthday will arrive, and so raise him to the age necessary
for undertaking the shift. In common with most other youths, he looks
upon the night turn as something “devoutly to be wished,” but I very
much fear that a few weeks of the change will modify his opinion of the
matter, if it does not entirely disillusion him. Notwithstanding a
certain amount of novelty attaching to the working on the night-shift,
it is attended with many hardships and inconveniences. The greater part
of those who have to perform it would willingly exchange it for the day
duty.
There was at one time another highly distinctive “character” attached to
the drop-stamps. He revelled in the nickname of “Smamer.” Where he
obtained the pseudonym is unknown, though it is notable that the word
has an intelligible derivative. Smamer is undoubtedly derived from the
Greek verb σμᾶν = sman, meaning _to smear_, and, afterwards, from
σμᾶμα[1] = soap, so that the nickname is meant to designate a smearer.
As there are many who are in the habit of smearing their faces with
soap, the nickname would seem to have a very wide and universal
application. Be that as it may, our Smamer was a smearer of the first
order; he usually stopped at that and did not care to prosecute the
matter further. His face daily bore traces of the initial process of
washing, and that only; it was a genuine smear and little besides.
Whoever first honoured him with the appellation was a person of
discernment, though he might not have been aware of the origin of the
word. You often hear a workman say that So-and-so is “all smamed up”
with oil or some other greasy substance.
[1] Classical, σμῆν, σμῆμα
Smamer was one of the forge hands and heated iron for the middle
drop-stamp. His home was in the country, several miles from the town;
winter and summer he tramped to and from the shed. For several years
after his father and mother died he lived in the cottage by himself,
tilled his own garden, prepared his food, performed his housework, made
his bed, and did his own washing, though he was no more than nineteen
years of age. He was noted for his eccentric mode of living. Whatever
the weather might be he scarcely ever wore an overcoat. He often came to
work wet through to the skin, and reached home at night in the same
condition, where he received no welcome of any sort, but had to light
his own fire before he could dry his clothing or prepare his meal. To
every inquiry as to whether he was wet or not he made one reply; he was
“just a little bit damp about the knees,” that was all.
In manner he was quiet and rather sullen; he was never very
sweet-tempered, though he was a quick and clever heater of iron and a
very good mate. About his native village he was rough and noisy, fond of
fighting and disturbance. He was frequently in conflict with the police,
and often on the point of being summoned before the Bench for some
offence or other, but he usually scraped out of the difficulty at the
last moment, either by means of apologies, or by making some kind of
restitution to the injured party. At week-ends, with a band of
associates, he paid visits to the neighbouring villages and fought with
the young men, until the whole of them became so well-known to the
police that wherever they went they were recognised and promptly hustled
off in the direction of their native place.
During the autumn months Smamer visited all the orchards along the road
on the way to work, and came to the shed with his pockets crammed full
of apples. These he used to divide out among his mates, who ate them
with little or no compunction; there is small searching of conscience
among the boys of the factory, especially when the contraband happens to
be sweet, juicy apples plucked from the farmer’s trees. Very soon,
however, the habit of the life began to tell upon him. His continually
getting wet, and the having no one to provide him with any kind of
comfort, ruined his constitution; in a few months he wasted away and
died. A small party of mates from the shed attended the funeral at the
little village churchyard: that was the end of Smamer. His place at the
forge was soon filled; he was not missed very much. Everyone said he had
but himself to blame; there was no sympathy meted out to him. His
brother, who also worked on the drop-stamps, had been killed by a blow
on the head with a piece of metal from the die only a short while
before. They lay side by side in the little walled enclosure, for ever
oblivious of the noise and din of the thunderous hammers and the
grinding wheels of the factory.
There are several others, distinguished with titles of an expressive
kind, working on the drop-stamps. Of these one answers to the nickname
of “Bovril,” one is “Kekky Flapper,” one is “Aeroplane Joe,” one
“Blubber,” and another is known about the shed as “Wormy.” How they came
to possess such inglorious appellatives cannot with certainty be told; a
very little will suffice to brand you with an epithet in the work-shed.
In addition to these, in the vicinity of the drop-stamps in the corner
are an ex-groom, a grocer, a musical freak, a comedian, a photographer,
a boy scout, a territorial, a jockey, a cowman, a pianoforte maker, and
a local preacher.
Situated over the coal furnace that feeds the big drop-stamps is a
boiler of the “loco” pattern, one of those responsible for the
tremendous din that is raised every day at meal-times when the steam is
not required for the engines and hammers. These boilers have all served
their time on the line--in passenger or goods traffic--and, after their
removal from the engine frames, they have become distributed over the
company’s system and throughout the factories. The distance a boiler is
required to travel under steam on the railway is about thirty thousand
miles; after completing this it is superseded and removed from the
active list on the permanent way. By the time the boiler and engine have
travelled together so many miles they will be half worn out. The wheels,
by reason of the frequent application of the brakes and “skidding” on
the rails, will be grooved and cut about, and the machinery will require
new fittings and bearings. After the boilers have been removed from the
frames they are overhauled and tested and then sold out to the different
sheds and stations, wherever they may happen to be wanted.
The method of transacting business between the different sheds and
departments at the works is exactly like that employed by outside firms
and tradesmen. Bills and accounts are rendered, and the whole formula of
hire and purchase is entered into by the different parties; everything;
in fact, except the actual payment of money, is duly carried out. The
sheds are required to show a balance on the right side at the end of
each year; percentages are charged for working expenses, and all the
rest is profit. Thus, some sheds will show profits of many thousands of
pounds annually, though upon paper only; the surpluses do not exist in
reality.
Although the new boiler costs £1,000 it is sold to the shed second-hand
for £200, so that the cost of ten for the workshop was only £2,000. The
charge for setting, and fitting, and also for repairs and cleaning,
however, is very great; a big sum is needed to keep them in a fit
condition for work. After they have been erected above the furnaces they
are covered with a thick jacket of a compound of magnesia and fibre, to
enable them to retain the heat, and they are afterwards painted black,
so as to harmonise with the general environment. The steam pressure of
the repaired boiler is usually fixed at about a hundred and twenty-five
pounds per square inch. The capacity of each boiler is very great, and
the composite power of the whole set formidable; if one of them should
happen to explode the result would indeed be disastrous. A small staff
of men superintends them by day and night, and greater care is taken of
them than was the case formerly. I can remember when the shed was
several times within a hair’s breadth of being blown up and forty or
fifty men hurled to perdition.
A few years ago, instead of trustworthy men being appointed to
superintend the boilers, they were consigned to the charge of several
youths, who were very careless and negligent in their work, and who
seemed to have no idea whatever of the tremendous responsibility resting
upon them for the safety and welfare of the life in the shed. Provided
with mouth-organs and bones, or Jew’s harps, they would play and skylark
about for a long time and leave their boilers unattended at considerable
risk. I have often known them to be away from their posts for an hour at
a stretch, and to allow the water in the boilers to become almost
entirely evaporated before they returned to fill them up again, which,
as everyone knows, is an exceedingly dangerous practice. By the common
regulation attaching to boilers, the water should never be permitted to
fall below that point when it is visible in the gauge-glass. If it is
allowed to do so the position becomes dangerous immediately, and, to
obviate accident, the bars of the furnace fire should be withdrawn and
no cold water admitted.
Once a youth--a wild, reckless fellow--was absent from the boiler an
unusually long time in the middle of the morning before dinner. The
stampers watched the water in the gauge-glass drop little by little and
finally vanish, and still no one came to attend to it. Being a little
anxious about it I sent several men and boys to try and find the
boilerman, but without avail. His mates were nowhere to be found either,
and the foreman was away from the shed at the time. From being anxious I
soon felt alarmed. The matter was becoming serious, and we were not
allowed, under any circumstances, to meddle with the injectors
ourselves.
As I was warning all men in the locality of the danger the boilerman
arrived, a little frightened, but in a desperate mood. I advised him to
take the usual course in such a case, to have the fire withdrawn from
the furnace and allow the boiler to burn, but as this would have meant
certain dismissal for him he decided to risk everything and fill up the
boiler or explode it. As he was determined in his foolhardy resolution
we collected our mates and left the shed, retiring to a safe distance.
By good fortune, however--by pure luck, and nothing else--the boiler
received the water safely, though with a great deal of shuddering, and
the danger was past. To make the best--or the worst--of it, there were
three men on the back of the boiler at the time, laying on the coat of
magnesia, for it had not been erected many days. Although we gave them
warning of the danger they took not the slightest notice, but kept
working away, in a hurry to get the job done, for it was piecework. If
the boiler had exploded, packed as it was with terrific pressure and
priming furiously, they would have been blown to atoms.
The bold and daring of the shed indulge in many jeers and
uncomplimentary remarks, if some others, in the face of real danger,
should adopt precautionary measures and take heed of their safety, but
experience has taught me that it is better to be apprehensive and
cautious and to take pains to safeguard oneself than to score a cheap
victory by bravado and carelessness. When danger threatens in the
factory, the best course is to stand quite clear at all costs; it is
then no shame to put into practice the words of the old proverb,
slightly amended: “He that works and runs away will live to work another
day.” By far the greater proportion of the accidents that happen daily
at the works are the direct result of inattention, of not taking notice
of warnings uttered by others, and the failure to exercise the instinct
of self-preservation natural to each individual. It is not that the men
are absolutely careless of themselves; it is rather that the care they
do take is not considerable or sufficient.