THE NIGHT SHIFT--ARRIVAL IN THE SHED--“FOLLOWING THE
TOOL”--THE FORGEMAN’S HASTE AND BUSTLE--LIGHT AND
SHADE--SUPPER-TIME--CLATTER AND
CLANG--MIDNIGHT--WEARINESS--THE RELEASE--HOME TO REST
Whatever the trials of the day shift at the forge may be, those of the
night turn are sure to be far greater. For the daytime is the natural
period of both physical and mental activity. The strong workman, after a
good night’s rest and sleep, comes to the task fresh, keen, vigorous,
and courageous. Though the day before him be painfully long--almost
endless in his eyes--he feels fit to do battle with it, for he has a
reserve of energy. In the early morning, before breakfast, he is not at
his best. He has not yet “got into his stride,” he tells you. His full
strength does not come upon him suddenly, it develops gradually. He can
spend and spend and spend, but cannot exhaust. Nature’s great battery
continues to yield fresh power until the turn of the afternoon. Then the
rigid muscles relax, and the flesh shows loose and flabby. The eyes are
dull, the features drawn; the whole body is tired and languid.
But this is with the day shift, working in the natural order of things.
A great change is to be observed in the case of the night turn. There
nature is inverted; the whole scheme is reversed. The workman, unless he
is well seasoned to it, cannot summon up any energy at all, and he
cannot conquer habit, not after months, or even years of the change.
When, by the rule of nature, he should be at his strongest and the
exigencies of the night shift require that he should sleep, that
strength, bubbling up, keeps him awake, dead tired though he be, and
when he requires to be active and vigorous just the reverse obtains. The
energy has subsided, the sap has gone down from the tree. Nature has
retired, and all the coaxing in the world will not induce her to come
forth until such time as the day dawns and she steals back upon him of
her own free will. That is what, most of all, distinguishes the night
from the day shift, and makes it so wearisome for the pale-faced
toilers.
There is a poignancy in preparing for the night shift, the feeling is
really one of tragedy. This is where the unnaturalness begins. Everyone
but you is going home to rest, to revel in the sweet society of wife and
children, or parents, to enjoy the greatest pleasure of the workers’
day--the evening meal, the happy fireside, a few short hours of simple
pleasure or recreation and, afterwards, the honey-dew of slumber. As you
walk along the lane or street towards the factory you meet the toilers
in single file, or two abreast, or marching like an army, in compact
squads and groups, or straggling here and there. The boys and youths
move smartly and quickly, laughing and talking; the men proceed more
soberly, some upright with firm step and cheerful countenance, others
bent and stooping, dragging their weary limbs along in silence like
tired warriors retreating after the hard-fought battle.
There is also the inward sense and knowledge of evening, for, however
much you may deceive your external self, you cannot deceive Nature.
Forget yourself as much as you please, she always remembers the hour and
the minute; she is far more painstaking and punctual than we are. The
time of day fills you with a sweet sadness. The summer sun entering
into the broad, gold-flooded west, the soft, autumn twilight, or the
gathering shades of the winter evening, all tell the same story. It is
drawing towards night; night that was made for man, when very nature
reposes; night for pleasure and rest, for peace, joy, and compensations,
while you--here are you off to sweat and slave for twelve dreary hours
in a modern inferno, in the Cyclops’ den, with the everlasting wheels,
the smoke and steam, the flaring furnace and piles of blazing hot metal
all around you.
Within the entrance the place seems almost deserted. The huge sheds have
poured out their swarms of workmen. The black-looking crowds have
disappeared, and the great, iron-bound doors are closed up and locked.
The watchmen, who have been patrolling the yard and supervising the
exodus of the toilers, are returning to their quarters. Only the rooks
are to be seen scavenging up the fragments of bread and waste victuals
which the men have thrown out of their pockets for them.
Arrived at the shed you are greeted with the familiar and dreadful din
of the boilers priming, the loud roar of the blast and the whirl of the
wheels. The rush of hot air almost overpowers you. You feel nearly
suffocated already, and half stagger through the smoke and steam to
reach your fire and machine standing under the dark, sooty wall. As you
thread your way in and out between the furnaces and among the piles of
iron and steel you receive a severe dig in the ribs with the long handle
of the man’s shovel who is cleaning out the cinders and clinker from
beneath the furnaces, or the ash-wheeler, stripped to the waist and
dripping with perspiration, runs against you roughly with his
wheel-barrow and utters a loud “Hey-up!” or otherwise assails you with
“Hout o’ the road, else I’ll knock tha down,” and hurries off up the
stage to deposit his load and then comes down again to get in a stock of
coal from the waggon for the furnaces. Here the smith is preparing his
fire, while his mate breaks up the coke with the heavy mallet; the
yellow flames and cinders are leaping up from the open forge by the
steam saw. The oil furnaces are puffing away and spitting out their
densest clouds of pitchy smoke, filling the shed, while the stamper
fixes his dies and oils round, or half runs to the shears in the corner
and demands his stock of iron bars to be brought forthwith. The old
furnaceman, sweating from the operation of clinkering, shovels in the
coal and disposes it with the ravel. The forging hammers glide up and
down, clicking against the self-act, while the forger and his mates
manipulate the crane and ingot, or charge in the blooms or piles.
Everyone is in a desperate hurry, eager to start on with the work and
get ahead of Nature, before she flags too much. It is useless to wait
till midnight, or count upon efforts to be made in the hours of the
morning.
All this is during your entry to the shed and often before the official
hour for starting work. On coming to your post you, too, strip off hat,
coat, and vest, and hang them up in the shadow of the forge, then bind
the leathern apron about your waist, see to your own fire and
tools--tongs, sets, flatters, and sledges--obtain water from the tap by
the wall, shout “Hammer up!” to your mate, and prepare to thump away
with the rest. The heat of the shed in the evening, from six o’clock
till ten o’clock, is terrific in the summer months. For hours and hours
the furnaces and boilers have been raging, fuming, and pouring out their
interminable volumes of invisible vapour; the sun without, and the fires
within have made it almost unbearable. The floor plates, the iron
principals, the machine frames, the uprights of the hammers--everything
is full of heat; the water in the feed-pipes is so hot as to startle
you. As the hour draws on, towards nine or ten o’clock, this diminishes
somewhat. The cool night air envelops the shed and enters in through the
doors, restoring the normal temperature, though, if the night be muggy,
there will be scarcely any diminution of the punishment till the early
morning, when there is always a cooling down of the atmosphere.
Now the general toil commences in every corner of the smithy. The brawny
forger pulls, tugs, or pushes the heavy porter; the stamper runs out
with his white-hot bar, spluttering and hissing, and poises one foot on
the treadle while he adjusts it over the die, then _Pum-tchu, pom-tchu,
ping-tchu, ping-tchu_, goes the hammer, and over he turns it deftly,
blows away the scale and excrescence with the compressed air, and
_pom-tchu, ping-tchu_, again replies the hammer. Here he claps the
forging in the trimmer, click goes the self-act, and down comes the
tool. The finished article drops through on to the ground; the stamper
thrusts the bar into the furnace, turns on more oil and off he goes
again. The sparks swish and fly everywhere, travelling to the furthest
wall; he wipes away the sweat with the blistered back of his hand,
looking half-asleep, and rolls the quid of tobacco in his cheek.
Hard by the smith is busy with his forge and tools. His mate is ghastly
pale and thin in the yellow firelight, though he himself looks fat and
well. He sets the blast on gently till the iron is nearly fit, then
applies the whole volume, to put on the finishing touch and make the
iron soft and “mellow.” This lifts up the white cinders in clouds and
blows them out of the front also, so that now and then they lodge on the
blacksmith’s arms and in his hair, but he shakes them off and takes
little notice of them. He jerks the jumper up and down once or twice,
turns the heat round quickly, then shuts off the blast, and with a
lion-like grip of the tongs, brings it to the anvil and lays on with his
hand-hammer, while his mate plies the sledge. Presently he throws down
his hammer, grips the “set tool” or “flatter,” and his mate continues to
strike upon it till the work is completed. If the striker is not
proficient and misses once or twice, he jerks out, in a friendly
tone--“On the top, or go home,” or, “Go and get some chalk”--_i.e._, to
whiten the tool--or, “Follow the tool, follow the tool, you okkerd
fella.” Once, when a smith had a strange mate--a raw hand--with him, and
bade him to “Follow the tool,” when he put that down the striker
continued to go for it till it flew up and nearly knocked out the
smith’s eye, but he excused himself on the ground that he thought he had
to “follow the tool.”
Here is a skinny, half-naked fellow, striving with all his might to draw
a heavy bogie piled up with new blooms, half a ton or more in weight.
His head is thrown far forward, about a yard from the ground. His arms,
thin and small, are strained like rods of iron behind his back; only his
toes grip the ground. He shouts out to someone near for help.
“Hey! Gi’ us a shove a minute.”
“Gi’ thee tha itch! Ast the gaffer for a mate. I got mi own work to do,”
the other replies, and keeps hammering away.
Next is a belated stamper in want of tools. “Hast got a per o’ tongs to
len’ us a minute, ole pal?”
“Shove off wi’ thee and make a pair, or else buy some, like I got to.
Nobody never lends I nothin’,” is the answer he receives.
This one wants a blow. “Come an’ gi’ I a blow yer.”
“Gi’ thee a blow on the head. I got no time to mess about wi’ thee.”
Another is concerned as to the hour--there are those whose thoughts are
always of the clock, anxiously awaiting the next stop. “What time is it,
mate?”
“Aw! time thee wast better,” or “Same as ’twas last night at this time.
Thee hasn’t bin yer five minutes it.”
Perhaps the steam pressure is low. “Wha’s bin at wi’ the steam, matey?
We chaps can’t hit a stroke.”
“Got twisted in the pipes, I ’spect. Go an’ put thi blower on, an’ fire
up a bit, an’ run that slag out.”
This one cannot obtain his supply of bars from the shears. “Now Matty!
Hasn’t got that iron cut? I can’t wait about for thee.”
“Dwunt thee be in sich a caddle. Thee ootn’t get it none the zooner.
Other people got to live as well as thee, dost naa!”
“All right! I shall go and see _he_,” (the overseer).
“Thee cast go an’ do jest whatever thee bist a-mine to. ’Twunt make a
’appoth o’ difference.”
By and by the overseer comes up and shouts--“Hey! Can’t you let these
chaps on, Matthews?”
“No, I caan’t! Tha’ll hef to woite a bit. Ther’s some as bin a-woitin’
all night, ver nigh. ’Tis no good to plag’ I, else ya wunt get nothin’
done at all.”
Here is the forger bellowing at his driver. “Go on! Go on! Hit him! Hit
him! Hit him! Light, ther’! Light! ’Old on! ’Old on! Whoa, then! Castn’t
stop when I tells tha? Dost want to spile the jilly thing? Gi’ us up
they gauges. A’s too thick now. Up a bit, ther! Hit un agyen! Light now!
Light! Light! That’ll do! Whoa! Take ’old o’ this bar, an’ gi’ us that
cutter. Now, Strawberry! turn ’e over in the fire, an’ don’ stand ther’
a-gappatin’. ’Aaf thi ’ed ’ll drop off in a minute. Ther’s a lot to do
yet, else ya won’ get no balance. Hout o’ the road, oot!”
“Haw-w-right. Kip yer wool on. ’Tis a long time to mornin’ it. Thee bist
allus in a caddle,” the other answers.
“Shet thi ’ed, an’ mind thi own business, else I’ll fetch the gaffer to
thee! Pull up ther’, an’ le’s ’ev un out on’t. We be all be’ind agyen!
Everybody else ull a done afore we begins! Hang on to that chayn, Fodgy!
Now then! ALL together! UGH!”
So the ingot is brought out with shouts and cries, the rattling and
jingling of chains and the loud roaring of steam in the roof outside.
The blaze of the furnace and the spluttering, white-hot metal make it as
light as day in the shed. The forger and his mates stagger under the
weight of the ingot and porter-bar and incline their heads to escape the
fierce heat. Their faces and necks are burnt red and purple--of the
colour of blood-poisoning. Their shirt sleeves are hanging loose to
protect their arms; they wear thin, round calico caps on their heads and
leathern aprons about their waists. At the first blow or two the sparks
shriek around, and especially if the ingot is of steel and happens to be
well-heated. The smiths yell out at the top of their voice and rush to
save their clothes hanging up beside the forge. The men’s faces look
transfigured in the bright light. Their shadows, huge, weird, and
fantastic, reach high up the wall, even to the roof. The smallest object
is thrown into relief and the shafts of the sledges cast a shadow as
sharp and clear as from the sun at mid-day. As the mighty steel monkey
descends, half covering the white mass, the shadow falls on the roof,
walls, and machinery around, and rises as the smooth, shapely piston
glides upward into the cylinder; up and down, up and down it goes, like
the rising and falling of a curtain. This continues till the heat of
the forging diminishes and the rays of the metal are no longer capable
of overpowering the light cast out from the fire-holes and the smoky,
sleepy-looking gas-jets hanging in lines adown the smithy.
As the iron becomes cooler the hammer beats harder and harder. The
oscillation is very great and the sound nearly approaches a ring. The
steam roars overhead and leaks and hisses through the joints of the
pipes and glands. The oil in the stamper’s dies explodes with a
cannon-like report. The huge hydraulic engines _tchu-tchu_ outside; the
wheels whirr and hum away in the roof, and the smith’s tools clang out
or ring sharply on the anvil. Without, through the open doors, the night
shows inky black; the smoke and steam beat down and are blown in with
the wind, or the fog is sucked in quickly by the currents. Now the rain
beats hard on the roof and runs through in streams, while the wind
clatters between the stacks and ventilators overhead with a noise like
thunder; or, if it is mid-winter, the light, feathery snowflakes are
wafted in from above and sway to and fro and round and round, uncertain
where to lodge, until they are dissolved with the heat and finally
descend in small drops like dew upon the faces and arms of the forgers.
At the end of every hour the watchman with his lamp passes through, like
a policeman on his beat, and stands a moment before the furnace to warm
himself or to watch the shaping of the ingot. The old furnaceman views
him askance, or ventures to address him with a “How do?” or “Rough night
out,” to which the other responds with a nod, or a “Yes; ’Tis!” and
takes his departure into the blackness outside. At frequent intervals
the overseer walks round and takes his stand here and there, with his
hands behind him, or twisting his fingers in front, or with his thumbs
thrust into the arm-holes of his waistcoat, and glares at the men,
spitting out the tobacco juice upon the ground or on the red-hot
forging. Presently he shouts:--“Ain’t ya done that thing yet? How much
longer ya going to be? He’ll want a bit o’ salt directly. Wher’s
Michael? Ain’t he in to-night? Wha’s up wi’ he?”
“He’s a-twhum along o’ the owl’ dooman to-night,” someone answers. The
grimy toilers curse him under their breath and wish he would soon clear
off, which he presently does, slipping quickly away into the shadows or
climbing up the wooden stairway into the well-lit office.
The first spell is at ten o’clock--that is, after four hours of terrific
hammering and sweating. This is the supper-hour. Here the engines cease
and the wheels stop their grinding. The roar of the blast has ceased,
too; there is not a flicker from the coke fires. The old furnaceman is
still shovelling away, for the forger was on till the last moment. Now
he “stops up,” lays a little coal dust along the furnace door, shuts off
his blower, puts down the damper, and proceeds to rinse his hands in the
water bosh. All the while he was attending to his fire he had the wiper
about his neck and held one corner of it in his mouth. After drying his
hands with it he gives his grimy face a good rub, goes to his clothes
hanging up by the wall, slips on his waistcoat, stirs his tea in the can
with the blade of his pocket-knife, takes his food from the peg and
comes and sits down near the furnace, or in the sand-bunk. The one in
charge of the steam walks from boiler to boiler, setting on the
injectors. They admit the cool water with a murmurous, sleepy
sound--there is no priming yet. The furnace fire glitters through the
chinks of the door or grate like the stars on a frosty night. The old
furnaceman does not eat much. He tastes a little and bites here and
there, then he wraps the whole up again.
“What! Bistn’t agwain to hae thi zupper, then?” some one enquires.
“No-o! Can’t zim to get on wi’t to-night,” he answers.
“Well! Chock it out for they owld rats, they’ll be glad on’t. Yellacks
is a girt un ther’ now, in atween they piles!”
Try how you will you cannot enjoy your food on the night shift. I have
carried mine home again morning after morning, or thrown it out for the
birds in the yard. I have seen men--and especially youths--go to sleep
with the food in their mouths. You are too languid to eat much, and what
you do eat has no savour. It is remarkable, also, that while you
continue working you do not feel the fatigue so much, but as soon as you
sit down you are assailed with increased weariness; you feel powerless
and exhausted and have no strength or energy left. Many, in order to
keep awake and fresh, go out into the town, deserted at that hour. Some
walk outside in the yard and bruise their shins against this or that
obstruction in the darkness. Others, again, after partaking of a few
mouthfuls of food, go on making up their fires, not only to keep
themselves awake, but also to help the work forward and earn their money
for the shift. I have many times worked all night--through both
meal-hours--in the attempt to earn my wages, and then have been
deficient.
Here and there a small party will sit together and chat the meal-time
away, or a few will endeavour to read. Very soon, however, the newspaper
or book slips from the fingers. The tiredness and heat together prevail;
the eyes close and the mouth opens--the toiler is fast asleep. Presently
someone comes on the scene with a loud shout: “Hey-yup! What! bist thee
vly-ketchin’ agyen? Get up and check, else tha’t be locked out,” or
another staggers round with half-closed eyes and bawls out, “’Ow beest
bi tiself, Bill?“ the reply to which usually is, ”Thee get an’ laay
down,” or “None the better for thy astin’.” Occasionally several will
start singing a song, or hymn, and be immediately assailed with loud
cries of “Lay down, oot!” or “Yeow! Yeow! Kennul! Kennul!” or a large
lump of coal is thrown against the roof to break and fall in dust upon
the choristers. Some spread rivet bags in front of the furnace and lie
upon them and others lie down upon the bare bricks or iron of the floor.
A few minutes before eleven o’clock the stragglers arrive back from the
town. The old furnaceman bestirs himself, lifts the damper, sets on the
blower, routs the coals of the fire and shouts, “Come on, yer,” to his
mates. The steam-hammer man opens the valve and raises the monkey,
making it glide up and down to work the water out of the cylinder, the
forgemen and smiths bustle about again and the terrific din recommences.
So the furious toil proceeds hour by hour. _Bang, bang, bang. Pum-tchu,
pum-tchu, ping-tchu, ping-tchu. Cling-clang, cling-clang. Boom, boom,
boom. Flip-flap, flip-flap. Hoo-oo-oo-oo-oo. Rattle, rattle, rattle.
Click, click, click. Bump, bump. Scrir-r-r-r-r-r-r. Hiss-s-s-s-s-s-s.
Tchi-tchu, tchi-tchu, tchi-tchu. Clank, clank, clank, clank, clank._ The
noises of the steam and machinery drown everything else. You see the
workmen standing or stooping, pulling, tugging, heaving, dragging to and
fro, or staggering about as though they were intoxicated, but there is
no other sound beyond the occasional shouting of the forger and the
jerking or droning of the injectors. It is a weird living picture, stern
and realistic, such as no painter could faithfully reproduce. If the
oil in the stampers’ forges is worse than usual the dense clouds of
nauseating smoke hang over you like a pall so thickly that you cannot
see your fellows a few paces away, making it intensely difficult to
breathe and adding a horrible disgust to the unspeakable weariness. Then
the bright flashing metal and the white gas-jets show a dull red. Even
the sound seems deadened by the smoke and stench, but this is merely the
action of the impurity upon the sense organs; they are so much impaired
with the grossness of the atmosphere as to fail in their functions. By
and by, when the air has cleared a little, it all rushes back upon you
with increased intensity. Everything is swinging and whirling round, and
you seem to be whirled round with it, with not a thought of yourself,
who you are, where you are, or what you are doing, but keep toiling
mechanically away. Ofttimes you would be quite lost, but the revolutions
of the machine, the automatic strokes of the hammer, and the _habit_ of
the job control you. And if this should fail, your mate, half asleep,
whacks his heat along and casts it upon your toe, or sears you with the
hot tongs, or he misses the top of the tool at the anvil and strikes
your thumb instead. There are many things to keep you alive, and always
the fear of not earning your money for the turn and having to be jeered
at and bullied by the chargeman or overseer and so have your life made
miserable. The faces and fronts of the smiths and forgers, as they stand
at the fires or stoop over the metal, are brilliantly lit up--yellow and
orange. Here are the piles of finished forgings and stampings upon the
ground--white, yellow, bright red, dull red, and almost black hot; the
long tongues of fire leap up from the coke forges, and every now and
then a livid sheet of flame bursts out from the stamper’s dies. There is
plenty of colour, as well as animation, in the picture, which obtains
greater intensity through contrast with the blackness outside.
The greatest weariness assails you about midnight, and continues to
possess you till towards three o’clock. Then Nature struggles violently,
demanding her rights, twitching, clutching, and tugging at your eyelids
and striving in a thousand ways to bring you into submission and force
her rule upon you, but the iron laws of necessity, circumstance, and
system prevail; you must battle the power within you and repel the sweet
soother, struggling on in the unnatural combat. The keen eye of the
overseer is upon you, who is always whipping you to your task, or the
watchman is striving to take you loitering and so bring himself into
notice; it is useless to give way. Necessity urges; the body must be
clothed and fed. There are the wife and children at home, and you must
live. I have felt it, and I know what it is. There, in the smoke and
stench, the heat and cold, draught and damp of midnight I have slaved
with the rest, not harder or with greater pains than they, though
perhaps I have noted the feelings whereas they have not. The eyes ache,
the ears ache, the teeth ache, the temples ache, the shoulders ache, the
arms ache, the legs ache, the feet ache, and the heart aches. I have
many times wished, in those dark, awful hours, that the hammer would
smash my head; that I might be suddenly caught and hurled into eternity,
and I have heard others express the same wish openly and sincerely.
Sometimes I have stolen out of the great doors to stand for a moment in
the open in the cold dark or starry night, and looked out towards the
hills, or away over the town with the whirl of the shed behind me. There
was the great red moon showing through the clouds low down, or the
fiercely glittering Mars setting in the west, or inky blackness above,
with a few tiny lights twinkling in the far-off streets of the town and
a silence as deep as death out beyond. If I could but have heard the old
barn owl hooting in the farmyard, the cow lowing in the meadow or stall,
the fox yelping in the little wood, or even the bark of a dog, I should
have been strengthened and relieved, but there was never a sound of
them--nothing but the black outlines of the sheds around, the small
distant lights of the town and the great white blaze and crash of noises
within. Even to pause there is but to intensify the torture and the cold
air soon chills you to the bone. The only course open is to keep toiling
away with the rest and wear the night out.
The second stop is at two o’clock and is of brief duration--twenty
minutes or half an hour at the outside. It is merely a break in order to
have a mouthful of food, a something, so that it shall not be said that
the men have to toil for seven consecutive hours in that unspeakable
weariness. Here the huge engines become silent again and the heavy
pounding stops. The wheels and machinery under the wall look as inert
and innocent as though they had never moved; it would be difficult to
imagine that they were capable of such noise and uproar if you had not
heard it yourself but a few minutes before. The boilers, relieved of the
strain upon their resources, begin to prime again with a continued
crashing, shattering sound which the boilerman tries in vain to subdue
with cold water through the injectors. The furnace glitters and the oil
forges smoke. The air is laden with the peculiarly nauseous fumes of the
water-gas that make the toilers feel sick and ill and destroy the
appetite.
This time the men are unusually silent and mopish. Each selects a place
for himself and sits, or lies down, apart from the others. Only the
tough, wiry forgeman, the strong smith, or the hardy coalies and
ash-wheelers can attack the food. The rest usually go to their jackets,
open their handkerchiefs, look at the contents, eat a little perhaps,
half-heartedly, and wrap them up again. The constitution of the forgeman
is almost like iron itself. He and the smith can usually manage their
meal, and the coal-wheelers, from being constantly out in the fresh air,
are not quite as weary as are the others, and so can relish the food
better. On Friday nights--when the men are more than usually drowsy--the
food may be a little more tempting and tasty. At six o’clock the wages
were paid, and at supper-time a few, at least, will have gone or sent
out into the town for an appetizing morsel: some sausages, rashers, a
mutton chop, a pound of tripe, a bloater, or a packet of fried fish and
chipped potatoes--the youth’s favourite dainty. Then, in the early
hours, amid the din of the boilers, the black frying-pan or coal shovel
is produced and the savoury odour is wafted abroad. The greatest
pleasure, however, is usually in the anticipation of the meal. The food
itself is seldom eaten--or no more than a small part of it, at
least--the other is cast out for the rats and rooks. Years ago, in the
autumn, we boys used to gather mushrooms in the fields on our way to
work and cook them for “dinner” in the early morning and suffer severely
for it afterwards. Nature, disorganized with the exigences of the night
shift, refused the proffered dainties. It is difficult to digest even
ordinary food taken in the unwholesome air of the shed at such an
unearthly hour.
Punctually to the moment, if not before time, the engines begin to throb
again; the piston rods, gliding slowly at first, soon attain a rapid
speed. The huge crank, flashing in the bright gas-light, leaps over and
over. The big belt strains and creaks as though it would avoid its
labour and the turning of the shaft overhead, but the heavy fly-wheel
spins round, and the little pulleys and cogs go with it; they must all
obey the urging of the mighty steam wizard lurking in the green-painted
cylinder. The donkey engines, forcing the blast, are coughing and
spitting out the white vapour and labouring painfully under the wall in
the lean-to outside. Within the fires are flashing and the flames
leaping, and the toil goes on as before.
About three o’clock, or soon after, the weariness begins to diminish
somewhat, and the old habit of the body reasserts itself. The natural
hour of repose is passing, and the fountain of energy begins to bubble
up within you; you feel to be approaching the normal condition again.
The fatigue now gives place to a feeling of unreality and stupidity; you
seem to be dazed and irritable, as though you had been aroused from
sleep before the accustomed time. Now you experience deep pains in the
chest, resulting from loss of sleep. The head aches as though it would
burst and the eyes are very painful and “gritty,” but you feel cheered,
nevertheless, with the thought of daylight, the coming cessation from
toil, and the opportunity of obtaining a breath of fresh, pure air
again. The overseer slips to and fro quickly about this time in order to
keep the men well on the move, pricking here and prodding there, and
visiting those whom he knows will tell him all the news of the night’s
work--such as may have escaped him. The toilers pay him but little
attention, however, and keep plodding languidly away.
Steadily, as the day dawns, the light within increases, red, white, or
golden, stealing through the thick glass of the roof or by the wide open
doors, and soon after one appears with a long staff and turns off all
the gas. It is really day once more, and there is not much longer to
go. At twenty minutes past five the hooter sounds loudly, calling up the
men of the day shift, and the pace flags visibly. A few, however, who
have not done any too well in the middle hours of the night, hammer away
with increased energy right up to the last, for they know the day
overseers and the chargemen will go round and feel the forgings to see
how late the others were toiling. If the iron is cool they know that
their mates have been dilatory and the tale is told around.
A few minutes before six o’clock the engines slow down and stop and the
roar of the blast ceases. The steam-hammers are lowered with a loud thud
and the furnace fires are banked up; the mighty toil is over, for this
turn, at any rate. Now the forgers and stampers unbind their aprons and
roll them up; the smiths stow their tools, placing these in the iron box
and those in the boshes of water to soak the shafts and tighten the
handles of the sledges. After that they swill their hands at the tap,
put on muffler, jacket, or great-coat, and file out of the shed--dirty,
dusty, tired and sleepy-looking. Not for them the joy of morning, the
vigour, freshness and bloom, the keen delight in the open air, the happy
heart and elevated spirit. They slouch away through the living stream of
the day toilers now arriving as black as sweeps, half-blinded with the
bright daylight, blinking and sighing, feeling unutterably and
unnaturally tired, out of sorts and out of place, too, and crawl home,
like rats to their holes, to snatch a little rest, and recuperate for
new efforts to be made on the following turn.
Few of the men’s wives or parents in the town will be up to welcome them
at that early hour and provide them with warm tea and a breakfast.
Accordingly, some go home and straight to bed without food at all, a few
walk about the streets or out towards the country for an hour or so
till the home fire is lit, while others go home and get the breakfast
themselves. Perhaps, if trade in the shed is brisk, they will be
required to work overtime till eight or nine o’clock. I have done this
for months at a stretch and afterwards walked home to the village,
ofttimes sitting down on the roadside to rest, reaching home at about
ten o’clock and getting to bed an hour before noon, to be awakened by
every slight noise without the house. At one time I was aroused by the
old church clock striking, at another by the sound of the school bell,
or the children at play underneath the window, or by the farm waggon. At
four in the afternoon, rested or not, you must rise again, wash and
dress, snatch a hasty meal, and plod off to the town, four miles
distant, forgetful of everything behind you--the gentle peace of the
village, the long line of dreamy-looking hills, the haymakers in the
field, the sweetly sorrowful sound of the threshing machine by the ricks
in the farmyard, the eternal pageantry of the heavens, the whole natural
life and scenery of the world. The knowledge of the loss lies like lead
at the heart and fills one with a keen regret, a poignant sense of the
cruelty of the industrial system and your own weakness with it; yet one
must live. But there is real tragedy in working the night shift at the
forge.