For twenty-five minutes while the boil goes on I stir it constantly with
my long iron rabble. A cook stirring gravy to keep it from scorching in
the skillet is done in two minutes and backs off blinking, sweating
and choking, having finished the hardest job of getting dinner. But my
hardest job lasts not two minutes but the better part of half an hour.
My spoon weighs twenty-five pounds, my porridge is pasty iron, and the
heat of my kitchen is so great that if my body was not hardened to it,
the ordeal would drop me in my tracks.
Little spikes of pure iron like frost spars glow white-hot and stick
out of the churning slag. These must be stirred under at once; the long
stream of flame from the grate plays over the puddle, and the pure iron
if lapped by these gases would be oxidized--burned up.
Pasty masses of iron form at the bottom of the puddle. There they would
stick and become chilled if they were not constantly stirred. The whole
charge must be mixed and mixed as it steadily thickens so that it will
be uniform throughout. I am like some frantic baker in the inferno
kneading a batch of iron bread for the devil's breakfast.
“It's an outrage that men should have to work like this,” a reformer
told me.
“They don't have to,” I replied. “Nobody forced me to do this. I do
it because I would rather live in an Iron Age than live in a world of
ox-carts. Man can take his choice.”
The French were not compelled to stand in the flame that scorched
Verdun. They could have backed away and let the Germans through. The
Germans would not have killed them. They would only have saddled them
and got on their backs and ridden them till the end of time.
And so men are not compelled to face the scorching furnaces; we do
not have to forge the iron that resists the invading cyclone and the
leveling earthquake. We could quit cold and let wild nature kick
us about at will. We could have cities of wood to be wiped out by
conflagrations; we could build houses of mud and sticks for the gales to
unroof like a Hottentot village. We could bridge our small rivers with
logs and be flood-bound when the rains descended. We could live by
wheelbarrow transit like the Chinaman and leave to some braver race the
task of belting the world with railroads and bridging the seas with iron
boats.
Nobody compels us to stand shoulder to shoulder and fight off nature's
calamities as the French fought off their oppressor at Verdun. I repeat,
we could let nature oppress us as she oppresses the meek Chinese--let
her whip us with cold, drought, flood, isolation and famine.
We chose to resist as the French resisted--because we are men. Nature
can chase the measly savage fleeing naked through the bush. But nature
can't run us ragged when all we have to do is put up a hard fight and
conquer her. The iron workers are civilization's shock troops grappling
with tyrannous nature on her own ground and conquering new territory in
which man can live in safety and peace. Steel houses with glass windows
are born of his efforts. There is a glory in this fight; man feels a
sense of grandeur. We are robbing no one. From the harsh bosom of the
hills we wring the iron milk that makes us strong. Nature is no kind
mother; she resists with flood and earthquake, drought and cyclone.
Nature is fierce and formidable, but fierce is man's soul to subdue her.
The stubborn earth is iron, but man is iron too.