I tried to get a lot of sleep last night for handling the long turn;
managed about nine hours. When I came to the locker, Stanley was there,
dressed, cleaning his smoked glasses.
"How much sleep last night?" I asked.
"Oh, six, seven hour," said Stanley.
"You're a damned fool," I said; "this is the long turn."
"I know, I know," he returned, "I have t'ing to do. No have time sleep."
I looked at him. He had a big frame, but his limbs were hung on it, like
clothes on hooks. His face was a gray pallor, sharply caving in under
the cheek-bones. His eyes were very dull, and steady. I'd noticed those
eyes of his before, and never could decide whether they showed a kind of
sullen defiance, or resignation, or were just extraordinarily tired.
"Two month more," he said.
"Two month more what?"
"Two month more this work every Sunday--goddam work all day like hell,
all night like hell. Pretty soon go back to good job."
I knew what he meant now. He had told me weeks before, when we had
hewed cinders together in the pit, how he was a rougher in a Pittsburgh
mill. Worked only twelve hours a day and no Sundays.
"No more goddam long turn," he concluded; "work of rougher slack now,
all right October."
He moved off slowly, with no spring in his step, and no energy expended
beyond what was absolutely necessary to move him.
I walked out on the floor to look at the clock. The night gang on every
furnace was washing up, very cheerfully and with an extraordinary
thoroughness. They were slicking up for the once a fortnight
twenty-four-hour party. Nearly everyone drank through his day off, or
raised hell in some extraordinary manner. It was too precious and rare
to spend in less violent reaction to the two weeks' fatigue. I looked at
them and tried not to be envious. The first-helper on Seven was taking a
last look through the peepholes as he put on his collar. A great Slavic
hulk on Number 5 was brushing his clothes with unheard of violence.
Dick Reber passed by. He saw me leaning against a girder buttoning my
shirt.
"Front-wall, Number 5, you!" he bawled.
I was sore at myself for having been seen standing about doing nothing.
But I was sore at Dick also, unreasonably. I went back to my locker, got
my gloves, and went to Number 5. I began filling the spoon, with the
help of "Marty," the Wop. He glared at me, and interfered with my shovel
twice when we went together to the dolomite pile. Marty had made enemies
widely on the furnaces because of a loud mouth, and an officiousness
that sat ridiculously on his stature and his ignorance of steel-making.
I was glad when the front-wall was done. I took the hook down, and went
over to the fountain in back of Five, cooled my head, neck, and arms,
and went over to Seven, without taking a swallow. I had decided to have
only two drinks of water in the half-day.
Dick Reber saw me coming up and, I think in punishment for loafing,
said: "Clean up under there. I want you to clean all that filth out, all
of it, from behind that girder."
It was near the locker and under the flooring, in a sort of shelf, where
lime, dolomite, dirt, old gloves, shoes, filth of all sorts had
accumulated. I cleaned it out with a broom and a stick. It took me half
an hour.
"All right," said the first-helper; "now get me ten thousand."
So I went off to the Bessemer, rather glad of the walk. I climbed the
stairs to the pouring platform, and watched the recorder, who had left
his book, operate the levers. The shifting engine backed a ladle under,
and slowly the huge pig-iron mixer, bubbling and shooting out a tide of
sparks, dipped and allowed about 20,000 pounds to drop into the ladle.
"Ten thou' for Seven," I said.
In another five minutes, the engine brought up a ladle for my ten
thousand, and the boy dipped it out for me with the miraculous levers.
"All right," I said; and ran down the stairs fast enough to catch a
ride back past the furnaces, on the step of the locomotive.
The second-helper grabbed the big hook which came down slowly on a chain
from the crane, and stuck it into the bottom of the ladle. As the chain
lifted, the ladle tipped, and poured the ten thousand pounds with a
hiss. But the craneman was careless, which isn't usual. Fred kept
saying, "Whoop, whoop!" but he went right on spilling for quite a spell
before he recovered control.
"Dolomite," said the first-helper to me, after the "jigger" was poured.
I went to a box full of the white gravel, at the end of the mill, and
yelled at Herb, the craneman. A box of dolomite is about eight feet
square and three high. This one was perched on top of a dolomite pile,
ten feet off the ground. I struggled up on top, and took the hooks Herb
gave me from the crane,--eight-inch hooks,--and put them into the
corners of the box, using both hands. Then I slid down, and the box rose
and swung over my head.
Herb settled it neatly on our own little dolomite pile in front of
Seven. I slipped out the front hooks, and the back ones lifted and
dumped the load, with a soft swish, nearly on the low part of the old
pile.
There was a little time to sit down after this--perhaps ten minutes. I
smoked a Camel, which had spent the last shift in my shirt pocket. It
was a melancholy Camel, and tended to twist up in my nose, but it tasted
sweet. I sat on Seven's bench, and watched Fred take his rod and move
aside the shutters of the peepholes, to give final looks at the furnace.
She must be nearly ready. He looked back at me, and I knew that meant
"test."
I grabbed tongs, lying spread out by the anvil, clamped hold of the
mould, and ran with them to about ten feet from number two door of the
furnace. Fred had the test-spoon lifted and shoved into the door; he
moved it around in the molten steel, and brought it out full, straining
his body tense to hold it level and not lose the test. I shifted the
mould a little on the ground, and closed my hands as tight as I could on
the tongs, so the mould wouldn't slip and turn. He poured easily and
neatly, just filling the mould, and flung the spoon violently on the
floor, to shake off the crusting steel on the handle.
I ran with mould and tongs to the water-trough in front of Eight, and
plunged it in, the steam coming up in a small cloud. I brought it out
and held it on the anvil, end-wise, with the tongs, while Nick flattened
in the top slightly on both edges, to make it break easily. Nick broke
the ingot in two blows, and Fred and the melter consulted over the
fragments.
"All right," said Dick.
We were about to tap. I went after my flat manganese shovel, but it was
gone from the locker. Some dog-gone helper has nailed it. I took out an
ordinary flat shovel.
In back of the furnace Nick was already busy with a "picker," prodding
away the stopping from the tap. He burned his hands once, swore, gave it
up, went halfway along the platform away from the tap, returned, and
went at it again. Finally, the steel escaped, with its usual roar of
flame and its usual splunch as it fell into the ladle.
I stepped back, and nearly into "Shorty," who had come to help shovel
manganese. "Where you get shovel?" he said, with his eyes blazing,
pointing to mine.
"Out of my locker," I said.
He started toward it, and I held it away from him.
"I tell you that goddam shovel mine--" he began; but Dick, from the
other side of the spout, shouted at us how many piles to shovel, and
Shorty shut up. We were to get in the first big pile and the next little
one.
The ladle was beginning to fill. "Heow!" yelled Dick.
Shorty and I went forward and put in the manganese. It was hot, but I
took too much interest in shoveling faster than Shorty, to care. Then
came the second ladle, during which Shorty's handkerchief caught on
fire, and made him sputter a lot, and rid himself of some profanity in
Anglo-Italian.
I went to that trough by Eight afterward, to wash off the soot and
cinder, and put my head under water, straight down. I knew back-wall was
coming, and sat down a minute, wondering, rather vaguely, how I was
going to feel at six or seven the next morning.
Back-wall came. I had bad luck with it, trying too hard. It was too hot
for one thing. There are times when a back-wall will be so cool you can
hesitate a long second, as you fling your shovelful, and make sure of
your aim; at others, your face scorches when you first swing back, and
you let the stuff off any fashion, to get out of the heat. There's a
third-helper on Five, I'm glad to say, who is worse than I. They put him
out of the line this time; he was just throwing into the bottom of the
furnace.
Everyone develops an individual technique. Jimmy's is bending his knees,
and getting his shovel so low that it looks like scooping off the floor.
Fred's is graceful, with a smart snap at the end.
Then front-wall. I start in search of a spoon and a hook. It's not easy
to get one to suit the taste of my first-helper. There's one that looks
twenty feet,--I haven't any technical figures on spoons,--but it's too
long, I know, for Fred. There's a spoon three feet shorter, just right.
Hell--with two inches melted off the end! I pick a short one in good
repair,--he can use the thing or get his own,--and drag it to Seven,
giving the scoop a ride on the railroad track, to ease the weight. Fred
has put a hook over number one door; so I hurry, and lift the spoon
handle with gloved hands to slip it on the hook. If it's not done
quickly, you'll get a burn; you're an arm's length from molten steel,
and no door between. I get it on, and pick up a shovel.
Front-wall can be very easy,--you can nearly enjoy it, like any of the
jobs,--if the furnace is cool, and there's a breeze blowing down the
open spaces of the mill. And, too, if the spoon hangs right in the hook,
and the first-helper turns it a little for you, then you can stand off,
six feet from the flame, and toss your gravel straight into the spoon's
scoop. You hardly go to the water fountain to cool your head when the
stunt's over. On number one the hook hung wrong, the spoon wouldn't turn
in it, and you had to hug close, and pour, not toss. I tried a toss on
my second shovel, and half of it skated on the floor.
"Get it on the spoon, goddam you!" from Nick.
So I did.
After that, we sat around for twenty minutes. Fred looked at the furnace
once or twice, and changed the gas. Several gathered in front of
Seven--Jock, Dick, the melter, Fred, and Nick.
"Do you know what my next job's going to be?" said Fred.
The others looked up.
"In a bank."
"Nine to five," said Dick. "Huh! gentlemen's hours."
"Saturday afternoons, and Sundays," said Fred.
The other faces glowed and said nothing.
"This wouldn't be so bad if there were Sundays," said Fred.
"I'll tell you, there'll come a time," broke in the melter, "when Gary
and all the other big fellers will have to work it themselves--no one
else will."
"Now in the old country, a man can have a bit of fun," said the
Scotchman. "Picnics, a little singin' and drinkin',--and the like. What
can a man do here? We work eight hours in Scotland. They work eight
hours in France, in Italy, in Germany--all the steel mills work eight
hours, except in this bloody free country."
The melter broke in again. "It's the dollar they're after--the sucking
dollar. They say they're going to cut out the long turn. I heard they
were going to cut out the long turn when I went to work in the mill, as
a kid. I'm workin' it, ain't I? Christ!"