At the end of every shift, when I walked toward the green mill-gate just
past the edge of the power house, I could look over toward the
blast-furnaces. There were five of them, standing up like mammoth cigars
some hundred feet in height. A maze of pipes, large as tunnels, twisted
about them, and passed into great boilers, three or four of which arose
between each two furnaces. These, I learned, were "stoves" for heating
the blast. I had had in mind for several days asking for a transfer to
this interesting apparatus. There was less lifting of dead weight on the
blast-furnace jobs than on the open-hearth. Besides, I wanted to see the
beginning of the making of steel--the first transformation the ore
catches, on its way toward becoming a steel rail, or a surgical
instrument.
I went to see the blast-furnace superintendent, Mr. Beck, at his house
on Superintendent's Hill.
"I'm working on the open-hearth," I said, "and want very much to get
transferred to the blast-furnace. I intend to learn the steel business,
and want to see the beginnings of things."
"How much education?" he asked.
"I graduated from college," I said, "Yale College." Would that
complicate the thing, I wondered, or get in the way? I wanted badly to
sit down for a talk, tell him the whole story--army, Washington, hopes
and fears; I liked him a good deal. But he was in a hurry--perhaps that
might come on a later day.
We talked a little. He said I ought to come into the office for a while
and "learn to figure burdens." I replied that I wanted the experience of
the outside, and a start at the bottom.
"All right," he said, "I'll put you outside. Come Monday morning."
On Monday morning I followed the cindered road inside the gate for three
hundred yards, turned off across a railroad track, and passed a
machine-shop. The concrete bases of the blast-furnaces rose before me.
Somebody had just turned a wheel on the side of one of the boiler-like
"stoves," and a deafening blare, like tons of steam getting away, broke
on my eardrums. I asked where the office was.
"Through there."
Up some steps, over a concrete platform, past the blaring "stove," I
went, to the other side of the furnaces, and found there a flat dirty
building--the office. Inside was Mr. Beck, who turned me over at once to
Adolph, the "stove-gang boss."
I was a little anxious over this introduction to things, and thought it
might embarrass or prevent comradeships. But it didn't. No one knew, or
if he did, ever gave it a thought. It may perhaps have accounted for
Adolph's letting me keep my clothes in his shanty that night, and for
considerable conversation he vouchsafed me on the first day. But my
individuality passed quickly, very quickly; I became no more than a part
of that rather dingy unit, the stove-gang.
While I was putting on my clothes in Adolph's sheet-iron shanty, he
grinned and said: "Last time, pretty dirty job, too, eh?"
"Yes," I said, "open-hearth."
He led me out of the shanty, past three stoves, up an iron staircase,
past a blast-furnace, and through a "cast-house." That is not as
interesting as I hoped. It is merely a place of many ditches, or
run-ways, that lead the molten iron from the furnace to the ladle. Very
little iron is ever "cast," since the blast-furnaces here make iron only
for the sake of swiftly transporting it, while still hot, to the
Bessemer and open-hearth, for further metamorphosis into steel.
We came at last to more stoves, a set of three for No. 4 blast-furnace.
Near the middle one was a little group of seven men, three of them with
a bar, which they thrust and withdrew constantly in an open door of the
stove. Inside were shelving masses and gobs of glowing cinder.
"You work with these feller," Adolph said; and passed out of sight along
the stoves.
I watched carefully for a long time, which was a cardinal rule of
practice with me on joining up with a new gang. It was best, I thought,
to shut up, and study for a spell the characters of the men, the
movements and knacks of the job. I think this reserve helped, for the
men were first to make advances, and before the day was out, I had a
life-history from most of them.
"Where you work, las' job?" asked a little Italian with a thin blond
moustache, after he had finished his turn on the crowbar.
"Open-hearth," I said, "third-helper."
"I work three week open-hearth," he said, "too hot, no good."
"Hot all right," I said; "how's this job?"
"Oh, pretty good, this not'ing," he said; "sometime we go in stove,
clean 'em up, hot in there like hell. Some day all right, some day no
good."
I had been watching the stove, and caught the simple order of movements.
Two or three men, with long lunging thrusts, loosened the glowing cinder
inside a fire-box; another pulled it out with a hoe into a steel
wheelbarrow; another dumped the load on a growing pile of cinder over
the edge of the platform. When one of the men disappeared for a chew, I
grabbed the wheelbarrow at hauling-out time, and worked into the job.
In fifteen minutes that fire-box was cleared out, and we moved to the
next stove. We skipped that; the door was locked and wedged. I learned
later that, if we had opened it, the blast (being "on" in the stove)
would in all likelihood have killed us. It blows out with sufficient
pressure to carry a man forty yards. But the next stove we tackled. I
tried the thrusting of the bar this time. The trick is to aim well at a
likely crack, thrust in hard and together, and with all the weight on
the bar, spring it up and down till the cinder gives. It was good
exercise without strain, and so cool in comparison with open-hearth work
that I took real joy in the hot cinder. The heat was comparable to a
wood fire, and only occasionally was it necessary to hug close.
We did five stoves, taking the wheelbarrow with us, and carrying it up
the steps, when we passed from one level to another. After the five came
a lull. Two of the men rolled cigarettes, the rest reinforced a chew
that already looked as big as an apple in the cheek. For both these
comforting acts "Honest Scrap" was used, a tobacco that is stringy and
dark, and is carried in great bulk, in a paper package.
The men sat on steps or leaned against girders. A short Italian near me,
with quick movements, and full of unending talk, looked up and asked the
familiar question, "What job you work at last time?"
"Open-hearth," I said.
"How much pay?"
"Forty-five cents an hour."
"No like job?"
"No, like this job better," I returned.