One day I was promoted to stove-tender or hot-blast man on Number 6.
The keeper of the furnace was a negro. When he was rebuilding the
runways for the tapped metal, I noticed that his movements were sure and
practised. He patted and shaped the mud-clay in the runway, like a
potter moulding a vessel. When it was tap time, he bored the tap hole
with the electric drill easily and neatly; when the metal flowed, he
knew the exact moment to lift the gates for drawing away slag. I watched
him to see how he managed the four white men that worked for him. They
were Austrians, and I found they joked together and showed no resentment
of status. Commands were given with a nod or gesture. With the Americans
on the furnace, the relation was the traditional one. The negro was
light and seemed too slightly built for the job, but he performed it
very efficiently, and so did his gang.
The blower was Old McLanahan, a man somewhere between thirty-five and
sixty. A long, successful life of inebriety had given him a certain
resignation to the ills of man, and enabled him to keep the heart of a
viveur throughout his life. His skin appeared thrown like a bag over an
assemblage of loosely fitted bones--the only considerable part of him
being a paunch which coursed forward into a moderate point.
He was rather proud of being a blower on furnace No. 6.