The jute mills failed of its agreement to increase my pay to a dollar and
a quarter a day, and I, a free-born American boy whose direct ancestors
had fought in all the wars from the old pre-Revolutionary Indian wars
down, exercised my sovereign right of free contract by quitting the job.
I was still resolved to settle down, and I looked about me. One thing
was clear. Unskilled labour didn't pay. I must learn a trade, and I
decided on electricity. The need for electricians was constantly
growing. But how to become an electrician? I hadn't the money to go to a
technical school or university; besides, I didn't think much of schools.
I was a practical man in a practical world. Also, I still believed in
the old myths which were the heritage of the American boy when I was a
boy.
A canal boy could become a President. Any boy who took employment with
any firm could, by thrift, energy, and sobriety, learn the business and
rise from position to position until he was taken in as a junior partner.
After that the senior partnership was only a matter of time. Very
often--so ran the myth--the boy, by reason of his steadiness and
application, married his employer's daughter. By this time I had been
encouraged to such faith in myself in the matter of girls that I was
quite certain I would marry my employer's daughter. There wasn't a doubt
of it. All the little boys in the myths did it as soon as they were old
enough.
So I bade farewell for ever to the adventure-path, and went out to the
power plant of one of our Oakland street railways. I saw the
superintendent himself, in a private office so fine that it almost
stunned me. But I talked straight up. I told him I wanted to become a
practical electrician, that I was unafraid of work, that I was used to
hard work, and that all he had to do was look at me to see I was fit and
strong. I told him that I wanted to begin right at the bottom and work
up, that I wanted to devote my life to this one occupation and this one
employment.
The superintendent beamed as he listened. He told me that I was the
right stuff for success, and that he believed in encouraging American
youth that wanted to rise. Why, employers were always on the lookout for
young fellows like me, and alas, they found them all too rarely. My
ambition was fine and worthy, and he would see to it that I got my
chance. (And as I listened with swelling heart, I wondered if it was his
daughter I was to marry.)
"Before you can go out on the road and learn the more complicated and
higher details of the profession," he said, "you will, of course, have to
work in the car-house with the men who install and repair the motors.
(By this time I was sure that it was his daughter, and I was wondering
how much stock he might own in the company.)
"But," he said, "as you yourself so plainly see, you couldn't expect to
begin as a helper to the car-house electricians. That will come when you
have worked up to it. You will really begin at the bottom. In the
car-house your first employment will be sweeping up, washing the windows,
keeping things clean. And after you have shown yourself satisfactory at
that, then you may become a helper to the car-house electricians."
I didn't see how sweeping and scrubbing a building was any preparation
for the trade of electrician; but I did know that in the books all the
boys started with the most menial tasks and by making good ultimately won
to the ownership of the whole concern.
"When shall I come to work?" I asked, eager to launch on this dazzling
career.
"But," said the superintendent, "as you and I have already agreed, you
must begin at the bottom. Not immediately can you in any capacity enter
the car-house. Before that you must pass through the engine-room as an
oiler."
My heart went down slightly and for the moment as I saw the road lengthen
between his daughter and me; then it rose again. I would be a better
electrician with knowledge of steam engines. As an oiler in the great
engine-room I was confident that few things concerning steam would escape
me. Heavens! My career shone more dazzling than ever.
"When shall I come to work?" I asked gratefully.
"But," said the superintendent, "you could not expect to enter
immediately into the engine-room. There must be preparation for that.
And through the fire-room, of course. Come, you see the matter clearly,
I know. And you will see that even the mere handling of coal is a
scientific matter and not to be sneered at. Do you know that we weigh
every pound of coal we burn? Thus, we learn the value of the coal we buy;
we know to a tee the last penny of cost of every item of production, and
we learn which firemen are the most wasteful, which firemen, out of
stupidity or carelessness, get the least out of the coal they fire." The
superintendent beamed again. "You see how very important the little
matter of coal is, and by as much as you learn of this little matter you
will become that much better a workman--more valuable to us, more
valuable to yourself. Now, are you prepared to begin?"
"Any time," I said valiantly. "The sooner the better."
"Very well," he answered. "You will come to-morrow morning at seven
o'clock."
I was taken out and shown my duties. Also, I was told the terms of my
employment--a ten-hour day, every day in the month including Sundays and
holidays, with one day off each month, with a salary of thirty dollars a
month. It wasn't exciting. Years before, at the cannery, I had earned a
dollar a day for a ten-hour day. I consoled myself with the thought that
the reason my earning capacity had not increased with my years and
strength was because I had remained an unskilled labourer. But it was
different now. I was beginning to work for skill, for a trade, for
career and fortune, and the superintendent's daughter.
And I was beginning in the right way--right at the beginning. That was
the thing. I was passing coal to the firemen, who shovelled it into the
furnaces, where its energy was transformed into steam, which, in the
engine-room, was transformed into the electricity with which the
electricians worked. This passing coal was surely the very
beginning-unless the superintendent should take it into his head to send
me to work in the mines from which the coal came in order to get a
completer understanding of the genesis of electricity for street railways.
Work! I, who had worked with men, found that I didn't know the first
thing about real work. A ten-hour day! I had to pass coal for the day
and night shifts, and, despite working through the noon-hour, I never
finished my task before eight at night. I was working a twelve-to
thirteen-hour day, and I wasn't being paid overtime as in the cannery.
I might as well give the secret away right here. I was doing the work of
two men. Before me, one mature able-bodied labourer had done the day
shift and another equally mature able-bodied labourer had done the
night-shift. They had received forty dollars a month each. The
superintendent, bent on an economical administration, had persuaded me to
do the work of both men for thirty dollars a month. I thought he was
making an electrician of me. In truth and fact, he was saving fifty
dollars a month operating expenses to the company.
But I didn't know I was displacing two men. Nobody told me. On the
contrary, the superintendent warned everybody not to tell me. How
valiantly I went at it that first day. I worked at top speed, filling
the iron wheelbarrow with coal, running it on the scales and weighing the
load, then trundling it into the fire-room and dumping it on the plates
before the fires.
Work! I did more than the two men whom I had displaced. They had merely
wheeled in the coal and dumped it on the plates. But while I did this
for the day coal, the night coal I had to pile against the wall of the
fire-room. Now the fire-room was small. It had been planned for a night
coal-passer. So I had to pile the night coal higher and higher,
buttressing up the heap with stout planks. Toward the top of the heap I
had to handle the coal a second time, tossing it up with a shovel.
I dripped with sweat, but I never ceased from my stride, though I could
feel exhaustion coming on. By ten o'clock in the morning, so much of my
body's energy had I consumed, I felt hungry and snatched a thick
double-slice of bread and butter from my dinner pail. This I devoured,
standing, grimed with coal-dust, my knees trembling under me. By eleven
o'clock, in this fashion I had consumed my whole lunch. But what of it?
I realised that it would enable me to continue working through the noon
hour. And I worked all the afternoon. Darkness came on, and I worked
under the electric lights. The day fireman went off and the night
fireman came on. I plugged away.
At half-past eight, famished, tottering, I washed up, changed my clothes,
and dragged my weary body to the car. It was three miles to where I
lived, and I had received a pass with the stipulation that I could sit
down as long as there were no paying passengers in need of a seat. As I
sank into a corner outside seat I prayed that no passenger might require
my seat. But the car filled up, and, half-way in, a woman came on board,
and there was no seat for her. I started to get up, and to my
astonishment found that I could not. With the chill wind blowing on me,
my spent body had stiffened into the seat. It took me the rest of the
run in to unkink my complaining joints and muscles and get into a
standing position on the lower step. And when the car stopped at my
corner I nearly fell to the ground when I stepped off.
I hobbled two blocks to the house and limped into the kitchen. While my
mother started to cook, I plunged into bread and butter; but before my
appetite was appeased, or the steak fried, I was sound asleep. In vain
my mother strove to shake me awake enough to eat the meat. Failing in
this, with the assistance of my father she managed to get me to my room,
where I collapsed dead asleep on the bed. They undressed me and covered
me up. In the morning came the agony of being awakened. I was terribly
sore, and, worst of all, my wrists were swelling. But I made up for my
lost supper, eating an enormous breakfast, and when I hobbled to catch my
car I carried a lunch twice as big as the one the day before.
Work! Let any youth just turned eighteen try to out-shovel two man-grown
coal-shovellers. Work! Long before midday I had eaten the last scrap of
my huge lunch. But I was resolved to show them what a husky young fellow
determined to rise could do. The worst of it was that my wrists were
swelling and going back on me. There are few who do not know the pain of
walking on a sprained ankle. Then imagine the pain of shovelling coal
and trundling a loaded wheelbarrow with two sprained wrists.
Work! More than once I sank down on the coal where no one could see me,
and cried with rage, and mortification, and exhaustion, and despair.
That second day was my hardest, and all that enabled me to survive it and
get in the last of the night coal at the end of thirteen hours was the
day fireman, who bound both my wrists with broad leather straps. So
tightly were they buckled that they were like slightly flexible plaster
casts. They took the stresses and pressures which hitherto had been
borne by my wrists, and they were so tight that there was no room for the
inflammation to rise in the sprains.
And in this fashion I continued to learn to be an electrician. Night
after night I limped home, fell asleep before I could eat my supper, and
was helped into bed and undressed. Morning after morning, always with
huger lunches in my dinner pail, I limped out of the house on my way to
work.
I no longer read my library books. I made no dates with the girls. I
was a proper work beast. I worked, and ate, and slept, while my mind
slept all the time. The whole thing was a nightmare. I worked every
day, including Sunday, and I looked far ahead to my one day off at the
end of a month, resolved to lie abed all that day and just sleep and rest
up.
The strangest part of this experience was that I never took a drink nor
thought of taking a drink. Yet I knew that men under hard pressure
almost invariably drank. I had seen them do it, and in the past had
often done it myself. But so sheerly non-alcoholic was I that it never
entered my mind that a drink might be good for me. I instance this to
show how entirely lacking from my make-up was any predisposition toward
alcohol. And the point of this instance is that later on, after more
years had passed, contact with John Barleycorn at last did induce in me
the alcoholic desire.
I had often noticed the day fireman staring at me in a curious way. At
last, one day, he spoke. He began by swearing me to secrecy. He had
been warned by the superintendent not to tell me, and in telling me he
was risking his job. He told me of the day coal-passer and the night
coal-passer, and of the wages they had received. I was doing for thirty
dollars a month what they had received eighty dollars for doing. He
would have told me sooner, the fireman said, had he not been so certain
that I would break down under the work and quit. As it was, I was
killing myself, and all to no good purpose. I was merely cheapening the
price of labour, he argued, and keeping two men out of a job.
Being an American boy, and a proud American boy, I did not immediately
quit. This was foolish of me, I know; but I resolved to continue the
work long enough to prove to the superintendent that I could do it
without breaking down. Then I would quit, and he would realise what a
fine young fellow he had lost.
All of which I faithfully and foolishly did. I worked on until the time
came when I got in the last of the night coal by six o'clock. Then I
quit the job of learning electricity by doing more than two men's work
for a boy's wages, went home, and proceeded to sleep the clock around.
Fortunately, I had not stayed by the job long enough to injure
myself--though I was compelled to wear straps on my wrists for a year
afterward. But the effect of this work orgy in which I had indulged was
to sicken me with work. I just wouldn't work. The thought of work was
repulsive. I didn't care if I never settled down. Learning a trade
could go hang. It was a whole lot better to royster and frolic over the
world in the way I had previously done. So I headed out on the
adventure-path again, starting to tramp East by beating my way on the
railroads.