The Iron Puddler [22]
we will go back to the old home in Asia Minor. The hills where we were born are full of coal. The people call it black stone. They do not know that it will burn. We will go back there with our American knowledge and set the world on fire."
There is a people who have been kicking coal around for five thousand years and have not yet learned that it will burn. Those hills produced gypsies who travel around cheating, dickering and selling gewgaws that are worth nothing. They come among a people who have used their heads. From these people they learned to heat a banana stand with a little coal stove. Having mastered that coal-stove principle, they are going back to their native hills with black magic up their sleeves.
"What a superior man am I," thought that young tribesman swollen with vanity, although he had done nothing.
This taught me that some of these thick-headed tribes can be all swelled up with pride when they have little to be proud of.
CHAPTER XV
THE IRON BISCUITS
In the Sharon town band I played the clarinet from the time I was thirteen until I left that town several years later to chase the fireflies of vanishing jobs that marked the last administration of Cleveland. A bands-man at thirteen, I became a master puddler at sixteen. At that time there were but five boys of that age who had become full-fledged puddlers. Of these young iron workers, I suppose there were few that "doubled in brass." But why should not an iron worker be a musician? The anvil, symbol of his trade, is a musical instrument and is heard in the anvil chorus from Trovatore. In our rolling mill we did not have an anvil on which the "bloom" was beaten by a trip-hammer as is done in the Old Country. The "squeezer" which combines the functions of hammer and anvil did the work instead.
When I became my father's helper he began teaching me to handle the machinery of the trade. The puddling furnace has a working door on a level with a man's stomach. Working door is a trade name. Out in the world all doors are working; if they don't work they aren't doors (except cellar doors, which are nailed down under the Volstead Act). But the working door of a puddling furnace is the door through which the puddler does his work. It is a porthole opening upon a sea of flame. The heat of these flames would wither a man's body, and so they are enclosed in a shell of steel. Through this working door I put in the charge of "pigs" that were to be boiled. These short pieces of "mill iron" had been smelted from iron ore; they had taken the first step on their journey from wild iron to civilized iron. There isn't much use for pig-iron in this world. You've got to be better iron than that. Pig-iron has no fiber; it breaks instead of bending. Build a bridge of it and a gale will break it and it will fall into the river. Some races are pig-iron; Hottentots and Bushmen are pig- iron. They break at a blow. They have been smelted out of wild animalism, but they went no further; they are of no use in this modern world because they are brittle. Only the wrought-iron races can do the work. All this I felt but could not say in the days when I piled the pig-iron in the puddling furnace and turned with boyish eagerness to have my father show me how. Six hundred pounds was the weight of pig-iron we used to put into a single hearth. Much wider than the hearth was the fire grate, for we needed a heat that was intense. The flame was made by burning bituminous coal. Vigorously I stoked that fire for thirty minutes with dampers open and the draft roaring while that pig-iron melted down like ice-cream under an electric fan. You have seen a housewife sweating over her oven to get it hot enough to bake a batch of biscuits. Her face gets pink and a drop of sweat dampens her curls. Quite a horrid job she finds it. But I had iron biscuits to bake; my forge fire must be hot as a volcano. There were five bakings every day and this meant the shoveling in of nearly two tons of coal. In summer I was stripped to the waist and panting while the sweat poured down across my heaving
There is a people who have been kicking coal around for five thousand years and have not yet learned that it will burn. Those hills produced gypsies who travel around cheating, dickering and selling gewgaws that are worth nothing. They come among a people who have used their heads. From these people they learned to heat a banana stand with a little coal stove. Having mastered that coal-stove principle, they are going back to their native hills with black magic up their sleeves.
"What a superior man am I," thought that young tribesman swollen with vanity, although he had done nothing.
This taught me that some of these thick-headed tribes can be all swelled up with pride when they have little to be proud of.
CHAPTER XV
THE IRON BISCUITS
In the Sharon town band I played the clarinet from the time I was thirteen until I left that town several years later to chase the fireflies of vanishing jobs that marked the last administration of Cleveland. A bands-man at thirteen, I became a master puddler at sixteen. At that time there were but five boys of that age who had become full-fledged puddlers. Of these young iron workers, I suppose there were few that "doubled in brass." But why should not an iron worker be a musician? The anvil, symbol of his trade, is a musical instrument and is heard in the anvil chorus from Trovatore. In our rolling mill we did not have an anvil on which the "bloom" was beaten by a trip-hammer as is done in the Old Country. The "squeezer" which combines the functions of hammer and anvil did the work instead.
When I became my father's helper he began teaching me to handle the machinery of the trade. The puddling furnace has a working door on a level with a man's stomach. Working door is a trade name. Out in the world all doors are working; if they don't work they aren't doors (except cellar doors, which are nailed down under the Volstead Act). But the working door of a puddling furnace is the door through which the puddler does his work. It is a porthole opening upon a sea of flame. The heat of these flames would wither a man's body, and so they are enclosed in a shell of steel. Through this working door I put in the charge of "pigs" that were to be boiled. These short pieces of "mill iron" had been smelted from iron ore; they had taken the first step on their journey from wild iron to civilized iron. There isn't much use for pig-iron in this world. You've got to be better iron than that. Pig-iron has no fiber; it breaks instead of bending. Build a bridge of it and a gale will break it and it will fall into the river. Some races are pig-iron; Hottentots and Bushmen are pig- iron. They break at a blow. They have been smelted out of wild animalism, but they went no further; they are of no use in this modern world because they are brittle. Only the wrought-iron races can do the work. All this I felt but could not say in the days when I piled the pig-iron in the puddling furnace and turned with boyish eagerness to have my father show me how. Six hundred pounds was the weight of pig-iron we used to put into a single hearth. Much wider than the hearth was the fire grate, for we needed a heat that was intense. The flame was made by burning bituminous coal. Vigorously I stoked that fire for thirty minutes with dampers open and the draft roaring while that pig-iron melted down like ice-cream under an electric fan. You have seen a housewife sweating over her oven to get it hot enough to bake a batch of biscuits. Her face gets pink and a drop of sweat dampens her curls. Quite a horrid job she finds it. But I had iron biscuits to bake; my forge fire must be hot as a volcano. There were five bakings every day and this meant the shoveling in of nearly two tons of coal. In summer I was stripped to the waist and panting while the sweat poured down across my heaving