The Iron Puddler [26]
biscuits is now done and I must take them out at once and rush them to the hungry mouth of the squeezing machine. A bride making biscuits can jerk them out of the oven all in one pan. But my oven is larger and hotter. I have to use long-handled tongs, and each of my biscuits weighs twice as much as I weigh. Suppose you were a cook with a fork six feet long, and had three roasting sheep on the grid at once to be forked off as quickly as possible. Could you do it? Even with a helper wouldn't you probably scorch the mutton or else burn yourself to death with the hot grease? That is where strength and skill must both come into play.
One at a time the balls are drawn out on to a buggy and wheeled swiftly to the squeezer. This machine squeezes out the slag which flows down like the glowing lava running out of a volcano. The motion of the squeezer is like the circular motion you use in rolling a bread pill between the palms and squeezing the water out of it. I must get the three balls, or blooms, out of the furnace and into the squeezer while the slag is still liquid so that it can be squeezed out of the iron.
From cold pig-iron to finished blooms is a process that takes from an hour and ten minutes, to an hour and forty minutes, depending on the speed and skill of the puddler, and the kind of iron. I was a fast one, myself. But you expected that, from the fact that I am telling the story. The man that tells the story always comes out a winner.
CHAPTER XIX
I START ON MY TRAVELS
Now that I was a master puddler, I faced the problem of finding a furnace of my own. I saw no chance in Sharon. Furnaces passed from father to son, so I could not hope to get one of the furnaces controlled by another family. My father was not ready to relinquish his furnace to me, as he was good for twenty years more of this vigorous labor.
I wanted to be a real boss puddler, and so, when I was eighteen I went to Pittsburgh and got a furnace. But a new period of hard times was setting in, jobs were getting scarce as they had been in 1884. That was the year when we had no money in the house and I was chasing every loose nickel in town. The mill at Sharon was down, and father was hunting work in Pittsburgh and elsewhere. Then after a period of prosperity the hard times had come again in 1891 and '92. My furnace job in Pittsburgh was not steady. The town was full of iron workers and many of them were in desperate need. Those who had jobs divided their time with their needy comrades. A man with hungry children would be given a furnace for a few days to earn enough to ward off starvation. I had no children and felt that I should not hold a furnace. I left Pittsburgh and went to Niles, Ohio, where I found less competition for the jobs. I worked a few weeks and the mill shut down. I wandered all over the iron district and finally, deciding that the North held no openings, I began working my way toward the iron country in the South.
The Sharon mill did not shut down completely. The owner operated it at a loss rather than throw all his old hands out on the world. Twenty years later I met him on a train in the West and we talked of old times when I worked in his mill. As long as he lived he was loved and venerated by his former employees.
Father was putting in short time at Sharon and was badly worried. He was thinking of setting out again to go from town to town looking for work, but I had advised him against it. I had told him that he would merely find crowds of idle men roaming from mill to mill along with him. My brothers gave him similar advice.
"Father," we said, "it is a time of business depression and wide-spread unemployment. If you went to Pittsburgh you might find a few weeks' work, but it would not pay you to go there for it. You would have to lay out cash for your board and lodging there before you could send anything home to mother. Keeping up two establishments is harder than keeping up one. You have a home here partly paid for, and a big garden that helps support that home. It is better for you to stick with this establishment
One at a time the balls are drawn out on to a buggy and wheeled swiftly to the squeezer. This machine squeezes out the slag which flows down like the glowing lava running out of a volcano. The motion of the squeezer is like the circular motion you use in rolling a bread pill between the palms and squeezing the water out of it. I must get the three balls, or blooms, out of the furnace and into the squeezer while the slag is still liquid so that it can be squeezed out of the iron.
From cold pig-iron to finished blooms is a process that takes from an hour and ten minutes, to an hour and forty minutes, depending on the speed and skill of the puddler, and the kind of iron. I was a fast one, myself. But you expected that, from the fact that I am telling the story. The man that tells the story always comes out a winner.
CHAPTER XIX
I START ON MY TRAVELS
Now that I was a master puddler, I faced the problem of finding a furnace of my own. I saw no chance in Sharon. Furnaces passed from father to son, so I could not hope to get one of the furnaces controlled by another family. My father was not ready to relinquish his furnace to me, as he was good for twenty years more of this vigorous labor.
I wanted to be a real boss puddler, and so, when I was eighteen I went to Pittsburgh and got a furnace. But a new period of hard times was setting in, jobs were getting scarce as they had been in 1884. That was the year when we had no money in the house and I was chasing every loose nickel in town. The mill at Sharon was down, and father was hunting work in Pittsburgh and elsewhere. Then after a period of prosperity the hard times had come again in 1891 and '92. My furnace job in Pittsburgh was not steady. The town was full of iron workers and many of them were in desperate need. Those who had jobs divided their time with their needy comrades. A man with hungry children would be given a furnace for a few days to earn enough to ward off starvation. I had no children and felt that I should not hold a furnace. I left Pittsburgh and went to Niles, Ohio, where I found less competition for the jobs. I worked a few weeks and the mill shut down. I wandered all over the iron district and finally, deciding that the North held no openings, I began working my way toward the iron country in the South.
The Sharon mill did not shut down completely. The owner operated it at a loss rather than throw all his old hands out on the world. Twenty years later I met him on a train in the West and we talked of old times when I worked in his mill. As long as he lived he was loved and venerated by his former employees.
Father was putting in short time at Sharon and was badly worried. He was thinking of setting out again to go from town to town looking for work, but I had advised him against it. I had told him that he would merely find crowds of idle men roaming from mill to mill along with him. My brothers gave him similar advice.
"Father," we said, "it is a time of business depression and wide-spread unemployment. If you went to Pittsburgh you might find a few weeks' work, but it would not pay you to go there for it. You would have to lay out cash for your board and lodging there before you could send anything home to mother. Keeping up two establishments is harder than keeping up one. You have a home here partly paid for, and a big garden that helps support that home. It is better for you to stick with this establishment