Steel Worker

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6. Blast-Furnace Apprenticeship



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.

He paused. Then, "What job you work at before open-hearth?"

"Oh," I said, "I was in the army."

His face became alert at once, and interested. The others stopped talking, also, and looked over at me.

"Me have broder in de American army; no in army, mysel'; me one time Italian army. How long time you?"

"Nearly two years," I said.

"Oversea?"

"Yes, but didn't get to front, before war over. No fight," I answered, adopting abbreviated style, as I sometimes did. It seemed unnecessary and a little discourteous to use a rounded phrase, with all the adorning English particles.

He jumped down from the steps and took up a broom, executing a shoulder arms or two, and the flat-hand Italian salute, performed with a tremendous air.

"Here," I said, "bayonet."

I took the broomstick, and did the bayonet exercises. The gang stood up and watched with delight, making comments in several languages. Especially the eyes of the Italians danced. The incident left a genial social atmosphere.

Adolph came in from behind one of the stoves as I was concluding a "long point."

"Come on," he said, looking at me with a grin; and when I had followed him, "I show you furnace, li'l bit."

He took me to a stair-ladder near the skip that ascended to the top of Number 5. For every furnace, a skip carries up the ore and other ingredients for melting inside. It is a funicular-like thing, a continuous belt, with boxes attached, running from the "hopper" at the top of the furnace to the "stockroom" underground.

We started to climb the steps at the left of the belt. There was a little rail between us and the moving boxes of ore.

"See dat," said Adolph, pointing through at the boxes. "Keep head inside," he said, "keep hand inside, cut 'em off quick." He illustrated the amputation, with great vivacity, on his throat and wrists.

It was a climb of five minutes to the furnace-top. We paused to look at the mounting boxes.

"Ore?" I asked.

He nodded.

Pretty soon the iron ceased coming, and a white stone took its place in the boxes.

"What's that?"

"Limestone," he said. "Next come coke. Look."

We were near enough to the top to see the boxes tilt, and the hopper open and swallow the dumping of stone. In a minute or two, we stepped out on the platform on top of the furnace.

Adolph looked at me and grinned. "You smell dat gas?" he asked.

I nodded. He referred to the carbon monoxide that I knew issued from the top of all blast-furnaces.

"You stay li'l bit, pretty soon you drunk," he said.

"Let's not," I returned.

"You stay li'l bit more," he continued, his grin broadening, "pretty soon you dead."

I learned in later days that this was perfectly accurate.

We stood on a little round platform fifteen or twenty feet across, with the hopper in the centre gobbling iron ore and limestone. A layer of ore dust, an inch thick, covered the flooring, and a faint odor of gas was in the air. Each of the other five furnaces had a similar lookout, and a narrow passageway connected them with the tops of the stoves. The top of these gigantic shafts likewise had a diameter of some fifteen feet; there were little railings about them, and in the centre a trapdoor.

"What's that for?" I asked.

"Go inside to clean 'em out," he returned.

I wondered, with a few flights of imagination, what that job would be like, and remembered that the Italian with the blond moustache had spoken of the duty in uncomplimentary terms.

We could look forth from this eminence and see the whole mill yard, which was nearly a mile in extent. Over the "gas house"--a large building I hadn't noticed before, the source of gas for the open-hearth--and far to the left, were the Bessemers, spouting red gold against a very blue sky. On their right rose the familiar stacks of the open-hearth. I looked intently at them and wondered what Number 7 did at that moment--front-wall, back-wall, or tapping its periodic deluge of hot steel?

In the foreground, a variety of gables, and then the irregular roof, far beyond, that I knew must be the blooming-mill, because of the interesting yard with the muscular cranes, tossing about bars and shapes and sheets of steel. An immense system of railways everywhere, running down as far as the river bank, where were piles of cinder, and a trainload of ladles moving there to dump. A half-mile away another ironclad cluster of buildings, the tube mill, the nail mill, and the rest, with convenient rails running up to them.

I turned around. Near by, slightly beyond the foot of the skips, was that impressive hill of red dust, the ore pile. Iron ore was being taken away for the skips with one of those spider-like mechanisms that combine crane, derrick, and steam-shovel. It was built hugely, two uprights forty or fifty feet high, at a distance, I estimate, of a hundred yards, with their bases secured to railway cars. A crossbeam joined them, which was itself a monorail, along which a man-carrying car ran. From that car dropped chains, attaching themselves at the bottom to the familiar automatic shovel or scoop.

First the whole arrangement moved--the uprights, the crosspiece, and the monorail car--very slowly over the whole hill of ore, to a good spot for digging. Then the monorail car sped to the chosen position, and the shovel fell rapidly into the ore. With a mouthful secure, the chains lifted a little, enough to clear the remaining ore, and the car ran its mouthful to the hill's edge, to dump into special gondolas on railroad tracks. The whole gigantic ore-hill was within easy reach of a single instrument.

"Ought to last a while," I said.

"Will be gone in a month," he returned.

We went down the ladder-steps, and stopped near one of the furnaces. I rather hoped the stove-gang boss would talk. He did.

"Ever work blast-furnace before?" he began.

"No," I said; "I have worked on the open-hearth furnaces a little. But before that I spent about two years in the army."

"Me in Austrian army," he said musingly, "fifteen year ago. Sergeant artillery."

I thought about that, and it occurred to me that he retained something of the artillery sergeant still, necessarily adapted a little to the exigencies of American blast-stoves. I found he knew about ordnance, and boasted of Budapest cannon-makers.

"How do you like this country?" I asked.

"America, all right," he said.

"Good country?" I pushed him a little.

"Mak' money America," he explained; "no good live. Old country fine place live."

We developed that a little. We discussed cities. He asked me about London and Paris, and other European cities. Which did I like best, cities over there or American cities? I said American cities. He asked what was the difference. I thought a minute, comparing New York and London. European cities did not have the impressive forty-story edifices of American, and looked puny with four or five.

"Ah," he said, "tall buildings no look good. Budapest good city, no can build over five story."

Here was unlooked-for discrimination. I began feeling provincial. He went on to describe the cleanliness of Budapest, and to contrast it with Pennsylvania cities of his acquaintance. He certainly had me hands down.

He continued: "No can build stack that t'row smoke into neighbor's house. Look at dis place," he said, pointing to Bouton, "look at Pittsburgh."

I said no more, but nodded swift agreement.

He was a little more encouraging about the United States when it came to government.

"You have a man president; that no good, after four year you kick him out. My country sometime get king, that's all right, sometime get damn bad one. No can kick him out."

But he relapsed into censure again when he came to American women. "Women," he said, "in my country do more work than men this country."

"They have more time, here," I said, "and don't have to work so hard."

"American women, when you meet 'em, always ask: 'How much money in de pock?' What they do? Dress up,--hat, dress, shoe,--walk all time Main Street. Bah!"

It was a refreshing shock to receive this outspoken critique of America from a Hunky, a Hungarian stove-gang boss of a blast-furnace. I was amused very much by it, except the phrase "America all right mak' money, old country place live." I coupled it up with some talks I had had with men on the open-hearth. America, steel-America, which was all they knew, was very largely a place of long hours, gas, heat, Sunday work, dirty homes, big pay. There was a connection in that, I thought, with the gigantic turnover figures of laborers in steel, the restless moving from job to job that had been growing in recent years so fast. Too many men were treating America as a good place for taking a fortune out of. The impulse toward learning English, building a home, and becoming American, certainly wasn't strong in steel-America. But I left these questions in the back of my head, and returned to the stove gang at Adolph's command.

In a few days I was well in the midst of my gang-novitiate. We got formally introduced by name one day in front of No. 12 stove. The little Italian with the black moustache said: "What's your name?"

"Charlie," I said, knowing that first names were the thing.

"All right," he said, "that's Jimmy, Tony, Joe. Mike not here. You know Mike? Slavish. John, that's me. That's John too wid de bar.--Hey!" with an arresting yell, that made the others look up, "Dis is Charlie!"

I became a part of an exclusive group of seven men, who had worked together for about two years. There is a cohesiveness and a structure of tradition about a semipermanent mill-group of this sort that marks it off from the casual-labor gang. The physical surroundings remain unaltered, and methods and ways of thought grow up upon them. I was struck by the amount of character a man laid bare in twelve hours of common labor. There are habits of temper, of cunning and strength, of generosity and comradeship, of indifference, that it is capable of throwing into relief beyond any a priori reasoning. It begins by being extensively intimate in personal and physical ways; you know every man's idiosyncrasies in handling a sledge or a bar or a shovel, and the expression of his face under all phases of a week's work; you know naturally the various garments he wears on all parts of his body. You proceed to acquaint yourself, as the work throws up opportunity, with the mannerisms and qualities of his spirit. It is astonishing, with the barrier of a different language, only partly broken down by a dialect-American, how little is ultimately concealed or kept out of the common understanding.

I was impressed by the precise practices established in doing the work. Every motion and every interval of the job had been selected by long trial. If you didn't think the formula best, try it out. Many considerations went into its selection--to-day's fatigue, to-morrow's, and next month's. It had an eye for gas effect, for the boss's peculiar character, and for all material obstacles, many of which were far from obvious.

When the flue dust had been removed from the blast-stoves, I found wheeling and dumping it an easy and congenial set of movements, and consequently took off my loads at a great speed.

At once I became a target, "Tak' it eas'--What's the matter with you; tak' it eas'."

John--Slovene, and Stoic--put in an explanation: "Me work on this job two year, me know; take it easy. You have plenty work to do."

"Take it easy," I said, "and no get tired, eh? feel good every day?"

"You no can feel good every day," he amended quickly. "Gas bad, make your stomach bad."

So I slowed up on my wheelbarrow loads, sat on the handles, and spat and talked, till I found I was going too slow. There was a work-rhythm that was neither a dawdle nor a drive; if you expected any comfort in your gang life of twelve hours daily, you had best discover and obey its laws. It might be, from several points of view, an incorrect rhythm, but, at all events, it was a part of the gang mores. And some of its inward reasonableness often appeared before the day was out, or the month, or the year.

Everybody wore good clothes to work, and changed in the shanty to their furnace outfit. I usually came in a brown suit, which had been out in the rain a good many times and was fairly shapeless. One day I entered the mill in a gray suit, which fitted and was moderately pressed.

At the dinner-bucket hour in the shanty, I was asked by John the Italian: "How much you pay for suit, Charlie?"

I was embarrassed, fearing vaguely explanations that might have to follow a declaration of price. I suddenly recalled the fact that the suit had been given me by my brother, so that I didn't know the price, and said so.

"My brother give me suit, I don't know how much he pay," I said. That dumped me into another quandary.

"What job your brother have?" I was immediately asked.

I thought a moment and answered truthfully again.

"My brother, priest," I said.

That arrested immediate attention, and I was looked at with respect and curiosity.

Tony finally said, "Why you no be priest, Charlie?"

"Oh," I answered, laughing, "I run away; I like raise hell too much be priest." This was pretty accurate, too.

"O Charlie!" they bellowed.

After that, the gang were friends to the death.