Part 22

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.