Part 27

"Hey, you," said the keeper summoning a helper. They swung out the "mud gun" on a kind of crane and pointed its muzzle into the glowing aperture. It was a real gun, looked like a six-inch fieldpiece, but fired projectiles of mud by steam instead of powder.

"Quick," said the keeper.

I pushed a wheelbarrow towering with mud up to the sheet iron; then, with a long scoop-shovel standing against the furnace, shoveled mud in the gun. The keeper stood almost over the runway with only the rapidly heating sheet-iron between himself and the liquid-metal puddle beneath. He operated a little lever that shot mud charges by steam into the hole. Every time he shot the gun, I took a new scoop of mud. We worked as fast as our arms let us. Some of the helpers kick at this part of their duties, but it is cooler by several degrees than the open-hearth, and thinking of those sizzling nights lightens it for me. Besides, it has excitement and requires a streak of skill.

I spent several days with young Lonergan helping the water-tender, Ralph.

"Water connections damn important thing," said Lonergan. I was beginning to see why. The whole wall of the great cone-shaped furnace was covered with cooling water-conduits. Without these the furnace would melt away.

We ranged from furnace to furnace, climbing up to a platform that ran around the fattest part and spending long quarter-hours on our bellies unscrewing valves. There was always something leaking. Ralph could come and take a look at the furnace, and send us after tools.

"Ralph's all right," said Lonergan, "has new names though for everything. Doesn't call a goddam wrench a wrench, calls it a 'jigger.' Have to learn all your tools over again by his goddam Hunky names."

Young Lonergan was very "white" to me, as they say. "I'll show you how to clean that peephole." And he grabs a cleaning rod, and imparts the knack of knocking cinder out of that important little observation post.

"I used to work stove-tender," he explained.

"If you want to know anything ask Dippy, he'll talk, don't McLanahan, he don't know he's livin'.... Have a chew?"

"No, I'll smoke."

One day we had been discussing the bosses, and how they had got their start, till the talk drifted to young Lonergan and his own very typical career of youth.

"Used to work on the open-hearth," he began. "I used to test the metal--you know in the little shanty where 'Whiskers' is now. Chemist!" he grinned.

"Then, by God, I went to work in the blooming-mill, chasing steel--you know; keepin' track of all the ingots comin' in. A hell of a job--by God you didn't stop a second--you knew you'd been workin', boy, when you pulled out in the mornin'. I worked my head off at that job.

"Then I fought with Towers. He gave me a week. After I came back I had another run-in.... When I carried my bucket out o' that place, I was off work entirely. Didn't go to work for three months, thought I never would work again.

"But after a hell of a spell, gotta job, pipe mill New Naples--eight hours--a good job, but the mill's shut down now. Then the suckers drafted me. Balloon comp'ny a bloody year and a half."

There followed a very vast series of parties in the army, and explicit views on all the officers he'd had. There was usually a new army story whenever I met him. He was extraordinarily clever in getting away with A. W. O. L.'s.

"When I got my discharge, father wanted me to come to work here, so I did. Worked on those stoves where you are, for a while--stove-tender helper, then stove-tender. Then I got this job.... Don't you chew?... I'll lose it too if I take many more days off for sickness. Last time I was 'sick'"--he grinned--"Bert Cahill and the bunch and I took three skirts in Bill's car to Monaca. Had six quarts of damn good whiskey. I was out a week. Ralph says, when I come back: 'Pretty damn sick, you!' But to hell with 'em! I'm not afraid of my job."

That little blower called Dippy, I found, knew the furnace game in all its phases with great practical thoroughness. I used to try to get chances of talking with him on questions of technique.

"What about those jobs in the cast-house?" I said one day, "the helper's jobs? Isn't it a good thing to know about those if you're learning the iron game?"

"You don't want to work there," he said quickly, "only Hunkies work on those jobs, they're too damn dirty and too damn hot for a 'white' man."

So I got thinking over the "Hunky" business, and several other conversations came into my mind. Dick Reber, senior melter on the open-hearth, had once said, "There are a few of these Hunkies that are all right, and damn few. If I had my way, I'd ship the whole lot back to where they came from."

Then I thought of the incident of my getting chosen from the pit for floor work on the furnaces. Several times Pete, who was a Russian, discriminated against me in favor of Russians. Until Dick came along and began discriminating in my favor against the Hunkies.

How many Hunkies have risen to foremen's jobs, I thought, in the two departments where I have worked? One in the open-hearth--a fellow who "stuck with the company" in the Homestead Strike--and none on the blast-furnaces except Adolph, the stove-gang boss.

My recollections were broken into by a call for violent action.

"Cooler," yelled McLanahan, his voice going up into a husky shriek.

That meant molten iron inside, melting the cone-shaped water-chamber around the blast pipe. If let alone, the cooling at that place would cease, and in a short time there would follow an escape of molten metal.

"Cooler!" yelled on a blast-furnace means "Hurry like hell."