Part 3

I knew there was no "solution." There was nothing so neat as that for this multiform condition. But an adjustment, a working arrangement would be found out, somehow, by my generation. I expected to discover no specific--no formula with ribbons--after working at the bottom of the mill. I did expect to learn something of the practical technique of making steel, and alongside it,--despite, or perhaps because of, an outsider's fresh vision,--some sense of the forces getting ready at the bottom of things to make or break society. Both kinds of education were certainly up to my generation.

The train jarred under its brakes, and began to slow down.

"Good luck," I said to the salesman; "I hope you make it all right."

"Good luck," he said.

The train stopped and I found the Bouton station, small and neatly built, of a gray stone, with deeply overhanging roof and Gothicized windows. It seemed unrelated to the rest of the steel community. On the right, across tracks, loomed a dark gathering of stacks arising from irregular acres of sheet-iron roofs. Smoke-columns of various texture, some colored gold from an interior light, streaked the sky immediately above the mill stacks. The town spread itself along a valley and on the sides of encircling hills on my left. In the foreground was Main Street, with stores and restaurants and a fruit-seller. I went across the street to explore for breakfast.

"Can I look at the job?" I asked.

"Sure," he said, "you can look at the job."

I walked out of the square, brick office of the open-hearth foreman, and lost my way in a maze of railroad tracks, trestles, and small brick shanties, at last pushing inside a blackened sheet-iron shell, the mill. I entered by the side, following fierce white lights shining from the half-twilight interior. They seemed immensely brighter than the warm sun in the heavens.

I was first conscious of the blaring mouths of furnaces. There were five of them, and men with shovels in line, marching within a yard, hurling a white gravel down red throats. Two of the men were stripped, and their backs were shiny in the red flare. I tried to feel perfectly at home, but discovered a deep consciousness of being overdressed. My straw hat I could have hurled into a ladle of steel.

Some one yelled, "Watch yourself!" and I looked up, with some horror, to note half the mill moving slowly but resolutely onward, bent on my annihilation. I was mistaken. It was the charging-machine, rattling and grinding past furnace No. 7.

The machine is a monster, some forty feet from head to rear, stretching nearly the width of the central open space in the mill. The tracks on which it proceeds go the whole length, in front of all the furnaces. I dodged it, or rather ran from it, toward what appeared open water, but found there more tracks for stumbling. An annoyed whistle lifted itself against the general background of noise. I looked over my shoulder. It relieved me to find a mere locomotive. I knew how to cope with locomotives. It was coming at me leisurely, so I gave it an interested inspection before leaving the track. It dragged a cauldron of exaggerated proportions on a car fitted to hold it easily. A dull glow showed from inside, and a swirl of sparks and smoke shot up and lost themselves among girders.

The annoyed whistle recurred. By now the charging affair had lumbered past, was still threatening noisily, but was two furnaces below. I stepped back into the central spaces of the mill.

The foreman had told me to see the melter, Peter Grayson. I asked a short Italian, with a blazing face and weeping eyes, where the melter was.

He stared hostilely at me.

"Pete Grayson," I said.

"Oh, Pete," he returned; "there!"

I followed his eyes past a pile of coal, along a pipe, up to Pete. He was a Russian, of Atlas build, bent, vast-shouldered, a square head like a box. He was lounging slowly toward me with short steps. Coming into the furnace light, I could see he was an old man with white hair under his cap, and a wooden face which, I was certain, kept a uniform expression in all weathers.

"What does a third-helper do?" I asked when he came alongside.

Pete spat and turned away, as if the question disgusted him profoundly. But I noticed in a moment that he was giving the matter thought.

We waited two minutes. Finally he said, looking at me, "Why a third-helper has got a hell of a lot to do."

He seemed to regard this quantitative answer as entirely satisfying.

"I know," I said, "but what in hell does he do?"

He again looked at the floor, considered, and spat. "He works around the furnace," he said.

I saw that I should have to accept this as a prospectus. So I began negotiations. "I want a job," I said. "I come from Mr. Towers. Have you got anything now?"

He looked away again and said, "They want a man on the night-shift. Can you come at five?"

My heart leaped a bit at "the night-shift." I thought over the hours-schedule the employment manager had rehearsed: "Five to seven, fourteen hours, on the night-week."

"Yes," I said.

We had just about concluded this verbal contract, when a chorus of "Heows" hit our eardrums. Men make such a sound in a queer, startling, warning way, difficult to describe. I looked around for the charging machine, or locomotive, but neither was in range.