Part 32

Marco drew Croatian words for me with a piece of chalk on his shovel, and I put down English ones for him. He had attended night school after working twelve hours a day in Pittsburgh. But Marco was, perhaps, exceptionally gifted.

The jobs we did were pick-and-shovel jobs. But have you ever used a pick on hot slag? There is judgment and knack, and he is a fool who says that "anyone can do the job." Whenever the chance for special skill happened by, as in hooking the crane to a difficult piece of scrap, there was an abundance, and much rivalry to show it off. Could such substance of "knacks" ever grow into anything more for this "nine tenths of mankind?" I wonder.

How much of strength, of skill, of possible loyalty, does modern industry tap from the average Hunky?

I asked the question, but did not answer it--for modern industry. I answered it for the gang in the pit and the crew on the stoves of the blast-furnace.

Not half.

There were vast unused areas of men's minds and of their muscles, as well as of their powers of will, that were wholly unreached in the rough job adjustment of modern industry. I mean among the so-called groups of "lower intelligence." It was an interesting speculation whether any engineer would ever find a means of tapping this unused voltage.

I suddenly thought how inconceivable the stoppage of that roar would be. A silent valley, with all those ordered but gigantic forces stopped, would be almost terrible. But just such a silence was likely to happen. By a walk-out.

The great strike had been going a week, in other towns--tying up the steel production of the country. Meetings had followed, and riots, with an occasional bloody conflict with the "mud guard" of Pennsylvania.

Part of that untapped force! I said to myself--dynamos of power of all sorts. Would it bludgeon over a change in steel conditions, or flow back, waste voltage, into the ground?

The rumble in the valley again. Could I hear the shake of the charging-machine at this distance? The Bessemer glow had changed. The nail mill roar seemed to increase.

I went down the hill. When I reached Mrs. Farrell's and climbed into my back room, I set the alarm for 4.00 o'clock, putting the clock a foot and a half from the bed. It has a knob on top, and you can stop it by knocking down the knob with the palm of your hand. I went to sleep, to dream about the men who built the Pyramids.

"NO CAN LIVE"

I went into the employment office one day, to fix up the papers of my transfer to the blast-furnace, and got into a talk with Burke, the employment manager, about personnel work.

"What do you think of the game?" I asked.

"It's great," he returned; "it's working with human material--that's what it is; there's nothing like it. But," he added, "if you have any ideas about unions keep them in the back of your head--that is, if you want a job in steel. They won't stand for that sort of thing."

He looked down on his desk, where there was a news-clipping of the demands of the American Federation of Labor's Strike Committee--the twelve demands. He pointed to it.

"We give them practically all of these here in Bouton," he said, "all but two or three."

"The eight-hour day?" I queried.

"Yes, we give them the eight-hour day. Overtime for everything over eight hours."

"Could I stop work to-day after eight hours' work on the furnace?" I asked. "Could anyone before six o'clock, and hold his job?"

"Oh, no," he returned.

"I should call that a twelve-hour day," I said.

The "safety man" came in, and interrupted. He was a stocky young man with the intelligent face of an engineer.

"That man might do something for the steel-worker," I thought.

The men on the furnaces were talking about the strike that day. One young American said: "Well, strike starts Monday. Damned if I won't go if the rest do."

There were no leaders about, and it was unlikely, perhaps, that any would appear. There seemed to be a current opinion that any organizers "get taken off the train before they get to Bouton."

The Old Home Week Carnival had been called off through the influence of the mill authorities. They were afraid of a strike committee coming from the next town, and having a parade to lead the men out.

A special train went through Bouton that day at about five o'clock. Everyone watched it from the furnaces, and speculated what it meant. It was a double-header and passed through at top speed.