Part 8

Marco and I became good chums. We sat on a wheelbarrow one day, after finishing a job on the track under Six.

"You teach me American," he said; "I teach you Croatian."

"Damn right," I said; and we began on the parts of our body, and the clothing we wore, drawing out some of the words in the dirt with a stick, or marking them with charcoal on a board.

"Did you ever go to school in America?" I asked.

"Three month, night school, Pittsburgh. Too much, work all day, twelve hour, go to school night," he said.

"Do you save any money? Got any in the bank?" I asked, feeling a little fatherly, and wondering on the state of his economic virtues.

"Hell, no," he said; "I don' want money in bank, jes nuff get along on."

I talked to a good many on the savings question, and found the young men very often didn't save, but "bummed round," while practically all the "Hunkies" of twenty-eight or thirty and over saved very successfully. A German who put scrap in the charge-boxes, after the magnet had dropped it, had saved $4000 and invested it. One man said to me: "A good job, save money, work all time, go home, sleep, no spend." Speaking of the German, "He no drink, no spend." The savers, I think, are apt to be the single men who return to their own country in ten or fifteen years.

I came out of the mill one morning after a night-shift, with an appetite that made me run from the railroad bridge to Main Street. I went to the Hotel Bouton, where the second-helper on Eight usually eats, and started at the beginning, with pears. I ate the cereal, eggs, potatoes, toast, coffee, and griddle-cakes, taking seconds and thirds when I could negotiate them--the Bouton is stingy under a new management, probably finding that steel-workers eat up the profit. I got up from the table feeling as hungry as when I sat down, and went to the restaurant just two doors below--unpalatable, but serving fairly large portions. There I had another breakfast: coffee, oatmeal, eggs. I felt decidedly better after that, and started home in good humor. But by the time I reached the window of Tom, the Wiener man, I felt that there was room for improvement, and looked in my pocketbook to see if I had any breakfast money left. I hadn't a cent, but there were quantities of two-cent stamps. I went in and sat down at Tom's counter, where I ate a bowl of cereal and a glass of milk. Then I opened my purse. In a moment or two I convinced Tom that two-cent stamps were good legal tender, and went home.

FOOTNOTE:

I learned later the flow could have been stopped by simply tilting back the furnace, but the craneman was ready and so brought the ladle up.

III

THE OPEN-HEARTH--NIGHT-SHIFTS

"Have a cigarette, Pete," I said, offering a Camel to a very fat and boyish-looking Russian.

"No t'ank."

"What, no smoke?" I asked, incredulous.

"No, no smoke."

"No drink?" I asked, wondering if I had found a Puritan.

"Oh, drink" he said with profound emphasis; and continuing, he told me of other solaces he found in this mortal life.

"Look!" cried some one.

Herb, the craneman, in a fit of extreme playfulness had thrown some wet green paint forty feet through the air at the pit boss, greening the whole side of his face. Al was doing a long backward dodge, and slapping a hand to his painted face, supposing it a draught of hot metal. When he perceived that he wasn't killed, he picked up cinder-hunks and bombarded the crane-box. It sounded like hail on tin.

Pete, the Russian melter, came out on the gallery behind the furnaces, and I could see by the way he looked the pit over, that he was picking a man for furnace work. Somebody had stayed out and they were short a helper. He looked at the fat workman beside me, and then grunted.

This was the third time he had picked Russians in preference to the rest of us, who are Serbian, Austrian, and American.

The next day I went on the floor, and tackled Pete.

"How about a chance on the floor?" I said, standing in front of him to keep him from lurching away.

"Y' get chance 'nuff, don' worry."

"If I can't get a crack at learning this game in Bouton, I'll go somewhere I can," I said, boiling up a little.

Dick Reber, the Pennsylvania-Dutch melter, came up.