The Iron Puddler Part 11

"When your roommates complained because your light kept them awake, I knew what you were doing. I knew that you were studying their problems for them, getting yourself an education so you would know how to get them better wages and better working conditions."

This letter pleased me more than I can tell. This kind old lady, now eighty-two, had faith in me and feels that her faith was justified. Now, then, can I believe that life is meaningless,--that there is no plan, and that all man's efforts are foredoomed to failure?

CHAPTER x.x.xIII. I MEET THE INDUSTRIAL CAPTAINS

Elwood, Indiana, was a small village that had been called Duck Creek Post-Office until the tin mill and other industries began making it into a city. In my capacity as president of the local union and head of the wage mill committee, I was put in personal contact with the heads of these great industrial enterprises. This was my first introduction to men of large affairs.

I approached them with the inborn thought that they must be some sort of human monsters. The communist books that Comrade Bannerman had given me taught me to believe that capitalists had no human feelings like ordinary mortals. I therefore expected to find the mill-boss as cunning as the fox and ape combined. I supposed that his word would be worthless as a pledge and would be given only for the purpose of tricking me. His manners I expected to be rude; he would shout at me and threaten me, hoping to take away my courage and send me back to my fellows beaten.

What I found, of course, was a self-possessed man, the model of courtesy and exactness. He differed from us men in one respect. His mind was complex instead of simplex. That is, he could think on two sides of a question at the same time. He had so trained his mind by much use of it that it was as nimble as the hands of a juggler who can keep several objects tossing in the air at the same time. We men were clumsy thinkers, and one thing at a time was all we could handle without fumbling it.

The great manufacturer never showed any emotion. He was never angry, domineering, sneering or insulting. He kept these emotions under control because they could do him no good, and because they would give pain to others. We fellows never hesitated to show how we felt. We would jibe one another, laugh at a fellow to his chagrin, and when we were angry bawl each other out unmercifully. For a fellow to smile when he was angry and not let the other fellow know it, was a trick we had not learned. That a bloodthirsty, cruel capitalist should be such a graceful fellow was a shock to me. I saw from the start that the communist picture of a capitalist as a bristling, snorting hog was the farthest thing from the truth. The picture was drawn by malice and not from a desire to tell the truth.

I learned that when Mr. Reid and his fellows gave their word they never broke it. It was hard to get a promise from them, but once they made a promise they always fulfilled it. If they said they would meet us at a certain hour, they were always there on the minute. They were patient, firm and reasonable, and they always treated us as their equals.

They always gave us the reasons for the stand they took. At first I doubted their sincerity, but in the end I learned that the reasons they cited were the true reasons. At first they thought that they would have to guard themselves against roguery and double-dealing on the part of the tin workers. This showed that they had had unpleasant experiences. For, men who knew their business as well as they did must surely have had some cause for their suspicion. Baseless suspicion is a trait of ignorant men, and these men were not ignorant. A burnt child dreads the fire.

I decided to take them as my models, to learn all their virtues and let them know that I was as square in my dealings with them as they were with me. I studied their business as thoroughly as I studied the case of the men. I soon got from them all the concessions we had demanded when we called the strike. It was fortunate for us that the strike was cancelled, for we kept our jobs and in due course got all the things that we were going to strike for.

In fact, I got so many concessions by d.i.c.kering with those bosses that I made life a burden for them at times. I knew the cost of every different kind of plate the mill put out, and so I could demand a high rate of wages and support my demands with logic. My midnight studies had not been in vain. It all came back in cash to the working man; and yet it was my own pals who had rebuked me for being too bookish. This did not make me sour. I loved the fellows just the same, and when they showed their faith in me, it more than paid me back.

But I had learned this general rule: The average working man thinks mostly of the present. He leaves to students and to capitalists the safeguarding of his future.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV. s.h.i.+RTS FOR TIN ROLLERS

In summer the temperature in the tin mills is very high. It is as hot as the Fourth of July in Abyssinia. One day a philosophical fellow was talking religion to me. He said, "I don't believe in h.e.l.l as a place where we boil forever in a lake of brimstone. It can't be as hot as that. My const.i.tution never could stand it." His const.i.tution stood up under the heat in the tin mill. So it is plain that the tin-mill temperature was somewhat less than the temperature of the Pit.

Outsiders began coming into the mills and giving us workers a chill by telling us that the heat was killing us. The men used to cool themselves down with a gla.s.s of beer at the close of the day. The social investigators told us that alcohol taken into the system at such a time would cause sunstroke. If beer was fatal, most of us figured that we had been dead for years and didn't know it. The effect of constant complaints was to demoralize us and make our work harder. I thought at first that these investigators were our friends and I gave them all the help I could. But instead of helping us, they only hurt us, and then I soured on their misapplied zeal. They were a species new to me that seemed to have sprung up in the hard times, just as cooties spring up in time of war. And like cooties, they attached themselves to us closer than a brother and yet they were no brothers of ours. The social investigators nibbled away at the men and kept them restless in their hours of ease. They sat at our boarding table and complained of the food. Corned beef and cabbage was one of our regular dishes. Mr.

Investigator turned up his nose and said: "I never touch corned beef. If you knew as much about it as I do, you would insist on steaks or roast beef instead. You know what corned beef is, don't you?"

The men got mad and one fellow said: "Yes; it is dead cow. All meat is dead animals. Now give us a rest."

"Yes, it's all dead, but some of it is a whole lot deader than you imagine. I've been investigating the packing business, and I'll tell you all about corned beef and wienies." He then went on with a lot of sickening details and when he got through he found that the younger men had not eaten any dinner. The older men paid no attention to him and worked right ahead to the pie and toothpick stage, but the younger fellows had been euchred out of dinner and went back to work with wabbly steps and empty stomachs.

This convinced me that the investigator was a false alarm. If corned beef was poison, as he said, there wouldn't be a working man alive in America. But millions have eaten corned beef all their lives and have thrived on it. Things are never one tenth so bad as the agitators say. They merely take the heart out of men and send them back to work weakened and unhappy.

This fellow had a favorite joke which he sprang every meal. After sniffing at the soup and meat and cabbage he would exclaim: "Hebrews, 13-8." We thought it was some jibe about the fat pork, and after he had sprung it every day for a week we learned that he was. .h.i.tting at the monotony of the diet. The verse in the Bible reads:

"Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever."

The fellow came into the mills and sympathized with us because we worked with our s.h.i.+rts off. To withstand the heat we stripped to the waist.

We didn't want to wear a s.h.i.+rt. It would have clung to our flesh and hampered our moving muscles. We were freer and cooler without any cloth to smother us. It was a privilege to go s.h.i.+rtless. Adam enjoyed that blessing in the Garden of Eden. And when he sinned they punished him by putting a s.h.i.+rt, collar and necktie on him. And yet this theorist in the mills demanded working conditions that would let us wear s.h.i.+rts. Why?

Who was asking for s.h.i.+rts? Only he, and he had a s.h.i.+rt. In their own words, the fellows would have enjoyed making him eat it.

CHAPTER x.x.xV. AN UPLIFTER RULED BY ENVY

The uplifter saw the men between heats drinking beer out of tin pails.

"Why do those big fine fellows drink beer," he asked me, "when they have plenty of water?"

I asked him: "Why don't you drink beer?"

"It makes me bilious," he replied. "If I drink one gla.s.s of beer every day for a week it upsets me and I get weak and dizzy."

"Do you think that one drink of beer a day will upset those fellows and make them dizzy?"

"Evidently not."

"Then when you oppose beer you are doing it to keep yourself from getting sick, aren't you? Do you really care a darn whether those fellows get sick at the stomach or not?"

"Certainly, I--"

"You don't want them to get sick at the stomach?"

"Then, why did you give that lecture on corned beef and make those strong fellows all sick at the stomach while you enjoyed your own dinner?"

"I didn't know it would disturb them so. Besides I wanted to keep them from getting sick later."

"Well, they prefer to have their health now, and wait for their sickness until later on. You are doing no man a favor by making him sick when he is feeling well. If G.o.d is willing for them to be well, and they want to be well, and the only thing that keeps them from being well is you, aren't you afraid that they will pile on to you and knock the daylights out of you?"

"I am really working for their good."

"Then you want their stomachs to have what agrees with them?"

"Certainly."

"Well, I'll tell you something, then. Water doesn't always agree with the stomach as well as beer does. You never worked at terrific muscular exertion handling white-hot iron in a mill like this. You haven't got the muscles to do it, and I doubt if you've got the heart. You can not know the condition a man is in when he hits his hardest lick here. But they know, and I know. Some of the men feel they can't drink water at that time. My pal tells me that his stomach rejects it; his throat seems to collapse as he gulps it. But beer he can drink and it eases him.

The alcohol in beer is a blessing at that time. It soothes his laboring stomach until the water can get into his system and quench the man's thirst. Iron workers in the Old World have used malt beverages for generations. Why take away the other man's pleasure if it doesn't injure you? If it was deadly we would have been weakened in the course of generations. But look at the worker's body. It is four times as strong as yours." I saw an envious look in his eye.

"Of course I inherited my muscular build," I apologized, "and so I try to make the most of it in boasting to you fellows who haven't any muscle. But really I envy you. You have education and brain power.

That's what I lack and that's what I want above all other things. I try to study at night and educate myself. But I haven't got any chance against you fellows who are born intellectual and have college training on top of it. So if I have talked sharp to you, my cussedness is really due to envy. I really want to be in your shoes, and I haven't got the brains for the job."

This worked.

"There is nothing about me for a fellow like you to envy," he said condescendingly. "I'm no better off than you are. In fact, I envy you fellows. You are never sick; you can eat and digest anything. I really envy you. You are built like a young Hercules and are never ashamed when you strip. When I put on a bathing suit I am embarra.s.sed until I get out of sight in the water, because I'm all skin and bones. My arms and legs are the size of broomsticks."

"Oh, well," I said, "you're just as well off without the Hercules shape.

You are always healthy."