The Twenty-Four-Hour Shift: A Chapter in Steel. Iii

I

7 A.M. Sunday.
I TRIED to get a lot of sleep last night for handling the long turn; managed about nine hours. When I came to the locker, Stanley was there, dressed, cleaning his smoked glasses.

‘How much sleep, last night?’ I asked.

‘Oh, six, seven hour,’ said Stanley.

‘You ’re a fool,’ I said; ‘this is the long turn.’

‘I know, I know,’ he returned, ‘I have t’ing to do. No have time sleep.’

I looked at him. He had a big frame, but his limbs were hung on it, like clothes on hooks. His face was of a gray pallor, sharply caving in under the cheek-bones. His eyes were very dull, and steady. I had noticed those eyes of his before, and never could decide whether they showed a kind of sullen defiance, or resignation, or were just extraordinarily tired.

‘Two month more,’ he said.

‘Two month more what?’

‘Two month more this goddam work every Sunday — goddam work all day like hell, all night like hell. Pretty soon go back to good job.’

I knew what he meant now. He had told me weeks before, when we had hewed cinders together in the pit, how he was a rougher in a Pittsburgh mill. Worked only twelve hours a day, and no Sundays.

‘No more long turn,’ he concluded; ‘work of rougher slack now, all right October.’

He moved off slowly, with no spring in his step, and no energy expended beyond what was absolutely necessary to move him.

I walked out on the floor to look at the clock. The night gang on every furnace was washing up, very cheerfully and with extraordinary thoroughness. They were slicking up for the once a fortnight twenty-four-hour party. Nearly everyone drank through his day off, or raised hell in some marvelous manner. It was too precious and rare to spend in less violent reaction to the two weeks’ fatigue. I looked at them and tried not to be envious. The first helper on Seven was taking a last look through the peepholes as he put on his collar. A great Slavic hulk on Number 5 was brushing his clothes with unheard of violence.

Dick Reber passed by. He saw me leaning against a girder buttoning my shirt.

‘Front-wall, Number 5, you!’ he bawled.

I was sore at myself for having been seen standing about doing nothing. But I was sore at Dick, also, unreasonably. I went back to my locker, got my gloves and went to Number 5. I began filling the spoon, with the help of ‘ Marty,’ the Wop. He glared at me, and interfered with my shovel twice when we went together to the dolomite pile. Marty had made enemies widely on the furnaces, because of a loud mouth, and an officiousness that sat ridiculously on his stature and his ignorance of steelmaking. I was glad when the frontwall was done. I took the hook down, and went over to the fountain in back of Five, cooled my head, neck, and arms, and went over to Seven, without taking a swallow. I had decided to have only two drinks of water in the half-day.

Dick Reber saw me coming up, and I think in punishment for loafing said:

‘ Clean up under there. I want you to clean all that filth out, all of it from behind that girder.’

It was near the locker and under the flooring, in a sort of shelf, where lime, dolomite, dirt, old gloves, shoes, filth of all sorts had accumulated. I cleaned it out with a broom and a stick. It took me half an hour.

‘All right,’ said the first-helper; ‘ now get me ten thousand.’

So I went off to the Bessemer, rather glad of the walk. I climbed the stairs to the pouring platform, and watched the recorder, who had left his book, operate the levers. The shifting engine backed a ladle under, and slowly the whole Bessemer cauldron, bubbling and shooting out a tide of sparks, dipped and allowed about 20,000 pounds to drop into the ladle.

‘Ten thou’ for Seven,’ I said.

In another five minutes, the engine brought up a ladle for my ten thousand, and the boy dipped it out for me with the miraculous levers.

‘All right,’ I said; and ran down the stairs fast enough to catch a ride back past the furnaces, on the step of the locomotive.

The second-helper grabbed the big hook which came down slowly on a chain from the crane, and stuck it into the bottom of the ladle. As the chain lifted, the ladle tipped and poured the ten thousand pounds with a hiss. But the craneman was careless, which is n’t usual. Fred kept saying: ‘Whoop, whoop!’ but he went right on spilling for quite a spell before he recovered control.

‘Dolomite,’ said the first-helper to me, after the ‘jigger’ was poured.

I went to a box full of the white gravel, at the end of the mill, and yelled at Herb, the craneman. A box of dolomite is about eight feet square and three high. This one was perched on top of a dolomite pile, ten feet off the ground. I struggled up on top, and took the hooks Herb gave me from the crane, — eight-inch hooks, — and put them into the corners of the box, using both hands. Then I slid down, and the box rose and swung over my head.

Herb settled it neatly on our own little dolomite pile in front of Seven. I slipped out the front hooks, and the back ones lifted and dumped the load, with a soft swish, neatly on the low part of the old pile.

There was a little time to sit down after this — perhaps ten minutes. I smoked a Camel, which had spent the last shift in my shirt-pocket. It was a melancholy Camel, and tended to twist up in my nose, but it tasted sweet. I sat on Seven’s bench, and watched Fred take his rod and move aside the shutters of the peepholes to give final looks at the furnace. She must be nearly ready. He looked back at me, and I knew that meant ‘test.’

I grabbed tongs, lying spread out by the anvil, clamped hold of the mould, and ran with them to about ten feet from Number 2 door of the furnace. Fred had the test-spoon lifted, and shoved into the door; he moved it around in the molten steel, and brought it out full, straining his body tense to hold it level and not lose the test. I shifted the mould a little on the ground, and closed my hands as tight as I could on the tongs, so that the mould would n’t slip and turn. He poured easily and neatly, just filling the mould, and flung the spoon violently on the floor, to shake off the crusting steel on the handle.

I ran with mould and tongs to the water-trough in front of Eight, and plunged it in, the steam coming up in a small cloud. I brought it out and held it on the anvil, endwise, with the tongs, while Nick flattened in the top slightly on both edges, to make it break easily. Nick broke the ingot in two blows, and Fred and the melter consulted over the fragments.

‘All right,’ said Dick.

We were about to tap. I went after my flat manganese shovel, but it was gone from the locker. Some dog-gone helper had nailed it. I took out an ordinary shovel.

In back of the furnace, Nick was already busy with a ‘picker,’ prodding away the stopping from the tap. He burned his hands once, swore, gave it up, went halfway along the platform away from the tap, returned, and went at it again. Finally the steel escaped with its usual roar of flame, and its usual splunch as it fell into the ladle. I stepped back, and nearly into ‘Shorty,’ who had come to help shovel manganese. ‘Where you get shovel?’ he said, with his eyes blazing, pointing at mine.

‘Out of my locker,’ I said.

He started toward it, and I held it away from him.

‘I tell you that shovel mine—’ he began; but Dick, from the other side of the spout, shouted at us how many piles to shovel, and Shorty shut up. We were to get in the first big pile and the next little one.

The ladle was beginning to fill. ‘Heow!’ yelled Dick.

Shorty and I went forward and put in the manganese. It was hot, but I took too much interest in shoveling faster than Shorty to care. Then came the second ladle, during which Shorty’s handkerchief caught on fire, and made him sputter a lot, and rid himself of some profanity in Anglo-Italian.

I went to that trough by Eight afterward, to wash off the soot and cinder, and put my head under water, straight down. I knew back-wall was coming, and sat down a minute, wondering, rather vaguely, how I was going to feel at six or seven the next morning.

Back-wall came. I had bad luck with it, trying too hard. It was too hot for one thing. There are times a back-wall will be so cool you can hesitate a long second, as you fling your shovelful, and make sure of your aim; at others, your face scorches when you first, swing back, and you let the stuff off any fashion to get out of the heat. There’s a thirdhelper on Five, I’m glad to say, who is worse than I. They put him out of the line this time; he was just throwing into the bottom of the furnace.

Everyone develops an individual technique. Jimmy’s is bending his knees, and getting his shovel so low it looks like scooping off the floor. Fred’s is graceful, with a smart snap at the end.

Then front-wall. I start in search of a spoon and a hook. It’s not easy to get one to suit the taste of my firsthelper. There’s one that looks twenty feet, — I have n’t any technical figures on spoons, — but it’s too long, I know, for Fred. There’s a spoon three feet shorter, just right. Hell — with two inches melted off the end! I pick a short one in good repair, — he can use the thing or get his own, — and drag it to Seven, giving the scoop a ride on the railroad track, to ease the weight. Fred has put a hook over Number 1 door, so I hurry, and lift the spoon handle with gloved hands to slip it on the hook. If it’s not done quickly, you ’ll get a burn. You ’re at arm’s length from molten steel, and no door between. I get it on, and pick up a shovel.

Front-wall can be very easy, — you can nearly enjoy it, like any of the jobs, — if the furnace is cool, and there’s a breeze blowing down the open space of the mill. And, too, if the spoon hangs right, in the hook, and the first-helper turns it a little for you, then you can stand off, six feet from the flame, and toss your gravel straight into the spoon’s scoop. You hardly go to the waterfountain to cool your head when the stunt’s over. On Number 1 the hook hung wrong, the spoon would n’t turn in it, and you had to hug close, and pour, not toss. I tried a toss on my second shovel, and half of it skated on the floor.

‘Get it on the spoon, — you!’

from Nick.

So I did.

After that, we sat around for twenty minutes. Fred looked at the furnace once or twice, and changed the gas. Several gathered in front of Seven — Jock, Dick, the melter, Fred, and Nick.

‘Do you know what my next job’s going to be?’ said Fred.

The others looked up.

‘In a bank.’

‘Nine to five,’ said Dick. ‘Huh? gentlemen’s hours.’

‘Saturday afternoons, and Sundays,’ said Fred.

The other faces glowed and said nothing.

‘This would n’t be so bad if there were Sundays,’ said Fred. ‘I’ll tell you there’ll come a time,’

broke in the melter, ‘when Gary and all the other big fellers will have to work it themselves — no one else will.’

‘Now in the old country, a man can have a bit of fun,’ said the Scotchman. ‘Picnics, a little singing and drinkin’, and the like. What can a man do here? We work eight hours in Scotland. They work eight hours in France, in Italy, in Germany — all the steel mills work eight hours, except in this bloody free country.’

The melter broke in again. ‘ It’s the dollar they’re after — the sucking dollar. They say they ’re going to cut out the long turn. I heard they were going to cut out the long turn when I went to work in the mill, as a kid. I’m working it, ain’t I?’

I left, to shovel in fluor spar with Fred.

When we finished, Fred said: ‘You better get your lunch now, if you want it. Then help Nick on the spout.’

I ate in the mill restaurant. My order was roast beef, which included mashed potato, peas, and a cup of coffee — for thirty-five cents. Then I had apple pie and a glass of milk. The waiters are a fresh Jew, named Beck, and a short, fat Irish boy, called Pop. There is a counter, no tables; the food is clean.

I went back to help Nick on the spout, and found him already back on the gallery, with a wheelbarrow of mud. He looked up gloomily and said: ‘One more.’

I dumped the wheelbarrow, and went after more mud, bounced it over tracks, and a hose, and up and down a little board runway, to where the mud-box stands. After filling up, I went back slowly, dangerously, swayingly, over bits of dolomite and coal, navigated the corner of the gallery by a hair’s tolerance, and dropped the handles of the wheelbarrow by Nick, with relief. It’s bad on my back, that’s it. I’d rather do two back-walls, and tap three times in high heat, than wheel these exacting loads of mud.

Nick knelt on the other side of the spout, and I gave him the mud with my shovel, to repair the holes and broken places of the spout, which the last flow of molten steel had carried away. When he finished the big holes, I gave him small gobs of mud, dipping my hands in a bucket of water between each, to keep the stuff from sticking. A wave of weakening heat rose constantly from the spout, still hot from the last flow. I prayed God Nick would hurry. He made a smooth neat, surface the whole seven feet of spout, rounding the edges with his hands.

When I came back from the spout, Fred was in front of the furnace, blue glasses on his nose, inspecting the brew. He put his glasses back on his cap, glanced at me, and pointed to a pile of dolomite and slag which had been growing in front of Number 3 door.

‘All right,’ I said, and picked up a shovel from the dolomite pile. For a couple of minutes, I shoveled the stuff down the slag hole, and remembered vividly the bygone pit-days. Then I would have been cleaning up around the buggy. For a minute I felt vastly superior to pit people. I earned two cents more an hour, and threw down a hole the dolomite and dirt they cleared away.

I began to feel a little tired in back and legs, and repeated Fred’s formula on how to get away with a long turn: ‘Take it like any other day to five o’clock. Then work for midnight. Anyone can stand it from midnight to morning.’ I did a front-wall on that basis.

‘Watch those buggies!’

I ran over to the furnace and glanced down the slag hole, yelling back: ‘Half full.’ Then Fred went to an electric switch, and the whole furnace tilted till the hot running slag flowed over at the doors, and dripped into the buggy-car beneath, in the pit. I held my hand up as one of them filled, and Fred caught the pitching furnace with the switch, and stopped the flow of slag.

II

4 P.M. Sunday.
Number 8 furnace tapped, and I shoveled manganese into the ladle with that man from Akron, who is new, and who, I noticed, burned his fingers in the same way I did on my first day. Then back-wall and front-wall, and Jock saying all the while, ‘It’s a third gone, lads.’

5 P.M. Sunday.
I felt much more tired after this first ten hours than later; it was the limp fatigue that comes from too much heat. I ate fried eggs and a glass of milk, and then my appetite took a start and I ordered cold lamb and vegetables. When I had finished I went back into the mill, to my locker, and took out a cigarette. I sat on a pile of pipesagainst a main girder, intending to smoke; the cigarette went out, and I slept a half hour.

Things were going first-rate from six to nine. Jigger, clean up scrap, frontwall Number 6, front-wall Number 8. I could n’t distinguish between this and any other night shift; the food must have acted for sleep. But after nine the hours dragged. From 9.20 to 10 was a couple of hours. In the middle of a front-wall, I saw the efficiency man, Mr. Lever, come through and stare at the furnace, walk around a little, and stare profoundly at the furnace.

Mr. Lever was pointed in two places, I noticed for the first time. He had a pointed stomach, and his face worked into a point at his nose. I noticed carefully that he had a receding chin and a receding forehead. As he watched us scoop the dolomite, drag up to the spoon, dump, scoop up the dolomite, and do it over for three quarters of an hour I thought about him. I wanted to go up to him, and give him my shovel. I had to struggle against that impulse — to go up to him and give him my shovel.

The evening dragged. I fought myself to keep from looking at the clock. I fought for several hours after ten o’clock, and then, when I thought dawn must be breaking, went up and found it ten minutes of eleven.

I did feel relieved at twelve, and went out to the restaurant, saying: ‘Anyone can wait till morning.’

Sometimes, when things are hurried, when tapping is near or a spout is to be fixed, you have to eat, still drenched in sweat. But to-night, I had time, and at quarter of twelve, hung my shirt on the hot bricks at the side of the furnace, and stood near the doors in the heat, to dry my back and legs. I then washed soot and dolomite dust from ears and neck, and dipped my left arm, which was burned, in cold water. At twelve I put on the dried shirt, and went to eat.

Half the men wash, half don’t. There were a number of open-hearth helpers in the restaurant, with black hands and faces, two eating soup, two with their arms on the table. Their faces lacked any expression beyond a sullen fatigue, but their eyes roved, following Beck about. Lefflin had his arms on the table and his face on them.

I ate ham and eggs, which included coffee, fried potatoes, two slices of bread, and a glass of milk.

Walking back to the furnaces was an effort of will. I climbed the embankment to the tracks very slowly, the stones and gravel loosening and tumbling downhill at each step. I tried hard to concentrate on a calculation of the probable number of front-walls to come. Then I wondered if it would n’t pay to cut out breakfast in the morning, and get nine hours’ sleep instead of eight and a quarter. Friselli came up the bank behind me. He is third on Number 6.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘make lots of money to-night.’

‘What’s the good money, kill yourself,’ he said, and went past me along the tracks.

Number 8 was preparing to make front-wall. I felt weary, and full of ham and eggs, and very desirous of sitting down right there on the floor. But Jock, the first-helper on Eight, said, ‘Oh, Walker!’ when he saw me, and we began.

Through that front-wall Jock was tiring. He worked in little spurts. For half a door he would sing, and goad us on in half-Scotch; and for the next half he would be silent, and wipe his face with his sleeve. After that door, he came up to us and said with profound conviction, ‘It’s a lang turn, it’s a lang turn.’

When we finished, Jock lay down on a bench.

It’s a part of a third-helper’s duties to keep five or six bags of fine anthracite coal on the little gallery back of the furnace near the spout. I went after that little job now. Fifty pounds of coal in a thick paper bag is n’t much to carry — till you get doing it a couple of days running.

I sat on the seat, where the Wop stays who works the furnace doors. They call him the ‘pull up.’ That had some sacks and a cushion, and was broad, with a girder for back. I fell asleep.

Something twisting and pinching my foot woke me up. It was the first-helper. ‘Fifteen thousand, quick,’ he said.

I got up with a jerk, feeling not so sleepy as I expected, but immeasurably stiff. I moved in a wobbly fashion down toward the Bessemer. I felt as if I were limping in four or five directions. Very vigorously and insistently I thought of one thing. I would look at the clock opposite Number 6, when I went by, and possibly, very probably, a whole pile of hours had been knocked off. Then I thought with a sting that we had not tapped, and it could n’t be more than three. It was two.

‘Fifteen thousand,’ I said to myself, ‘quick,’ and climbed the iron stairs to the Bessemer platform.

When I came back, I walked beside the locomotive as it dragged the ladle and the fifteen thousand pounds of liquid steel. Through closing eyes I watched the charging machine thrust in the spout. That long finger lifted the clay thing from its resting-place on the big saw-horses between furnaces. Then the machine adjusted itself in front of Number 2 door, and shoved the spout in with a jar.

I stood lazily watching the pouring of the molten steel. Fred motioned slowly with his hands, with ‘ Up a little. Whoop!’ as the stream flowed very cleanly into the spout and furnace. Then came the noise of lifting, that characteristic crane grind, with a rising inflection as it gained speed and moved off. ‘ Pretty soon tapping, after tapping, back-wall, front-wall, the spout, morning,’ I meditated.

‘Well, how in hell are you?’ It was Al, the pit boss.

‘Fine!’ I said, as loudly as I could, and went, and sat down at once. My chin hit my chest. I stopped thinking, but did n’t go to steep.

‘Test!’ yelled Fred.

We tested three times, and then tapped. There were two ladles, with four piles of manganese to shovel in. Athirdhelper from Number 4, a short stocky Italian, shoveled with me. The ladle swung slightly closer to the gallery than usual and sent up a bit more gas and sparks. We put out little fires on our clothes six or seven times. After the first ladle, the Italian put back the sheet iron over the red-hot spout, and after the second ladle I put it on. We rested between ladles, in a little breeze that came through between furnaces.

‘ What you think of this job?’ he asked.

‘ Pretty bad,’ I said, ‘but pretty good money.’

He looked up, and the veins swelled on his forehead. His cheeks were inflamed and his eyes showed the effects of the twenty hours of labor.

‘ To hell with the money,’ he said with quiet passion; ‘no can live.’

The words sank into my memory for all time.

The back-wall was, I think, no hotter than usual; but men’s nerves made them mind things they would have smirked at the previous morning. The third-helper on Eight and Nick quarreled over a shovel, and Nick sulked till Fred went over and spoke to him.

Once the third-helper got in Nick’s way. ‘Get out, or I ’ll break your damned neck!’ and so on.

I felt outrageously sore at everyone present, not least, myself. After that back-wall, everyone except Fred threw their shovels with violence on the floor and went to the edge of the mill. They stood about in the little breeze that had come up there, in a state of fatigue and jangled nerves, looking out on a pale streak of morning just visible over freight cars and piles of scrap.

We made front-wall and, when it was over, I went to the bench by the locker and sat down, to try to forget about the spout. I had been forgetting about it for twenty minutes when Nick came up and shook me, thinking I had fallen asleep.

‘Mud,’ he said.

I got him mud.

Nick fixed up the spout amid an inclination to curse in Serbian, and gave me commands in loud tones in the same language. I felt exceedingly indifferent to Nick and to the spout, and finished up in a state of enormous indifference to all things, save the chance to sleep. Jack, the second-helper of Eight, was making tea, having dipped out some hot steel with a test-spoon and set a teapot on it.

‘Want some?’ he said.

I nodded.

Watching him make it, and drinking the tea woke me up.

‘ What time is it ? ’ I asked.

‘Four-thirty,’ said he.

‘Thanks for the tea.’

Then the summoning signal for a third-helper rang out — a sledge-hammer pounding on sheet iron. They were ‘spooning up,’ that is, making frontwall, on Number 6. All through that stunt I was wide-awake, quite refreshed, though with the sense, the conviction, that I had been in the mill, doing this sort of thing, for a week at the inside.

Coming back to Seven from that, I found Fred flat on his back, looking all in. Jock came up for a drink of water, and looked over at me.

‘You look to me,’ he remarked, ‘ like the breaking-up of a bad winter.’

III

5A.M.Monday.
The sun came into the mill, looking very pallid and sick beside the bright light from the metal. I watched the men on Eight make back-wall, and heard the sounds; I sat on the bench, my legs as loose as I could make them, my head forward, eyes just raised.
‘Lower, lower, goddam you, lower!'
came a desperate command to the ‘ pullup’ man to close the furnace-doors.
‘ Get out —1
‘ One more — ’
‘Up, up, where are your damn ears?’
‘Come on, men, last door.’
‘My shovel, you — —!’
Now they were tapping on Number 6.
The melter came out of his shanty; he had had a sleep since the last furnace tapped. He rubbed his eyes, and went out on the gallery. I could hear his ‘ Heow.’ Four poor devils were standing in the flame, putting in manganese. Thank God, I don’t shovel for Six. ‘A jigger,’ from Fred.
‘Sure.’

When I went for it, the sores on the bottom of my feet hurt so that I walked on the edges of my shoes. I was so delighted with the idea of its being six o’clock, with no back-walls ahead, that I almost took a pleasure in that foot. I stopped in front of a fountain, and put my right arm under the water.
The recorder in the Bessemer was asleep. He was a boy of twenty. I woke him up, and grinned in his face. ‘Fifteen thou’ for Number 7.’
‘ You go to hell, with your Number 7!’ I grinned at him again, knew it was just the long turn, knew he ’d give me that fifteen thousand pounds; went downstairs again —
Twenty minutes of seven. It’s light. Nobody talks, but all dress in a hurry. Faces look grave, eyes dead. We leave at ten minutes of seven.

7 A.M.Monday.
It’s a problem whether to walk fast, and get home quick, or walk slow, and sort of rest. I try to go fast, and have the sense of lifting my legs, not with the muscles, but with something else. I shake my head to get it clearer. One bowl of oatmeal. Coffee. ‘I feel all right.’ I get up and am conscious of walking home quietly and evenly, without any further worry about the difficulty of lifting my feet. ‘The long turns, they ’re not so bad,’ I say out loud, and stumble the same second on the stairs. I get up, angry, and with my feet stinging with pain. Old thought comes back: ‘Only seven to eight hours sleep. Bed. Quick.’

I push into my room. The sun is all over my bed. Pull the curtain; shut out a little. Take off my shoes. It’s hard work trying to be careful about it, and it’s darn painful when I’m not careful. Sit on the bed, lift up my feet. Feel burning all over; wonder if I’ll ever sleep. Sleep.