The Iron Puddler: My Life in the Rolling Mills and What Came of It

rity. My father had reached the stage where this was the problem that worried him. He was growing old and must soon cease working. But his home was not yet secure and he was

supported by his sons. I am glad he never had to be. Independence has made his old age happy and he has

lining years. Wages was my sole problem. I wanted steady wages, and of course I wanted the highest I could get. To find the place where wages were to be had I was always on the go. When a mill closed I did not wait for it to reopen, but took the first train f

lower classes. About the only people that paid car fare were the Knights of Pythias on their way to their annual convention. Railroad workers could get all the passes they wanted, and any toiler whose sister had married a brakeman or whose second cousi

o lived there was a chap named Frank Bannerman. I always remember him because he was a communist, the first one I ever saw, and he filled my pockets with about ten pounds

est, that I would be anything for a watermelon. But he t

at the intellect, the intellect." I was flattered. "Come here, wife

ven I myself. I thought I was a muscle-bound iron puddler, but they pronounced me an intellectual giant. It never occurred to me that they might have guessed wrong, while the wise old world had guessed right. If the world was in step, they were out of step, but I figured t

us where you come f

hat?" I

ommunists," he

h of the rolling mills where I had worked. I had to invent the statistics out of my own head, but that head was full of intellect, so I jokingly gave him

e country, and it appeared that the few mills I had worked in contained practically the whole communist party. He got rather excited and said the numbers were growing faster than he had imagined. He had figured that it would take forty years

ged him for a speech he had made denouncing religion. I saw by his hands that he didn't work much, and from the hands of his wife I learned who raised the wate