I found out very quickly the why of this mess. The furnace is made to rock forward, and spill out a few hundred pounds of the slag that floats on top. A short "buggy" car runs under, to catch the flow. But somebody had blundered--no buggy was there when the slag came. "Get him up queek, and let buggy come back for nex' time," explained an Italian with moustachios, who carried the pick. "Huh, whatze matter goddam first-helper, letta furnace go?" he added angrily. "Lotza work." This job took us three hours. The Italian went in at once with the pick, and loosened a mass of cinder near one of the rails. Fritz and I followed up with shovels, hurling the stuff away from the tracks. The slag is light, and you can swing a fat shovelful with ease; but mixed with it are clumps of steel that follow the slag over the furnace doors. It grew hotter as we worked in--three inches of red heat, to a slag cake six inches thick. "Hose," said someone. The Italian found it in back of the next furnace, and screwed it to a spigot between the two. We became drowned in steam. We had been at it about an hour and a half, and I was shoveling back loose cinder, with a little speed to get it over with. "Rest yourself," commanded Moustachios. "Lotza time, lotza time." I leaned on my shovel and found rather mixed feelings rising inside me. I was a little resentful at being told what to do; a little pleased that I was up, at least, to the gang standard; a little in doubt as to whether we ought not to be working harder; but, on the whole, tired enough to dismiss the question and lean on my shovel. The heat was bad at times (from 120 to 130 degrees when you're right in it, I should guess). It was like constantly sticking your head into the fireplace. When you had a cake or two of newly turned slag, glowing on both sides, you worked like hell to get your pick work done and come out. I found a given amount of work in heat fatigued at three times the rate of the same work in a cooler atmosphere. But it was exciting, at all events, and preferable to monotony. We used the crowbar and sledge on the harder ledges of the stuff, putting a loose piece under the bar and prying. When it was well cleared, a puffy switch-engine came out of the dark from the direction of Number 4, and pushed a buggy under the furnace. The engineer was short and jolly-looking, and asked the Italians a few very personal questions in a loud ringing voice. Everyone laughed, and all but Fritz and I undertook a new cheekful of "Honest Scrap." I smoked a Camel and gave Fritz one. Then Al, the pit boss, came through. He was an American, medium husky, cap on one ear, and spat through his teeth. I guessed that Al somehow wasn't as hard-boiled as he looked, and found later that he was new as a boss. I concluded that he adopted this exterior in imitation of bosses of greater natural gifts in those lines, and to give substance to his authority. He used to be a workman in the tin mill.