Steel: The Diary of a Furnace WorkerWalker, Charles R. (Charles Rumford)
History
Steel: The Diary of a Furnace Worker
Walker, Charles R. (Charles Rumford)
Iron and steel workers -- United States
The twelve-o'clock whistle blew. A few men had been moving toward the
gate slowly for minutes. The whistle sent them at top walking-speed. I
stared at them to assure myself as to the correct dress for steel
makers.
Main Street began at the tracks, and ran straight through the town,
mounting the hills as it went. At the railroad end was the Hotel Bouton,
where I had breakfasted. Beside it was an Italian fruit store sprawling
leisurely over the sidewalk, and a Greek restaurant, one of four. The
Greeks monopolized the feeding of Bouton. A block farther, on the right,
I ran into a clothing-store, a barber-shop, and two rudimentary
department stores. Then, on the same side, a finished city block,
looking queer and haughty amid its village companions.
"What's that?" I asked a strolling, raw-boned Slav.
"Comp'ny store," he said.
I passed a one-story movie "palace," almost concealed behind chromatic
advertising, and then the street twisted and I entered the "American
quarter." Half a mile of neat, slightly varying brick houses, with lawns
fifteen by twenty, and children in such quantity as seriously to menace
automobiles.
I looked at the numbers with growing interest, to discover in which I
should go to bed to-morrow morning at 7.30. The employment manager had
given me the number 343 to try. Here it was, on the right, quite like
the others, and, I guessed, about twenty minutes from the mill.
Calculation of the rising-times for future night-shifts came into my
mind.
I was shown the back room on the second floor--a very good room, with a
big bed, and two windows.
"You can see our garden," said Mrs. Farrell standing at one of the
windows.
I looked out and found the most intensively cultivated twenty-foot plot
I had ever seen or imagined. Behind was the back road and a mud cliff.
The room seemed a little extravagant for a third-helper, but I took it,
in order to have a place for the night, and contracted to pay four
dollars a week.
I walked through a street where the prices of clothing were moderate,
but where there seemed a dearth of second-hand shops. In one store were
green suits, belted, and hung on forms. They had the close-fitting
waist, and were marked, "Style Plus Garments: Our Special Price,
$15.00." The proprietor, who stood in the doorway, to be handy for
collaring the prospective customer, rushed out at me, hands threatening.
He was of the prevailing racial type.
"Fix you up wid a dandy suit," he said.
"What I am looking for," I said, "is something second-hand. Do you have
any?" I shot this out partly as a check.
"Old man upstairs, fix you up. That door."
I went through that door and up two flights, to a room containing an old
man, a sewing machine, and a large table covered with old clothing.
"I'm looking for something for working-clothes," I said; "second-hand
coat and pants."
He lifted a number from the tangled mass of garments, and displayed
them. They appeared to me too clean, too new, too dressy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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