Pete's wandering gaze caught one man watching him with serious eyes, and he broke off. "Say, Johnson, wha' d'you suppose I want a bath-tub for?" Johnson was an anomaly among the iron-workers--a man without a sense of humor. He never knew when his fellows were joking and when serious; he usually took them literally. "To wash in," he answered. Pete whistled. "Wash in it! Ain't you got no respect for the traditions o' the workin' class?" "Hey, Pig Iron; talk English!" Bill demanded. "What's traditions?" Pete looked puzzled, and a laugh passed about the men. Then his sang-froid returned. "Your traditions, Bill, is the things you'd try to forget about yourself if you had enough coin to move into a place like this." He turned his lean face back on Johnson. "Don't you know what a bath-tub's for, Johnson? Don't you never read the papers? Well, here's how it is: The landlords come around wearin' about a sixteen-candle-power incandescent smile. They puts in marble bath-tubs all through all the houses. They're goin' to elevate us. The next day they come around again to see how we've improved. They throw up their hands, an' let out a few yells. There's them bath-tubs chuck full o' coal. We didn't know what they was for,--an' they was very handy for coal. That's us. It's down in the papers. An' here you, Johnson, you'd ruin our repitations by usin' the bath-tubs to bathe in." The pulley toiled into view, dragging after it two columns. Johnson was saved the necessity of response. The men hurried to their places. "O' course, Pig Iron, you'll be fixed all right when you've moved in here," began Bill, after the boom had reached out and the pulley had started spinning down for the other two columns. "But how about the rest of us fixers? Three seventy-five a day, when we get in only six or seven months a year, ain't makin' bankers out o' many of us." "Only a few," admitted Pete; "an' them few ain't the whole cheese yet. Me, I can live on three seventy-five, but I don't see how you married men do." "Especially with scabs stealin' your jobs," growled Bill, glancing again at the two men working along the building's edge. "I told you Foley'd look after them," said Barry, who had joined the group for a moment. "It hustles most of us to keep up with the game," he went on, in answer to Pete's last remark. "Some of us don't. An' rents an' everything else goin' up. I don't know what we're goin' to do." "That's easy," said Pete. "Get more money or live cheaper." "How're we goin' to live cheaper?" demanded Bill. "Yes, how?" seconded Barry. "I'm for more money," declared Bill. "Well, I reckon I wear the same size shoe," said Pete. "More money--that's me." "And me," "and me," joined in the other men, except Johnson. "It's about time we were gettin' more," Pete advanced. "The last two years the bosses have been doin' the genteel thing by their own pockets, all right."