The Iron Puddler: My Life in the Rolling Mills and What Came of It — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
The Iron Puddler: My Life in the Rolling Mills and What Came of It
John Stuart Mill · en
This is a cynical age and I can imagine that I hear somebody snicker
when I confess the fondness I had for the Sunday-school. I don't want
any one to think I am laying claim to the record of having always been a
good little boy; nor that everything I did was wise. No; I confess I did
my share of deviltry, that some of my deeds were foolish, and (to use
the slang of that time) I often got it in the neck. Once I bantered a
big fat boy to a fight. He chased me and I ran and crawled into a place
so narrow that I knew he couldn't follow me. I crawled under the floor
of a shed that was only about six inches above the ground. Fatty was at
least ten inches thick and I thought I was safe. But he didn't try to
crawl under the floor after me. He went inside the shed and found that
the boards of the floor sank beneath his weight like spring boards. And
there that human hippopotamus stood jumping up and down while he mashed
me into the mud like a mole under a pile-driver. I had showed that I had
“a head on me like a nail” when I crawled under that floor and let Fatty
step on me. There is a saying, “You can't keep a good man down.” But
Fatty kept me down, and so I must admit he was a better man than I
was. Some people say you should cheer for the under-dog. But that isn't
always fair. The under-dog deserves our sympathy, the upper-dog must be
a better dog or he couldn't have put the other dog down. I give three
cheers for the winner. Any tribe that adopts the rule of always hissing
the winner has found a real way to discourage enterprise.
I owned a part interest in some pigeons with a boy named Jack Thomas.
The pigeons' nests were in Jack's back yard. He told me that my share
of the eggs had rotted and his share had hatched, so that my interest in
the young pigeons had died out and they were all his now. I was sure it
was a quibble and that he was cheating me. It made me mad and I sneaked
up to the pigeon loft and put a tiny pin prick in all the eggs in the
nests. This was invisible but it caused the eggs to rot as he said mine
had, and I felt that this was only justice. Turn about is fair play.