I decided to take them as my models, to learn all their virtues and let them know that I was as square in my dealings with them as they were with me. I studied their business as thoroughly as I studied the case of the men. I soon got from them all the concessions we had demanded when we called the strike. It was fortunate for us that the strike was cancelled, for we kept our jobs and in due course got all the things that we were going to strike for. In fact, I got so many concessions by dickering with those bosses that I made life a burden for them at times. I knew the cost of every different kind of plate the mill put out, and so I could demand a high rate of wages and support my demands with logic. My midnight studies had not been in vain. It all came back in cash to the working man; and yet it was my own pals who had rebuked me for being too bookish. This did not make me sour. I loved the fellows just the same, and when they showed their faith in me, it more than paid me back. But I had learned this general rule: The average working man thinks mostly of the present. He leaves to students and to capitalists the safeguarding of his future. CHAPTER XXXIV. SHIRTS FOR TIN ROLLERS In summer the temperature in the tin mills is very high. It is as hot as the Fourth of July in Abyssinia. One day a philosophical fellow was talking religion to me. He said, “I don't believe in hell as a place where we boil forever in a lake of brimstone. It can't be as hot as that. My constitution never could stand it.” His constitution stood up under the heat in the tin mill. So it is plain that the tin-mill temperature was somewhat less than the temperature of the Pit. Outsiders began coming into the mills and giving us workers a chill by telling us that the heat was killing us. The men used to cool themselves down with a glass of beer at the close of the day. The social investigators told us that alcohol taken into the system at such a time would cause sunstroke. If beer was fatal, most of us figured that we had been dead for years and didn't know it. The effect of constant complaints was to demoralize us and make our work harder. I thought at first that these investigators were our friends and I gave them all the help I could. But instead of helping us, they only hurt us, and then I soured on their misapplied zeal. They were a species new to me that seemed to have sprung up in the hard times, just as cooties spring up in time of war. And like cooties, they attached themselves to us closer than a brother and yet they were no brothers of ours. The social investigators nibbled away at the men and kept them restless in their hours of ease. They sat at our boarding table and complained of the food. Corned beef and cabbage was one of our regular dishes. Mr. Investigator turned up his nose and said: “I never touch corned beef. If you knew as much about it as I do, you would insist on steaks or roast beef instead. You know what corned beef is, don't you?”