The Iron Puddler Part 10

All my savings had long since gone, and from the high life in the Pie Boarding-House I had descended to my days of bread and water. All men were in a common misery. If a hobo managed to get a steak and cook it in the bushes by the railroad track, the smell of it would draw a score of hungry men into the circle of his firelight. It was a trying time, and it took all the fort.i.tude I had to look hopefully forward toward a day when things would begin picking up and the wheels of industry would whirl again. The idle men who had camped by the railroads had drunk their water from, and cooked their mulligan stews in, tomato cans.

The tin can had become the badge of hoboing. The tin trade was new in America and I foresaw a future in the industry, for all kinds of food were now being put up in tin, whereas when I was a child a tin can was rarely seen. I decided that two trades were better than one, and I would learn the tin plate trade. I went to Elwood, Indiana, and found a place there in a tin mill. My knowledge of puddling, heating and rolling, occasionally working in a sheet mill similar to a tin mill, prepared me for this new work. In tin making a piece of wrought iron is rolled thin and then covered with a thinner coating of pure tin. After this is done the plate remains soiled and discolored, and the next process is to remove the stain and polish the tin until it s.h.i.+nes like silver.

To have a job and eat pie again made me happy. Our union contained several hundred members, so I had a lot of prospective friends to get acquainted with. I was then nearly twenty-one and a pretty good mixer; I liked men and enjoyed mingling with them and learning all I could from what they told me. When they drifted into a saloon I went along for the company. I did not care to drink, so I would join some impromptu quartet and we would sing popular songs while the other fellows cheered us with the best will in the world. A drink of beer or two heightens a man's appreciation of music, and the way the boys applauded my singing makes me rather regret the Volstead Act. It queered my act. Since beer disappeared n.o.body has asked me to sing. Prohibition may be good for the health but it is sure death to art.

Those were happy days. But just when all my troubles seemed ended and the rainbow of promise in the sky, a new cloud appeared, black and threatening. In fact it swept down like a tornado. The men decided to strike.

A strike! Of all things! We owned about the only jobs in Indiana. Our strike wouldn't last long--for the mills. For us it would last forever.

The day we walked out, others would walk in. And it would be so small a part of c.o.xey's army that the main body would march on and never miss it. I had just gone through that long, soul-killing period of idleness and had barely managed to find a job before I collapsed. Now that we were to strike I would have to push that job aside and sink back into the abyss.

In reaching Elwood, I had tramped from Muncie, Indiana, to Anderson, a long weary walk for one whose feet, like mine, were not accustomed to it. From Anderson I tramped to Frankton, and there I caught a freight and rode the b.u.mpers to Elwood. The train took me right into the mill.

It was summer and the mill had been shut down by the hard times. The boss was there looking over the machinery. They were getting ready to start up. I faced him and he said: "Do you want a job?"

"Yes," I said.

"What at? Greasing up to-night," he said. Weary and hungry as I was from my hoboing, I went right to work, and all night I, with a few others, greased the bearings. The next day he gave me a job as a catcher. A catcher is one who seizes the rolled plate as it comes out and throws it back to the roller. It has to be rolled many times. The boss who gave me this much-wanted job was Daniel G. Reid, who afterward became one of the big men in the tin industry.

After I became Secretary of Labor I was a dinner guest at the White House. When I arrived the President said: "Here's an old friend of yours." To my surprise and keen pleasure President Harding led forward my old boss, Daniel G. Reid. There was much laughing and old-time talk between us. "Do you recall," said Mr. Reid, "how during the tin strike of '96, you steered to the lodge room and unionized men who came to take the place of the strikers?" Mr. Reid thought this was a great joke. He had always been favorable to ending the strike and signing the men's agreement, but for a long time had been deterred by his partners. Mr.

Reid in nearly every conference was selected for chairman, and this was considered by the employers a very fine tribute of respect and confidence. Turning to the president, Mr. Reid said: "If Jim is as industrious in your service as he was in the Elwood tin mill you have got a good secretary. Jim knew more about the tin plate business when he was a worker than any other man in America. I wanted to get him to join our sales department but he declined my offer!"

When the matter of the Elwood strike was referred to the next regular meeting I had been working only three weeks. I wrote to my father in Sharon asking for his counsel on the subject. He wrote back: "In as much as it isn't a question of wages or rules, I'd vote to stay on the job and wait for my pay. There's no pay out here to be had even by waiting.

The mill is down, and if we hadn't raised a big potato crop we wouldn't know where to look for our next meal."

CHAPTER x.x.xI. UNACCUSTOMED AS I AM TO PUBLIC SPEAKING

With father's warning on my mind I went to the meeting where the strike was to be voted. n.o.body had opposed the strike, for the cause was plainly a just one. The men wanted their pay to be issued to them every week, and they were ent.i.tled to it. The only question in my mind was one of expediency. Could we hope to win a strike at a time like that when the mills were on the verge of closing because of bad business?

While the speakers were presenting the reasons for the strike I noticed that not a man examined or discussed the dangers in it. The mind of the meeting was made up. I was talking to the fellow who sat beside me, and I told him what my father had written me.

"I agree," he said. "A strike at a time like this doesn't seem to be the right thing to do."

"If you don't think it a wise move," I said, "why don't you get up and say so. For this meeting is going to vote strike in the next two minutes, sure as fate."

"I can't make a speech," he said. "You do it."

The men were paid monthly checks and had never heard any complaint from their landlords and grocerymen who were willing to wait for their pay.

The complaint had been made by a few outsiders who wanted to see money circulate faster in town and thus boom things up a bit. They had aroused the strike spirit of the men by speeches like this:

"The bosses own you body and soul. They regard you as slaves. Your work makes them rich and yet they won't pay for your work. While they are piling up profits you go around without a nickel in your jeans. At the end of the week you want your pay. Why don't they give it to you?

Because they would sooner borrow money without interest from you than go to the bank and pay eight per cent. for it. You men are their bankers and don't know it. You could have your money in the bank instead of in their pockets--it would be drawing interest for you instead of drawing interest for them! The interest on the wages of you men is five hundred sixty dollars a month. No wonder they hold your pay for a month and put that five hundred and sixty dollars in their pockets. But those wages are yours as fast as you earn them. The interest on your money belongs to you. That five hundred and sixty dollars a month belongs in your pockets. But it will go into the bosses' pockets as long as you are willing to be robbed. You have rights, but they trample on them when you will not fight for your rights. Are you mice or men?"

When it was put that way they answered that they were men. The strike was "sold" to them before the meeting, without their having had a chance to state their side of it. I felt that this was wrong. There are lynch verdicts in this world as well as verdicts of justice. When men have a chance to make up their own minds their verdict is always just. But here a little group who knew what they wanted had stampeded the minds of the men, and a verdict won that way is like a mob verdict.

I decided to get up and speak, although it was really too late. It seemed to me like calling a doctor after the patient is dead. "Men,"

I said, "I'm a newcomer here and I never made a speech in my life. I wouldn't try to now, only I've been asked to by others--by somebody that's been here a long time. He thinks there ought to be a little more said before we ballot. It's a hot day and I don't want to keep you here if you don't want to listen to me. What I've got to say probably don't amount to much."

"Go ahead," somebody said.

"We've decided to strike, and I don't know how it will turn out. I've been out of work for several months and you fellows haven't, so I can tell you what it's like. The country is thronging with idle men. If we lose this strike we can roam all over the country before we find another job. I came all the way here from Alabama, where they drove a bunch of iron workers into the peonage camps, and I was glad to get out alive.

Conditions are awful bad in this country and I have been trying to study 'em. Money is scarcer now than it's ever been before. They tell us that the bosses are keeping our wages in their pockets. That's a mistake.

They haven't got anything in their pockets. They've mortgaged their homes and pledged everything they own. They're having a devil of a time to rake up the money every month to meet the pay-roll when it's due.

They aren't taking in the money as fast as they're paying it out. Their salesmen are on the road trying to sell tin plate, but the tinners are so hard up that few of them can buy.

"I believe we ought to get our pay every week, but how can we get it if the boss hasn't got it? We've got to look at this thing in the light of facts. The facts are that we have our jobs and are sure of our pay once a month. There are a million men who would like to have what we have.

Those men will swarm in and take our jobs. You can't stop them. A hungry man can't be stopped by the cry of 'scab.' You all know that there are so many union men now idle that we have to pa.s.s around our jobs to keep the men in this town from starving. When word goes out that we have struck, you'll see the workers swarm in here like locusts. They'll be glad to take their pay by the month. What's the use of a strike that hasn't got a chance to win? We joined the union to make our jobs secure and to get good pay. We're getting good pay. Our jobs are secure unless we lose them in this strike.

"I don't believe we've looked at both sides of the case. I don't believe the boys really want this strike. The demand for it originated outside our ranks. Who started it? Wasn't it started by fellows who want us to get our pay quicker so they can get it quicker? They're the ones that worked up this strike. They tell us that the bosses are robbing us because they hold our pay till the end of the month. They say we ought to have it in the bank. They know we wouldn't put it in the bank. You know we wouldn't put it in the bank. We don't want to put it in the bank, and you bet your boots they don't want us to put it in the bank.

They're liars when they say they're boosting for the banks. They're boosting for their own pockets.

"But we've really got our money in a bank--or what's good as a bank. The mill keeps our money for us just the way a bank would. No bank in town pays interest on checking accounts, you know that. Then why take our money out of the mill office and put it in a bank? It's just as safe in the mill office. And you've got the right to draw on it if you really need money in the middle of the month. Only in case of death or accident does a man need money in the middle of the month. And he can go to the pay window and get it when he needs it. The doctor doesn't send his bill till the end of the month. The landlord doesn't collect the rent till the end of the month. The grocer and butcher let you run a bill till the end of the month. Some of us are really better off getting our pay at the end of the month. For it's all there for us and we can pay our bills promptly and hold up our heads as men. If we didn't leave our money in the office until the end of the month, we might blow it in at a bar, and when the wife wanted money to pay the rent and food bill we would have to tell her we were broke and she would have to hang her head. When the landlord and butcher came for the money she would have to try to stand them off. Do we want to let the rent go unpaid until the landlord cusses us out? Is that what we are striking for? If the landlord and butcher are willing to wait till we draw our pay, we ought to be willing too.

Isn't it better to wait a month for pay than to wait a year? I'm right here to tell you that after this strike we'll wait for our pay until h.e.l.l freezes over and the devil goes skating.

"Let us make no mistake. We are calling this strike not of our own free will, but were shoved into it by a lot of slick talkers that are in business and are not workers. They have hoodwinked us. They have made fools of us. A speaker asked are we mice or men. I ask them are they rats or men. I want these rats to come out of their holes and stand upon this floor. Who was the first man that suggested this strike? I want to see the color of his hair. Stand up, if he's in the hall. If he isn't here, why isn't he?"

No one answered.

"If this strike was called by outsiders," I cried, "why don't the outsiders do the striking? Whose jobs will be lost in this strike--our jobs or the outsiders' jobs? If the man who started this strike has a job that won't be lost in the strike, then I claim that we have made a bad mistake. And if we're making a mistake, men, what are we going to do about it?"

I sat down, exhausted by the first attempt at public pleading I had ever made. Everything grew dark about me, and I knew that I had done my best and that I was through. I was quite young, and I went to pieces like an untrained runner who had overdone himself.

The men were talking to one another, and somebody moved that the meeting take a recess until after supper. It would give time to think it over and find out what the men really thought about the strike proposition.

CHAPTER x.x.xII. LOGIC WINS IN THE STRETCH

At seven o'clock we met again and several men made short talks opposing the strike. Each fellow, when he got up, seemed to have a lot of ideas, but when he tried to express them he grew confused, and after stammering a while he could only put forth the bare opinion, "I don't think we ought to strike." This meeting was quite different from the other one.

Here every man was thinking for himself but n.o.body could say anything.

In the previous meeting the speakers had talked pa.s.sionately, and the rest had been swept along with them as a unit. In other words, the first session had become group-minded instead of individual-minded. It is like the difference between a stampede and a deliberative body. The second meeting was calmly deliberative and it finally voted a reconsideration, and the strike resolution was overwhelmingly defeated.

If this were a novel, it would be fine to record in this chapter that the young orator who at the last moment turned the tide and saved the day became the hero of the union and was unanimously elected president.

That's the way these things go in fiction. And that is exactly what happened. In due time I found myself at the head of the Local, and nearly every man had voted for me. I started negotiations for more frequent paydays, and a few months later we were being paid on the first and fifteenth of the month. Life is indeed dramatic,--at least it has seemed so to me. Some men say that life has no meaning; that men are the playthings of blind forces that crush them, and there is no answer to the riddle. This is nonsense. I admit that we are in the grip of blind forces. But we are not blind. We can not change those forces. If we fight against them they will crush us. But by going with them, guiding our careers along their courses, they will bear us to the port we're steering for.

The mob spirit in man is one of those blind forces that so often lead to s.h.i.+pwreck. The mob-mind differs from the mind of reason. To tell them apart is like distinguis.h.i.+ng mushrooms from toadstools. They look alike, but one means health and the other is poison. Life has taught me the difference between a movement and a mob. A movement is guided by logic, law and personal responsibility. A mob is guided by pa.s.sion and denies responsibility.

I have seen meetings turned into mobs and mobs dissolved again into meetings. Swept by pa.s.sion we willed a strike. That strike would have been just, and, yet, it would have ruined us. We were like a mob in which every man forgets his own responsibility, The mob mind would have rushed us to our own ruin. My speech called for individuals to stand up.

That set each individual thinking: "If I stand up, that crazy guy will smash me." Each man became responsible again. The mob was gone, and all we had was individual men, each thinking for himself. That thinking then went on and each man reached a verdict based on logic, sense and duty.

The meeting could no longer speak with one voice. It couldn't talk at all. It stammered. The action showed that each mind stood apart, alone.

And yet the vote revealed that they were all together.

I have watched the long struggle of unionism in America and I know the law that has governed all its ups and downs. Wherever it was still a movement it has thrived; wherever it became a mob it fell. The one Big Union was a mob. No movement based on pa.s.sion finally wins; no movement based on reason finally fails. Why then say life is a riddle and man helpless?

When I became Secretary of Labor, one of the first letters I received was from Mrs. Eli Baldwin whose coal oil I burned shamelessly, studying far into the night. Mrs. Eli Baldwin wrote from Atlanta, Indiana, where she now lives: