The Iron Puddler Part 8

"Birmingham," I answered.

"What have you got to go on?"

I had some money in my belt, but I would need that for the boarding-house keeper in the Alabama iron town. So I drew something from my vest pocket and said:

"This is all I've got left."

The trainman examined it by the dim light at the window. His eye told him that it was a fine gold watch. "All right," he said as he pocketed it and went away. I never knew whether I cheated the brakeman or the brakeman cheated me. The watch wasn't worth as much as the ride, but the ride wasn't his to sell.

I had bought the watch in Cincinnati. A fake auction in a p.a.w.nshop attracted my attention as I walked along a street near the depot. The auctioneer was offering a "solid gold, Swiss movement, eighteen jeweled watch" to the highest bidder. "This watch belongs to my friend Joe Coupling," he said, "a brakeman on the B. & O. He was in a wreck and is now in the hospital. Everybody knows that one of the best things a railroader has is his watch. He only parts with it as a matter of life and death. Joe has got to sell his watch and somebody is going to get a bargain. This watch cost eighty-five dollars and you couldn't buy the like of it to-day for one hundred. How much am I offered?" Some one bid five dollars, and the bidding continued until it was up to twenty-five dollars. At that price the watch was declared sold, and I strolled on, thinking the matter over. I figured that the story of Joe the injured brakeman must be false. If he had an eighty-five-dollar watch he could borrow forty on it. Why should his "friend" have sold it outright for twenty-five? The fakery of it was plain to any one who stopped to think.

Who then would be fool enough to pay twenty-five dollars for a fake watch at a side auction? Not I. I was too wise. "How easy it is," I said to myself, "to solve a skin game."

The next day I happened to pa.s.s the place again and they were selling the same watch. I listened for the second time to the sad story of Joe the brakeman. He was still in the hospital and still willing to sacrifice his eighty-five-dollar gold watch to the highest bidder. Just for fun I started off the bidding at two dollars. The auctioneer at once knocked down the watch to me and took my money. The speed of it dazed me, and I stumbled along the street like a fool. What was the game? I held the glittering watch in my hand and gazed at it like a hypnotized bird. I came to another p.a.w.nshop and went in. "What will you give me on this watch?" I asked. The p.a.w.nbroker glanced at it and said he couldn't give me anything but advice.

"I can buy these watches for three dollars a dozen. They are made to be sold at auction. The case is not gold and the works won't run."

I had been caught in the game after all. The whole show had been put on for me. The men who did the bidding the first day were "with the show."

Their scheme was to get a real bid from me. When I failed to bite, they rung down the curtain and waited for the next come-on. The show was staged again for me the following day, and that time they got me. I had the "brakeman's watch" and he had the laugh on me. In the next wreck that Brakeman Joe got into I wished him the same luck Comrade Bannerman wished for the trainload of plutocrats. "If I should meet Joe now," I said, "I'd gladly give him back the timepiece that he prizes so." Let us hope that the brakeman I gave the watch to down in Alabama was Brakeman Joe.

There was much to think of in that auction incident. Experience will often give the lie to theory. My theory of the game was good enough for me. I acted on my theory, and they got my money. Perhaps the theory of Bannerman was wrong. He claimed he knew just how the capitalists were robbing labor. Suppose we backed his theory with some money and got stung? I was now theory shy and I have stayed away from theories ever since.

If you know the facts, no swindle can deceive you. I spend my life in getting facts. I now have seen enough to know that capitalism is not a swindle. If all hands labored hard and honestly the system would enrich us all. Some workers are dishonest and they gouge the employers. Some employers are dishonest and they gouge the workers. But whether employer or employee does the robbing, the public is the one that's robbed. And they are both members of the public. In making the world poorer they are rendering a sorry service to the world.

Dishonesty is the thing that does the trick. And it is not confined to any cla.s.s. It was not a capitalist but a slick wind worker who robbed me by the watch swindle. He had to swing his jaw for hours every day in order to steal a few dollars.

CHAPTER XXV. A DROP IN THE BUCKET OF BLOOD

In Birmingham I found a job in a rolling mill and established myself in a good boarding-house. In those days a "good boarding-house" in iron workers' language meant one where you got good board. One such was called "The Bucket of Blood." It got its name because a b.l.o.o.d.y fight occurred there almost every day. Any meal might end in a knock-down-and-drag-out. The ambulance called there almost as often as the baker's cart. But it was a "good" boarding-house. And I established myself there.

Good board consists in lots of greasy meat, strong coffee and slabs of sweet pie with gummy crusts, as thick as the palm of your hand. At the Bucket of Blood we had this delicious fare and plenty of it. When a man comes out of the mills he wants quant.i.ty as well as quality. We had both at the Bucket of Blood, and whenever a man got knocked out by a fist and was carted away in the ambulance, the next man on the waiting list was voted into our club to fill the vacancy. We had what is called "family reach" at the table (both in feeding and fighting). Each man cut off a big quivering hunk of roast pork or greasy beef and pa.s.sed the platter to his neighbor. The landlady stood behind the chairs and directed two colored girls to pour coffee into each cup as it was emptied.

These cups were not china cups with little handles such as you use in your home. They were big "ironstone" bowls the size of beer schooners, such as we used to see pictured at "Schmiddy's Place," with the legend, "Largest In The City, 5c." (How some of us would like to see those signs once more!) To prevent the handles from being broken off, these cups were made without handles. They were so thick that you could drop them on the floor and not damage the cups. When one man hit another on the head with this fragile china, the skull cracked before the teacup did.

The "family reach" which we developed in helping ourselves to food, was sometimes used in reaching across the table and felling a man with a blow on the chin. Kipling has described this hale and hearty type of strong man's home in Fulta Fisher's Boarding-House where sailors rested from the sea.

"A play of shadows on the wall, A knife thrust unawares And Hans came down (as cattle fall), Across the broken chairs."

But the boarders did not fight with knives at the Bucket of Blood.

Knifing is not an American game. We fought with fists, coffee cups and pieces of furniture, after the furniture went to pieces. We were not fighting to make the world safe for democracy, although we were the most democratic fellows in the world. We slept two to a bed, four to a room.

Not always the same four, for like soldiers on the firing line, some comrade was missing after every battle.

These fights started in friendly banter. One fellow would begin teasing another about his girl. The whole table would take it up, every man doing his best to insult and enrage the victim. It was all fun until some fellow's temper broke under the strain. Then a rush, and a few wild swings that missed. Then the thud of a blow that connected, and the fight was over. These men had arms with the strength of a horse's leg, and as soon as their "kick" struck solid flesh, the man hit was knocked out. He wouldn't be back for supper, but the rest of us would, without having our appet.i.tes disturbed in the least. I didn't like these methods, but if the boys did I was not going to complain.

My practice of studying at night offended my roommates. The lamplight got in their eyes. There were three fellows in the room besides myself.

For several nights they advised me to "cut out the higher education, douse that light and come to bed." Finally they spoke about it in the daytime. "Majority rules," they said, "and there's three of us against you. We can't sleep while you have that lamp burning. The light keeps us awake and it also makes the room so hot that the devil couldn't stand it. If you stay up reading to-night we'll give you the b.u.m's rush."

I was so interested in my books that I couldn't help lingering with them after the other fellows went to bed. Everything grew quiet. Suddenly six hands sized me and flung me out the window. It was a second-story window and I carried the screen with me. But as it was full of air holes it didn't make a very competent parachute. I landed with a thud on the roof of the woodshed, which, being old and soft with southern moss, caved in and carried me to the ground below--alive. The fellows up above threw my books out the window, aiming them at my head. They threw me my hat and coat and my valise, and I departed from the Bucket of Blood, and took up my abode at "The Greasy Spoon."

CHAPTER XXVI. A GRUB REFORMER PUTS US OUT OF GRUB

The Greasy Spoon isn't an appetizing name; not appetizing to men who live a sedentary life. But it was meant as a lure to men who live by muscular toil. It sounded good to us mill workers for, like Eskimos, we craved much fat in our diet. We were great muscular machines, and fat was the fuel for our engines. Muckraking was just beginning in those days, and a prying reformer came to live for a while at the Greasy Spoon. He told us that so much grease in our food would kill us. We were ignorant of dietetics; all we knew was that our stomachs cried for plenty of fat. The reformer said that our landlady fed us much fat meat because it was the cheapest food she could buy. Milk, eggs and fruits would cost more, and so this greedy cruel woman was lining her pocket at the expense of our lives.

The landlady was a kindly person, and she took the reformer's advice.

She banished the fat pork, and supplied the table with other food subst.i.tutes, but she was generous and gave us plenty of them. We ate this reformed food and found we were growing weaker every day at the puddling furnace. We got the blues and became sullen. Gradually all laughter ceased in that boarding-house. We even felt too low to fight.

At the end of two weeks there was one general cry: "Hog fat, and plenty of it!" Our engines had run out of fuel; and now we knew what we needed.

We were so crazy for bacon that if a hog had crossed our path we would have leaped on him like a lion and eaten him alive.

Fat came back to the table, and the Greasy Spoon again rang with laughter. How foolish that reformer was! He did no work himself and was a dyspeptic. He tried to force his diet upon us, and he made us as weak as he was. How many reformers there are who are trying to reshape the world to fit their own weakness. I never knew a theorist who wasn't a sick man.

To-day we understand that we can't run a motor-car after the gasoline is played out. The burning of the oil in the engine gives the power. The burning of fats in the muscles gives the laborer his power. Sugar and starches are the next best things to fat, and that's why we could eat the thick slabs of sweet pie. We relished it well and have burned it all up in our labor in the mills. We came out with that healthy sparkle that dyspeptics never know.

When we realized that the reformer didn't know what he was talking about, and that in his effort to help us he was hurting us, we saw he was our enemy, and we gave all of his ideas the "horse laugh." His theory that the boarding-house keepers were in a conspiracy to rob the workers by feeding them pork instead of pineapples turned out to be much like all the "capitalist conspiracies" in Comrade Bannerman's pamphlets.

I am glad I have lived in a world of facts, and that I went therefrom to the world of books. For I have found there is much falsehood taught in books. But life won't tell a fellow any lies.

A man who knows only books may believe that by writing a new prescription he can cure the world of what ails it. A man who knows life knows that the world is not sick. Give it plenty of food and a chance to work and it will have perfect digestion.

CHAPTER XXVII. THE PIE EATER'S PARADISE

The Greasy Spoon was all right. It was a peaceful place. The landlady was Irish, and her motto was: "If there's any fighting to be done here I'll do it myself." On the sideboard she kept a carving knife as big as a cavalry saber. Whenever two men started a row, she grabbed this carving knife and with a scream like a panther she lit into them.

"Stop yer fightin' before I hack your hands off!"

The men were in deadly fear of her because they knew she meant business.

The sight of that swinging knife quelled every riot before it got started. We fellows were like children in that we only thought of one thing at a time. And when we saw the landlady's carving knife we forgot whatever else was on our minds. This woman was a real peacemaker. She not only wanted peace, she knew how to get it. Such things afford us lessons that are useful all our lives. This woman had learned by sad experience that healthy men will quarrel and thump each other; that these fights put men in the hospital, after breaking her dishes and splattering her tablecloths with blood. Hating bloodshed, she prevented it by being ever ready to shed blood herself. She stood for the moral law, but she stood armed and ready.

Impractical men have told me that right will always triumph of itself; it needs no fighters to support it. The man who believes that is ignorant, and such ignorance is dangerous. Right is always trampled down when no fighter upholds it. But men will fight for right who will not fight for wrong. And so right conquers wrong because right has the most defenders. Let no man s.h.i.+rk the battle because he thinks he isn't needed.

The reason a woman with a carving knife was strong enough to put a stop to fighting in the Greasy Spoon was this: she had behind her every man except the two who were fighting. Had either of those men struck down the woman, then twenty other men, outraged by such a deed, would then and there have swarmed upon the two and crushed them. The woman stood for right and she always triumphed because she had (and these two knew she had) the biggest bunch of fighters on her side.

This is what peace means, an equilibrium between forces. It is the natural law,--G.o.d's way of keeping peace. And any plan for World Peace that is builded not upon this law is nothing. Justice must stand with an upraised sword. When two states quarrel she must admonish them, and let them know that should they overthrow her, all good nations would rush in and crush them. The same law that keeps peace in a rowdy boarding-house will keep the peace of the world. For what is this world but a big wide boarding-house, and all the nations rough and greedy grabbers at the table?

I left the Greasy Spoon and went to the "Pie Boarding-House." The Greasy Spoon had peace, but peace is not enough. After peace comes prosperity.

The Pie House represented prosperity. For the woman who ran it knew how to make more pies than the fellows ever heard of. You see, we were all from the British Isles where they have pudding. The pie is an American inst.i.tution. n.o.body knows how to make pies but an American housewife.

And lucky that she does, for men can not thrive in America without pie. I do not mean the standardized, tasteless things made in great pie factories. I refer to the personally conducted pies that women used to make. The pioneer wives of America learned to make a pie out of every fruit that grows, including lemons, and from many vegetables, including squash and sweet potatoes, as well as from vinegar and milk and eggs and flour. Fed on these good pies the pioneers--is there any significance in the first syllable of the word--hewed down the woods and laid the continent under the plow. Some men got killed and their widows started boarding-houses. Here we workers fed on proper pie, and we soon changed this wooden land into a land of iron. Now the pie is pa.s.sing out and we are feeding on French pastry. Is our downfall at hand?

Life in the Pie Boarding-House was a never-ending delight. You never knew when you sat down at the table what kind of pie would be dealt you.

Some of the fellows had been there half a year and swore that they had seen fifty-seven varieties and were expecting new ones at any meal. The crowd here was a selected crowd. It was made up of the pie connoisseurs of mill-town. Word was quietly pa.s.sed out among the wisest fellows to move to this boarding-house and get a liberal education in pie. So it was a selected and well-behaved crowd. They didn't want to start any rumpus and thus lose their places at this attractive table.

And that is one way that virtue is its own reward. Only the well-behaved fellows were tipped off to the pie bonanza. From this I learned that the better manners you have, the better fare you will get in this world.