American Adventures Part 36

Pursuing this course, we were successful. All that any official of the company required of us was that we be open-minded. The position of the company, when we came to understand it, was simply that it did not wish to facilitate the work of men who came down with pencils, paper, and preconceived "views," deliberately to play the great American game of "swat the corporation."

Surely there is not in the world an industry which, for sheer pictorial magnificence, rivals the modern manufacturing of steel. In the first place, the scale of everything is inexpressibly stupendous. To speak of a row of six blast furnaces, with mouths a hundred feet above the ground, and chimneys rising perhaps another hundred feet above these mouths, is not, perhaps, impressive, but to look at such a row of furnaces, to see their fodder of ore, dolomite, and c.o.ke brought in by train loads; to see it fed to them by the "skip"; to hear them roar continually for more; to feel the savage heat generated within their bodies; to be told in shouts, above the din, something of what is going on inside these vast, voracious, savage monsters, and to see them dripping their white-hot blood when they are picked by a long steel bar in the hands of an atom of a man--this is to witness an almost terrifying allegory of mankind's achievement.

The gas generated by blast furnaces is used in part in the hot-blast stoves--gigantic tanks from which hot air, at very high pressure, is admitted to the furnaces themselves, and is also used to develop steam for the blowing engines and other auxiliaries. In the furnaces the molten iron, because of its greater specific gravity, settles to the bottom, while the slag floats to the top. The slag, by the way, is not, as I had supposed, altogether worthless, but is used for railroad ballast and in the manufacture of cement.

The molten iron drawn from the blast furnaces runs in glittering rivulets (which, at a distance of twenty or thirty feet, burn the face and the eyes), into ladle cars which are like a string of devils' soup bowls, mounted on railroad trucks ready to be hauled away by a locomotive and served at a banquet in h.e.l.l.

That is not what happens to them, however. The locomotive takes them to another part of the plant, and their contents, still molten, is poured into the mixers. These are gigantic caldrons as high as houses, which stand in rows in an open-sided steel shed, and the chief purpose of them is to keep the "soup" hot until it is required for the converters--when it is again poured off into ladle cars and drawn away.

The converters are in still another part of the grounds. They are huge, pear-shaped retorts, resembling in their action those teakettles which hang on stands and are poured by being tilted. But a million teakettles could be lost in one converter, and the boiling water from a million teakettles, poured into a converter, would be as one single drop of ice water let fall into a red-hot stove.

In the converters the metalloids--silicon, manganese, and carbon--are burned out of the iron under a flaming heat which, by means of high air pressure, is brought to a temperature of about 3400 degrees. It is the blowing of these converters, and the occasional pouring of them, which throws the Vesuvian glow upon the skies of Birmingham at night. The heat they give off is beyond description. Several hundred feet away you feel it smiting viciously upon your face, and the concrete flooring of the huge shed in which they stand is so hot as to burn your feet through the soles of your shoes.

The most elaborate display of fireworks ever devised by Mr. Pain would be but a poor thing compared with the spectacle presented when a converter is poured. The whole world glows with golden heat, and is filled with an explosion of brilliant sparks, and as the molten metal pa.s.ses out into the sunlight that light is by contrast so feeble that it seems almost to cast a shadow over the white-hot vats of iron.

Next come the tilting open-hearth furnaces, where the iron is subjected to the action of lime at a very high temperature. This removes the phosphorus and leaves a bath of commercially pure iron which is then "teemed" into a hundred-ton ladle, wherein it is treated in such a way as to give it the properties required in the finished steel. What these properties may be, depends, of course, upon the purpose to which the steel is to be put. Rails, for example, must, above all, resist abrasion, and consequently have a higher carbon content than, say, reinforcing bars for concrete work. To obtain various qualities in steel are added carbon, ferro-manganese, or ferro-silicon in proportions differing according to requirements.

In the next process steel ingots are made. I lost track of the exact detail of this, but I remember seeing the ingots riding about in their own steel cars, turning to an orange color as they cooled, and I remember seeing them pounded by a hammer that stood up in the air like an elevated railroad station, and I know that pretty soon they got into the blooming mill and were rolled out into "blooms," after which they were handled by a huge contrivance like a thumb and forefinger of steel which--though the blooms weigh five tons apiece--picked them up much as you might pick up a stick of red candy.

Still orange-hot, the blooms find their way to the rolling mill, where they go das.h.i.+ng back and forth upon rollers and between rollers--the latter working in pairs like the rollers of large wringers, squeezing the blooms, in their successive pa.s.sages, to greater length and greater thinness, until at last they take the form of long, red, glowing rails; after which they are sawed off, to the accompaniment of a spray of white sparks, into rail lengths, and run outside to cool. And I may add that, while there is more brilliant heat to be seen in many other departments of the plant, there is no department in which the color is more beautiful than in the piles of rails on the cooling beds--some of them still red as they come from the rollers, others shading off to rose and pink, and finally to their normal cold steel-gray.

Presently along comes a great electromagnet; from somewhere in the sky it drops down and touches the rails; when it rises bunches of them rise with it, and, after sailing through the air, are gently deposited upon flat cars. Here, even after the current is shut off, some of them may try to stick to the magnet, as though fearing to go forth into the world. If so, it gives them a little shake, whereupon they let go, and it travels back to get more rails and load them on the cars.

Iron ore, coal, and limestone, the three chief materials used in the making of steel, are all found in the hills in the immediate vicinity of Birmingham. I am told that there is no other place in the world where the three exist so close together. That is an impressive fact, but one grows so accustomed to impressive facts, while pa.s.sing through this plant, that one ceases to be impressed, becoming merely dazed.

If I were asked to mention one especially striking item out of all that welter, I should think of many things--things having to do with vastness, with gigantic movements and mutations, with Niagara-like noises, with great bursts of flame suggesting fallen fragments from the sun itself--but above all I think that I should speak of the apparent absence of men.

There were some four thousand men in the plant, I believe, at the time we were there, but excepting when a s.h.i.+ft changed, and a great army pa.s.sed out through the gates, we never saw a crowd; indeed I hardly think we saw a group of any size. Here and there two or three men would be doing something--something which, probably, we did not understand; in the window of a locomotive cab, or that of a traveling crane, we would see a man; we kept pa.s.sing men as we went along; and sometimes as we looked from a high perch over the interior of one of the great sheds, we would be vaguely conscious of men scattered about the place. But they were very small and gray and inconspicuous dots upon the surface of great things going on--going on, seemingly by themselves, with a sort of mad, mechanical, majestic, molten sweep.

At this time, when the great efficient organization started by Bismarck is being devoted entirely to destruction, it is interesting to recall that the idea of industrial welfare work originated in Germany during the period of Bismarckian reorganization. So, paradoxically, the very forces which, on one hand, were building towards the new records for the extinction of life established in the present war, were, upon the other hand, developing plans for the safeguarding of life and for making it worth living--plans which have enormously affected the industrial existence of the civilized world.

The broad theory of industrial welfare work was brought to this country by engineers, chemists, and workmen who had resided in Germany; but, where this work developed over there along cooperative lines, it has remained for Great Britain and the United States to work it out in a more individualistic way.

In this country welfare work has come as a logical part of the general industrial development. The first step in this development was the a.s.sembling of small, weak industrial units into large, powerful, effective units--that is to say, the formation of great corporations and trusts. The second step was the coordination of these great industrial alliances for "efficiency." The third step was the achievement of material success.

When our great corporations were in their formative period, effort was concentrated on making them successful, but with success came thoughts of other things. It began to be seen, for example, that whereas the old small employer of labor came into personal contact with his handful of workmen, and could himself supervise their welfare, some plan must now be devised for doing this work in a large, corporate way.

Thus welfare work developed in the United States, and it is interesting to observe, now, that many of our great corporations are finding time and funds to expend upon purely aesthetic improvements, and that, in the construction of the most modern American industrial plants, architects, landscape gardeners, and engineering men work in cooperation, so that, instead of being lopsided, the developments are harmonious and oftentimes beautiful.

On work calculated to prevent accidents in mines, not only the Tennessee Coal, Iron, & Railroad Company, but all the leading mining companies in the State join for conference. As a result the number of accidents steadily decreases. Nine years ago one man was killed, on an average, for every 100,000 tons of iron ore raised. The record at the time of our visit was one man to 450,000 tons. In the coal mines, where nine years ago one man was killed for every 75,000 tons raised, the recent record is one man for 650,000 tons.

In 1914, 126 men were killed in the coal mines of Alabama. In 1915, though the tonnage was about the same, this number was reduced to 63, which was a record. All this is the result of safety work.

"Aside from humane considerations," said an official of the Tennessee Company, "this concern realizes that the man is the most valuable machine it has."

This gentleman was one of the ablest men we met in the South. While taking us through the company's plant, and explaining to us the various operations, he was interesting, but the real enthusiasm of the man did not crop out until he took us to the company's villages and showed us what was being done for the benefit of operatives and their families, and, of course, for the benefit of the company as well--for he was a corporation official of the modern school, and he knew that by benefiting its men a corporation necessarily benefits itself.

The story of the Tennessee Company's work among its employees, which began about five years ago, some time after the company was taken over by the United States Steel Corporation, is too great to be more than touched on here. In the department of health thirty-six doctors, sixteen nurses, and a squad of sanitary inspectors are employed. The department of social science covers education, welfare, and horticulture. To me the work of these departments was a revelation. Each camp has a first-rate hospital, each has its schools and guildhall, and everything is run as only an efficiently managed corporation can run things.

The Docena Village is less like one's idea of a coal "camp" than of a pretty suburban development, or a military post, with officers' houses built around a parade. The grounds are well kept; there is a tennis court with vine-clad trellises about it, a fine playground for children, pretty brick walks, with splendid trees to shade them; and there is a brick schoolhouse which is a better building, better equipped, better lighted, and, above all, better ventilated than the schools I attended in my boyhood.

Near the school is the guildhall, which is used for religious services, meetings, and entertainments. And best of all, perhaps, the houses are not the rows of sad, unpainted cabins one remembers having seen in western mining camps, but are pretty cottages, touched with a slight architectural variety, and with little variations of color, so that each home has individuality.

The schools are financed partly by the company and partly by the parents of the three thousand scholars. The teachers are, for the most part, graduates of leading colleges--Smith, Wellesley, Va.s.sar, the University of Chicago, the University of Wisconsin--and educational work of great variety is carried on, including instruction in English for foreign employees, and domestic-science cla.s.ses for women--separate establishments, of course, for whites and blacks, for the color line is drawn in southern mining camps as elsewhere. Negroes are, however, better provided for by the corporation than by most southern munic.i.p.alities, both in the way of living conditions and of education.

On the whole, I believe that a child who grows up in the Docena Village, and is educated there, has actually a better chance than one who grows up in most Alabama towns, or, for the matter of that, in towns in any other State which has not compulsory education. Moreover, I doubt that there is in all Alabama another kindergarten as truly charming as the one we visited at Docena, or that there is, in the State, a schoolhouse of the same size which is as perfect as the one we saw in that camp.

In another camp old houses have been remodeled, giving practical demonstration of what can be done in the way of making a hovel into a pretty home by the intelligent use of a little lattice-work, a little paint, and a few vines and flowers. Old boarding-houses in this neighborhood have been converted into community houses, with entertainment halls, shower baths, and other conveniences for the men and their families. Thus tests are being made to discover whether it is possible to encourage among certain cla.s.ses of foreign laborers, whose habits of life have not, to put it mildly, been of the tidiest, some appreciation of the standard of civilization represented by clean, pretty cottages, pleasant meeting houses, and shower baths.

I have not told about the billiard tables, bowling alleys, and game rooms of the clubs, nor about the model rooms fitted up to show housewives how they may make their homes attractive at but slight expense, nor about the annual medical examination of the children, nor about the company dentists who charge their patients only for the cost of gold actually used, nor about the fine company store at Edgewater Mine, nor about the excellent meats supplied by the company butchers, nor about the low prices of supplies, nor about the effort to discourage employees from buying cheap furniture at high prices on the installment plan, nor, above all, about the clean, decent, happy look of the families we chanced to see.

Even had I the s.p.a.ce in which to tell of these things, it is perhaps wiser that I refrain from doing so. For I am aware that in speaking anything but ill of a great corporation I have scandalously outraged precedent. Nor does it argue well for my powers of observation, or those of my companion. I feel confident that where our limited visions perceived only prosperity and contentment, certain of my brother writers, and his brother ill.u.s.trators would, in our places, have rent the thin, vaporish veil of apparent corporate kindliness, and found such foul shame, such hideous malignity, such grasping, grubby greed, such despicable soul-destroying despotism, as to shock the simple nature of a chief of the old-time Russian Secret Police.

It shames me to think what my friend Lincoln Steffens could have done had he but enjoyed my opportunities. It shames me to think what John Reed or other gifted writers for "The Ma.s.ses" could have done. And I should think that Wallace Morgan would writhe with shame. For, where Art Young would have seen heavy-jowled, pig-eyed Capital, in a silk hat and a checked suit, whirling a cruel knout over the broad and n.o.ble (but bent and shuddering) back of Labor--where Boardman Robinson would have found a mother, her white, drawn face half hidden by the shoddy shawl of black, to which cling the hands of her emaciated brood--what has Wallace Morgan seen?

A steel-plant in operation. A company steel-plant! A _corporation_ steel-plant! A TRUST steel-plant.

Yet never so much as a starving cat or a pile of garbage in the foreground!

CHAPTER XL

THE ROAD TO ARCADY

Before we saw the train which was to take us from Birmingham to Columbus, Mississippi, we began to sense its quality. When we attempted to purchase parlor car seats of the ticket agent at the Union Station and were informed by him that our train carried no parlor car, it seemed to us that his manner was touched with cynicism, and this impression was confirmed by his reply to our further timid inquiry as to a dining car:

"Where do you gentlemen reckon you're a-goin' to, anyhow?"

Presently we pa.s.sed through the gate and better understood the nature of the ticket agent's thoughts. The train consisted of several untidy day coaches, the first a Jim Crow car, the others for white people. The negro car was already so full that many of its occupants had to stand in the aisle, but this did not seem to trouble them, for all were gabbling happily, and the impression one got, in glancing through the door, was of many sets of handsome white teeth displayed in as many dark grinning faces. There are innumerable things for which we cannot envy the negro, but neither his teeth nor his good nature are among them.

It was Sat.u.r.day afternoon, and the two or three other cars, though not overcrowded, were well filled with people from the neighboring mining towns who were going home after having spent the morning shopping in the city. Almost all our fellow pa.s.sengers carried packages, many had infants with them, and we were struck with the fact that the complexions of these people suggested a diet of pie--fried pie, if there be such a thing--that a peculiarly high percentage of them suffered from diseases of the eye, and that the pervading smell of the car in which we sat was of oranges, bananas, babies, and overheated adults.

A young mother in the seat in front of us had with her three small children, the youngest an infant in arms. She was feeding a banana to the second child, who looked about two years old. Behind us a clean, capable-looking woman talked in a broad Scottish dialect with another housewife whose jargon was that of the mountaineers.

The region through which the train presently began to wind its way was green and hilly, and there were many stops at villages, all of them mining camps apparently, made up of shabby little cabins scattered helter-skelter upon the hillsides. In many of the cabin doorways mothers lingered with their broods watching the train, and on all the station platforms stood crowds of idlers--men, women, and children, negro and white--many of the men stamped, by their coal-begrimed faces, their stained overalls, and the lamps above the visors of their caps, as mine workers.

After a time my companion and I moved to the exceedingly dirty smoking room at the end of the car, where we sat and listened to the homely conversation of a group of men who seemed not only to know one another, but to know the same people in towns along the line. Between stations they gossiped, smoked, chewed, spat, and swore together like so many New England crossroad sages, but when the train stopped they gave encouraging attention to the droll performances of one of their number, a s.h.a.ggy, unshaven, rawboned man, of middle age, gray-haired and collarless, who sat near the window and uttered convincing imitations of the sounds made by chickens, roosters, pigs, goats, and crows.

The platform crowds, the negroes in particular, were mystified and lured by this animal chorus coming from a pa.s.senger coach. On hearing it they would first gaze in astonishment at the car, then edge up to the windows and doors, and peer in with eyes solemn, round, and wondering, only to be more amazed than ever by the discovery that the car housed neither bird nor beast. This bucolic comedy was repeated at every station until we reached Wyatt, Alabama, where our gifted fellow traveler arose, pointed his collar b.u.t.ton toward the door, bade us farewell, and departed, saying that he was going to "walk over to Democrat."

Presently the conductor dropped in for a chat, in the course of which he informed the a.s.sembly that a certain old lady in one of the towns along the way had died the night before, whereupon our companions of the smoking room, all of whom seemed to have known the old lady well, held a protracted discussion of her history and traits.