CHAPTER XX
The jute mills failed of its agreement to increase my pay to a
dollar and a quarter a day, and I, a free-born American boy whose
direct ancestors had fought in all the wars from the old pre-
Revolutionary Indian wars down, exercised my sovereign right of
free contract by quitting the job.
I was still resolved to settle down, and I looked about me. One
thing was clear. Unskilled labour didn't pay. I must learn a
trade, and I decided on electricity. The need for electricians
was constantly growing. But how to become an electrician? I
hadn't the money to go to a technical school or university;
besides, I didn't think much of schools. I was a practical man in
a practical world. Also, I still believed in the old myths which
were the heritage of the American boy when I was a boy.
A canal boy could become a President. Any boy who took employment
with any firm could, by thrift, energy, and sobriety, learn the
business and rise from position to position until he was taken in
as a junior partner. After that the senior partnership was only a
matter of time. Very often--so ran the myth--the boy, by reason
of his steadiness and application, married his employ's daughter.
By this time I had been encouraged to such faith in myself in the
matter of girls that I was quite certain I would marry my
employer's daughter. There wasn't a doubt of it. All the little
boys in the myths did it as soon as they were old enough.
So I bade farewell for ever to the adventure-path, and went out to
the power plant of one of our Oakland street railways. I saw the
superintendent himself, in a private office so fine that it almost
stunned me. But I talked straight up. I told him I wanted to
become a practical electrician, that I was unafraid of work, that
I was used to hard work, and that all he had to do was look at me
to see I was fit and strong. I told him that I wanted to begin
right at the bottom and work up, that I wanted to devote my life
to this one occupation and this one employment.
The superintendent beamed as he listened. He told me that I was
the right stuff for success, and that he believed in encouraging
American youth that wanted to rise. Why, employers were always on
the lookout for young fellows like me, and alas, they found them
all too rarely. My ambition was fine and worthy, and he would see
to it that I got my chance. (And as I listened with swelling
heart, I wondered if it was his daughter I was to marry.)
"Before you can go out on the road and learn the more complicated
and higher details of the profession," he said, "you will, of
course, have to work in the car-house with the men who install and
repair the motors. (By this time I was sure that it was his
daughter, and I was wondering how much stock he might own in the
company.)
"But," he said, "as you yourself so plainly see, you couldn't
expect to begin as a helper to the car-house electricians. That
will come when you have worked up to it. You will really begin at
the bottom. In the car-house your first employment will be
sweeping up, washing the windows, keeping things clean. And after
you have shown yourself satisfactory at that, then you may become
a helper to the car-house electricians."
I didn't see how sweeping and scrubbing a building was any
preparation for the trade of electrician; but I did know that in
the books all the boys started with the most menial tasks and by
making good ultimately won to the ownership of the whole concern.
"When shall I come to work?" I asked, eager to launch on this
dazzling career.
"But," said the superintendent, "as you and I have already agreed,
you must begin at the bottom. Not immediately can you in any
capacity enter the car-house. Before that you must pass through
the engine-room as an oiler."
My heart went down slightly and for the moment as I saw the road
lengthen between his daughter and me; then it rose again. I would
be a better electrician with knowledge of steam engines. As an
oiler in the great engine-room I was confident that few things
concerning steam would escape me. Heavens! My career shone more
dazzling than ever.
"When shall I come to work?" I asked gratefully.
"But," said the superintendent, "you could not expect to enter
immediately into the engine-room. There must be preparation for
that. And through the fire-room, of course. Come, you see the
matter clearly, I know. And you will see that even the mere
handling of coal is a scientific matter and not to be sneered at.
Do you know that we weigh every pound of coal we burn? Thus, we
learn the value of the coal we buy; we know to a tee the last
penny of cost of every item of production, and we learn which
firemen are the most wasteful, which firemen, out of stupidity or
carelessness, get the least out of the coal they fire." The
superintendent beamed again. "You see how very important the
little matter of coal is, and by as much as you learn of this
little matter you will become that much better a workman--more
valuable to us, more valuable to yourself. Now, are you prepared
to begin?"
"Any time," I said valiantly. "The sooner the better."
"Very well," he answered. "You will come to-morrow morning at
seven o'clock."
I was taken out and shown my duties. Also, I was told the terms
of my employment--a ten-hour day, every day in the month including
Sundays and holidays, with one day off each month, with a salary
of thirty dollars a month. It wasn't exciting. Years before, at
the cannery, I had earned a dollar a day for a ten-hour day. I
consoled myself with the thought that the reason my earning
capacity had not increased with my years and strength was because
I had remained an unskilled labourer. But it was different now.
I was beginning to work for skill, for a trade, for career and
fortune, and the superintendent's daughter.
And I was beginning in the right way--right at the beginning.
That was the thing. I was passing coal to the firemen, who
shovelled it into the furnaces, where its energy was transformed
into steam, which, in the engine-room, was transformed into the
electricity with which the electricians worked. This passing coal
was surely the very beginning-unless the superintendent should
take it into his head to send me to work in the mines from which
the coal came in order to get a completer understanding of the
genesis of electricity for street railways.
Work! I, who had worked with men, found that I didn't know the
first thing about real work. A ten-hour day! I had to pass coal
for the day and night shifts, and, despite working through the
noon-hour, I never finished my task before eight at night. I was
working a twelve-to thirteen-hour day, and I wasn't being paid
overtime as in the cannery.
I might as well give the secret away right here. I was doing the
work of two men. Before me, one mature able-bodied labourer had
done the day shift and another equally mature able-bodied labourer
had done the night-shift. They had received forty dollars a month
each. The superintendent, bent on an economical administration,
had persuaded me to do the work of both men for thirty dollars a
month. I thought he was making an electrician of me. In truth
and fact, he was saving fifty dollars a month operating expenses
to the company.
But I didn't know I was displacing two men. Nobody told me. On
the contrary, the superintendent warned everybody not to tell me.
How valiantly I went at it that first day. I worked at top speed,
filling the iron wheelbarrow with coal, running it on the scales
and weighing the load, then trundling it into the fire-room and
dumping it on the plates before the fires.
Work! I did more than the two men whom I had displaced. They had
merely wheeled in the coal and dumped it on the plates. But while
I did this for the day coal, the night coal I had to pile against
the wall of the fire-room. Now the fire-room was small. It had
been planned for a night coal-passer. So I had to pile the night
coal higher and higher, buttressing up the heap with stout planks.
Toward the top of the heap I had to handle the coal a second time,
tossing it up with a shovel.
I dripped with sweat, but I never ceased from my stride, though I
could feel exhaustion coming on. By ten o'clock in the morning,
so much of my body's energy had I consumed, I felt hungry and
snatched a thick double-slice of bread and butter from my dinner
pail. This I devoured, standing, grimed with coal-dust, my knees
trembling under me. By eleven o'clock, in this fashion I had
consumed my whole lunch. But what of it? I realised that it would
enable me to continue working through the noon hour. And I worked
all the afternoon. Darkness came on, and I worked under the
electric lights. The day fireman went off and the night fireman
came on. I plugged away.
At half-past eight, famished, tottering, I washed up, changed my
clothes, and dragged my weary body to the car. It was three miles
to where I lived, and I had received a pass with the stipulation
that I could sit down as long as there were no paying passengers
in need of a seat. As I sank into a corner outside seat I prayed
that no passenger might require my seat. But the car filled up,
and, half-way in, a woman came on board, and there was no seat for
her. I started to get up, and to my astonishment found that I
could not. With the chill wind blowing on me, my spent body had
stiffened into the seat. It took me the rest of the run in to
unkink my complaining joints and muscles and get into a standing
position on the lower step. And when the car stopped at my corner
I nearly fell to the ground when I stepped off.
I hobbled two blocks to the house and limped into the kitchen.
While my mother started to cook, I plunged into bread and butter;
but before my appetite was appeased, or the steak fried, I was
sound asleep. In vain my mother strove to shake me awake enough
to eat the meat. Failing in this, with the assistance of my
father she managed to get me to my room, where I collapsed dead
asleep on the bed. They undressed me and covered me up. In the
morning came the agony of being awakened. I was terribly sore,
and, worst of all, my wrists were swelling. But I made up for my
lost supper, eating an enormous breakfast, and when I hobbled to
catch my car I carried a lunch twice as big as the one the day
before.
Work! Let any youth just turned eighteen try to out-shovel two
man-grown coal-shovellers. Work! Long before midday I had eaten
the last scrap of my huge lunch. But I was resolved to show them
what a husky young fellow determined to rise could do. The worst
of it was that my wrists were swelling and going back on me.
There are few who do not know the pain of walking on a sprained
ankle. Then imagine the pain of shovelling coal and trundling a
loaded wheelbarrow with two sprained wrists.
Work! More than once I sank down on the coal where no one could
see me, and cried with rage, and mortification, and exhaustion,
and despair. That second day was my hardest, and all that enabled
me to survive it and get in the last of the night coal at the end
of thirteen hours was the day fireman, who bound both my wrists
with broad leather straps. So tightly were they buckled that they
were like slightly flexible plaster casts. They took the stresses
and pressures which hitherto had been borne by my wrists, and they
were so tight that there was no room for the inflammation to rise
in the sprains.
And in this fashion I continued to learn to be an electrician.
Night after night I limped home, fell asleep before I could eat my
supper, and was helped into bed and undressed. Morning after
morning, always with huger lunches in my dinner pail, I limped out
of the house on my way to work.
I no longer read my library books. I made no dates with the
girls. I was a proper work beast. I worked, and ate, and slept,
while my mind slept all the time. The whole thing was a
nightmare. I worked every day, including Sunday, and I looked far
ahead to my one day off at the end of a month, resolved to lie
abed all that day and just sleep and rest up.
The strangest part of this experience was that I never took a
drink nor thought of taking a drink. Yet I knew that men under
hard pressure almost invariably drank. I had seen them do it, and
in the past had often done it myself. But so sheerly non-
alcoholic was I that it never entered my mind that a drink might
be good for me. I instance this to show how entirely lacking from
my make-up was any predisposition toward alcohol. And the point
of this instance is that later on, after more years had passed,
contact with John Barleycorn at last did induce in me the
alcoholic desire.
I had often noticed the day fireman staring at me in a curious
way. At last, one day, he spoke. He began by swearing me to
secrecy. He had been warned by the superintendent not to tell me,
and in telling me he was risking his job. He told me of the day
coal-passer and the night coal-passer, and of the wages they had
received. I was doing for thirty dollars a month what they had
received eighty dollars for doing. He would have told me sooner,
the fireman said, had he not been so certain that I would break
down under the work and quit. As it was, I was killing myself,
and all to no good purpose. I was merely cheapening the price of
labour, he argued, and keeping two men out of a job.
Being an American boy, and a proud American boy, I did not
immediately quit. This was foolish of me, I know; but I resolved
to continue the work long enough to prove to the superintendent
that I could do it without breaking down. Then I would quit, and
he would realise what a fine young fellow he had lost.
All of which I faithfully and foolishly did. I worked on until
the time came when I got in the last of the night coal by six
o'clock. Then I quit the job of learning electricity by doing
more than two men's work for a boy's wages, went home, and
proceeded to sleep the clock around.
Fortunately, I had not stayed by the job long enough to injure
myself--though I was compelled to wear straps on my wrists for a
year afterward. But the effect of this work orgy in which I had
indulged was to sicken me with work. I just wouldn't work. The
thought of work was repulsive. I didn't care if I never settled
down. Learning a trade could go hang. It was a whole lot better
to royster and frolic over the world in the way I had previously
done. So I headed out on the adventure-path again, starting to
tramp East by beating my way on the railroads.
