runner, it froze up in the ladle. The entire heat was lost. It was an angry crew of men that worked with sledges, bars, and picks, cleaning up the mess. I was sorry the boss could

now know how much that bunch of men loved him.

I saw him approaching Pete; I saw him shaking his clenched fist; I heard an ugly word; the lie was passed, a blow was struck, and the long-expected fight was on.

Out on the smooth iron floor, in the glare of the furnace flames some one had hoisted the three doors to the top the two enemies fought it out. They were giants in build, both of them muscled like gladiators. It was a brutal, savage exhibition. Finally, the boss reeled, dropped to his knees, swayed back and forth, and went down.

Pete, having floored the boss, took a bath, changed his clothes, shook hands all round, and came seeking me. "Well, buddy, I'm off," he chuckled, peeping at me from a chink in his swollen face. "Like as not I'll be shuckin' punkins up in Minnesota this time next week. Oh, no use my tryin' to stick it out here you can't stay here, you know when you've had a go with the boss. So long!"

I did not go to work the next day, nor the next. I was deliberating whether I would go back at all, the morning of the third day, when Mike came looking for me. "Pete wants

you to come to work," he announced.

"Pete?" I said, wondering what he meant. "You said it! Pete's boss now!"

"No!"

"Yes! Ch, the super, he isn't blind! He knew what was goin' on, he did, and it didn't take him long to fix him when he'd heard the peticlars. I'll tell Pete you'll be comin' along soon." And Mike departed.

I went back and resumed my old position on Number Three, with John Yakabowski, a Pole. Yakabowski was an exceptionally able furnace-man and an agreeable fellow workman. There was great rejoicing all over the plant because our old boss was out, and there was general satisfaction over

Pete's appointment to his place. This feeling among the men was soon reflected in the output of the furnaces our tonnage showed a steady increase.

Pete was nervous and ill at ease for a few weeks. He was afraid he would make some mistake that would show him to be unworthy of the trust the superintendent had placed in him.

"No education - that's where I'm weak!" he said to me in one of our confidential chats. "Can't write, can't figger, can't talk don't know nothin'! It's embarrassin'! The super tells me to use two thousand of manganese on a hundred-. and-fifty-thousand-pound charge. That's easy- I just tell a hunky to wheel in two thousand. But s'pose that lunk-head out in them scales goes wrong, and charges in a hundred and sixty-five thousand pounds and doesn't tell me until ten minutes before we're ready to tap - how am I goin' to figger out how much more manganese to put in? Or when the chief clerk writes me a nice letter, requestin' a statement showin' how many of my men have more than ten children, how many of 'em can read the Declaration of Independence, and how many of 'em eat oatmeal for breakfast, why, I'm up against it, I tell you! No education! I reckon I ought never to've left the farm. Hey, buddy?"

I understood Pete's gentle hint, and I took care of his clerical work, writing what few letters he had to send out, making up his statements, doing his calculating, and so forth.

Six months passed. Pete had "made good." The management was highly pleased with him as a melter. Success had come to me, too, in a modest way I had been given a furnace I was now a "first helper."

It was about the time I took the furnace that I began to notice a falling off in the number of requests from Pete for assistance. I thought little of it, supposing that he was getting his work done by one of the weighers. But one night when I went down to his office to have a chat, I found him seated at his little desk poring over an arithmetic.

He

looked up at me and grinned in a rather shamefaced man

ner.

"Oh, that's it, is it?" I said. "Now I understand why I'm no longer of any use to the boss!"

"Well, I just had to do somethin'," he laughed. "Couldn't afford to go right on bein' an ignoramus all the time."

"Are you studying it out alone?"

"You bet I'm not! I'd never get there if I was! I've a teacher, a private teacher. He comes every other night, when I'm workin' days, and every other afternoon, when I'm workin' nights. Gee, but I'm a bonehead! He's told me so a dozen times, but the other day he said he thought I was softenin' up a bit."

Good old Pete! I left him that night with my admiration for the man increased a hundred times.

Another six months passed, six months of hard, grinding toil, and yet a six months I look back upon with genuine pleasure. I now had the swing of the work and it came easy; conditions about the plant under Pete's supervision were ideal; I was making progress in the work; we were making good money. Then came the black day.

How quickly it happened! I had tapped my furnace, and the last of the heat had run into the ladle. "Hoist away!" I heard Pete shout to the crane-man. The humming sound of the motors getting into action came to my ears. The giant crane was groaning and whining as it slowly lifted its eightyton burden from the pit where the ladle stood. It was then five or six feet above the pit's bottom. Pete was leaning over the railing of the platform directly in front of the rising ladle.

Suddenly something snapped among the shafts and cables. I saw two men in the crane cab go swarming up the escapeladder. I saw the ladle drop as a broken cable went flying out of a sheave. A great white wave of steel washed over the ladle's rim, and another, and another.

Down upon a shallow pool of water that a leaking hose had

formed, the steel was splashed, and as it struck, the explosion came. I was blown from my feet and rolled along the floor. The air was filled with bits of fiery steel, brick, and débris of all kinds. I crawled to shelter behind a column and there beat out the flames that were burning my clothing in a halfdozen places. Then, groping through the dust and smoke that choked the building, I went to look for Pete.

Near the place where I had seen him standing when the ladle fell I found him. Two workmen, who had been crouching behind a wall when the explosion came and were unhurt, were tearing his burning clothes from his blackened body. Somebody brought a blanket, and we wrapped it about him. We doubted if he lived, but as we carried him back I noted he was trying to speak, and stooping, I caught the words: "Ought never to have left the farm, ought we? Hey, buddy?"

That was the last time I ever heard Pete speak. That was the last time I ever saw him alive.

Two o'clock in the morning. Sitting at the little desk where I found Pete that night poring over his arithmetic, I have been writing down my early experiences in the open hearth. Here comes Yakabowski with a test. I know exactly what he will say: "Had I better give her a dose of ore?" Two o'clock in the morning! The small man at the gate was right: Night-work is no good!

I was mistaken; Yakabowski doesn't ask his customary question. He looks at me curiously. "You don't look good, boss," he says. "You sick, maybe?"

Yes, I'm sick - I always am at two o'clock in the morning, when I'm on the night shift. I streich, I yawn, I shudder. "Ought never to have left the farm, ought we? Hey, Yakabowski?" I say to the big Pole.

CLASS ACTIVITIES

1. Describe the action in the passage you selected (p. 132) as it would appear if thrown on the screen. Point out the different

scenes which would be pictured if the entire story were made into a motion-picture.

2. Explain in order the different kinds of work done by the teller of

the story.

3. Give the reasons of the author for thinking that work in a steelmill is more severe than work on a farm. Do you agree with him? Give reasons.

4. Read the passages in which there is a touch of humor.

5. Name any preceding selections which gave you something to bring to this story and tell what they gave you.

6. Tell what you like most about Pete. Read passages which show the ability and the modesty of the teller of the story. ADDITIONAL READINGS. 1. "The Steel Worker," B. Braley, in Songs of a Workaday World, 17-18. 2. "Pioneers of the Machine Shop," H. Thompson, Age of Invention, 175-193. 3. "The Epic of Steel," B. J. Hendrick, Age of Big Business, 58–85. 4. “Vulcan,” J. Husband, America at Work, 20-31.

3. MANUFACTURING AUTOMOBILES

BURTON J. HENDRICK

When you finish this selection, be able to explain and illustrate what is meant by standardization.

A few years ago an English manufacturer, seeking the explanation of America's ability to produce an excellent automobile so cheaply, made an interesting experiment. He obtained three American cars, all of the same "standardized" make, and gave them a long and racking tour over English highways. Workmen then took apart the three cars and threw the disjointed remains into a heap. Every bolt, bar, gas-tank, motor, wheel, and tire was taken from its accustomed place and piled up, a mass of rubbish. Workmen then painstakingly put together three cars from these disordered elements. Three chauffeurs jumped on these cars, immediately started them down the road, and made a long journey just as acceptably as before. The Englishman had learned the secret of American success with automobiles. The one word "standardization" explained the mystery.