The Iron Puddler
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James J. Davis >> The Iron Puddler
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11 THE IRON PUDDLER
MY LIFE IN THE ROLLING MILLS AND
WHAT CAME OF IT
by JAMES J. DAVIS
Introduction by
JOSEPH G. CANNON
The man whose life story is here presented between book covers
is at the time of writing only forty-eight years old. When I
met him many years ago he was a young man full of enthusiasm.
I remember saying to him then, "With your enthusiasm and the
sparkle which you have in your eyes I am sure you will make good."
Why should so young a man, one so recently elevated to official
prominence, write his memoirs? That question will occur to those
who do not know Jim Davis. His elevation to a Cabinet post marks
not the beginning of his career, but rather is the curtain-rise
on the second act of one of those dramatic lives with which
America has so often astounded the world. Bruised and bleeding in
a southern, peon camp, where he and other hungry men had been
trapped by a brutal slave driver, he drank the bitter cup of
unrequited toil. And from this utter depth, in less than thirty
years, he rose to the office of secretary of labor. There is
drama enough for one life if his career should end to-day. And
while this man fought his way upward, he carried others with him,
founding by his efforts and their cooperation, the great school
called Mooseheart. More than a thousand students of both sexes,
ranging from one to eighteen years, are there receiving their
preparation for life. The system of education observed there is
probably the best ever devised to meet the needs of all humanity.
The brain of James J. Davis fathered this educational system.
It is his contribution to the world, and the world has accepted
it. The good it promised is already being realized, its fruits
are being gathered. Its blessings are falling on a thousand young
Americans, and its influence like a widening ripple is extending
farther every day. It promises to reach and benefit every child
in America. And to hasten the growth of this new education, James
J. Davis has here written the complete story. I have known Mr.
Davis many years and am one of the thousands who believe in him
and have helped further his work.
The author of this autobiography is indeed a remarkable man. He
is sometimes called the Napoleon of Fraternity. Love of his
fellows is his ruling passion. He can call more than ten thousand
men by their first names. His father taught him this motto: "No
man is greater than his friends. All the good that comes into
your life will come from your friends. If you lose your friends
your enemies will destroy you." Davis has stood by his friends.
As a labor leader and a fraternal organizer, he has proved his
ability. Thousands think he is unequaled as an orator, thinker
and entertainer. His zeal is all for humanity and he knows man's
needs. He has dedicated his life to the cause of better education
for the workers of this land. His cause deserves a hearing.
J G Cannon
WASHINGTON, D. C.,
JUNE, 1922.
PREFACE
"Where were you previous to the eighth and immediately
subsequent thereto?" asked the city attorney.
The prisoner looked sheepish and made no answer. A box car had
been robbed on the eighth and this man had been arrested in the
freight yards. He claimed to be a steel worker and had shown the
judge his calloused hands. He had answered several questions
about his trade, his age and where he was when the policeman
arrested him. But when they asked him what he had been doing
previous to and immediately subsequent thereto, he hung his head
as if at a loss for an alibi.
I was city clerk at the time and had been a steel worker. I
knew why the man refused to answer. He didn't understand the
phraseology.
"Where were you previous to the eighth and immediately
subsequent thereto?" the attorney asked him for the third time.
All the prisoner could do was look guilty and say nothing.
"Answer the question," ordered the judge, "or I'll send you up
for vagrancy."
Still the man kept silent. Then I spoke up:
"John, tell the court where you were before you came here and
also where you have been since you arrived in the city."
"I was in Pittsburgh," he said, and he proceeded to tell the
whole story of his life. He was still talking when they chased
him out of court and took up the next case. He was a free man,
and yet he had come within an inch of going to jail. All because
he didn't know what "previous to the eighth and immediately
subsequent thereto" meant.
The man was an expert puddler. A puddler makes iron bars. They
were going to put him behind his own bars because he couldn't
understand the legal jargon. Thanks to the great educational
system of America the working man has improved his mental muscle
as well as his physical.
This taught me a lesson. Jargon can put the worker in jail. Big
words and improper phraseology are prison bars that sometimes
separate the worker from the professional people. "Stone walls do
not a prison make," because the human mind can get beyond them.
But thick-shelled words do make a prison. They are something that
the human mind can not penetrate. A man whose skill is in his
hands can puddle a two hundred-pound ball of iron. A man whose
skill is on his tongue can juggle four-syllable words. But that
iron puddler could not savvy four-syllable words any more than
the word juggler could puddle a heat of iron. The brain worker
who talks to the hand worker in a special jargon the latter can
not understand has built an iron wall between the worker's mind
and his mind. To tear down that wall and make America one nation
with one language is one of the tasks of the new education.
If big words cause misunderstandings, why not let them go? When
the stork in the fable invited the fox to supper he served the
bean soup in a long-necked vase. The stork had a beak that
reached down the neck of the vase and drank the soup with ease.
The fox had a short muzzle and couldn't get it. The trick made
him mad and he bit the stork's head off. Why should the brain
worker invite the manual worker to a confab and then serve the
feast in such long-necked language that the laborer can't get it?
"Let's spill the beans," the agitator tells him, "then we'll all
get some of the gravy."
This long-necked jargon must go. It is not the people's dish.
With foggy phrases that no one really understands they are trying
to incite the hand worker to bite off the head of the brain
worker. When employer and employee sit together at the council
table, let the facts be served in such simple words that we can
all get our teeth into them.
When I became secretary of labor I said that the employer and
employee had a duty to perform one to the other, and both to the
public.
Capital does not always mean employer. When I was a boy in
Sharon, Pennsylvania, I looked in a pool in the brook and
discovered a lot of fish. I broke some branches off a tree, and
with this I brushed the fish out of the pool. I sold them to a
teamster for ten cents. With this I bought shoe blacking and a
shoe brush and spent my Saturdays blacking boots for travelers at
the depot and the hotel. I had established a boot-blacking
business which I pushed in my spare time for several years. My
brush and blacking represented my capital. The shining of the
travelers' shoes was labor. I was a capitalist but not an
employer; I was a laborer but not an employee.
"Labor is prior to and independent of capital," said Lincoln.
This is true. I labored to break the branches from the tree
before I had any capital. They brought me fish, which were
capital because I traded them for shoe blacking with which I
earned enough money to buy ten times more fish than I had caught.
So labor is prior to capital--when you use the words in their
right meaning. But call the employee "labor" and the employer
"capital," and you make old Honest Abe say that the employee is
prior to and independent of the employer, or that the wage earner
is independent of the wage payer or, in still shorter words, the
man is on the job before the job is created. Which is nonsense.
Capital does not always mean employer. A Liberty Bond is
capital but it is not an employer; the Government is an employer
but it is not capital, and when any one is arguing a case for an
employee against his employer let him use the proper terms. The
misuse of words can cause a miscarriage of justice as the misuse
of railway signals can send a train into the ditch.
All my life I have been changing big words into little words so
that the employee can know what the employer is saying to him.
The working man handles things. The professional man plies words.
I learned things first and words afterward. Things can enrich a
nation, and words can impoverish it. The words of theorists have
cost this nation billions which must be paid for in things.
When I was planning a great school for the education of
orphans, some of my associates said: "Let us teach them to be
pedagogues." I said: "No, let us teach them the trades. A boy
with a trade can do things. A theorist can say things. Things
done with the hands are wealth, things said with the mouth are
words. When the housing shortage is over and we find the nation
suffering from a shortage of words, we will close the classes in
carpentry and open a class in oratory."
This, then is the introduction to my views and to my policies.
They are now to have a fair trial, like that other iron worker in
the Elwood police court. I know what the word "previous" means. I
can give an account of myself. So, in the following pages I will
tell "where I was before I came here."
If my style seems rather flippant, it is because I have been
trained as an extemporaneous speaker and not as a writer. For
fifteen years I traveled over the country lecturing on the
Mooseheart School. My task was to interest men in the abstract
problems of child education. A speaker must entertain his hearers
to the end or lose their attention. And so I taxed my wit to make
this subject simple and easy to listen to. At last I evolved a
style of address that brought my points home to the men I was
addressing.
After all these years I can not change my style. I talk more
easily than I write; therefore, in composing this book I have
imagined myself facing an audience, and I have told my story. I
do not mention the names of the loyal men who helped work out the
plans of Mooseheart and gave the money that established it, for
their number is so great that their names alone would fill three
volumes as large as this.
J.J.D.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I THE HOME-MADE SUIT OF CLOTHES
II A TRAIT OF THE WELSH PEOPLE
III NO GIFT FROM THE FAIRIES
IV SHE SINGS TO HER NEST
V THE LOST FEATHER BED
VI HUNTING FOR LOST CHILDREN
VII HARD SLEDDING IN AMERICA
VIII MY FIRST REGULAR JOB
IX THE SCATTERED FAMILY
X MELODRAMA BECOMES COMEDY
XI KEEPING OPEN HOUSE
XII MY HAND TOUCHES IRON
XIII SCENE IN A ROLLING MILL
XIV BOILING DOWN THE PIGS
XV THE IRON BISCUITS
XVI WRESTING A PRIZE FROM NATURE'S HAND
XVII MAN IS IRON TOO
XVIII ON BEING A GOOD GUESSER
XIX I START ON MY TRAVELS
XX THE RED FLAG AND THE WATERMELONS
XXI ENVY IS THE SULPHUR IN HUMAN PIG-IRON
XXII LOADED DOWN WITH LITERATURE
XXIII THE PUDDLER HAS A VISION
XXIV JOE THE POOR BRAKEMAN
XXV A DROP IN THE BUCKET OF BLOOD
XXVI A GRUB REFORMER PUTS US OUT OF GRUB
XXVII THE PIE EATER'S PARADISE
XXVIII CAUGHT IN A SOUTHERN PEONAGE CAMP
XXIX A SICK, EMACIATED SOCIAL SYSTEM
XXX BREAKING INTO THE TIN INDUSTRY
XXXI UNACCUSTOMED AS I AM TO PUBLIC SPEAKING
XXXII LOGIC WINS IN THE STRETCH
XXXIII I MEET THE INDUSTRIAL CAPTAINS
XXXIV SHIRTS FOR TIN ROLLERS
XXXV AN UPLIFTER RULED BY ENVY
XXXVI GROWLING FOR THE BOSSES BLOOD
XXXVII FREE AND UNLIMITED COINAGE
XXXVIII THE EDITOR GETS MY GOAT
XXXIX PUTTING JAZZ INTO THE CAMPAIGN
XL FATHER TOOK ME SERIOUSLY
XLI A PAVING CONTRACTOR PUTS ME ON THE PAVING
XLII THE EVERLASTING MORALIZER
XLIII FROM TIN WORKER TO SMALL CAPITALIST
XLIV A CHANCE TO REALIZE A DREAM
XLV THE DREAM COMES TRUE
XLVI THE MOOSEHEART IDEA
XLVII LIFE'S PROBLEMS
XLVIII BUILDING A BETTER WORLD BY EDUCATION
XLIX CONCLUSION
THE IRON PUDDLER
CHAPTER I
THE HOME-MADE SUIT OF CLOTHES
A fight in the first chapter made a book interesting to me when
I was a boy. I said to myself, "The man who writes several
chapters before the fighting begins is like the man who sells
peanuts in which a lot of the shells haven't any goodies." I made
up my mind then that if I ever wrote a book I would have a fight
in the first chapter.
So I will tell right here how I whipped the town bully in
Sharon, Pennsylvania. I'll call him Babe Durgon. I've forgotten
his real name, and it might be better not to mention it anyhow.
For though I whipped him thirty years ago, he might come back now
in a return match and reverse the verdict, so that my first
chapter would serve better as my last one. Babe was older than I,
and had pestered me from the time I was ten. Now I was eighteen
and a man. I was a master puddler in the mill and a musician in
the town band (I always went with men older than myself). Two
stove molders from a neighboring factory were visiting me that
day, and, as it was dry and hot, I offered to treat them to a
cool drink. There were no soda fountains in those days and the
only place to take a friend was to the tavern. We went in and my
companions ordered beer. Babe, the bully, was standing by the bar.
He had just come of age, and wanted to bulldoze me with that fact.
"Don't serve Jimmy Davis a beer," Babe commanded. "He's a
minor. He can't buy beer."
"I didn't want a beer," I said. "I was going to order a soft
drink."
"Yes, you was. Like hell you was," Babe taunted. "You came in
here to get a beer like them fellers. You think you're a man, but
I know you ain't. And I'm here to see that nobody sells liquor to
a child."
I was humiliated. The bully knew that I wanted to be a man, and
his shot stung me. My friends looked at me as if to ask: "Are you
going to take that?" And so the fight was arranged, although I
had no skill at boxing, and was too short-legged, like most
Welshmen, for a fast foot race. Babe had me up against a real
problem.
"Come on over the line," he said.
Sharon was near the Ohio border and it was customary to go
across the state line to fight, so that on returning the local
peace officers would have no jurisdiction. We started for the
battle ground. Babe had never been whipped; he always chose
younger opponents. He was a good gouger, and had marked up most
of the boys on the "flats" as we called the lowlands where the
poorer working people lived. A gouger is one who stabs with his
thumb. When he gets his sharp thumb-nail into the victim's eye,
the fight is over. Biting and kicking were his second lines of
attack.
As we walked along I was depressed by the thought that I was
badly outclassed. There was only one thing in my favor. I hated
Babe Durgon with a bitter loathing that I had been suppressing
for years. It all went back to the summer of 1884 when I was
eleven years old. Times were hard, and the mill was "down."
Father had gone to Pittsburgh to look for work. I was scouring
the town of Sharon to pick up any odd job that would earn me a
nickel. There were no telephones and I used to carry notes
between sweethearts, pass show bills for the "opry," and ring a
hand-bell for auctions. An organized charity had opened
headquarters on Main Street to collect clothing and money for the
destitute families of the workers. I went up there to see if they
needed an errand boy. A Miss Foraker--now Mrs. F. H. Buhl--was in
charge. She was a sweet and gracious young woman and she
explained that they had no pay-roll.
"Everybody works for nothing here," she said. "I get no pay,
and the landlord gives us the use of the rooms free. This is a
public charity and everybody contributes his services free."
I saw a blue serge boy's suit among the piles of garments. It
was about my size and had seen little wear. I thought it was the
prettiest suit I had ever seen. I asked Miss Foraker how much
money it would take to buy the suit. She said nothing was for
sale. She wrapped up the suit and placed the pack. age in my
arms, saying, "That's for you, Jimmy."
I raced home and climbed into the attic of our little four-
dollar-a-month cottage, and in the stifling heat under the low
roof I changed my clothes. Then I proudly climbed down to show my
blue suit to my mother. "Where did you get those clothes, James?"
she asked gravely.
I told her about Miss Foraker.
"Did you work for them?"
"No; everything is free," I said.
Mother told me to take the suit off. I went to the attic,
blinking a tear out of my eyes, and changed into my old rags
again. Then mother took the blue suit, wrapped it up carefully
and putting it in my hands told me to take it back to Miss
Foraker.
"You don't understand, James," she said. "But these clothes are
not for people like us. These are to be given to the poor."
I have often smiled as I looked back on it. I'll bet there
wasn't a dime in the house. The patches on my best pants were
three deep and if laid side by side would have covered more
territory than the new blue suit. To take those clothes back was
the bitterest sacrifice my heart has ever known.
A few days later there was a fire sale by one of the merchants,
and I got the job of ringing the auction bell. Late in the
afternoon the auctioneer held up a brown overcoat. "Here is a
fine piece of goods, only slightly damaged," he said. He showed
the back of the coat where a hole was burned in it. "How much am
I offered?"
I knew that I would get fifty cents for my day's work, so I bid
ten cents--all that I could spare.
"Sold," said the auctioneer, "for ten cents to the kid who rang
the bell all day."
I took the garment home and told my mother how I had bought it
for cash in open competition with all the world. My mother and my
aunt set to work with shears and needles and built me a suit of
clothes out of the brown overcoat. It took a lot of ingenuity to
make the pieces come out right. The trousers were neither long
nor short. They dwindled down and stopped at my calves, half-way
above my ankles. What I hated most was that the seams were not in
the right places. It was a patchwork, and there were seams down
the front of the legs where the crease ought to be. I didn't want
to wear the suit, but mother said it looked fine on me, and if
she said so I knew it must be true. I wore it all fall and half
the winter.
The first time I went to Sunday-school, I met Babe Durgon. He
set up the cry:
"Little boy, little boy,
Does your mother know you're out;
With your breeches put on backward,
And the seams all inside out!"
This was the first time that my spirit had been hurt. His words
were a torment that left a scar upon my very soul. Even to this
day when I awake from some bad dream, it is a dream that I am
wearing crazy breeches and all the world is jeering at me. It has
made me tender toward poor children who have to wear hand-me-
downs.
To-day psychologists talk much of the "inferiority complex"
which spurs a man forward to outdo himself. But Babe Durgon and I
didn't go into these matters as we trudged along through the dark
on our way to do battle "over the line." At the foot of the hill,
Babe exclaimed:
"What's the use of going any farther? Let's fight here." It was
in front of a new building--a church-school half completed. We
took off our coats and made belts of our suspenders. Then we
squared off and the fight began. Babe rushed me like a wild boar
and tried to thrust his deadly thumb into my eye. I threw up my
head and his thumb gashed my lips and went into my mouth. The
impact almost knocked me over, but my teeth had closed on his
thumb and when he jerked back he put me on my balance again. I
clouted him on the jaw and knocked him down. He landed in the
lime box. The school had not yet been plastered, and the
quicklime was in an open pit. I started in after the bully, but
stopped to save my pants from the lime. There was a hose near by,
and I turned the water on Babe in the lime bath. The lime
completely covered him. He was whipped and in fear of his life.
Choking and weeping he hollered, "Nuff." We got him out, too weak
to stand, and gently leaned him up in a corner of the school
building. There we left the crushed bully and returned to town.
But before I went I gave him this parting shot:
"Do you know why I licked you, Babe? It wasn't what you said in
the tavern that made me mad. I didn't want a glass of beer, and
you were right in saying I was a minor. Where you made your
mistake was when you made fun of my breeches, seven years ago.
And do you remember that blue suit you had on at the time? I know
where you got that blue suit of clothes, and I know who had it
before you got it. If you still think that a bully in charity
clothes can make fun of a boy in clothes that he earned with his
own labor, just say so, and I'll give you another clout that will
finish you."
All bullies, whether nations, parties or individuals, get
licked in the same way. They outrage some one's self-respect, and
then the old primordial cyclone hits them.
CHAPTER II
A TRAIT OF THE WELSH PEOPLE
My family is Welsh, and I was born in Tredegar, Wales. David
and Davies are favorite names among the Welsh, probably because
David whipped Goliath, and mothers named their babies after the
champion. The Welsh are a small nation that has always had to
fight against a big nation. The idea that David stopped Goliath
seemed to reflect their own national glory. The ancient invasions
that poured across Britain were stopped in Wales, and they never
could push the Welshmen into the sea.
The Welsh pride themselves on hanging on. They are a nation
that has never been whipped. Every people has its
characteristics. "You can't beat the Irish" is one slogan, "You
can't kill a Swede" is another, and "You can't crowd out a
Welshman" is a motto among the mill people.
I didn't want to leave Wales when my parents were emigrating.
Though I was not quite eight years old I decided I would let them
go without me. The last act of my mother was to reach under the
bed, take hold of my heels and drag me out of the house feet
first. I tried to hang on to the cracks in the floor, and tore
off a few splinters to remember the old homestead by. I never was
quite satisfied with that leave-taking, and nearly forty years
later when I had car fare, I went back to that town. I never like
to go out of a place feet first, and I cleared my record this
time by walking out of my native village, head up and of my own
free will.
On that trip I paid a visit to the home of Lloyd George in
Cricuth. Joseph Davies, one of the war secretaries to the prime
minister, invited me to dinner and we talked of the American form
of government. (Note the spelling of Davies. It is the Welsh
spelling. When my father signed his American naturalization
papers he made his mark, for he could not read nor write. The
official wrote in his name, spelling it Davis and so it has
remained.) "You have this advantage," said Mr. Davies. "Your
president is secure in office for four years and can put his
policies through. Our prime minister has no fixed term and may
have to step out at any minute."
"Yes," I replied jokingly, "but your prime minister this time
is a Welshman."
Since then four years have passed and our president is out. But
Lloyd George is still there (1922). And he'll still be there, for
all I know, until he is carried out feet first. The instinct of a
Welshman is to hang on.
These things teach us that racial characteristics do not
change. In letting immigrants into this country we must remember
this. Races that have good traits built up good countries there
abroad and they will in the same way build up the country here.
Tribes that have swinish traits were destroyers there and will be
destroyers here. This has been common knowledge so long that it
has become a proverb: "You can't make a silk purse out of a
sow's ear."
Proverbs are the condensed wisdom of the ages. Life has taught
me that the wisdom of the ages is the truth. The Proverbs and the
Ten Commandments answer all our problems. My mother taught them
to me when I was a child in Wales. I have gone out and tasted
life, and found her words true. Starting at forge and furnace in
the roaring mills, facing facts instead of books, I have been
schooled in life's hard lessons. And the end of it all is the
same as the beginning: the Proverbs,--the Commandments,--and the
Golden Rule.
CHAPTER III
NO GIFT FROM THE FAIRIES
From my father I learned many things. He taught me to be
skilful and proud of it. He taught me to expect no gift from
life, but that what I got I must win with my hands. He taught me
that good men would bring forth good fruits. This was all the
education he could give me, and it was enough.
My father was an iron worker, and his father before him. My
people had been workers in metal from the time when the age of
farming in Wales gave way to the birth of modern industries. They
were proud of their skill, and the secrets of the trade were
passed from father to son as a legacy of great value, and were
never told to persons outside the family. Such skill meant good
wages when there was work. But there was not work all the time.
Had there been jobs enough for all we would have taught our trade
to all. But in self-protection we thought of our own mouths
first. All down the generations my family has been face to face
with the problem of bread.
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