The Iron Puddler My life in the rolling mills and what came of it

Excerpt

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....