started to slide down its rope there was little for the men to do till it had climbed back up the rope with its burden of steel. Pete – who was usually addressed as "Pig Iron," perhaps for the reason that he claimed to be from Pittsburg – settled back at his ease among the gang, his back against a pile of columns, his legs stretched out.
"I've just picked out the apartment where I'm goin' to keep my celluloid collar when this here shanty's finished," he remarked. "Over in the corner there, lookin' down in both streets. I ain't goin' to do nothin' but wear kid gloves, an' lean out the windows an' spit on you roughnecks as you go by. An' my boodwar is goin' to have about seventeen push-buttons in it. Whenever I want anything I'll just push a button, an' up'll hot-foot a nigger with it in a suit o' clothes that's nothin' but shirt front. Then I'll kick the nigger, an' push another button. That's life, boys. An' I'll have plush chairs, carpets a foot thick, an iv'ry bath-tub – "
Pete's wandering gaze caught one man watching him with serious eyes, and he broke off. "Say, Johnson, wha' d'you suppose I want a bath-tub for?"
Johnson was an anomaly among the iron-workers – a man without a sense of humor. He never knew when his fellows were joking and when serious; he usually took them literally.
"To wash in," he answered.
Pete whistled. "Wash in it! Ain't you got no respect for the traditions o' the workin' class?"
"Hey, Pig Iron; talk English!" Bill demanded. "What's traditions?"
Pete looked puzzled, and a laugh passed about the men. Then his sang-froid returned. "Your traditions, Bill, is the things you'd try to forget about yourself if you had enough coin to move into a place like this."
He turned his lean face back on Johnson. "Don't you know what a bath-tub's for, Johnson? Don't you never read the papers? Well, here's how it is: The landlords come around wearin' about a sixteen-candle-power incandescent smile. They puts in marble bath-tubs all through all the houses. They're goin' to elevate us. The next day they come around again to see how we've improved. They throw up their hands, an' let out a few yells. There's them bath-tubs chuck full o' coal. We didn't know what they was for, – an' they was very handy for coal. That's us. It's down in the papers. An' here you, Johnson, you'd ruin our repitations by usin' the bath-tubs to bathe in."
The pulley toiled into view, dragging after it two columns. Johnson was saved the necessity of response. The men hurried to their places.
"O' course, Pig Iron, you'll be fixed all right when you've moved in here," began Bill, after the boom had reached out and the pulley had started spinning down for the other two columns. "But how about the rest of us fixers? Three seventy-five a day, when we get in only six or seven months a year, ain't makin' bankers out o' many of us."
"Only a few," admitted Pete; "an' them few ain't the whole cheese yet. Me, I can live on three seventy-five, but I don't see how you married men do."
"Especially with scabs stealin' your jobs," growled Bill, glancing again at the two men working along the building's edge.
"I told you Foley'd look after them," said Barry, who had joined the group for a moment. "It hustles most of us to keep up with the game," he went on, in answer to Pete's last remark. "Some of us don't. An' rents an' everything else goin' up. I don't know what we're goin' to do."
"That's easy," said Pete. "Get more money or live cheaper."
"How're we goin' to live cheaper?" demanded Bill.
"Yes, how?" seconded Barry.
"I'm for more money," declared Bill.
"Well, I reckon I wear the same size shoe," said Pete. "More money – that's me."
"And me," "and me," joined in the other men, except Johnson.
"It's about time we were gettin' more," Pete advanced. "The last two years the bosses have been doin' the genteel thing by their own pockets, all right."
"We've got to have more if our kids are goin' to know a couple o' facts more'n we do." Barry went over to the edge of the building and watched the tiny figures attaching the columns to the pulley hook.
"That's right," said Pete. "You don't stand no chance these days to climb up on top of a good job unless you ripped off a lot o' education when you was young an' riveted it on to your mem'ry. I heard a preacher once. He preached about education. He said if you wanted to get up anywhere you had to be educated like hell. He was right, too. If you left school when you was thirteen, why, by the time you're twenty-seven an' had a few drinks you ain't very likely to be just what I'd call a college on legs."
"Keating, he thinks we ought to go after more this spring," said Bill.
"I wonder what Foley thinks?" queried another of the men.
"If Tom's for a strike, why, Foley'll be again' it," one of the gang answered. "You can place your money on that color."
"Tom certainly did pour the hot shot into Foley at the meetin' last night," said Bill, grinning. "Grafter! He called Buck about thirteen diff'rent kind."
"If Keating's all right in his nut he'll not go round lookin' for a head-on collision with Buck Foley," asserted Jake, with a wise leer at Bill.
Bill answered by giving Jake his back. "Foley don't want no strike," he declared. "What's he want to strike for? He's gettin' his hand in the dough bag enough the way things is now."
"See here, the whole bunch o' you roughnecks give me a pain!" broke out Pete. "You shoot off your faces a lot when Buck's not around, but the imitation you give on meetin' nights of a collection o' mummies can't be beat. I ain't in love with Buck – not on your life! You can tell him so, Jake. But he certainly has done the union a lot o' good. Tom'd say that, too. An' you know how much Tom likes Foley. You fixers forget when you was workin' ten hours for two dollars, an' lickin' the boots o' the bosses to hold your jobs."
There was a short silence, then Johnson put forward cautiously: "I don't see the good o' strikin'."
Pete stared at him. "Why?" he demanded.
"Well, I've been in the business longer'n most o' you boys, an' I ain't found the bosses as bad as you make 'em out. When they're makin' more, they'll pay us more."
"Oh, you go tell that to a Sunday school!" snorted Pete. "D'you ever hear of a boss payin' more wages'n he had to? Not much! Them kind 'o bosses's all doin' business up in heaven. If we was actually earnin' twenty a day, d'you suppose we'd get a cent more'n three seventy-five till we'd licked the bosses. You do – hey? That shows the kind of a nut you've got. The boss 'ud buy a tutti-frutti yacht, or a few more automobiles, or mebbe a college or two, where they learn you how to wear your pants turned up; but all the extra money you'd get wouldn't pay for the soap used by a Dago. If ever a boss offers you an extra dollar before you've licked him, yell for a cop. He's crazy."
Pete's tirade completely flustered Johnson. "All the same, what I said's so."
Pete snorted again. "When d'you think you're livin'? You make me tired, Johnson. Go push yourself off the roof!"
The two last columns rose swinging above the chasm's brink, and there was no more talk for that afternoon. For the next hour the men were busy setting the last of the columns which were to support the twenty-second and twenty-third stories. Then they began setting in the cross beams, walking about on these five-inch beams (perhaps on one with the pavement straight beneath it) with the matter-of-fact steps of a man on the sidewalk – a circus act, lacking a safety net below, and lacking flourishes and kisses blown to
