CHAPTER XIX. I START ON MY TRAVELS
Now that I was a master puddler, I faced the problem of finding a
furnace of my own. I saw no chance in Sharon. Furnaces passed from
father to son, so I could not hope to get one of the furnaces controlled
by another family. My father was not ready to relinquish his furnace to
me, as he was good for twenty years more of this vigorous labor.
I wanted to be a real boss puddler, and so, when I was eighteen I went
to Pittsburgh and got a furnace. But a new period of hard times was
setting in, jobs were getting scarce as they had been in 1884. That was
the year when we had no money in the house and I was chasing every loose
nickel in town. The mill at Sharon was down, and father was hunting work
in Pittsburgh and elsewhere. Then after a period of prosperity the hard
times had come again in 1891 and '92. My furnace job in Pittsburgh was
not steady. The town was full of iron workers and many of them were in
desperate need. Those who had jobs divided their time with their needy
comrades. A man with hungry children would be given a furnace for a few
days to earn enough to ward off starvation. I had no children and felt
that I should not hold a furnace. I left Pittsburgh and went to Niles,
Ohio, where I found less competition for the jobs. I worked a few
weeks and the mill shut down. I wandered all over the iron district and
finally, deciding that the North held no openings, I began working my
way toward the iron country in the South.
The Sharon mill did not shut down completely. The owner operated it at a
loss rather than throw all his old hands out on the world. Twenty years
later I met him on a train in the West and we talked of old times when
I worked in his mill. As long as he lived he was loved and venerated by
his former employees.
Father was putting in short time at Sharon and was badly worried. He was
thinking of setting out again to go from town to town looking for work,
but I had advised him against it. I had told him that he would merely
find crowds of idle men roaming from mill to mill along with him. My
brothers gave him similar advice.
“Father,” we said, “it is a time of business depression and wide-spread
unemployment. If you went to Pittsburgh you might find a few weeks'
work, but it would not pay you to go there for it. You would have to lay
out cash for your board and lodging there before you could send anything
home to mother. Keeping up two establishments is harder than keeping up
one. You have a home here partly paid for, and a big garden that helps
support that home. It is better for you to stick with this establishment
and work at half time in the mill than to roam around at big expense
seeking full time in some other mill. There may be no mill in the land
that is running full time.”
This had not occurred to him. What lay beyond the hills was all mystery.
But we young fellows had been brought up in the American atmosphere, we
had read the Youth's Companion and the newspapers, and our outlook was
widened; we could guess that conditions were the same in other states
as they were in our part of Pennsylvania, for we were studying economic
causes.
“It is better for you to stay here and wait for good times to come
again. Hang on to your home, and if in a few months or a few years the
mills begin booming again you will be secure for life. But if the iron
industry doesn't revive, give up that trade and find other work here.
If necessary go out and work on a farm, for the farming industry will
always have to be carried on.”
Father saw the force of our argument. So he stayed and kept his home.
He has it to-day. But if he had wandered around as millions of us did in
those hard days he would surely have lost it. This was my first little
attempt to work out an economic problem. I had studied all the facts and
then pronounced my judgment. It proved right, and so I learned that in
my small way I had a head for financiering. This encouraged me, for it
taught me that the worker can solve part of his problems by using his
head.
The fear of ending in the poor-house is one of the terrors that dog a
man through life. There are only three parts to the labor problem, and
this is one of them. This fear causes “unrest.” This unrest was used
by revolutionists to promote Bolshevism which turns whole empires into
poor-houses. Such a “remedy,” of course, is worse than the disease. I
think I know a plan by which all workers can make their old age secure.
I will go into it more fully in a later chapter.