CHAPTER XXX. BREAKING INTO THE TIN INDUSTRY

I decided to leave Birmingham as soon as my stomach had got used to

regular meals and my pocket knew what real money felt like again.

The dry years had ended and once more the northern farms were yielding

mammoth crops. But the country was so sick that it couldn't sit up and

eat as it ought to. So the farmers were selling their crops at steadily

falling prices. This drove some of them frantic. They couldn't pay

interest on their mortgaged farms, and they were seeking to find “the

way out” by issuing paper money, or money from some cheap metal with

which they could repudiate their debts. Banks could not collect their

loans, merchants could not get money for their goods, manufacturers were

swamped by their pay-rolls and had to discharge their men. Coxey was

raising a great army of idle men to march on Washington and demand that

the government should feed and clothe the people.

All my savings had long since gone, and from the high life in the Pie

Boarding-House I had descended to my days of bread and water. All men

were in a common misery. If a hobo managed to get a steak and cook it in

the bushes by the railroad track, the smell of it would draw a score of

hungry men into the circle of his firelight. It was a trying time, and

it took all the fortitude I had to look hopefully forward toward a day

when things would begin picking up and the wheels of industry would

whirl again. The idle men who had camped by the railroads had drunk

their water from, and cooked their mulligan stews in, tomato cans.

The tin can had become the badge of hoboing. The tin trade was new in

America and I foresaw a future in the industry, for all kinds of food

were now being put up in tin, whereas when I was a child a tin can was

rarely seen. I decided that two trades were better than one, and I would

learn the tin plate trade. I went to Elwood, Indiana, and found a place

there in a tin mill. My knowledge of puddling, heating and rolling,

occasionally working in a sheet mill similar to a tin mill, prepared me

for this new work. In tin making a piece of wrought iron is rolled thin

and then covered with a thinner coating of pure tin. After this is done

the plate remains soiled and discolored, and the next process is to

remove the stain and polish the tin until it shines like silver.

To have a job and eat pie again made me happy. Our union contained

several hundred members, so I had a lot of prospective friends to get

acquainted with. I was then nearly twenty-one and a pretty good mixer;

I liked men and enjoyed mingling with them and learning all I could from

what they told me. When they drifted into a saloon I went along for the

company. I did not care to drink, so I would join some impromptu quartet

and we would sing popular songs while the other fellows cheered us with

the best will in the world. A drink of beer or two heightens a man's

appreciation of music, and the way the boys applauded my singing

makes me rather regret the Volstead Act. It queered my act. Since beer

disappeared nobody has asked me to sing. Prohibition may be good for the

health but it is sure death to art.

Those were happy days. But just when all my troubles seemed ended and

the rainbow of promise in the sky, a new cloud appeared, black and

threatening. In fact it swept down like a tornado. The men decided to

strike.

A strike! Of all things! We owned about the only jobs in Indiana. Our

strike wouldn't last long--for the mills. For us it would last forever.

The day we walked out, others would walk in. And it would be so small

a part of Coxey's army that the main body would march on and never miss

it. I had just gone through that long, soul-killing period of idleness

and had barely managed to find a job before I collapsed. Now that we

were to strike I would have to push that job aside and sink back into

the abyss.

In reaching Elwood, I had tramped from Muncie, Indiana, to Anderson, a

long weary walk for one whose feet, like mine, were not accustomed to

it. From Anderson I tramped to Frankton, and there I caught a freight

and rode the bumpers to Elwood. The train took me right into the mill.

It was summer and the mill had been shut down by the hard times. The

boss was there looking over the machinery. They were getting ready to

start up. I faced him and he said: “Do you want a job?”

“Yes,” I said.

“What at? Greasing up to-night,” he said. Weary and hungry as I was from

my hoboing, I went right to work, and all night I, with a few others,

greased the bearings. The next day he gave me a job as a catcher. A

catcher is one who seizes the rolled plate as it comes out and throws it

back to the roller. It has to be rolled many times. The boss who gave me

this much-wanted job was Daniel G. Reid, who afterward became one of the

big men in the tin industry.

After I became Secretary of Labor I was a dinner guest at the White

House. When I arrived the President said: “Here's an old friend of

yours.” To my surprise and keen pleasure President Harding led forward

my old boss, Daniel G. Reid. There was much laughing and old-time talk

between us. “Do you recall,” said Mr. Reid, “how during the tin strike

of '96, you steered to the lodge room and unionized men who came to take

the place of the strikers?” Mr. Reid thought this was a great joke. He

had always been favorable to ending the strike and signing the men's

agreement, but for a long time had been deterred by his partners. Mr.

Reid in nearly every conference was selected for chairman, and this

was considered by the employers a very fine tribute of respect and

confidence. Turning to the president, Mr. Reid said: “If Jim is as

industrious in your service as he was in the Elwood tin mill you have

got a good secretary. Jim knew more about the tin plate business when he

was a worker than any other man in America. I wanted to get him to join

our sales department but he declined my offer!”

When the matter of the Elwood strike was referred to the next regular

meeting I had been working only three weeks. I wrote to my father in

Sharon asking for his counsel on the subject. He wrote back: “In as much

as it isn't a question of wages or rules, I'd vote to stay on the job

and wait for my pay. There's no pay out here to be had even by waiting.

The mill is down, and if we hadn't raised a big potato crop we wouldn't

know where to look for our next meal.”