Life in a Railway Factory

by Alfred Williams

It sometimes happens that one of the boys proves to be a bully and a terror and plays ducks and drakes with the rights and privileges of the others. This is always a matter of great concern to the juveniles, and they will not be satisfied till the tyrant has been humbled and punished. They have many minor differences and quarrels among themselves, and challenges to fight are frequent. Honour looms big in the eyes of the rivet boys, and they are quick to resent a taunt or affront and to wipe off all aspersions. Perhaps a sneer has been levelled at one by reason of his name, his father’s occupation, or the name of the street or locality in which he lives. With true pluck the matter is taken up. An hour and a place for the meeting are fixed: it is generally — “Meet me in the Rec at dinner-time.” There they accordingly assemble with their mates and supporters and fight the matter out. It is usually a rough-and-tumble proceeding, but they do not desist till one or the other has been worsted and honour satisfied. More than once it has happened that they have been so intent on the match they have lost count of the time and have all — a dozen or more — got locked out for the afternoon. This requires some explanation, and the next day the whole circumstance has to be related. Here the boys’ fathers might interfere and administer a sound corrective lesson to each one of them.

Getting locked out is also very often the result of over-staying at football, which is regularly practised by the youngsters in the recreation field all the year round. The boys club together and buy a ball and race out to play every dinner-time. There, for three-quarters of an hour, they exert themselves to the utmost and are forced to run back to the shed at the top of their speed, often returning in an exhausted condition. A spell of five minutes puts them right, however, and they go on with their work as though they had enjoyed an infinite period of refreshment. In the evening they race home to tea and afterwards go out again while it is daylight, never seeming too tired for sport and play.

Many queer nicknames, such as “Bodger,” “Snowball,” “Granny,” “Chucky,” and “Nanty Pecker,” are in vogue among the boys. These become fixtures and remain with them for many years. It must not be thought that all the rivet boys submit to become permanent hands in the shed. A good many of them, as soon as they are sufficiently old and big, go to the recruiting sergeant and try to enlist. Some enter the Army and others the Navy; some go this way and some that. Very often boys who spent their early days at rivet-hotting in the shed and enter the Service, return in after years to obtain another start in the old quarters, and grow old amid the scenes of their boyhood. Some never return at all, but die, either in battle, of sickness, or other accident. More than one, too, has gone the wrong way in life and ended in suicide.

The boys are much given to reading cheap literature of the “dreadful” type, and they revel in the deeds of Buffalo Bill, Deadwood Dick, and other well-known heroes of fiction. Sometimes a boy, unknown to his parents, actually possesses a firearm — a pistol or revolver — and, with a group of companions, scours the countryside round about in search of “game.” Once, at least, mischief was done in the shape of bursting open a letter-box with bullets, and at another time a poor calf received a bullet-shot through the hedgerow. This last-named deed, however, was purely accidental. Great fear fell upon the juveniles after this untoward experience and the pistol was forthwith cast into the canal. At another time a careless lad shot himself through the hand with a pistol and inflicted a dangerous wound.

A great change has come over the frame shed during the last twelve years. The old foreman has gone; a great many of the old hands have disappeared also, and the methods of work have been revolutionised. The prices have been cut again and again; a different spirit prevails everywhere; it is no longer as it used to be. Considerable liberty and many small privileges were allowed to the men by the governing staff in those days, and the foreman, if he felt disposed, could do much to make them comfortable and satisfied. Then the overseer was practically master of his shed and could make his own terms with the workmen, though it is only fair to remember that under those conditions he was sometimes inclined to be summary and despotic.

The old foreman of the frame shed was an excellent example of this kind of overseer. As an engineer he was clever, intelligent, sharp-sighted, and energetic. In addition to this he was a good judge of character, a natural leader of men, and one strongly sympathetic. If he was in want of new hands he needed not to ask a dozen ridiculous questions, or to stand upon any kind of ceremony; he came, saw, and decided at once. One glance was sufficient for him; he had summed the man up in an instant. In the shed he was free, easy and spontaneous, praising and blaming in the same breath. At one moment he was livid with passion; the next he was kind, conciliative, and condescending. His temper was hot and fiery. When he frowned at you his expression was as black as a thunder-cloud, but you knew that everything would soon be well again. His behaviour was at least open and genuine, and whatever his attitude to his superiors might have been, he was free from dissimulation with the workmen. Nothing escaped his attention in the shed. As he walked his eagle eye comprehended all. If a stanchion or girder was in the least out of square he perceived it, and it had to be put right immediately.

He never made himself too cheap and common with the workmen, but held himself in such a relation to them that he could always command respect. He often came to the shed late and left early, but there was then no rigid law compelling the foreman to be for ever at his post, and the work usually proceeded the same. He was an inventor himself, and he was always ready to encourage independent thought and action among his workmen. He recognised merit and rewarded it. He was not jealous of his workmen’s brains, and he was at all times willing to consider an opinion and to act upon it if it seemed preferable to his own. He was a mixture of the fatherly ruler and the despot, but he was very proud of his men and he lauded them up to the skies to outsiders, whenever an opportunity presented itself. There was nothing they could not make, and make well, according to him. If he blamed them to themselves he stoutly defended them against others, and he would not have dreamed of selling and betraying them to the management, as is commonly done at this time.

Of the boys he was extremely fond, and especially of such as were well-behaved and attentive, however ragged and rough their dress might be, and he often stood and talked to them with his hand on their shoulder, or gave them pennies or marbles. But if he saw one of the “terribles” bullying a younger lad he ran up to him and gave him a sound cuff, or a vigorous kick. Under his foremanship work was plentiful and wages were high. The shed was nearly always on overtime, and money flowed like water. The men bore the strain of the overtime complacently. They worked without fear and turned out a hundred, or a hundred and twenty waggon frames a week. Those were prosperous days for the frame shed and many a one saved a little pile from his earnings.

Together with all this, however, the foreman discovered some remarkable characteristics and he was possessed of the most amazing effrontery. If strangers connected with other firms came in to inspect the plant and process and to know the prices of things, he hoodwinked them in every possible manner and told them astounding fables. He would take up an article in his hand, describe it with pride, and tell them it was made for a fifth of what it actually cost to produce. If the manager came through and any awkward questions were asked, he skilfully turned the point aside and motioned secretly to the men to support him if they should be consulted. He hated all interference and would not stand patronage even from his superiors, and where argument failed clever manœuvring saved the situation.

Whatever he saw in the shape of machinery he coveted for his own shed. More than once he was known actually to purloin a machine from the neighbour foreman’s shop in the night and transfer it to his own premises. Once a very large drilling machine, new from the maker and labelled to another department at the works, came into the yard by mistake, but it never reached its proper destination. Calling a gang of men, he removed the drill from the truck, caused a foundation to be made for it, fixed it up in a corner half out of sight, and had it working the next morning. A hue and cry was raised up and down and around the yard for the missing machine, but it was not discovered till a long time afterwards. It still stands in the shed, a proof of one of the most brazen and impudent thefts possible.