SLOWLY the ladle moves, carried by the crane man, steered by the workmen, goggled and gloved—I had no time to draw those details. Into each mould it dropped just enough molten metal to make a shell head. And when all the moulds were filled, a man from another shop dropped in—“Say, what youse up to now?” “Me—I’m makin’ shells for the Kaiser.” “What! an’ here?” “Sure”—and as a French Inspector passed—“Ain’t we sending ’em to him as quick as we kin?”
XXIV
FORGING SHELLS: THE SLAVES OF THE WHEEL
NO composition could be finer, no movement more expressive, no grouping more perfect, and yet all this was happening every day and all day in an oily, dirty, greasy, smoky shell factory where no artist had ever worked before and the workmen, black men, were turning the big shell, under the big hammer, by the big capstan wheel that held it, and I noted in the shop that the black men saw more in my drawings than the white, yet there’s only one black painter in the country.