"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."