The Workers: An Experiment in Reality. The West

by Walter A. Wyckoff

Barry soon taught me how to load them properly, and, having filled the truck, we descended by an elevator to the ground-floor and passed out again into the bracing air of the open platforms, where we carefully stacked the tongues under the eaves, convenient to the loading of the cars. Round after round we made, going always and returning by the same course, loading the truck and stacking the tongues as quickly as we could. The work was not hard. There was a knack in the proper handling of the tongues, but it was readily acquired, and then one could settle down easily to the routine of work, whose monotony was broken by the recurring trips.

One incident checked us in the way. It was our happening to meet the timekeeper on his rounds. Barry dropped everything until he had made assurance doubly sure that his presence had been duly noted in the book. Seeing that I was a new hand the timekeeper quickly took my name, and then passed on with a parting word of caution to me about the proper record of my time.

Barry was evidently in high enjoyment of the situation. The work suited him, and the directing of a novice was hugely to his taste. There was little stay in the even current of his talk. I began to feel not unlike a “new boy” at school, for, with the air of a mentor, he pointed out to me all the sections of the factory, and the different occupations of the men, and the individual foremen as we chanced to see them. Once, as we were busily stacking tongues, his voice fell suddenly to a confidential tone, and his task was plied with tenser energy.

“Do you see that man talking to Crist?” he said to me, almost in a whisper, and with his eyes intent upon his work.

I had noticed someone who seemed to be a member of the managing staff.

“That’s Mr. Adams,” Barry continued. “He ain’t the head boss, but he’s next to the head. He’s an awful nice man. He was a workingman himself once. I’ve heard that he was a carpenter in the factory when the old man was alive, and that he was promoted to be next to the head boss. He knows what work is, and he’s awful nice to the men, but you don’t never want to let him catch you idle.”

We had just finished stacking the load and had started again for the warehouse, when we caught sight of a neatly dressed man of medium height who was crossing a temporary bridge, which joined the platform by the main building over the railway-track to the one where we were at work. I felt the truck shoot forward at a speed which I had to follow almost at a run. In the dark passage of the warehouse Barry was soon talking again, and again in an awed undertone.

“That was the head boss,” he said, impressively. “That was Mr. Young himself.” And he looked surprised that I did not stagger under the announcement, although, to do him justice, I did feel a good deal as the new boy might, brought unexpectedly for the first time into the presence of the head master.

“He ain’t never worked a day in his life,” Barry was continuing. “Only he’s a terrible fine superintendent. You bet he gets big wages. They say he can see when he ain’t looking, and he comes down like a thousand of brick on any man who shirks his work. He ain’t never worked himself, and so he don’t know what it is.”

The noon-whistle sounded soon after this, to my great relief, for a fast of eighteen hours was telling on me. Barry left the truck where it stood, and broke into a run. I followed him. In a moment the whole building and the outer platforms were echoing to the tread of running feet. When I reached the factory yard I found crowds of men streaming from every door and pressing swiftly through the gate. A stranger to the scene might at first sight have supposed the building to be on fire and that the men were escaping, but a second glance would have corrected the idea. There was no excitement in their mood; nor was there any playfulness; but with set, serious faces they were running for the careful economy of time. Barry had explained to me that, in order to quit the day’s work at half-past five, the hands take but half an hour for their mid-day meal, and that I must, therefore, be careful to be within the factory gates by half-past twelve.