How much of strength, of skill, of possible loyalty, does modern industry tap from the average Hunky?
I asked the question, but did not answer it--for modern industry. I answered it for the gang in the pit and the crew on the stoves of the blast-furnace.
There were vast unused areas of men's minds and of their muscles, as well as of their powers of will, that were wholly unreached in the rough job adjustment of modern industry. I mean among the so-called groups of "lower intelligence." It was an interesting speculation whether any engineer would ever find a means of tapping this unused voltage.
I suddenly thought how inconceivable the stoppage of that roar would be. A silent valley, with all those ordered but gigantic forces stopped, would be almost terrible. But just such a silence was likely to happen. By a walk-out.
The great strike had been going a week, in other towns--tying up the steel production of the country. Meetings had followed, and riots, with an occasional bloody conflict with the "mud guard" of Pennsylvania.
Part of that untapped force! I said to myself--dynamos of power of all sorts. Would it bludgeon over a change in steel conditions, or flow back, waste voltage, into the ground?
The rumble in the valley again. Could I hear the shake of the charging-machine at this distance? The Bessemer glow had changed. The nail mill roar seemed to increase.
I went down the hill. When I reached Mrs. Farrell's and climbed into my back room, I set the alarm for 4.00 o'clock, putting the clock a foot and a half from the bed. It has a knob on top, and you can stop it by knocking down the knob with the palm of your hand. I went to sleep, to dream about the men who built the Pyramids.
I went into the employment office one day, to fix up the papers of my transfer to the blast-furnace, and got into a talk with Burke, the employment manager, about personnel work.
"What do you think of the game?" I asked.
"It's great," he returned; "it's working with human material--that's what it is; there's nothing like it. But," he added, "if you have any ideas about unions keep them in the back of your head--that is, if you want a job in steel. They won't stand for that sort of thing."
He looked down on his desk, where there was a news-clipping of the demands of the American Federation of Labor's Strike Committee--the twelve demands. He pointed to it.