learned by experience how to make
the proper "heat" to boil the impurities out of pig-iron, or forge iron,
and change it into that finer product, wrought iron. Pig-iron contains
silicon, sulphur and phosphorus, and these impurities make it brittle so
that a cast iron teakettle will break at a blow, like a china cup. Armor
of this kind would have been no good for our iron-clad ancestors. When a
knight in iron clothes tried to whip a leather-clad peasant, the peasant
could have cracked him with a stone and his clothes would have fallen
off like plaster from the ceiling. So those early iron workers learned
to puddle forge iron and make it into wrought iron which is tough and
leathery and can not be broken by a blow. This process was handed down
from father to son, and in the course of time came to my father and so
to me. None of us ever went to school and learned the chemistry of it
from books. We learned the trick by doing it, standing with our faces
in the scorching heat while our hands puddled the metal in its glaring
bath.

And that is the way the farmer's son has learned hog scalding from the
time when our ancient fathers got tired of eating bristles and decided
to take their pork clean shaven. To-day there are books telling just
how many degrees of heat make the water right for scalding hogs, and the
metallurgists have written down the chemical formula for puddling
iron. But the man who learns it from a book can not do it. The mental
knowledge is not enough; it requires great muscular skill like that of
the heavyweight wrestler, besides great physical endurance to withstand
the terrific heat. The worker's body is in perfect physical shape and
the work does not injure him but only exhilarates him. No iron worker
can be a communist, for communists all have inferior bodies. The iron
worker knows that his body is superior, and no sour philosophy could
stay in him, because he would sweat it out of his pores as he sweats out
all other poisons.

The old man that I worked with when I first entered the rolling mill was
gray with his sixty years of toil. Yet his eye was clear and his
back was straight and when he went to the table he ate like a
sixteen-year-old and his sleep was dreamless. A man so old must conserve
his strength, and he made use of his husky helper whenever he could to
save his own muscles and lengthen his endurance. My business was to do
the little chores and save time for the helper. I teased up the furnac