pite working through the noon-hour, I never
finished my task before eight at night. I was working a twelve-to
thirteen-hour day, and I wasn't being paid overtime as in the cannery.

I might as well give the secret away right here. I was doing the work of
two men. Before me, one mature able-bodied labourer had done the day
shift and another equally mature able-bodied labourer had done the
night-shift. They had received forty dollars a month each. The
superintendent, bent on an economical administration, had persuaded me to
do the work of both men for thirty dollars a month. I thought he was
making an electrician of me. In truth and fact, he was saving fifty
dollars a month operating expenses to the company.

But I didn't know I was displacing two men. Nobody told me. On the
contrary, the superintendent warned everybody not to tell me. How
valiantly I went at it that first day. I worked at top speed, filling
the iron wheelbarrow with coal, running it on the scales and weighing the
load, then trundling it into the fire-room and dumping it on the plates
before the fires.

Work! I did more than the two men whom I had displaced. They had merely
wheeled in the coal and dumped it on the plates. But while I did this
for the day coal, the night coal I had to pile against the wall of the
fire-room. Now the fire-room was small. It had been planned for a night
coal-passer. So I had to pile the night coal higher and higher,
buttressing up the heap with stout planks. Toward the top of the heap I
had to handle the coal a second time, tossing it up with a shovel.

I dripped with sweat, but I never ceased from my stride, though I could
feel exhaustion coming on. By ten o'clock in the morning, so much of my
body's energy had I consumed, I felt hungry and snatched a thick
double-slice of bread and butter from my dinner pail. This I devoured,
standing, grimed with coal-dust, my knees trembling under me. By eleven
o'clock, in this fashion I had consumed my whole lunch. But what of it?
I realised that it would enable me to continue working through the noon
hour. And I worked all the afternoon. Darkness came on, and I worked
under the electric lights. The day fireman went off and the night
fireman came on. I plugged away.

At half-past eight, famished, tottering, I washed up, changed my clothes,
and dragged my weary body to the car. It was three miles to where I
lived, and I had received a pass with the stipulatio