William Robert
December 26th, 2003, 04:08 AM
The quotation below illustrates what a Secretary of Labor could say in 1922. This quote is from the "The Iron Puddler", an autobiography by the then Secretary of Labor, James J. Davis. Davis was Secretary of Labor under three Presidents -- Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover, After that he was US Senator from Pennsylvania for 14 years.
In this chapter he is describing his former job as an iron puddler. The entire book can be downloaded at the link below.
Albert Himoe
http://www.gutenberg.net/etext98/tirnp10.txt
"There isn't much
use for pig-iron in this world. You've got to be better iron than
that. Pig-iron has no fiber; it breaks instead of bending. Build
a bridge of it and a gale will break it and it will fall into the
river. Some races are pig-iron; Hottentots and Bushmen are pig-
iron. They break at a blow. They have been smelted out of wild
animalism, but they went no further; they are of no use in this
modern world because they are brittle. Only the wrought-iron
races can do the work. All this I felt but could not say in the
days when I piled the pig-iron in the puddling furnace and turned
with boyish eagerness to have my father show me how."
In this chapter he is describing his former job as an iron puddler. The entire book can be downloaded at the link below.
Albert Himoe
http://www.gutenberg.net/etext98/tirnp10.txt
"There isn't much
use for pig-iron in this world. You've got to be better iron than
that. Pig-iron has no fiber; it breaks instead of bending. Build
a bridge of it and a gale will break it and it will fall into the
river. Some races are pig-iron; Hottentots and Bushmen are pig-
iron. They break at a blow. They have been smelted out of wild
animalism, but they went no further; they are of no use in this
modern world because they are brittle. Only the wrought-iron
races can do the work. All this I felt but could not say in the
days when I piled the pig-iron in the puddling furnace and turned
with boyish eagerness to have my father show me how."