STAMPING — THE DROP-HAMMER STAFF — ALGY AND CECIL — PAUL AND “PUMP” — “SMAMER” — BOILERS — A NEAR SHAVE

The drop-stamps stand in the corner, close under the wall. They are supplied by three coke forges, and by the coal furnace before mentioned. A drop-stamp, or drop-hammer, is a machine used for stamping out all kinds of details and uses in wrought iron or steel, from an ounce to several hundredweights. It differs from a steam-hammer properly so called in that while it is raised by steam power it falls by gravity, striking the metal in the dies by its own impetus, whereas the steam-hammer head is driven down by a piston. Three hands are employed at each machine. They are — the stamper, his hotter, and the small boy who drives the hammer. A similar number compose the night shift; the machines are in constant use by night and day. All the work is done at the piece rate, and the prices are low; the men have to be very nimble to earn sufficient money to pay them for the turn.

The hands employed on the drop-hammers are of a fairly uniform type, though there are several distinguished above the others by reason of their individual features and characteristics. Chief among them are the two young hammer boys, Algy and Cecil, Paul the furnaceman, and a youth who rejoices in the preposterous nickname of “Pump.” Algy drives the end drop-stamp for the chargeman and Cecil the next one to it, larger and heavier. Algy has several nicknames, one of which, from his diminutive stature, being “Teddy Bear,” and the other, carrying with it a certain amount of sarcasm, is plain “Jim.” Sometimes, also, he is called “Dolly” or “Midget.” Cecil boasts of a string of christian names, the correct list being Cecil Oswald Clarence. Questioned concerning the other members of the family he informs you that his brother is named Reginald Cuthbert, his schoolgirl sister May Alberta, and his baby sister Ena Merle. From some cause or other he himself has not obtained a regular nickname; he is rather summarily addressed by his surname. No one in the shed ever deigns to call him by his christian name, it is too unusual and high-sounding, too aristocratic and superb. Bob or Jack would have been preferable; scarcely anyone at the works goes beyond a monosyllable in the matter of names.

The boys are of the same age — fifteen or thereabout — but they are dissimilar in stature and in almost every other respect. Algy is short and small, plump and sturdy, while Cecil is inclined to run. He is tall for his age, and very thin. His body is as flat as a man’s hand; he has no more substance than a herring. Algy’s features are round, regular, and pleasant; he is quite a handsome boy. His forehead slopes a little, his nose is perfect in shape. He has frank, grey eyes sparkling with fun and good-nature, a girlish mouth, and small, pretty teeth. Cecil, on the other hand, is not what one would style handsome. He has thin, hollow cheeks and small, hard features. His forehead is narrow, and his eyes are rather large and searching — expressing strength and keenness. His mouth is stern, and his lips pout a little: they are best represented by the French s’allonger — les lÈvres s’allongent, as Monsieur Jourdain’s did in MoliÈre, when he pronounced the vowel sound of u. He has a particularly fine set of teeth, and he has a way of grizzing them together and showing them when in the act of making a special exertion that gives him a savage expression.

Both boys are pale. Algy’s face, when it is clean, shines like a glass bottle; Cecil’s skin is inclined to be yellow. Both have dark rings around the eyes, especially Cecil, who is the more delicate of the two — they are neither very robust-looking. Their hair is very long, and it stands out well from underneath their cloth caps and stretches down the cheeks before the ears. They are consequently often assailed with the cry — “Get yer ’air cut,” or — “You be robbin’ the barber of tuppence,“ or — ”Tell yer mother to use the basin,” suggesting that the boys’ hair is cut at home. It is a common charge to lay to small boys in the shed that their mothers used to put a basin over their heads and cut the hair around the outside of it. Both boys wax indignant at being taunted about the basin, and reply to the other remark with, “You gi’ me the tuppence, then, an’ I’ll have it cut.” Occasionally, more by way of being sarcastic than out of any desire to show good-nature, the stampers will make a collection towards defraying the barber’s expenses, and the next morning the boys will turn up at the shed nearly bald: they have had their hair cut this time with a vengeance.

Several times Algy has come to the shed wearing a pair of wooden clogs, but, as everyone teased him and called him “Cloggy,” he cast them aside and would not wear them any more. Clogs belong rather to the Midlands and the North of England, and are very rarely seen in the railway town. The least respectable of all the boys’ clothing are their shirts. They are usually full of big rents, being split from top to bottom, or torn quite across the back, the lower part falling down and exposing the naked flesh for a space of a foot, and they are of an inscrutable colour. One day an entire sleeve of Algy’s shirt dropped clean away, and Cecil’s was rent completely up one side so that his entire flank and shoulder were visible. Though the stampers laugh at Cecil and sometimes grip hold of whole handfuls of his flesh, where the shirt is torn, he is not very much disconcerted. Algernon blushed considerably, however, when his mate quietly told him one day that he could see his naked posterior through a rent in his trousers.

Although the boys’ clothing is untidy and dilapidated they are not kept short of food, and their appetites are truly enormous. They bring large parcels of provisions to the shed — thick chunks of bread and butter, rashers of raw bacon, an egg to boil or fry, and sometimes a couple of polonies or succulent sausages. The whole is tied up in a red dinner-handkerchief or wrapped in a newspaper; you would often have a difficulty in getting it into an ordinary-sized bucket. The youngsters have to stand a great deal of chaff over their parcels of provisions. The men often take them in their hands and weigh them up and down, showing them about the shed, and asking each other if they do not want to buy a pair of old boots. At breakfast- or dinner-time the lads obtain a roughly-made frying-pan, or take the coke shovel, and, after rubbing it out with a piece of paper, cook their food, usually frying it together and dipping their bread in the fat alternately. Then, if it is fine, still stripped of their waistcoats, they go out in the yard and sit down, or crouch by the furnace door and clear up the food to the last morsel; they will often not have finished when the hooter sounds the first time to warn the men to come back to the shed. When the meal is over, if there is yet time, Algy will produce from his pocket some literature of the Buffalo Bill type, or a school story, of which he is fond, and read it. Cecil will not deign to look at “such stuff,” as he calls it, but will borrow a newspaper, or some part of one, from his mates, and greedily devour the contents of that.

Though neither of them has left school for more than a year, or, at the outside, fifteen months, they have forgotten almost everything they learned, even to the very rudiments in many cases. Their knowledge of grammar, arithmetic, poetry, geography, and history has entirely lapsed, or, if they remember anything at all, it will be but a smattering of each. To test their memory and knowledge of these matters the boys’ chargeman occasionally offers them prizes, and enters them into competition with other lads of the shed, some of whom have not been away from school for more than five or six months, but one and all show a deplorable lack of the faculty of retention. Whether it is the result of too much cramming by the teacher, or whether it is that the rising generation is really deficient in mental capacity, they are quite incapable of answering the most simple and elementary questions. The chargeman’s plan is to offer them pennies for the names of half-a-dozen capitals of foreign countries, half-a-dozen foreign rivers, six names of British kings or British rivers, the capitals of six English counties, or the names of the counties themselves, six fish of English rivers, six wild birds, half-a-dozen names of wild flowers, the capitals of British colonies, the names of six English poets, or a few elementary points of grammar, and so on.

The answers, when any are vouchsafed, are often ludicrous and amazing: the intellectual capacity of the boys is certainly not very brilliant. During these tests the chargeman was astonished to learn that Salisbury is a county, Ceylon is the capital of China, and that Paris stands on the banks of the river Liffey. As for the preterite tense, not one had ever heard of it. Only one out of six could give the names of the six counties and kings complete, though another of the lads had strong impressions concerning a monarch he called the “ginger-headed” one, but he could not think of his name. Not one could furnish the requisite list of fish, fowl, and natural wild flowers, but little Jim, struck with a sudden inspiration, shouted out “jack and perch,” for he had recently been fishing in the clay-pits with his brother. The others frankly confessed they did not know anything about the matter; if they had ever learned it at school they had forgotten it now. Anyway, it was not of much use to one, they said, though it was all right to know about it. Not one of the half-dozen, though all were born in the town, could give the name of a single Wiltshire river.

Paul is not permanently attached to the furnace in the corner, but came to fill the place of one who had met with an accident. As a matter of fact, Paul is everybody’s man; he is here, there, and everywhere. He can turn his hand to almost anything in the second degree, and is a very useful stop-gap. Forge he cannot, stamp he cannot, though he is a capital heater of iron, and makes a good furnaceman; he is a fair all-round, inside man. But somehow or other, everyone persists in making fun of Paul, and contrives to play pranks and practical jokes upon him. Whatever job he is engaged upon his mates address ridiculous remarks to him; they will never take him seriously. Some one or other, in passing by, will knock off his hat; this one gravely takes him by the wrist and feels his pulse, and that one will give him a rough push. Another puts water over him from the pipe, pretending it was by accident; whatever reply he makes his mates only laugh at him. As a rule, Paul takes it all in good part, though sometimes he will lose his temper and retaliate with a lump of coal, or any other missile upon which he can lay his hands.

Paul would be the tallest man in the shed if it were not that he stoops slightly as the result of having had rheumatics. As it is, he is quite six feet in height, bony, but not fleshy, with broad shoulders and large limbs. As he walks his head is thrown forward; he goes heavily upon his feet. His features are regular and pleasant; he has grey eyes and bushy brows. His skin is dark with the heat and grime of the furnace; his expression is one of marked good-nature. In appearance he is a perfect rustic; there is no need to look at him the second time to know that he dwells without the municipal border. It is this air of rusticity, combined with his simplicity of character and behaviour, that makes Paul the butt of the other workmen. They would not think of practising their clownish tricks upon others, for there are many upon whom it would be very inadvisable to attempt a jest without being prepared for a sudden and violent reprisal.

Paul’s home is in the village, about three miles from the town. There he passes his leisure in comparative quiet, and, in his spare time from the shed, cultivates a large plot of land and keeps pigs. This finds him employment all the year round, so that he has no time to go to the public-house or the football match, though he sometimes plays in the local cricket eleven. He takes great interest in his roots and crops, and almost worships his forty perch of garden. During the summer and autumn he brings the choicest specimens of his produce in his pocket and shows them to his mates in the shed; he usually manages to beat all comers with his potatoes and onions. In spite of Paul’s simplicity of behaviour, one cannot help being attracted to him by reason of his frankness and open-heartedness; he would not think of doing anything that is not strictly above board. Though rough and rude, blunt and unpolished, he is yet very honest and conscientious. Certainly he is not as sharp and intelligent as are many of the town workmen, but he is a better mate than most of them, and when it comes to work he will stand by you to the last; he is not one to back out at the slightest difficulty.

How Pump came to be Pump is a mystery; no one knows the origin of the nickname. “They called I Pump a long time ago,” says he. Very likely it was given to him extemporaneously, with no particular relation to anything; someone or other said “Pump,” and the name stuck there at once. Pump is just under eighteen years of age. He drives the heavy drop-stamp on the day-shift, and, owing to certain characteristics of which he is possessed, he always attracts attention. He is very loud and noisy, full of strong words and forcible language, though he is extraordinarily cheerful and good-natured. He is short in stature, very strong and much given to sweating; in the least heat his face will be very red and covered with great drops of perspiration. His forehead is broad and sloping, he has immense blue eyes, tapered nose, bronze complexion, a solid, square countenance, and a tremendous shock of hair. In driving the hammer he has acquired the unusual habit of following the heavy monkey up and down with his eyes, and the expression on his face, as he peers up into the roof, induces many to stop and take a peep at him as they pass by. To all such Pump addresses certain phrases much more forcible than polite, and warns them to “clear out” without delay if they do not “want something.” They usually respond with an extra-special grimace, or work their arms up and down as though they were manipulating the engine from which he derives his nickname.

As a mate Pump is variable. With the men of one shift he can agree very well, but with the others he is nearly always at loggerheads. The fact is that Pump’s stamper on one shift does not like him, and will not try to like him, either. He quite misunderstands his driver’s characteristics, and will not see his good qualities underneath a certain rugged exterior. Accordingly, they quarrel and call each other evil names all day. Very often the stamper will throw down his tongs and walk off. Thereupon Pump lowers the hammer defiantly, folds his arms, and tosses his head with disgust, while the furnaceman, waiting with his heat, calls to them to “come on.” Now the stamper picks up his tongs quickly, shouts loudly to Pump, “Hammer up, there!” and on they go again, the stamper snorting and muttering to himself, and glaring fiercely from side to side, while Pump bursts into song, with a broad grin on his countenance. Sometimes the stamper, in a towering fury, will come to the chargeman and swear that he will not hit another stroke with “that thing there,” and demand another mate forthwith, but with a little tact and the happy application of a spice of good-humour, the situation will be saved, and everything will go on right merrily, though the old trouble will certainly recur. Pump confides all his troubles to the chargeman and sheds a few tears now and then. He is full of good intentions and tries to do his level best to please, but he cannot avoid friction with his fiery and short-tempered mates of the fortnightly shift.

He has one very special and ardent desire, which is to go on night duty; he is for ever counting up the days and weeks that must pass before his birthday will arrive, and so raise him to the age necessary for undertaking the shift. In common with most other youths, he looks upon the night turn as something “devoutly to be wished,” but I very much fear that a few weeks of the change will modify his opinion of the matter, if it does not entirely disillusion him. Notwithstanding a certain amount of novelty attaching to the working on the night-shift, it is attended with many hardships and inconveniences. The greater part of those who have to perform it would willingly exchange it for the day duty.

There was at one time another highly distinctive “character” attached to the drop-stamps. He revelled in the nickname of “Smamer.” Where he obtained the pseudonym is unknown, though it is notable that the word has an intelligible derivative. Smamer is undoubtedly derived from the Greek verb s?? = sman, meaning to smear, and, afterwards, from s?a[1] = soap, so that the nickname is meant to designate a smearer. As there are many who are in the habit of smearing their faces with soap, the nickname would seem to have a very wide and universal application. Be that as it may, our Smamer was a smearer of the first order; he usually stopped at that and did not care to prosecute the matter further. His face daily bore traces of the initial process of washing, and that only; it was a genuine smear and little besides. Whoever first honoured him with the appellation was a person of discernment, though he might not have been aware of the origin of the word. You often hear a workman say that So-and-so is “all smamed up” with oil or some other greasy substance.

Smamer was one of the forge hands and heated iron for the middle drop-stamp. His home was in the country, several miles from the town; winter and summer he tramped to and from the shed. For several years after his father and mother died he lived in the cottage by himself, tilled his own garden, prepared his food, performed his housework, made his bed, and did his own washing, though he was no more than nineteen years of age. He was noted for his eccentric mode of living. Whatever the weather might be he scarcely ever wore an overcoat. He often came to work wet through to the skin, and reached home at night in the same condition, where he received no welcome of any sort, but had to light his own fire before he could dry his clothing or prepare his meal. To every inquiry as to whether he was wet or not he made one reply; he was “just a little bit damp about the knees,” that was all.

In manner he was quiet and rather sullen; he was never very sweet-tempered, though he was a quick and clever heater of iron and a very good mate. About his native village he was rough and noisy, fond of fighting and disturbance. He was frequently in conflict with the police, and often on the point of being summoned before the Bench for some offence or other, but he usually scraped out of the difficulty at the last moment, either by means of apologies, or by making some kind of restitution to the injured party. At week-ends, with a band of associates, he paid visits to the neighbouring villages and fought with the young men, until the whole of them became so well-known to the police that wherever they went they were recognised and promptly hustled off in the direction of their native place.

During the autumn months Smamer visited all the orchards along the road on the way to work, and came to the shed with his pockets crammed full of apples. These he used to divide out among his mates, who ate them with little or no compunction; there is small searching of conscience among the boys of the factory, especially when the contraband happens to be sweet, juicy apples plucked from the farmer’s trees. Very soon, however, the habit of the life began to tell upon him. His continually getting wet, and the having no one to provide him with any kind of comfort, ruined his constitution; in a few months he wasted away and died. A small party of mates from the shed attended the funeral at the little village churchyard: that was the end of Smamer. His place at the forge was soon filled; he was not missed very much. Everyone said he had but himself to blame; there was no sympathy meted out to him. His brother, who also worked on the drop-stamps, had been killed by a blow on the head with a piece of metal from the die only a short while before. They lay side by side in the little walled enclosure, for ever oblivious of the noise and din of the thunderous hammers and the grinding wheels of the factory.

There are several others, distinguished with titles of an expressive kind, working on the drop-stamps. Of these one answers to the nickname of “Bovril,” one is “Kekky Flapper,” one is “Aeroplane Joe,” one “Blubber,” and another is known about the shed as “Wormy.” How they came to possess such inglorious appellatives cannot with certainty be told; a very little will suffice to brand you with an epithet in the work-shed. In addition to these, in the vicinity of the drop-stamps in the corner are an ex-groom, a grocer, a musical freak, a comedian, a photographer, a boy scout, a territorial, a jockey, a cowman, a pianoforte maker, and a local preacher.

Situated over the coal furnace that feeds the big drop-stamps is a boiler of the “loco” pattern, one of those responsible for the tremendous din that is raised every day at meal-times when the steam is not required for the engines and hammers. These boilers have all served their time on the line — in passenger or goods traffic — and, after their removal from the engine frames, they have become distributed over the company’s system and throughout the factories. The distance a boiler is required to travel under steam on the railway is about thirty thousand miles; after completing this it is superseded and removed from the active list on the permanent way. By the time the boiler and engine have travelled together so many miles they will be half worn out. The wheels, by reason of the frequent application of the brakes and “skidding” on the rails, will be grooved and cut about, and the machinery will require new fittings and bearings. After the boilers have been removed from the frames they are overhauled and tested and then sold out to the different sheds and stations, wherever they may happen to be wanted.

The method of transacting business between the different sheds and departments at the works is exactly like that employed by outside firms and tradesmen. Bills and accounts are rendered, and the whole formula of hire and purchase is entered into by the different parties; everything; in fact, except the actual payment of money, is duly carried out. The sheds are required to show a balance on the right side at the end of each year; percentages are charged for working expenses, and all the rest is profit. Thus, some sheds will show profits of many thousands of pounds annually, though upon paper only; the surpluses do not exist in reality.

Although the new boiler costs £1,000 it is sold to the shed second-hand for £200, so that the cost of ten for the workshop was only £2,000. The charge for setting, and fitting, and also for repairs and cleaning, however, is very great; a big sum is needed to keep them in a fit condition for work. After they have been erected above the furnaces they are covered with a thick jacket of a compound of magnesia and fibre, to enable them to retain the heat, and they are afterwards painted black, so as to harmonise with the general environment. The steam pressure of the repaired boiler is usually fixed at about a hundred and twenty-five pounds per square inch. The capacity of each boiler is very great, and the composite power of the whole set formidable; if one of them should happen to explode the result would indeed be disastrous. A small staff of men superintends them by day and night, and greater care is taken of them than was the case formerly. I can remember when the shed was several times within a hair’s breadth of being blown up and forty or fifty men hurled to perdition.

A few years ago, instead of trustworthy men being appointed to superintend the boilers, they were consigned to the charge of several youths, who were very careless and negligent in their work, and who seemed to have no idea whatever of the tremendous responsibility resting upon them for the safety and welfare of the life in the shed. Provided with mouth-organs and bones, or Jew’s harps, they would play and skylark about for a long time and leave their boilers unattended at considerable risk. I have often known them to be away from their posts for an hour at a stretch, and to allow the water in the boilers to become almost entirely evaporated before they returned to fill them up again, which, as everyone knows, is an exceedingly dangerous practice. By the common regulation attaching to boilers, the water should never be permitted to fall below that point when it is visible in the gauge-glass. If it is allowed to do so the position becomes dangerous immediately, and, to obviate accident, the bars of the furnace fire should be withdrawn and no cold water admitted.

Once a youth — a wild, reckless fellow — was absent from the boiler an unusually long time in the middle of the morning before dinner. The stampers watched the water in the gauge-glass drop little by little and finally vanish, and still no one came to attend to it. Being a little anxious about it I sent several men and boys to try and find the boilerman, but without avail. His mates were nowhere to be found either, and the foreman was away from the shed at the time. From being anxious I soon felt alarmed. The matter was becoming serious, and we were not allowed, under any circumstances, to meddle with the injectors ourselves.

As I was warning all men in the locality of the danger the boilerman arrived, a little frightened, but in a desperate mood. I advised him to take the usual course in such a case, to have the fire withdrawn from the furnace and allow the boiler to burn, but as this would have meant certain dismissal for him he decided to risk everything and fill up the boiler or explode it. As he was determined in his foolhardy resolution we collected our mates and left the shed, retiring to a safe distance. By good fortune, however — by pure luck, and nothing else — the boiler received the water safely, though with a great deal of shuddering, and the danger was past. To make the best — or the worst — of it, there were three men on the back of the boiler at the time, laying on the coat of magnesia, for it had not been erected many days. Although we gave them warning of the danger they took not the slightest notice, but kept working away, in a hurry to get the job done, for it was piecework. If the boiler had exploded, packed as it was with terrific pressure and priming furiously, they would have been blown to atoms.

The bold and daring of the shed indulge in many jeers and uncomplimentary remarks, if some others, in the face of real danger, should adopt precautionary measures and take heed of their safety, but experience has taught me that it is better to be apprehensive and cautious and to take pains to safeguard oneself than to score a cheap victory by bravado and carelessness. When danger threatens in the factory, the best course is to stand quite clear at all costs; it is then no shame to put into practice the words of the old proverb, slightly amended: “He that works and runs away will live to work another day.” By far the greater proportion of the accidents that happen daily at the works are the direct result of inattention, of not taking notice of warnings uttered by others, and the failure to exercise the instinct of self-preservation natural to each individual. It is not that the men are absolutely careless of themselves; it is rather that the care they do take is not considerable or sufficient.