Love on the Dole by Walter Greenwood Page A

what everybody calls an “engineer”, you’ve no choice but to serve your seven years. Oh, and you were lucky to be taken on as an apprentice. I hear that they’re considering refusing to bind themselves in contracting to provide seven years’ employment. There is a rumour about that there aren’t to be any more apprentices. You see, Harry, if they don’t bind themselves, as they have to do in the indentures, they can clear the shop of all surplus labour when times are bad. And things are shaping that way, now,’ a grin: ‘You’ve no need to worry, though. You’ve seven years’ employment, certain.’
    Hum!
    It chilled Harry, momentarily.
    Only momentarily. With all its disadvantages it was infinitely a more enjoyable occupation than Price and Jones’s.
    Variety here! Any of the men requiring such and such a tool gave him a brass check with their number stamped on it; he took it to the stores and exchanged it for the desired tool. Towards noon, in company with other new apprentices, he brewed tea for those men it was his duty to attend. Afterwards he ran to Sam Grundy’s back entry with their threepenny and sixpenny bets. At week-end, he learned with pleasurable surprise, the men would give him coppers for the services, extra if the bets he had taken proved profitable. Yes, despite what Larry Meath had said, this method of earning a living was far more desirable than Price and Jones’s or any other office.
    As for Bill Simmons and the others, they were liars. From their talk at various times he had concluded they were in charge of machines. Nothing of the kind; errand boys, ‘shop boys’ they were, nothing more. Rather discouraging to learn that, generally, over a year elapsed before you were permitted to use even a drilling machine. Drilling machine, though. A child could be entrusted with it: all that was necessary was the depression of a lever; a device prevented the drill from boring too deep; it was foolproof. Nevertheless, he was not permitted practice on the machine. As yet he was errand boy, and a zealous one into the bargain.
    But that period soon passed when, sent on errands to the stores, he hurried there and back resisting the temptation to have his attention engaged by the numberless absorbingly interesting engineering operations to be seen on all sides. From the other apprentices he learnt the circuitous routes to the stores, routes which led through the various departments.
    The foundry! What a place.
    Steel platforms from which you saw great muscular men dwarfed to insignificance by the vastness of everything: men the size of Ned Narkey who had charge of the gigantic crane. Fascinated he saw the cumbrous thing, driven by Ned, unseen, move slowly along its metals: leisurely, its great arm deposited an enormous ladle by the furnace. A pause; a hoarse shout; a startling glimpse of fire then a rushing, spitting river of flames that was molten metal running out of the furnace’s channel into the ladle until it brimmed. The river of fire was dammed, ceased as by magic. The crane’s limp cable tautened; slowly the ladle swung, revolved, white-hot, a vivid, staring glare that stabbed the eyes; slowly it swung, twenty tons of molten metal to the moulds.
    Men, red in front, black behind and trailing long shadows after them; men with leathern aprons, bare, sinewy arms and coloured goggles shading their eyes, ran about in obedience to shouted instructions: chains creaked on strain, unseen mechanism ‘clank-clanked’, then, as with calculated deliberation, the glowing cauldron tipped forward as though held, jug-wise, by an invisible giant’s hand. Harry held his breath as the metal brimmed the lip to fall, splashing off a teeming fountain of heavy, quick-dying sparks like a Catherine wheel, before the metal ran to earth forcing off hissing plumes of burning rainbow-coloured gases through the mould vents.
    A magnificent, inspiring sight; made you feel proud of being identified with the great Marlowe