ds.

I have always been proud of the "batting eye" that enables an iron
puddler to shape the balls to the exact weight required. This is a
mental act,--an act of judgment. The artist and the sculptor must have
this same sense of proportion. A man of low intelligence could never
learn to do it. We are paid by weight, and in my time, in the Sharon
mill, the balls were required to be two hundred pounds. Every pound
above that went to the company and was loss to the men.

I have heard that "guessing pigs" was an old-time sport among farmers.
To test their skill, each farmer would guess the weight of a grazing
pig. Then they would catch the porker, throw him on the scales, and find
out which farmer had guessed nearest the mark. Sunday clothes used to be
badly soiled in this sport.

But the iron worker does not guess his pigs. He knows exactly how much
pig-iron he put into the boil. His guessing skill comes into play when
with a long paddle and hook he separates six hundred pounds of sizzling
fireworks into three fire balls each of which will weigh two hundred
pounds.

The balls are rolled up into three resting places, one in the
fire-bridge corner, one in the flue-bridge corner, and one in the jam,
all ready for the puddler to draw them.

My batch of biscuits is now done and I must take them out at once and
rush them to the hungry mouth of the squeezing machine. A bride making
biscuits can jerk them out of the oven all in one pan. But my oven is
larger and hotter. I have to use long-handled tongs, and each of my
biscuits weighs twice as much as I weigh. Suppose you were a cook with a
fork six feet long, and had three roasting sheep on the grid at once
to be forked off as quickly as possible. Could you do it? Even with a
helper wouldn't you probably scorch the mutton or else burn yourself to
death with the hot grease? That is where strength and skill must both
come into play.

One at a time the balls are drawn out on to a buggy and wheeled swiftly
to the squeezer. This machine squeezes out the slag which flows down
like the glowing lava running out of a volcano. The motion of the
squeezer is like the circular motion you use in rolling a bread pill
between the palms and squeezing the water out of it. I must get the
three balls, or blooms, out of the furnace and into the squeezer while
the slag is still liquid so that it can be squeezed out of the iron.

From cold pig-iron to finished blooms is a process that takes from