an
hour and ten minutes, to an hour and forty minutes, depending on the
speed and skill of the puddler, and the kind of iron. I was a fast
one, myself. But you expected that, from the fact that I am telling the
story. The man that tells the story always comes out a winner.

CHAPTER XIX. I START ON MY TRAVELS

Now that I was a master puddler, I faced the problem of finding a
furnace of my own. I saw no chance in Sharon. Furnaces passed from
father to son, so I could not hope to get one of the furnaces controlled
by another family. My father was not ready to relinquish his furnace to
me, as he was good for twenty years more of this vigorous labor.

I wanted to be a real boss puddler, and so, when I was eighteen I went
to Pittsburgh and got a furnace. But a new period of hard times was
setting in, jobs were getting scarce as they had been in 1884. That was
the year when we had no money in the house and I was chasing every loose
nickel in town. The mill at Sharon was down, and father was hunting work
in Pittsburgh and elsewhere. Then after a period of prosperity the hard
times had come again in 1891 and '92. My furnace job in Pittsburgh was
not steady. The town was full of iron workers and many of them were in
desperate need. Those who had jobs divided their time with their needy
comrades. A man with hungry children would be given a furnace for a few
days to earn enough to ward off starvation. I had no children and felt
that I should not hold a furnace. I left Pittsburgh and went to Niles,
Ohio, where I found less competition for the jobs. I worked a few
weeks and the mill shut down. I wandered all over the iron district and
finally, deciding that the North held no openings, I began working my
way toward the iron country in the South.

The Sharon mill did not shut down completely. The owner operated it at a
loss rather than throw all his old hands out on the world. Twenty years
later I met him on a train in the West and we talked of old times when
I worked in his mill. As long as he lived he was loved and venerated by
his former employees.

Father was putting in short time at Sharon and was badly worried. He was
thinking of setting out again to go from town to town looking for work,
but I had advised him against it. I had told him that he would merely
find crowds of idle men roaming from mill to mill along with him. My
brothers gave him similar advice.

"Father," we said, "it is a time of business depression an