lls, as the
landlord's pasture was near his hotel. To bring the coal and ore to the
blast furnaces took little labor, just as my driving in the cows cost
the landlord but four cents a day. Next to the blast furnaces stood the
mixer, the Bessemer open hearth furnaces, the ingot stripper building,
the soaking pits and then the loading yards with their freight cars
where the finished product in the form of wire, rails or sky-scraper
steel is shipped away.

Because the landlord had his cows milked at the back door of his hotel
the milk was still warm when it was carried into his kitchen. And so the
steel mills are grouped so closely that a single heat sometimes carries
the steel from the Bessemer hearth through all the near-by machines
until it emerges as a finished product and is loaded on the railroad
cars while it is still warm. It was this saving of labor and fuel that
made American steel the cheapest steel in the world. And that's why the
wages of steel and iron workers in America are the highest in the world.

Father was in the mills getting these good wages, though no puddler was
ever paid for all the work he does, and all of us young Davises were
eager to grow up so that we could learn the trade and get some of that
good money ourselves. My hands itched for labor, and I wanted nothing
better than to be big enough to put a finger in this industry that was
building up America before my very eyes. I have always been a doer and a
builder, it was in my blood and the blood of my tribe, as it is born in
the blood of beavers. When I meet a man who is a loafer and a destroyer,
I know he is alien to me. I fear him and all his breed. The beaver is a
builder and the rat is a destroyer; yet they both belong to the rodent
race. The beaver harvests his food in the summer; he builds a house and
stores that food for the winter. The rat sneaks to the food stores of
others: he eats what he wants and ruins the rest and then runs and hides
in his hole. He lives in the builder's house, but he is not a builder.
He undermines that house; he is a rat.

Some men are by nature beavers, and some are rats; yet they all belong
to the human race. The people that came to this country in the early
days were of the beaver type and they built up America because it was in
their nature to build. Then the rat-people began coming here, to house
under the roof that others built. And they try to undermine and ruin
it because it is in their nature to dest