Identifier: fullupfedupworke00will (find matches)
Title: Full up and fed up; the worker's mind in crowded Britain
Year: 1921 (1920s)
Authors: Williams, Whiting, 1878-
Subjects: Working class -- Great Britain
Publisher: London : Allen and Unwin
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
te worker feels himself enormously more the captain ofhis soul than does the time-worker. At practically all the local blast-furnaces the casting ofthe long pigs of iron is done in sand-beds without any coveranj^where except in the shanty, for a little loaf in betweenjobs. Its no place for a proper mon on a wintry day wenyer fice is burnin and yer backs in a bloody freeze, like, ared-faced but husky worker put it. Up on the platform atthe very top of the big blast-furnace the mon and hishelper emptied the hand-carts of coke, iron-stone, andlimestone into the cupola. Then when the bell, or cover,was raised the tons of materials for the charge, or bur-den, disappeared in the huge maw of the great uprightiron beast as the flame and smoke roared out and up to thesky—while we stood off and hunched our shoulders to keepthe mass of cinders from going down our backs. Exceptwhen in the tiny shed that houses the weights which con-trol the bell, the two men are exposed to every windthat blows.
Text Appearing After Image:
WITH THE ANDS ON SMELTING STAGE 183 Of course, against these winds and rains the boss up thereis anchored by his tonnage pay. It runs around thirtyshillings a turn—accordin to how she works. The boy,of course, also holds tight to the platform and the chanceit gives at his superiors job. Meanwhile every worker knowsthat every wind and every cinder that makes the workmore uncomfortable than a similar job down below has tobe paid for, sooner or later, at so much per, before responsi-ble men will stick. Likewise it is easy to observe from theapologetic manner of the men who confess themselves to beworking at the most out-of-date smelting shop in the oledistrict that the management is either paying them morein order to save their self-respect—not very likely, prob-ably, in a country of union rates—or is regularly paying theestablished and uniform rate to the poorest of the districtsworkers—men whose self-respect among their fellows isnot enough to take them onto the stages, of whos

Note About Images