Emerson Hough

“ To be sure, in such places a man must die now and then. But not even the foreman of the Bessemer rooms—where men and boys continually get enwrapped by flaming ribbons, which cut to the bone of leg or arm, or sear and sever arteries inches deep remembered anything worse than this affair of Matchek and Zulinski.
The rolls do not think, though they stretch ten tons of steel; nor do the shears which snip off a rail, nor the punches which lightly perforate a beam, nor the drills which softly penetrate a plate. No more should Zulinski or Matchek think ”

“ It was easy for Zulinski to slip up the dark and greasy stairs to the level of the pulpit and the bridge, and thus to get directly behind Matchek as he leaned against the iron pillar, between trips out over the bridge and above the giant ladle of seething steel. Men moved about in the darkness of the mills, and none of the pulpit men knew Zulinski, even had they noticed him. ”

“ The world must have its beasts of burden.
Lured by the blandishments of stump-lands in the West, the Drelkas went across seas. Matchek followed. Being pretty, and of some wit, Rosa rebelled at the thought of toil with ax and mattock, and stopped off at a big manufacturing city midway. Matchek stopped also. It was fate, of course, that he should follow her: and, for that matter, that Zulinski should later do the same.
In every village game and every village fight, back in the old country, Zulinski had beaten Matchek; but Rosa dismissed neither, and kept her own counsel regarding both. ”

“ Not quite so splendid a menage, this purposed one of Matchek’s, as that of the Weems-Jordans’; or that of Jerolson, president of the works where Weems-Jordan was second vice-president. The latter was not apt to go much higher, for toll had been taken of him in his day by these infernos of the mills, craving always food of mineral and men. Jerolson was strong, and to the strong go the spoils. His house was as finely furnished as any on Fifth Avenue; and continually Jerolson threatened the Board that he would pull up and go to Fifth Avenue; so that the Board paid him ever more. ”

“ It had been some sort of Magyar fate by which Zulinski had found Rosa again, even after her marriage. Now, Zulinski and Matchek were both coming out of the mill doors as the day shift poured out its stream, and Matchek saw Zulinski’s dinner-bucket, and saw also the whole story at a flash! Whereupon, he attacked his enemy without tarrying. They fought, bit, clawed about the street, until a lazy officer kicked them apart. “The beasts!” grumbled the latter to a bystander. “It’s like little, small mad bulls they be. They doesn’t fight like rale min!” But Rosa wept, denied, confessed ”

“ Author of “The Mississippi Bubble,” “54-40 or Flight,” etc}
Editor’s Note.—The reader that hates the truth, even when it is served up in the guise of fiction, will not find this brutally real story to his taste. ”