Iron and Steel: Class, Race, and Community in Birmingham, Alabama, 1875-1920

2 Skilled Work, White Workers

C H A P T E R 2 Skilled Work, White Workers A; ^t the heart of Birmingham's social order was the relationship between capital and labor. The»town's founders and promoters articulated an ideal of harmony between capital and labor that was dependent upon the unity of white skilled workingmen and white capital. In the i88os white craftsmen moved to the city prepared to assume their rightful places at the center of the community. They expected to enter a community where they would be treated as equal members of a broadly defined producing class, which did not include black common laborers, or "wage slaves." Skilled workers' concept of white male equality rested upon work cultures they dominated. Through workplace organizations, craftsmen sought to defend the autonomy within the sphere of production that they believed set them apart from the powerless and dependent.1 Skilled workers' ideas about equalitysoon clashed with employers' understanding of the rights of property owners. Employers challenged skilled workers' power, arguing that labor organizations violated property owners' right to establish the terms of employment. They extended their defense of property to the right of a nonunion worker to sell his labor to whomever he pleased. Many skilled workers resisted what they considered a plot against their freedom. They initiated strikes to challenge employers' claims to absolute authorityin their workplaces.The balance ofpower shifted back and forth throughout the i88os and into the 18905 as workers and employers struggled to define their respective rights on the shopfloor.Whether 23 through craft unions or assemblies of the Knights of Labor, skilled workers forcefully denied that an employer possessed total authority on the shop floor. If employers had their way, workers insisted, the equality between capital and labor essential to social order and the commonweal would cease to exist. For skilled men, work in Birmingham was much as it had been in the iron industry for many years. By the i88os skilled iron workers no longer marketed what they produced, as had preindustrial artisans; however, they continued to organize the process of production. A nineteenth-century rolling mill, foundry, or machine shop consisted of a number of small workshops run by skilled workers. Craftsmen enjoyed considerable autonomy because they possessed the knowledge critical to production, a knowledge few men in the South possessed in the early i88os.2 The type of work performed by skilled workers set them apart from the dependent workers they called wage slaves. Among the most skilled workers in nineteenth-century Birmingham were the men who kept its rolling mill companies operating. Rolling mills converted pig iron into semifinished wrought iron bars or plates, which metalworking shops then used in the production of finished goods. To produce iron a puddler, or boiler, with assistance from a helper, removed impurities from pig iron. Puddlers hired their own helpers, who were often relatives, and paid them from the earnings of the furnace. While assisting puddlers helpers learned the trade so they might someday operate their own furnace.3 Puddlers and helpers charged the furnace with approximately six hundred pounds of raw iron to start a "heat." Next the helper fired the furnace and melted the charge, which took about thirty minutes. At that point puddlers added iron oxide to the molten ore to cool the "bath" in order to oxidize phosphorous and sulphur. Throughout the process puddlers and their helpers stirred the charge with a hoe-like tool called a rabble. Stirring required considerable strength, since the charge thickened during boiling and the rabble used to stir it weighed twenty-five pounds.4 Puddlers monitored temperatures in the furnace closely. The temperature had to be lower early in the process to burn off the phosphorous and sulphur before the carbon. As the phosphorous and sulphur content of the ore decreased, the melting point of the metal increased. The puddler then instructed his helper to raise the temperature in the furnace to keep the charge molten. As the carbon began to oxidize, the charge began to boil. 24 : Skilled Work,White Workers During this critical "high boil" stage, the puddler and his helper alternately agitated the charge through a small hole in the furnace door to expose it to the action of the flames. The charge soon became pasty, so they had to work it more vigorously to weld the purified particles of iron together properly . When the puddling process was complete, puddler and...