meanwhile. “You want to build a building as goes up a fair number of floors and doesn’t have to give up half its space to bloody great stone walls and tree trunk beams, you need steel. Plenty as know that. I ain’t telling you anything worth much on the open market.”
“Sounds as if you’re describing an ancient castle, not a modern building, Mr. Tickle. Not too many tree trunk beams around these days. We use cast iron.”
“Ain’t safe above seven, maybe eight floors,” Tickle said. “Leastways, not safe enough. Not unless you put a bloody great iron pillar every ten or so feet. Sometimes not even then.”
“True,” Josh said. There had been half a dozen bridge collapses over the last quarter century. And any number of building cave-ins. A few years back someone got the idea of building an elevated railway along Greenwich Street. Take the Babel of traffic up over everyone’s heads. Except on the first attempt the iron framework hadn’t proved strong enough for the task and they had to build it a second time. “I take it steel is stronger than cast iron.”
Tickle had just taken a long pull on his pipe and his snort made smoke pour out of his nose and mouth. “Ten times as strong. Maybe twenty.” He reached over and opened the drawer of the table and produced a piece of metal. It was gunmetal gray in color, some six inches long and four inches wide and an inch thick. “Steel,” Tickle said. “Strongest building material in the world. And the thinnest. Make yourself a framework of that, clothe it up with brick or granite outside and plaster in. You can pile on as many stories as suits your fancy. Steel framing it’s called. Everyone’s known about it for maybe two hundred years.”
“Then why,” Josh asked, “has it not been done?”
This time Tickle took a few moments before he answered, using the pause to scrape the embers out of the bowl of his pipe and beginthe process of refilling it with fresh tobacco. “You a scientific sort of man, Mr. Turner?” he asked finally.
“Not really, no.”
“Well then, I’ll try to tell it simple. Iron for casting, pig iron, it’s got more ’n two percent carbon mixed in. Steel’s got less. You make steel by taking most of the carbon out of iron. Find a way to do it without taking all the time and trouble it used to took, you got yourself something special.”
“Am I to assume, Mr. Tickle, that you’re a man who knows his way around the foundry floor?”
Tickle nodded. “Foreman over at Novelty,” he said. “They say the little people got a calling for the foundry trade. You probably heard that.”
Josh allowed as he had, and that he knew of Novelty Iron Works.
“Besides me, nine of my kind works there. Mind you, that’s ten out of two thousand, and I’m the only one as is a foreman. I can’t say for sure it’s a calling, Mr. Turner, but I can tell you working iron’s as hard a job as a man can do, whatever his height.” Tickle clamped his pipe in his teeth and drew back the shirt sleeve of first one arm then the other. Both were knotted with muscles and crisscrossed with the reddened welts of burn scars. “Thing I do know, it’s a ways better than being a dressed-up doll in Barnum’s freak show.”
Josh didn’t comment on that. “I seem to remember,” he said instead, “that Novelty was the last of the ironworks to be unionized.”
“That’s so. Happened a few years back during the war. Before my time that was, but the North needed iron if they was going to win. Foundry workers had some cards to play and they played ’em.”
“And you, Mr. Tickle, are you a member of the Iron and Metal Workers League?”
“I am. Proud of it as well.”
“Yet you’re not with your brothers today,” Josh said. “It’s my understanding they’re marching down Broadway as we speak. Demanding an eight-hour workday. Do you not believe in their cause?”
“I do, Mr. Turner. But they can march to hell and back and it won’tmake a
“Sounds as if you’re describing an ancient castle, not a modern building, Mr. Tickle. Not too many tree trunk beams around these days. We use cast iron.”
“Ain’t safe above seven, maybe eight floors,” Tickle said. “Leastways, not safe enough. Not unless you put a bloody great iron pillar every ten or so feet. Sometimes not even then.”
“True,” Josh said. There had been half a dozen bridge collapses over the last quarter century. And any number of building cave-ins. A few years back someone got the idea of building an elevated railway along Greenwich Street. Take the Babel of traffic up over everyone’s heads. Except on the first attempt the iron framework hadn’t proved strong enough for the task and they had to build it a second time. “I take it steel is stronger than cast iron.”
Tickle had just taken a long pull on his pipe and his snort made smoke pour out of his nose and mouth. “Ten times as strong. Maybe twenty.” He reached over and opened the drawer of the table and produced a piece of metal. It was gunmetal gray in color, some six inches long and four inches wide and an inch thick. “Steel,” Tickle said. “Strongest building material in the world. And the thinnest. Make yourself a framework of that, clothe it up with brick or granite outside and plaster in. You can pile on as many stories as suits your fancy. Steel framing it’s called. Everyone’s known about it for maybe two hundred years.”
“Then why,” Josh asked, “has it not been done?”
This time Tickle took a few moments before he answered, using the pause to scrape the embers out of the bowl of his pipe and beginthe process of refilling it with fresh tobacco. “You a scientific sort of man, Mr. Turner?” he asked finally.
“Not really, no.”
“Well then, I’ll try to tell it simple. Iron for casting, pig iron, it’s got more ’n two percent carbon mixed in. Steel’s got less. You make steel by taking most of the carbon out of iron. Find a way to do it without taking all the time and trouble it used to took, you got yourself something special.”
“Am I to assume, Mr. Tickle, that you’re a man who knows his way around the foundry floor?”
Tickle nodded. “Foreman over at Novelty,” he said. “They say the little people got a calling for the foundry trade. You probably heard that.”
Josh allowed as he had, and that he knew of Novelty Iron Works.
“Besides me, nine of my kind works there. Mind you, that’s ten out of two thousand, and I’m the only one as is a foreman. I can’t say for sure it’s a calling, Mr. Turner, but I can tell you working iron’s as hard a job as a man can do, whatever his height.” Tickle clamped his pipe in his teeth and drew back the shirt sleeve of first one arm then the other. Both were knotted with muscles and crisscrossed with the reddened welts of burn scars. “Thing I do know, it’s a ways better than being a dressed-up doll in Barnum’s freak show.”
Josh didn’t comment on that. “I seem to remember,” he said instead, “that Novelty was the last of the ironworks to be unionized.”
“That’s so. Happened a few years back during the war. Before my time that was, but the North needed iron if they was going to win. Foundry workers had some cards to play and they played ’em.”
“And you, Mr. Tickle, are you a member of the Iron and Metal Workers League?”
“I am. Proud of it as well.”
“Yet you’re not with your brothers today,” Josh said. “It’s my understanding they’re marching down Broadway as we speak. Demanding an eight-hour workday. Do you not believe in their cause?”
“I do, Mr. Turner. But they can march to hell and back and it won’tmake a
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