Out of This Furnace

by Thomas Bell

and for the first time since he'd set foot in America, felt himself in a strange land.

His father had died the previous winter under notable circumstances. Idling in the village tavern,

he had bet someone a liter of the native whisky that he could build a table, carry it to a neighboring village, and come back, all in one day. He won the bet, but—the mountains were knee-deep in snow—

he caught pneumonia and died before the week was out, leaving a widow and three sons, the young...

Mike was approaching the age when he would have been called for military service, and it was partly to escape this that he had come to America.

international borders without bothering the guards, and with half a dozen young men from various villages, all as poor, all as eager to get to America, he crossed central Europe on foot, walking the roads to Bremen. The journey took about three

weeks.

They had. “But Mike expected to walk all the way to Braddock,” Dorta said. “It was only because the officer gave him that ten dollars that he was able to take the train. Besides,” she added, as though it were nothing, “you were only a few days on the road.”

Misfortune struck Dubik some months later. On the last day of July, fire swept the First Ward and before the hand pumps of the

Wold was a Slovak Jew and a growing power in the First Ward. It was said that the mill sent him to Europe regularly to persuade people to come to America, which was one reason there were so many Slovaks in Braddock from Wold's—and Dubik's, and Mike Dobrejcak's—

He worked and saved and then something happened and he was back where he'd started. Good times were invariably followed by bad, a period of comparative prosperity by a period of slow work and reduced wages which consumed all he'd been able to accumulate.

“What are you talking about? While you're losing a dollar Carnegie will be losing thousands. And these millionaires love a dollar more than you or I. Take a penny from them and they bleed.”