SPECIMEN DAYS
[The title which we have borrowed from Walt Whitman to stand at the head of these articles well enough expresses their purpose. They are simple accounts of the daily life of certain wage-earners, and of an elementary schoolmaster who began life as a hand-worker, written by themselves. Beyond the very rare correction of a phrase which made it difficult to follow the sense, no attempt has been made to " edit " the articles. Their interest and attractiveness would disappear if we tried to turn them into something other than they are—spontaneous descriptions of life as seen by the workers themselves.—En. Spectator.]
ENGLNE CLEANER.
[The writer of this article, J.B., was born in 1876, on a farm which was kept by his maternal grandparents. Here he spent the first four or five years of his life. Owing to poverty he had to leave school at twelve and begin work as a boy-postman in rural districts. At thirteen he became a chemist's errand boy and twelve months later a book-stall boy. In 1890, at the age of fourteen, he started as an engine cleaner on the G.W.R. Later he acted as • fireman and finally passed the examination as a driver. The following article was written when he was still a cleaner.]
T AM just off to work, seven o'clock in the evening. -I- It is not a very nice time of day to start, and all my friends employed in other occupations have finished their duty, being home and " cleaned up " and are just thinking of an evening of leisure. But I, having chosen the locomotive department of a railway, have to work mostly at night, owing to the majority of engines working during the day and being in the shed for cleaning and other. attention _during the night hours.
As I walk to work with my food basket and bottle of cold tea under my arm, I think over the four years I have served in this capacity, and I remember the first 'morning I started.- How on entering the shed at 6 a.m. when it was three parts full of giant shapes, prepared for their day's work, how these monsters dimly seen in .the darkness, and through the murk of smoke, all humming as their boiler water was being boiled into steam, impressed and nearly terrorized me, and I remem- ber the first 'winter, standing in a pit beneath the tender, cleaning tender wheels, how I shivered and wished that I had chosen some other occupation.
However, I have passed up from cleaning wheels to cleaning other parts of the engine, then to cleaning one of the smaller engines myself, and so on until now I am cleaning one of the track " flyers." And what a job it is after a rainy day, when everything is muddled up and in the hot parts burnt on that it takes some elbow grease to remove it, and how horrible the job after the engine has, during its run, been trying con- clusions with a horse or cow which has strayed on to the line, or worse still, after an unfortunate human fatality has taken place. Then one wishes that one were anywhere and engaged on any employment rather than removing the horror from that particular locomotive.
These thoughts soon give place to activity, for arriving at the shed I report for duty, am served out with my cleaning oil, torch flare-lamp, and sponge cloths or cotton waste, and make my way to the engine allotted to me. Here, hour after hour I work round the engine, doubled up into all sorts of fantastic shapes as I deal with the complicated mechanism of the motion parts, until the bell rings for supper time, when I, with twenty or thirty other youths, crowd into a not too clean cabin to partake of our meagre suppers, which having com- pleted, we are routed out by the foreman-cleaner to continue our work. The worst part of the night is during the early hours of the morning when sometimes the difficulty of keeping awake is tremendous, but this work must be done, and so we sometimes bathe our face and hands in cold water at one of the shed hydrants so that nature may be overcome and the work carried on.
Clambering about the motion of the engine, saturated as it is with oil, it is not one of the most pleasant of jobs, for the oil soaks through outer clothing and under clothing, so that when I get home the following morning my skin is patched over with oil marks like the hide of a leopard, and this takes any amount of hot water and soap to remove I can assure you.
The happy breaks in the monotony are when, owing to pressure of traffic, or illness, I am called out from my cleaning duties to temporarily take the place of a fireman. The change of work, the thought that promotion is before me, and the pride of being on a locomotive as one of its crew, helps to make me resigned to the long years of apprenticeship which I am serving, although I look with some apprehension on the stringent medical and eyesight examination I shall have to pass to become a fireman, for failure means dismissal and starting all over again in a new walk of life.
My wages as cleaner are 6s. per day, but as I have been moved from home to this depot, and in lodgings paying 80s. per week, I have not a great deal of surplus, and I am looking eagerly forward for my next and last advance before I am made a fireman, to IS. per day, and at that I shall have to remain possibly for another two or three years.
I am said to have an eight hour day, but as an hour is taken out of that for mealtime, I am on duty, from booking on to booking off, nine hours, and by the time I get to my lodgings and clean away the filth of the night's duty another hour at the least is easily spent.
However, I live in hopes of passing the various exam- inations and eventually coming out as a " full blown " footplate man, and although it may be looking ahead thirty or more years I may some day reach the height of my ambition and become a driver on the great express trains of the country.
(To be continued.)
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