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Life in these mills is a terrible life, the reformers say. Men are ground down to scrap and are thrown out as wreckage. This may be so, but my life was spent in the mills and I failed to discover it. I went in a stripling and grew into manhood with muscled arms big as a bookkeeper’s legs. The gases, they say, will destroy a man’s lungs, but I worked all day in the mills and had wind enough left to toot a clarinet in the band. I lusted for labor, I worked and I liked it. -from Scene in a Rolling Mill In 1921, JAMES JOHN DAVIS was appointed Secretary of Labor by President Warren Harding, and would go on to also serve Presidents Coolidge and Hoover. The next year, he published this gung-ho autobiography, a paean to the hard work and perseverance that fueled his rise to personal and professional success. Born in Wales, Davis (1873-1947) emigrated with his family to Pennsylvania, where he worked in the steel mills from the age of 11, acquiring the strength of character and learning the lessons in honor, duty, and honesty that would serve him well later in life, when from his position of prominence he was instrumental in eliminating the 12-hour workday, improving relations between labor and management, and establishing a prevocational school Mooseheart, Illinois, which young boys and girls were taught the fundamentals of industrial arts. A stalwart, hearty depiction of the American dream in action, The Iron Puddler is not merely one man’s story, and a fascinating and inspiring one at that… it is a universal story of the integrity and industry that built America.
