The Iron Puddler | Page 9

that good men would bring
forth good fruits. This was all the education he could give me, and it
was enough.
My father was an iron worker, and his father before him. My people
had been workers in metal from the time when the age of farming in
Wales gave way to the birth of modern industries. They were proud of
their skill, and the secrets of the trade were passed from father to son as
a legacy of great value, and were never told to persons outside the
family. Such skill meant good wages when there was work. But there
was not work all the time. Had there been jobs enough for all we would
have taught our trade to all. But in self-protection we thought of our
own mouths first. All down the generations my family has been face to
face with the problem of bread.
My Grandfather Davies, held a skilled job at the blast furnace where
iron was made for the rolling mill in which my father was a puddler.
Grandfather Davies had been to Russia and had helped the Russians
build blast furnaces, in the days when they believed that work would
make them wealthy. Had they stuck to that truth they would not be a
ruined people to-day. Grandfather also went to America, where his skill
helped build the first blast furnace in Maryland. The furnace fires have
not ceased burning here, and Russia is crying for our steel to patch her
broken railways. Her own hills are full of iron and her hands are as
strong as ours. Let them expect no gift from life.
Grandfather told my father that America offered a rich future for him
and his boys. "The metal is there," he said, "as it is in Russia. Russia

may never develop, but America will. A nation's future lies not in its
resources. The American mind is right. Go to America."
And because my father believed that a good people will bring forth
good fruit, he left his ancient home in Wales and crossed the sea to cast
his lot among strangers.
I started to school in Wales when I was four years old. By the time I
was six I thought I knew more than my teachers. This shows about how
bright I was. The teachers had forbidden me to throw paper wads, or
spitballs. I thought I could go through the motion of throwing a spitball
without letting it go. But it slipped and I threw the wad right in the
teacher's eye. I told him it was an accident, that I had merely tried to
play smart and had overreached myself.
"Being smart is a worse fault," he said, "than throwing spitballs. I
forgive you for throwing the spitball, but I shall whip the smart
Aleckness out of you."
He gave me a good strapping, and I went home in rebellion. I told my
father. I wanted him to whip the teacher. Father said:
"I know the teacher is a good man. I have known him for years, and he
is honest, he is just, he is kind. If he whipped you, you deserved it. You
can not see it that way, so I am going to whip you myself."
He gave me a good licking, and, strange to say, it convinced me that he
and the teacher were right. They say that the "hand educates the mind,"
and I can here testify that father's hand set my mental processes straight.
From that day I never have been lawless in school or out. The shame of
my father's disapproval jolted me so that I decided ever after to try to
merit his approval.
To-day there is a theory that the child ought never to be restrained.
Solomon said: "Spare the rod and spoil the child." We have no corporal
punishment at Mooseheart, but we have discipline. A child must be
restrained. Whenever a crop of unrestrained youngsters takes the reins I
fear they will make this country one of their much talked of Utopias. It

was an unrestricted bunch that made a "Utopia" out of Russia.
Anyhow, my father lived his life according to his simple rules. He is
living to-day, a happy man in the cozy home he won, by his own work.
The things he taught me I have seen tested in his long life, proved true.
He never expected any gift from life. I thought once to surprise him. I
wanted to buy a fine house and give it to him. He wouldn't have it. He
stayed in his own little cottage. It was not in his theory of life that a
house should come to him as a gift. It was a sound theory, and like a
true Welshman, he hangs on to it to