My palms and fingers, scorched by the heat, became hardened like goat hoofs, while my skin took on a coat of tan that it will wear forever.
What time I was not stoking the fire, I was stirring the charge with a long iron rabble that weighed some twenty-five pounds.

Strap an Oregon boot of that weight to your arm and then do calisthenics ten hours in a room so hot it melts your eyebrows and you will know what it is like to be a puddler.

But we puddlers did not complain.

There is men's work to be done in this world, and we were the men to do it.

We had come into a country built of wood; we should change it to a country built of steel and stone.