Chapter 5 Chapter 5 Steel City
Time and place have changed.It had been five years since the estate of the Indian noblewoman had passed into the hands of her two heirs.Now, the stage has moved to the southern part of Oregon, USA, ten miles away from the Pacific coast.There is still a barren land boundary, there is no clear demarcation between them, a bit like Switzerland in the United States.
If you just look at the terrain, it is indeed like Switzerland: the mountains are steep and towering into the clouds;
However, this is fake Switzerland after all, unlike the real Switzerland in Europe, where shepherd boys, guides and innkeepers work peacefully.It's just an Alpine landscape here, just a layer of rock and dirt and millennia-old pines on top of a heap of iron and coal.
If the traveler stops to listen to the sounds of nature in this deserted wilderness, he will not hear the harmonious whisper of life that accompanies the silence of the mountains in the paths of the Oberan Mountains in Switzerland.However, he could hear the dull sound of the steam hammer in the distance, and the dull explosion of the gunpowder under his feet.It is as if the earth is like a stage with underground traps.These huge rocks seem to be hollow, and they will fall into the mysterious bottomless abyss at any time.
Roads paved with soot and slag circled the mountainside.Under the yellowing grass, small piles of colorful slag were piled up, shining like the eyes of poisonous snakes.An abandoned well can be seen everywhere, thorny, eroded by rain, and wide open, like a bottomless abyss, or an extinguished volcano.The air was thick with smoke, and it hung heavily over the ground like a gray coat.Not a single bird flew by here, and the insects even seemed to be avoiding it. In people's memory, it seemed that they had never seen a butterfly flying.
Fake Switzerland!At its northernmost point, where the Ridge Branch meets the plain, between two barren hills, is what until 1871 was still called the "Red Desert" because of the seepage of its soil. Iron oxide was removed, all turned red, and now it is called "Stalstad" - "Steelfield".
You can imagine a mountainous land of five or six square meters in France, the sandy land is full of pebbles, as arid and desolate as the seabed of an ancient inland sea.Nature has made no effort to awaken this land, to animate it, to enliven it, but, to this end, man has suddenly exerted his incomparable power and energy.
In five years, eighteen working-class villages had sprung up on this shiny rocky plain, inhabited by great numbers of stout toilers, all in gray log cabins they had luckily built from Chicago.
In the center of these workers' villages, just at the foot of the inexhaustible peat hill, stands a dark, huge, and strange building complex. They are all neat and orderly buildings with symmetrical windows. Covered with red roofs, there are many large cylindrical chimneys, and continuous black smoke is spewed out from the mouths of thousands of chimneys.The sky was covered by a black curtain, and red light flashed through it from time to time.There was a rumbling sound coming from the wind in the distance, like thunder and waves, but it was more regular and dull than thunder.
This complex of buildings is Stahlstad Steel City, a German city, a former professor of chemistry at the University of Jena, who became a steel king due to the huge inheritance of an Indian lady, especially the largest king in the old and new continents King's private property of Mr. Schulz.
For Russia, for Turkey, for Romania, for Japan, for Italy, for China, and especially for Germany, he was casting cannons of all shapes and calibers, smoothbore, spiral, and Guns with movable and fixed mounts.
By the power of a sum of money, a gigantic building, a real city, and at the same time a model factory, suddenly and magically emerges from the ground.Thirty thousand workers, mostly Germans, settled around it, forming its suburbs.Within a few months, its products became known all over the world for their absolute superiority.
Professor Schultz extracts iron and coal from his own mines.He smelted them into molten steel and made wooden cannons on the spot.
What none of his competitors could do, he could do.Over 40,000 kilograms of steel chains have been refined in France.Britain made a hundred-ton cast-iron cannon.In Essen, steel ingots of 500,000 kilograms were actually cast.And Mr. Schultz is incomparable: no matter how heavy and powerful a cannon you order from him, he will build it for you like a shiny new coin on time.
However, he is a lion with a big mouth!The twenty-five million francs in 1871 seemed only to whet his appetite.
In gunsmithing, as in anything else, you are the strongest if you can do what others can't.Needless to say, the cannon made by Mr. Schulz is not only of unprecedented size, but even if the oil is used and the effectiveness is poor, it will never explode.Stalstad's steel seems to have only special properties.In this regard, there are some legends that its alloy is very mysterious and its chemical composition is very secret.What is certain is that no one knows the mystery of it.
It is also certain that in Stalstadt the secret is strictly guarded and must not be revealed.
In this remote corner of North America, surrounded by wilderness, separated from the outside world by a barrier of mountains, and five hundred miles from the nearest inhabited village, one can hardly find a way to build a strong America. The kind of republic that has traces of liberty.
Even under the city of Stalstad, don't try to break into the moat and the thick gates next to the bunkers every other section.The guards will ruthlessly chase you away.We must go down and go around to a suburb.You can enter Steel City only if you know the code, password, or at least a pass with a signature and stamp.
A young worker came to Stahlstad one morning in November.He doubtless had this pass with him, for after leaving a small, old leather suitcase at the inn, he went straight towards the gate nearest the village.
He was a tall, well-built young man, dressed casually, in the American frontiersman's attire: a dungaree jacket, a collarless wool shirt, corduroy trousers, and large leather boots.He lowered his big felt hat, as if to protect his face and better cover the soot all over his body.He walked briskly and whistled through his beard.
The young man came to a window opening, handed a piece of printed paper to the captain, and was immediately let in.
"The address on your pass is Workshop 743, Ninth Street, District K, Foreman Seligman," said the guard captain, "just follow the roundabout on your right until you reach the K-shaped stele , go directly to the guard... Do you know the rules? If you go into another district than yours, you will be kicked out," the captain added as the newcomer was about to leave.
The young worker followed the path indicated to him and walked to the ring road.There was a ditch to his right, and sentries patrolled the edge of the ditch.On his left, between the wide ring road and the building complex, there is a double-track city ring railway first, and behind it is a second city wall similar to the outer city wall, and the steel city is surrounded by the wall.
The various districts of Steel City are bounded by fortifications. Although they are surrounded by a common city wall and moat, they are self-contained.
The young workers came to the K-shaped monument in a short while.The road stele stands on the side of the road, facing a very tall door with a stone K character engraved on the door.So he walked towards the gate post.
This time, he faced not a soldier, but a disabled man with a prosthetic leg and a medal on his chest.
The invalid examined his certificate, stamped it, and said:
"Go straight, the ninth street on the left."
The young man passed the second line of defense and finally came to the K area.The road extending from the gate is the central axis of District K, with buildings of the same format lined up at right angles on both sides.
The roar of the machine was deafening.These gray buildings, with their thousand windows, looked not like inanimate things but like living monsters.But the newcomer must have been insensitive to the sight before him, for he did not pay attention to it.
In five minutes, he found workshop 743 on Ninth Street and came to Foreman Seligman.
The foreman took the certificate covered with various seals, checked it, and then looked up at the young worker:
"Hire you as a smelter? . . . " he asked. "You look too young, don't you?"
"It's not about age," replied the young worker, "I'm going to be twenty-six soon, and I've been working as a smelter for seven months... If you think it's necessary, I can show you my Proofs, the Director of Personnel employed me in New York on the basis of these materials."
The young man spoke German fluently, but with a slight accent, which seemed to arouse the suspicion of the foreman.
"Are you from Alsace?" the foreman asked him.
"No, I'm Swiss... from Schaffhausen. Here, here are my papers, all in order."
He took out a passport, an ID card and some supporting documents from a wallet and handed them to the foreman.
"Very good. Anyway, I have already hired you. I just need to assign you your position." Seligman said, relieved after seeing these official certificates.
He wrote John Schwartz, as on the employment form, and, handing him a blue card with his name on it, numbered 59938, added:
"You have to go to door K every morning at seven o'clock, hand over this card that will allow you to enter the outer wall, and then go to the shelf in the porter's room to take out the badge with your number on it, and let me see it when you come At seven o'clock in the evening, when you leave, throw your badge into a box at the door of the workshop, which is only open at this time."
"I know the rules ... can I live in it?" Schwartz asked.
"No. You'll have to find lodgings outside, but you can eat in the workshop cafeteria, which is very cheap. Your wages, at first, are a dollar a day. Each quarter increases by five percent. . . . There's only one— —Fire. Anyone who violates the regulations will be dealt with by me first, and then the engineer will make the final decision...you will start working today?"
"why not?"
"There is only half a day left today," the foreman reminded Schwartz, and led him to a passage inside.
Workers walked along a wide aisle, across a courtyard, and into a large factory building.The factory building has a large area and a light structure, just like a first-class station platform.Schwartz estimated it with his eyes, and couldn't help showing a kind of expert admiration.
This long factory building has a row of huge circular columns on each side, thick and thin and tall - like the columns of St. Paul's Church in Rome, rising from the ground, reaching the glass vault, and running through both ends.These columns are chimneys, the bottom of which is a smelting furnace.There are fifty in each row.
At one end of the workshop, several locomotives kept pulling wagons full of iron ore and sending them to the furnace for smelting.At the other end are rows of empty cars, waiting to be loaded with the steel smelted from this iron ingot and transported away.
The operation purpose of "smelting" is to smelt iron into steel.Groups of burly men, shirtless and holding long iron hooks, were busy working hard.
After the iron ore is thrown into the furnace with a layer of slag, it is first heated at high temperature.In order to make iron, the iron ore has to be stirred while it is melting.And for iron to be smelted into steel—which is a compound of iron that is very similar to iron but has properties very different from iron—you have to wait for the iron ore to melt into a liquid state, and you have to keep the steelmaking furnace at a higher temperature.The smelter then, with the tip of his long hook, stirred the heap of metal to and fro, turning it round and round in the blazing flames, and then, when it had bonded to a certain strength with the slag, divided it into four quarters. to form sponge-like balls, or "wrought iron nuggets," and hand them one by one to the blacksmith for hammering.
The operation was carried out in the center of the factory building. In front of each furnace was a hammer for forging, driven by the steam of a boiler standing in the chimney, and a blacksmith was in charge of forging.This blacksmith "wearing helmet and armor" is wearing high boots, iron sleeves, a thick leather apron around his chest, a metal mask on his head, and a hand-held tongs, which clamp the red A solid piece of wrought iron, move it under the steam hammer.Under the repeated hammering of the huge steam hammer, the wrought iron block squeezed out all the impurities contained in it like a sponge, causing steel flowers to splash and spray in all directions.
Then the blacksmith gave it to the assistant, put it back into the furnace to continue smelting, and after it was heated, it was taken out for forging.
In this huge ironworks, everything is in constant motion: the conveyor belt is endlessly turning; the hammer and boom are intertwined; sparks fly like fireworks; .In the midst of the roar and madness of subdued matter, man seems small.
But these smelters are stout lads!Under the scorching heat, they stretched out their arms to stir a pile of two hundred kilograms of metal, and stared at the dazzling hot iron for hours on end. will be tortured to death.
As if to show the foreman that he was up to the job, Schwartz took off his jacket and woolen shirt, revealing an athlete's upper body, muscles bulging, and took a smelter's long Hook and start to dry up.
Seeing that he was doing it with ease, the foreman quickly left him and went straight to his office.
The young workers continued to smelt iron until supper time.However, maybe it was because he worked too hard, maybe he didn't have a good breakfast that morning to cope with such a heavy workload, anyway, he soon became exhausted, and even the monitor could see that he was unable to work.
"You're not in the job of smelting, young man," said the monitor to him. "You'd better ask for a change of job right away. It's too late and you won't be allowed to change."
Schwartz was arguing that it was just a passing fatigue!He can smelt iron just like anyone else! ...
The squad leader reported the situation truthfully, so the young man was immediately called to the chief engineer.
The chief engineer read his materials, shook his head, and asked him in a questioning tone:
"You worked as a smelter in Brooklyn?"
Schwartz lowered his head in panic.
"I think I must tell the truth," he said, "I was in the casting shop, and I wanted to try smelting because I wanted a better wage!"
"You are all of the same virtue!" The chief engineer shrugged his shoulders and said, "You are only twenty-five years old, but you want to try a job that a thirty-five-year-old person rarely does!... Then you are at least a A good caster?"
"It's been two months since I was promoted to first-class casting worker."
"Under the circumstances, you should have been a foundry! Here you can only start at the third class. But I will allow you to change workshops, and you should be honored!"
The chief engineer wrote a few words on a pass, sent a letter, and said:
"Put your work card back, and then, you leave this area, go directly to the O area, and find the chief engineer's office. He has been notified."
Schwartz went through the same procedures at the gate of Zone O as he had to do at the gate of Zone K.There, as in the morning, he was questioned, detained, and then met with the workshop manager, who led him into the foundry.Here, however, the work was much quieter and more methodical.
"This is just a small earthen yard for casting No. 42 steel," the foreman said to him. "Only first-class workers are allowed to work in the cannon casting yard."
This "small" workshop is also 150 meters long and 65 meters wide.Schwartz estimates that there were at least six hundred crucibles, arranged in groups of four, eight, or twelve, depending on their capacity, heated in kilns.
The molds for containing molten steel are lined up in the tunnel at the top of the central axis of the factory.On both sides of the tunnel, there are two rails on each side, and there is a movable crane on it, which can be moved to the place where heavy objects need to be lifted at will.As in the smelting plant, one end of the rails carries ingots for casting, while the other end carries steel pipes in molds away.
Next to each mold, there is a worker holding an iron rod, watching the temperature of the molten steel in the melting pot.
Schwartz had seen this procedure done elsewhere, but here it was flawless.
When it was time to cast, a signal bell rang, signaling to all the workers who were guarding the molten steel.All of a sudden, some workers of average stature walked over in unison, two by two, holding an iron bar horizontally, and stood in front of each furnace.
A conductor with a whistle in his mouth and a stopwatch in his hand stood next to a mold near each of the burning furnaces.On both sides of the mold, there are some pipes wrapped with iron sheets and made of refractory clay placed on a slope with a small slope, and the ends of the pipes lead directly to a funnel groove.The conductor blew a whistle, and a cauldron was immediately removed from the fire with iron tongs, and hung on the iron bars of the two workers standing in front of the furnace.Then, the whistle issued a harmonious melody, and the two workers poured the molten steel from the melting pot into the pipe in rhythm.Then they threw the hot, empty cauldron into a sink.
Workers in other teams then operate in the same way, and the intervals are accurately calculated so that the casting process can proceed normally and orderly.
The precision was so extraordinary that the last cauldron was emptied and thrown into the trough as soon as the tenth second was reached at the stipulated final tapping moment.Such a perfect operation does not seem to be completed by the concerted efforts of hundreds of people, but more like the result of a piece of machinery operating step by step.
Iron discipline, skilled technique and harmonious rhythm produced this miracle.
Schwartz seems to be familiar with such a set of operating procedures.He immediately teamed up with a workman of his own stature, tried it in a minor casting, and was considered an excellent caster.At the end of the day, his monitor even promised to promote him soon.
And he, at seven o'clock in the evening, as soon as he was out of the O-block and the outer walls, went to the hotel to pick up his suitcase.Then, walking along a small road outside the city, he soon came to a settlement he had noticed in the morning, and easily found a single room with an honest woman who was "available for boarding".
Instead of looking for the tavern after supper, the young worker shut himself in his room and took out of his pocket a piece of steel, which he must have picked up from the smelter, and a fragment of a melting pot from the O-zone.Then, with a smoking oil lamp, he inspected and studied with great concentration.
Then he took out a large hardcover notebook from his suitcase, flipped through the pages filled with notes, formulas, and calculations, and wrote the following paragraph in the notebook in fluent French, but, For the sake of caution, he used code words that only he himself understood:
"November 10. Starstad. There is nothing special about the smelting method. Of course, except for the choice of the two temperatures, it is according to Chernoff's law, the first heating and The choice of reheating is different, and the first reheating is relatively low. As for the casting, it is done according to the Krupp method, but the balance of action is simply amazing. The precision of this operation It is the strong point of the Germans. It comes from the natural sense of music of the Germanic people. The British can never achieve this perfection. If they are not lack of discipline, at least they have a problem with their ears. Some French can do it easily To this point, for they are the first class dancers in the world. So far, this method of smelting, although famous, has no mystery. I collect other ore specimens in the mountains and our fine iron ore The coal samples are certainly superior and of high metallurgical value, but again there is nothing unusual about them. The Schulz method must have been of the finest raw material, with all impurities removed, to 100 percent However, these are still very easy to do. The problem now is to determine the composition of the refractory soil for making melting pots such as steel water pipes. If this is done, and our casters are also very conservative In terms of discipline, I don't see why we can't do everything we do here! However, I only saw two workshops, and this one has at least twenty-four workshops, not counting the central headquarters, the planning and design department, the secret room What the hell are these departments doing in this lair? How can our friends not be afraid when Mr. Schultz gets his share of the inheritance and makes threats?"
After writing these few questions, Schwartz felt that the day was tired enough, so he undressed, got into a German bed, that uncomfortable little bed, lit his pipe, and picked up an old book , watching while smoking.However, he seemed absent-minded.He spit out mouthfuls of fragrant smoke continuously from his mouth, making a sound:
"Puff!...Puff!...Puff!...Puff!..."
He finally put down the book and fell into deep thought, as if thinking about how to solve a difficult problem.
"Ah!" he exclaimed at last, "if there is a ghost, I can catch it! I shall find out Mr. Schultz's secrets, and especially how he thinks about the city of France!"
Schwartz chanted the name of Dr. Sarazan and slowly fell asleep, but in his sleep, he chanted the name of the little girl Jeanne.Although she was already a big lady when he left Jeanne, he still remembered her as a little girl.This phenomenon is not difficult to understand, it is purely a matter of association: when you think of Dr. Sarrazan, you think of his daughter.Therefore, when Schwartz, that is, Marcel Brickmann, woke up thinking of Jeanne's name, he was not surprised by it, and, on the contrary, once again experienced the psychological The principle is wonderful.
Notes:
Notes: