The Unknown Industrial Prisoner Read Online Free

one wanted to side with a foreman, not in a crowd. They would sneak into his office later one by one and square off.
    Since this specimen of Puroil management still hesitated, it was necessary for the Samurai to put out a greater effort to get rid of him. To be without a foreman in this part of the morning was a good thing. Once the evidence of the night had been safely stowed and the floors of the amenities, locker-room, toilets and hundred-foot control room had been swept and mopped, and this latest day marked off in scratches on the cement walls, there was time for leisurely dressing and, if you got in early, a shower. There were two showers among the fourteen men, but one wouldn’t work if the other was started first. Bubbles was first showered. He wiped a pore closing stink repressant over his armpits for that fresh cool carefree feeling. It kept the sweat in. Choking clouds of baby talc surrounded him. He loved his body and overhauled it for the girls. His tongue was still cocky-caged from the night before, his huge pink belly tight as a drum. He’d had his six hours down. All he had to do now was order a new pair of boots, his present pair were slightly worn at the heel. They’d be worth three dollars at the pub.
    The Samurai was quickly dressed and had the next hour to himself for thinking or just picking over the laundered overalls to see if his friends had left him one of his own pairs. He enjoyed this one hour of the shift. At seven they would be out the gate and gone. He had never worked on the better sections of the refinery—pump-houses, utilities, bitumen, distillation, platforming plants—where, on night shift, if the plant was producing and running steady, the men waited for the visit of the mobile canteen at midnight, then for the foreman’s visit soon after, then half went straight down, taking their turn in a civilized manner and were wakened at six by the foreman ringing their phone. Yes, that was a better reveille. There were no vacancies on those sections. Months ago, when the Good Shepherd was telling them of the European owners’ expansion plans, he’d said ‘The honeymoon’s over.’ With the new investment would come a more rigid control. The cracker was the first big complex needing its own on-the-spot supervision. On all other plants supervisors were visitors; the men kept the plant steady so there’d be no visits.
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    BIG DADDY The Samurai sat watching the rest of his shift come dressed from the locker-room. Technically they were citizens, allowed to reproduce at random. A place had to be found for their children, too. As he watched, something like a fine despair seemed to spray up from somewhere inside him and shower his organs of concern with a set of patterned words, the same words that had often risen to his tongue when he saw them attacking each other openly or in secret. It was man against man at every level and the company suffered from the situation’s wastefulness, but no one saw it as a blot that should be published, condemned, eradicated. Poor devils, you can’t take care of yourselves, you need a father to watch over you and fight the battles you should be fighting against the false and the unfair, the cruel and the oppressive…And, as usual, he knew that although he had heart and ability for such a fight and many wanted him to be their delegate, to stand in the front line and take the company’s first shots, he had never convinced himself that he had the basic inclination. Mostly the Union attracted men looking for an excuse to get off their plants when they felt like it. Those with ideas, energy and initiative got a second job outside. The Union knew only one thing: how to go for money. But what was the use of a wage increase awarded because prices had risen and industry could afford it, when as soon as the increase was awarded prices rose again because industry couldn’t afford it? If the Samurai had been a man of