| Carl Sandburg (1878–1967). Smoke and Steel. 1922. |
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| II. People Who Must |
| 7. The Mayor of Gary |
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| I ASKED the Mayor of Gary about the 12-hour day and the 7-day week. | |
| And the Mayor of Gary answered more workmen steal time on the job in Gary than any other place in the United States. | |
| “Go into the plants and you will see men sitting around doing nothing—machinery does everything,” said the Mayor of Gary when I asked him about the 12-hour day and the 7-day week. | |
| And he wore cool cream pants, the Mayor of Gary, and white shoes, and a barber had fixed him up with a shampoo and a shave and he was easy and imperturbable though the government weather bureau thermometer said 96 and children were soaking their heads at bubbling fountains on the street corners. | |
| And I said good-by to the Mayor of Gary and I went out from the city hall and turned the corner into Broadway. | 5 |
| And I saw workmen wearing leather shoes scruffed with fire and cinders, and pitted with little holes from running molten steel, | |
And some had bunches of specialized muscles around their shoulder blades hard as pig iron, muscles of their fore-arms were sheet steel and they looked to me like men who had been somewhere.
Gary, Indiana, 1915. | |
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