This section is the seat of a most prosperous manufacturing establishment, a single limb of a many-branched tree, and its business is the manufacturing, or rather refining, of oil. Of an ordinary business day you would not want a more inspiring picture of that which is known as manufacture. Great ships, inbound and outbound, from all ports of the world, lie anchored at its docks. Long trains of oil cars are backed in on many spurs of tracks, which branch from main-line arteries4 and stand like caravans5 of steel, waiting to carry new burdens of oil to the uttermost parts of the land. There are many buildings and outhouses of all shapes and201 dimensions which are continually belching6 forth7 smoke in a solid mass, and if you stand and look in any direction on a gloomy day you may see red fires which burn and gleam in a steady way, giving a touch of somber8 richness to a scene which is otherwise only a mass of black and gray.
This region is remarkable9 for the art, as for the toil10 of it, if nothing more. A painter could here find a thousand contrasts in black and gray and red and blue, which would give him ample labor11 for his pen or brush. These stacks are so tall, the building from which they spring so low. Spread out over a marshy12 ground which was once all seaweed and which now shows patches of water stained with iridescent13 oil, broken here and there with other patches of black earth to match the blacker buildings which abound14 upon it, you have a combination in shades and tones of one color which no artist could resist. A Whistler could make wonderful blacks and whites of this. A Vierge or a Shinn could show us what it means to catch the exact image of darkness at its best. A casual visitor, if he is of a sensitive turn, shudders15 or turns away with a sense of depression haunting him. It is a great world of gloom, done in lines of splendid activity, but full of the pathos17 of faint contrasts in gray and black.
At that, it is not so much the art of it that is impressive as the solemn life situation which it represents. These people who work in it—and there are thousands of them—are of an order which you would call commonplace. They are not very bright intellectually, of course, or they would not work here. They are not very attractive202 physically18, for nature suits body to mind in most instances, and these bodies as a rule reflect the heaviness of the intelligence which guides them. They are poor Swedes and Poles, Hungarians and Lithuanians, people who in many instances do not speak our tongue as yet, and who are used to conditions so rough and bare that those who are used to conditions of even moderate comfort shudder16 at the thought of them. They live in tumbledown shacks19 next to “the works” and they arrange their domestic economies heaven only knows how. Wages are not high (a dollar or a dollar and a half a day is good pay in most instances), and many of them have families to support, large families, for children in all the poorer sections are always numerous. There are dark, minute stores, and as dark and meaner saloons, where many of them (the men) drink. Looking at the homes and the saloons hereabout, it would seem to you as though any grade of intelligence ought to do better than this, as if an all-wise, directing intelligence, which we once assumed nature to possess, could not allow such homely20, claptrap things to come into being. And yet here they are.
Taken as a mass, however, and in extreme heat or cold, under rain or snow, when the elements are beating about them, they achieve a swart solemnity, rise or fall to a somber dignity or misery21 for which nature might well be praised. They look so grim, so bare, so hopeless. Artists ought to make pictures of them. Writers ought to write of them. Musicians should get their inspiration for what is antiphonal and contra-puntal from such203 things. They are of the darker moods of nature, its meanest inspiration.
However, it is not of these houses alone that this picture is to be made, but of the work within the plant, its nature, its grayness, its intricacy, its rancidity, its commonplaceness, its mental insufficiency; for it is a routine, a process, lacking from one year’s end to another any trace of anything creative—the filling of one vat22 and another, for instance, and letting the same settle; introducing into one vat and another a given measure of chemicals which are known to bring about separation and purifications or, in other words, the process called refining; opening gates in tubes and funnels23 which drain the partially24 refined oils into other vats25 and finally into barrels and tanks, which are placed on cars or ships. You may find the how of it in any encyclopedia26. But the interesting thing to me is that men work and toil here in a sickening atmosphere of blackness and shadow, of vile27 odors, of vile substances, of vile surroundings. You could not enter this yard, nor glance into one of these buildings, nor look at these men tramping by, without feeling that they were working in shadow and amid foul28 odors and gases, which decidedly are not conducive29 to either health or the highest order of intelligence.
Refuse tar30, oil and acids greet the nostrils31 and sight everywhere. The great chimneys on either hand are either belching huge columns of black or blue smoke, or vapory blue gases, which come in at the windows. The ground under your feet is discolored by oil, and all the wagons32, cars, implements33, machinery34, buildings, and the men, of course, are splotched and spotted35 with it. There seems204 to be no escape. The very air is full of smoke and oil.
It is in this atmosphere that thousands of men are working. You may see them trudging36 in in the morning, their buckets or baskets over their arms, a consistent pallor overspreading their faces, an irritating cough in some instances indicating their contact with the smoke and fumes37; and you may see them trudging out again at night, marked with the same pallor, coughing with the same cough; a day of peculiar duties followed by a night in the somber, gray places which they call home. Another line of men is always coming in as they go out. It is a line of men which straggles over all of two miles and is coming or going during an hour, either of the morning or the night. There is no gayety in it, no enthusiasm. You may see depicted38 on these faces only the mental attitude which ensues where one is compelled to work at some thing in which there is nothing creative. It is really, when all is said and done, not a pleasant picture.
I will not say, however, that it is an unrelieved hardship for men to work so. “The Lord tempereth the wind to the shorn lamb” is an old proverb and unquestionably a true one. Indubitably these men do not feel as keenly about these things as some of the more exalted39 intellectual types in life, and it is entirely40 possible that a conception of what we know as “atmosphere” may never have found lodgment in their brains. Nevertheless, it is true that their physical health is affected41 to a certain extent, and it is also true that the home life to which they return is what it is, whether this be due to low intelligence or low wages, or both. The205 one complements42 the other, of course. If any attempt were made to better their condition physically or mentally, it might well be looked upon by them as meddling43. At the same time it is true that up to this time nothing has been done to improve their condition. Doing anything more for them than paying them wages is not thought of.
A long trough, for instance, a single low wooden tub, in a small boarded-off space, in the boss teamsters’ shanty45, with neither soap nor towels and only the light that comes from a low door, is all the provision made for the host of “still-cleaners,” the men who are engaged in the removal of the filthy46 refuse—tar, acids, and vile residuums from the stills and agitators47. In connection with the boiler-room, where over three hundred men congregate48 at noontime and at night, there is to be found nothing better. You may see rows of grimy men congregate at noontime and at night, to eat their lunch or dinner, there is to be found nothing better. You may see rows of grimy men in various departments attempting to clean themselves under such circumstances, and still others walking away without any attempt at cleaning themselves before leaving. It takes too long. The idea of furnishing a clean dining-room in which to eat or a place to hang coats has never occurred to any one. They bring their food in buckets.
However, that vast problem, the ethics49 of employment, is not up for discussion in this instance: only the picture which this industry presents. On a gray day or a stormy one, if you have a taste for the somber, you have here all the elements of a gloomy labor picture206 which may not long endure, so steadily50 is the world changing. On the one hand, masters of great force and wealth, penurious51 to a degree, on the other the victims of this same penuriousness52 and indifference53, dumbly accepting it, and over all this smoke and gas and these foul odors about all these miserable54 chambers56. Truly, I doubt if one could wish a better hell for one’s enemies than some of the wretched chambers here, where men rove about like troubled spirits in a purgatory57 of man’s devising; nor any mental state worse than that in which most of these victims of Mother Nature find themselves. At the bottom nothing but darkness and thickness of wit, and dullness of feeling, let us say, and at the top the great brilliant blooms known to the world as the palaces and the office buildings and the private cars and the art collections of the principal owners of the stock of this concern. For those at the top, the brilliancy of the mansions58 of Fifth Avenue, the gorgeousness of the resorts of Newport and Palm Beach, the delights of intelligence and freedom; for those beneath, the dark chamber55, the hanging smoke, pallor, foul odors, wretched homes. Yet who shall say that this is not the foreordained order of life? Can it be changed? Will it ever be, permanently59? Who is to say?
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1
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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dreary
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| adj.令人沮丧的，沉闷的，单调乏味的 | |
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grotesque
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| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
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4
arteries
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| n.动脉( artery的名词复数 )；干线，要道 | |
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caravans
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| （可供居住的）拖车（通常由机动车拖行）( caravan的名词复数 )； 篷车； （穿过沙漠地带的）旅行队（如商队） | |
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6
belching
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| n. 喷出，打嗝 动词belch的现在分词形式 | |
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7
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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somber
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| adj.昏暗的，阴天的，阴森的，忧郁的 | |
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remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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10
toil
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| vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事 | |
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11
labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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12
marshy
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| adj.沼泽的 | |
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13
iridescent
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| adj.彩虹色的，闪色的 | |
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14
abound
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| vi.大量存在；(in，with)充满，富于 | |
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15
shudders
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| n.颤动，打颤，战栗( shudder的名词复数 )v.战栗( shudder的第三人称单数 )；发抖；（机器、车辆等）突然震动；颤动 | |
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16
shudder
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| v.战粟，震动，剧烈地摇晃；n.战粟，抖动 | |
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17
pathos
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| n.哀婉，悲怆 | |
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physically
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| adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律 | |
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shacks
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| n.窝棚，简陋的小屋( shack的名词复数 ) | |
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20
homely
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| adj.家常的，简朴的；不漂亮的 | |
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21
misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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vat
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| n.(=value added tax)增值税，大桶 | |
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funnels
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| 漏斗( funnel的名词复数 )； （轮船，火车等的）烟囱 | |
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24
partially
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| adv.部分地，从某些方面讲 | |
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vats
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| varieties 变化，多样性，种类 | |
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26
encyclopedia
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| n.百科全书 | |
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27
vile
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| adj.卑鄙的，可耻的，邪恶的；坏透的 | |
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28
foul
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| adj.污秽的；邪恶的；v.弄脏；妨害；犯规；n.犯规 | |
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conducive
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| adj.有益的，有助的 | |
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30
tar
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| n.柏油，焦油；vt.涂或浇柏油/焦油于 | |
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nostrils
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| 鼻孔( nostril的名词复数 ) | |
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32
wagons
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| n.四轮的运货马车( wagon的名词复数 )；铁路货车；小手推车 | |
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33
implements
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| n.工具( implement的名词复数 )；家具；手段；[法律]履行（契约等）v.实现( implement的第三人称单数 )；执行；贯彻；使生效 | |
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34
machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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spotted
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| adj.有斑点的，斑纹的，弄污了的 | |
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36
trudging
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| vt.& vi.跋涉，吃力地走（trudge的现在分词形式） | |
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37
fumes
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| n.(强烈而刺激的)气味，气体 | |
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38
depicted
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| 描绘，描画( depict的过去式和过去分词 )； 描述 | |
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39
exalted
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| adj.(地位等)高的，崇高的；尊贵的，高尚的 | |
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40
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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41
affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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42
complements
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| 补充( complement的名词复数 )； 补足语； 补充物； 补集（数） | |
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43
meddling
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| v.干涉，干预（他人事务）( meddle的现在分词 ) | |
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44
refinery
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| n.精炼厂，提炼厂 | |
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45
shanty
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| n.小屋，棚屋；船工号子 | |
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46
filthy
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| adj.卑劣的；恶劣的，肮脏的 | |
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47
agitators
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| n.（尤指政治变革的）鼓动者( agitator的名词复数 )；煽动者；搅拌器；搅拌机 | |
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48
congregate
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| v.(使)集合，聚集 | |
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49
ethics
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| n.伦理学；伦理观，道德标准 | |
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50
steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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51
penurious
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| adj.贫困的 | |
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52
penuriousness
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53
indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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54
miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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55
chamber
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| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
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56
chambers
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| n.房间( chamber的名词复数 )；（议会的）议院；卧室；会议厅 | |
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57
purgatory
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| n.炼狱；苦难；adj.净化的，清洗的 | |
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mansions
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| n.宅第，公馆，大厦( mansion的名词复数 ) | |
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permanently
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| adv.永恒地，永久地，固定不变地 | |
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