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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Iron Puddler by James J. Davis: pig-iron melted down like ice-cream under an electric fan. You
have seen a housewife sweating over her oven to get it hot enough
to bake a batch of biscuits. Her face gets pink and a drop of
sweat dampens her curls. Quite a horrid job she finds it. But I
had iron biscuits to bake; my forge fire must be hot as a
volcano. There were five bakings every day and this meant the
shoveling in of nearly two tons of coal. In summer I was stripped
to the waist and panting while the sweat poured down across my
heaving muscles. 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.
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