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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: 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.
What time I was not stoking the fire, I was stirring the charge
with a long iron rabble that weighed some twenty-five pounds.
Strap an Oregon boot of that weight to your arm and then do
calisthenics ten hours in a room so hot it melts your eyebrows
and you will know what it is like to be a puddler. But we
puddlers did not complain. There is men's work to be done in this
world, and we were the men to do it. We had come into a country
built of wood; we should change it to a country built of steel
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