In summer the temperature in the tin mills is very high. It is
as hot as the Fourth of July in Abyssinia. One day a
philosophical fellow was talking religion to me. He said, "I
don't believe in hell as a place where we boil forever in a lake
of brimstone. It can't be as hot as that. My constitution never
could stand it." His constitution stood up under the heat in the
tin mill. So it is plain that the tin-mill temperature was
somewhat less than the temperature of the Pit.

Outsiders began coming into the mills and giving us workers a
chill by telling us that the heat was killing us. The men used to
cool themselves down with a glass of beer at the close of the
day. The social investigators told us that alcohol taken into the
system at such a time would cause sunstroke. If beer was fatal,
most of us figured that we had been dead for years and didn't
know it. The effect of constant complaints was to demoralize us
and make our work harder. I thought at first that these
investigators were our friends and I gave them all the help I
could. But instead of helping us, they only hurt us, and then I
soured on their misapplied zeal. They were a species new to me
that seemed to have sprung up in the hard times, just as cooties
spring up in time of war. And like cooties, they attached
themselves to us closer than a brother and yet they were no
brothers of ours. The social investigators nibbled away at the
men and kept them restless in their hours of ease. They sat at
our boarding table and complained of the food. Corned beef and
cabbage was one of our regular dishes. Mr. Investigator turned up
his nose and said: "I never touch corned beef. If you knew as
much about it as I do, you would insist on steaks or roast beef
instead. You know what corned beef is, don't you?"