Paris: The Novel

the second platform. “And as we get higher, we’ll have another winch at about six hundred and fifty feet,” Eiffel informed them. The winching process would be accomplished in minutes. From there, creeper cranes could go up the tracks to where the sections were needed. The entire process could be completed in a little over a quarter of an hour.
    Eiffel also announced a pay increase up to ten and sixteen centimes an hour. The tower was ready to soar.

    But if the mechanics of the operation had changed, another problem returned.
    It was one of the first mornings of this new regime, in the middle of September, when Thomas came down to the Seine and found that he could not see the top of the tower. Above the second platform, the girders had vanished into an autumn mist. He was rather excited as he went up the tower. It would be like working in the clouds, he thought. As work began, the fires for heating the rivets glowed eerily in the surrounding mist. There was only one thing he’d forgotten.
    The cold. Up there, at over four hundred feet, the temperature was lower. Though he was working hard, it wasn’t enough to stop the damp cold seeping into his bones. He looked around him. The other men on the tower were feeling the same thing. When they went down for the lunchtime break, he could hear men cursing all around him. Was the terrible cold of the previous winter going to return—and so early?
    There was a new fellow on his gang that week. Their holder had fallen sick, and been replaced by a cheerful Italian fellow, younger than himself, whom everyone called Pepe. “You must be used to better weather than this,” Thomas remarked as they went down.
    “It’s true. But I am happy to work on the tower,” Pepe replied, and grinned at him. “My father build roads. He work in a hole. I no want to work in a hole. So I work in the sky.”
    Thomas smiled and tried to be cheerful too.
    That afternoon, the mist cleared, but a cold wind got up, moaned around the girders, and lashed the men as they worked. Everyone was blue with cold by the end of the day. Even Pepe stopped smiling.
    The next workday—it was the nineteenth of September—when he arrived at the site, Thomas found a crowd of men standing at the foot of the tower. Jean Compagnon was standing apart, looking grim. The wagons bearing the sections for the day had all arrived, their teams of horses standing silently. But none of the sections had been picked by the crane, and nobody was going up the tower.
    He saw Pepe.
    “What’s up?”
    “The men strike. They want more pay.”
    In a few minutes, when the workers had all arrived, one of the older flyers, a tall, bony-faced man named Éric, addressed them.
    “Brothers, the conditions under which we’re working are a disgrace. So last night a group of us got together and now we’re asking you to join us and call a strike. We have agreed on our main grievances. If you want to add to them, then now’s the time to raise your complaint. Do you all agree that I should read our grievances out?”
    There was a chorus of approval.
    “First: we are being asked to work under dangerous conditions. No one has ever had to work at heights like this. Yet the workers on this tower are being paid the same as if we were working on an ordinary building. Further, as soon as the winter ended, Monsieur Eiffel demanded that we work a twelve-hour day. And long hours cause fatigue—which in itself is dangerous on a high building. Eiffel is trying to squeeze every last drop of blood out of the workers on this tower, brothers. The workers are being exploited.”
    There was a broad murmur of agreement. “And what about the wages?” someone called.
    “Exactly. Second: Monsieur Eiffel has announced a small increase in wages. The top men will be getting sixteen centimes an hour. Note this. Per hour. But we are just about to go back to winter hours. Will you get any extra money for your trouble? Not a centime. We’re going to beexploited even further, under arctic conditions. And Eiffel doesn’t care. The only way to get his attention is a work stoppage.”
    “You mean a strike?” someone called out.
    “We stop work now. That’s a stoppage. If we’re not satisfied by the end of the day, you can call it a strike.” He looked around at them all. “Brothers, I open the meeting. Who wants to speak?”
    Several men stepped up. One spoke of the need for hot drinks in the cold, another about the need for special clothing. Two more