66 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF ECONOMICAL UTILITIES FOR 

 HANDLING RAW MATERIAL. 



By VVALDON FAWCETT. 



HPHE existence in crude form of some elementary devices for hoist- 

 -*- ing or otherwise handling certain classes of raw material, notably 

 stone and logs, dates back many years, but it has been within the past 

 decade and a half that there has taken place that remarkable pro- 

 gression which has constituted one of the most impressive achieve- 

 ments of the modern engineering world. Not only is bulk material, 

 practically without limitation as to weight, hoisted to any height de- 

 sired, but it has been rendered possible to transfer commodities at high 

 speed for either long or short distances, and thus the mechanical opera- 

 tives of the modern industrial world secure the trilogy of an economy 

 of time, a saving of labor and the conservation of expenditures. 



Easily the most interesting as well as the most significant advance- 

 ment in this broad field is found in the introduction of improved meth- 

 ods for the handling of those two most important commodities coal and 

 iron, the latter embracing of course a variety of forms from iron ore to 

 finished steel. Indeed, in the case of the most useful of metals there 

 has been evolved a cordon of mechanical devices, the functions of 

 which so supplement each other that from the time the ore leaves the 

 mine until it has been transformed into marketable iron or steel the 

 factor of manual labor directly applied, is practically eliminated. 



The initiatory machine in this chain is found in the steam shovel 

 which takes the iron ore from the ' open pit ' mines of the Lake Superior 

 district and later is called into requisition to transfer the ore from the 

 stock piles at the mines to the railroad cars provided to carry it either 

 direct to the blast furnaces or to the vessels wherein it will be given 

 water carriage to the Great Lakes. The steam shovels for the latest 

 approved practice range in weight from fifty-five to ninety-five tons 

 and in this feature alone is afforded ample evidence of progress, for 

 but a few years since the shovels of thirty-five or fortj^-five tons weight 

 were deemed sufficient for all the exactions imposed by this work. The 

 shovels now in use have dippers ranging in capacity from two and one 

 half to five yards, and something of the celerity of movement with which 

 they are operated may be appreciated from the fact that on many 

 occasions ordinary railroad cars are loaded with ore and pushed out 

 of the way of the machine at the rate of one every two minutes. 



In the unloading of the immense cargo-carrying vessels of the 



