AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 



37 



" finishing groove." The blooming train has a heavy fly-wheel 

 driven by an engine of great power. In the farther part of the 

 building is seen a cloud of steam which marks the location of the 

 " rail train/' to which the finished bloom is conveyed by mechan- 

 ical means. Fig. (JS is a very spirited view of that portion of the 

 rail-mill beyond the rail train (which is seen in the distance on 

 the left of the picture). In the left foreground is shown one of 

 the saws which cut the rails into lengths, and near the center 

 of the picture a man is seen dragging out one of the " crop ends." 

 In all these views the small number of men employed in pro- 

 portion to the work performed is very noticeable. By comparing 

 one of these cuts with Fig. 47, the great difl'erence between the 

 practice of the present and that of thirty-six years ago in this 

 respect is very evident. In 1855 a very large proportion of the 

 work of a rolling-mill was performed by the strong right hands 

 of a multitude of workmen ; but in our day much more and heavier 

 work is accomplished by powerful machinery — the crystallization 

 of ideas emanating from the strong right head of some mechan- 

 ical engineer, who had the ingenious courage to devise hands of 

 iron, and muscles of steel, to do the required work of the present. 



'Fig. 69. — View of Plate-mill. 



Fig. 69 is a view of a plate-mill at the Homestead Steel Works 

 (Carnegie, Phipps & Co.) near Pittsburgh, Pa. This mill is what 

 is known as a "three-high plate-mill." The train of rolls is 

 driven at the rate of fifty revolutions a minute. On the delivery 

 side of these rolls is a roller table five feet in width and 363 feet 

 long, the rollers being driven by power. This mill can roll plates 



