DRAMA OF FURNACE, FORGE AND SHOP 269 



flattened and lengthened the lead into oblong sinkers for his 

 fish line. He needed no heat to forge them, but steel must 

 be heated to soften it. Then it can be lengthened and flat- 

 tened by the press. It is about the same principle as the boy 

 employed, only the press has the power of 14,000 tons. 



When the man on the raised platform to the right pushes 

 his lever as far as it will go, a pressure equal to the weight of 

 some of the great office buildings in Chicago or New York is 

 placed upon the casting. Now is it any wonder that it flattens 

 out and lengthens, as the school boy's sinker. Electric power? 

 No — water such as children use to sail chips and from which 

 the maiden gathers lilies — yet when pent up by human in- 

 genuity can exert a force greater than any known save that of 

 explosives. 



Yet this is not the climax of the play. That is reached 

 in the hammer chamber when the metal victim placed upon the 

 block succumbs to the blows of the executioner — a strange and 

 startling parallel to the scenes of '98 and of the later com- 

 mune as conveyed to us on the canvas wrought by the cun- 

 ning of the French artist. Some day such a masterpiece may 

 represent the manner in which steel beheads steel. 



The prisoner in chains is moved to the front of this 

 guillotine of the foundry. There are the upright posts, the 

 resting place, the framework supporting the massive plate 

 which slides up and down in its groove, dripping with oil — all 

 bearing a sinister resemblance to the death weapon of France 

 but enlarged on a colossal scale. As the crane moves the 

 casting into the gap in the framework a man climbs the 

 circular stairway to the platform half way up one of the 

 great posts and seizes his lever. His fellows range them- 

 selves below with tools to clean the debris from the cooling 

 mass. 



The hammer boss looks up the groove to see that nothing 

 has caught in it and scans the chain wrapping to make certain 

 that all is secure — that nothing will break from the strength 

 about to be exerted. For an hour steam has been crowded 

 and pressed into the cylinders on each side of the hammer by 

 force equal to that of a thousand horses. The boss takes a 

 last look at the thing on the block. 



