UTILITIES FOR HANDLING RAW MATERIAL. 



BY WALDON FAWCETT. 



[Waldon Fawcctt, author; born Salem, Ohio, February 23, 1875; is one of the most 

 popular contributors to newspapers and periodicals on technical matters , writing for 

 the most part as the result of personal investigations ; in this connection he has trav- 

 eled through the United States and Europe collecting information; also syndicates 

 weekly articles on industrial topics to a large syndicate of newspapers. Author of 

 several works on economic and industrial subjects. The article here published is 

 used by arrangement with the Century Magazine.] 



The existence in crude form of some elementary devices 

 for hoisting or otherwise handhng certain classes of raw ma- 

 terial, 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 progression which has consti- 

 tuted one of the most impressive achievements 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 commod- 

 ities at high speed for either long or short distances, and thus 

 the mechanical operatives 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 

 advancement in this broad field is found in the introduction 

 of improved methods for the handling of those two most im- 

 portant 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 mar- 

 ketable iron or steel the factor of manual labor directly ap- 

 plied, 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 



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