Popular Sn'nice Monihly 



^237 



civic pride and for tiie general good. 

 All of this was done without legal 

 process or ap[)lication in any way to the 

 courts, ahhough the Bureau was em- 

 powered to act against \i()lators. The 

 next year, twent\' thousand "eleaning- 

 up" cards were distributed witii ijood 

 effect. They contained the Ringleniann 

 scale for smoke density adopted by the 

 Ignited States Government Bureau of 

 Mines — inch squares checked off in one 

 hundred spaces by light, dark, dense and 

 black lines, representing densities of 

 twenty, forty, sixt\- and eighty |)er 

 cent — the third, or si.xty per cent, being 

 the legal maximum. The Pittsburgh 

 Chamber of Commerce endorsed the 

 work of the Bureau. 



Conferences with railroad operating 

 officials and manufacturers enabled the 

 Bureau to suggest smoke abatement 

 appliances especially fitted for each 

 plant. The widest publicity was gi\'en 

 the campaign by local newspapers and 

 there were few stacks in the city that 

 did not have their smoke output closely 

 watched. Impro\-ements had to be 

 licensed by the Bureau, so that only 

 practical a|)[)liances were permitted. 

 Hundreds of concerns subsequently re- 

 ported to the Bureau that the smoke 

 abatement crusade had benefited them 

 by helping to reduce their coal con- 

 sumption and lessening operating costs. 



The beneficial results of the smoke 

 aliatement propaganda ■ have » been 

 widespread. Fully ninety-nine per 

 cent of the locomotives in Pittsburgh 

 yards arc now compKing with the law, 



The small particles of carbon 

 which escape in the form of 

 smoke are only a small part of 

 the loss in the heating value 

 of coal, for the loss due to the 

 escape of combustible gases 

 is ten or more times the 

 carbon loss. The smoke 

 escaping from the engine is 

 Pittsburgh's legal maximum 



the number involved being eleven hun- 

 dred and ninety daily. Before tlie 

 campaign, only one per cent com[)licd 

 with the law. 



Even to strangers in the city, the 

 smoke abatement is very noticeable in 

 Piltsliurgh. The atmosphere is practi- 

 cally free from soot particles in the 

 downtown section in particular. Fogs 

 are disspelled by the middle of the 

 day and frequently by the middle of the 

 morning, whereas formerly the city was 

 in a pall for at least a da\-, and some- 

 times longer. The Pittsburgh \\'eather 

 Bureau local office announced that the 

 periods of "dense smoke" last year were 

 less than one half those of 1913, despite 

 the fact that at least two and a half 

 times as much coal was consumed. The 

 Bureau of Smoke Regulation has cal- 

 culated that the annual sa\ing to the 

 people of Pittsburgh, through the reduc- 

 tion in the quantity of smoke cannot 

 be estimated at less than two million 

 fi\e hundred thousand dollars. 



The proper way to read smoke densi- 

 ties from the Ringlemann chart is as 

 follows: The chart is placed in line with 

 the top of a stack a sufficient distance 

 from the eyes so that the lines are not 

 \isiblc (about ten feet) and the smoke 

 emitting from the stack is then compared 

 with the different scales on the chart. 

 This enables every factory manager and 

 fireman to be his own smoke inspector 

 and determine at all times if the smoke 

 ordinance is being violated. In Cincin- 

 nati any smokeof greaterdensity than the 

 sixty percent scale \iolates the ordinance. 



