172 CARGO TRANSFERENCE AT STEAMSHIP TERMINALS. 
In contrast with the published volumes of information regarding the movement 
of merchandise on the wheel and on the keel we have for the equally important 
movement of merchandise in terminals only the scattered, though thorough and 
comprehensive, work of Mr. Harding. 
In view of the rapid growth of mechanical systems for handling freight and the 
engineering problems involved, I believe that Mr. Harding, however deeply we are 
indebted to him, owes it to the traffic and engineering fraternities to collect his 
various papers into a volume compiled as a standard reference book covering this 
vast field of human endeavor which stands in urgent need of such a work. 
It is with pleasure that I add the following data and description to Mr. 
Harding’s paper: 
One feature of cargo transference which heretofore has been a source of great 
labor expense is not clearly brought out in this paper. I refer to the distribution 
of cargoes to warehouses for storage, and the piecemeal return of this material to the 
bulk-head for lightering. ‘The great warehouses act asflywheels between the periodic 
crops of the world and the constant demand of the market—being the farmers’ 
granary ona very largescale. Where a large number of warehouses are maintained 
in connection with a marine terminal they must necessarily cover considerable 
territory so that the products intended for storage must be transferred anywhere 
from 500 feet to three quarters of a mile. Not only are the distances apt to be rela- 
tively great but the courses followed must be numerous, crooked, interlaced and 
overlapped. ‘Take for instance the Bush terminal where cargoes are distributed 
from seven great piers to 123 warehouses and then are returned to the piers and 
bulk-heads or to cars and drays. The use of an industrial railway for such work 
would involve so many miles of track and trolley construction that the first cost 
would be prohibitive. Then such a method involves a “‘system’’ which does not 
readily lend itself to short jobs, hurried work or to a large number of conflicting 
unit movements. The same objection in an intensified way holds true for a telpher 
or overhead system. 
The battery truck crane shown on Plate 84 of this paper was devised expressly 
to handle this class of work in an economical manner, and at a first cost thatis 
wiped out during the first year of service. 
Where the merchandise has to be carried only five hundred feet or less the loads 
of one ton are carried on the crane hook at about nine miles per hour, delivering a 
load every two minutes if the distance is three hundred feet. The lower cut on 
Plate 84 shows 1,600 pounds of plumbago which was moved at the rate of 30 tons per 
hour. Where the distance involved is over five hundred feet the material is loaded 
onto roller bearing trailers and towed behind the machine as shown in the upper cut. 
By this means thirty tons of cotton can be moved one-half a mile in an hour at a cost 
of less than three cents per bale for the transportation and labor of loading and un- 
loading the trailers. It is customary to use three trains per machine, that is, while 
one train is being loaded the second is being unloaded and the third is on the road 
between, thereby cutting out waiting at either end. In other words, one man and 
