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Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 



suitable compensation usually being found at the upper end. Pos- 

 sibly some employers prefer this class of help lest they might 

 learn some disagreeable truths concerning their steam generators. 

 There is, however, one very important point in this connection 

 which is usually lost sight of. There seems to be an inexorable 

 law in force in these cases as in many others. There is a mini- 

 mum cost in the management of machinery, which cannot be re- 

 duced even by machinery. And if the steam user will employ 

 incompetent labor because it is cheap, then the difference between 

 its cost and that of a higher grade of intelligence must certainly 

 be given to the boiler-maker and machinist by way of repairs, 

 and to the coal dealer for extra fuel, as a skillful fireman will 

 save from five to twenty per cent, over an untrained one. I call 

 to mind a striking illustration of the case, that of a manufacturer 

 in an eastern state, who, though a most successful business man 

 otherwise, possessed a remarkable faculty for utilizing every piece 

 of old iron he could obtain, and the extra work on which, in put- 

 ting it in suitable condition, always cost him more than the new 

 material. His annual loss from breakage and wear, making no 

 account of time when the machinery was idle, due to the employ- 

 ing of a one dollar man where a two dollar one was required, was at 

 least three times the difference in cost of one or two reliable men. 

 A very common practice, and one most reprehensible withal, is 

 that of employers compelling their engineers and firemen (often 

 these consist of but one man) to do their legitimate work and that 

 of two or three others, frequently being called to distant parts of 

 the building. No man can attend to too many duties well; it is 

 in the nature of things that some will be forgotten, and under 

 these circumstances it is just as likely to be the most important as 

 any other. 



Boilers are constructed from a great variety of designs. Those 

 found in more common use are of the locomotive type, and the 

 plain cylinder with closed ends. The material usually is from 

 1-4 to 3-8 inches thick. As a conductor of heat, iron stands low in 

 the scale, gold being as 1000, copper 898, and iron but 847. Now 

 with iron but 1-4 inch in thickness, a great amount of heat is lost 

 in boilers, owing to the inability to transfer all the heat produced 



