Photograph from Brown Brothers . 

 THE FINISHING SECTION OF A BIG RAIL MILL 



After the rails have been rolled and heat-treated, they are sawed into proper lengths and 

 sent through a straightening department, where the holes for the fishplates are punched 



unregarded in former years, but im- 

 mensely valuable to a world that desper- 

 ately needs them. From a ton of coal 

 there may be extracted five gallons of 

 tar. 20 pounds of sulphate of ammonia, 

 and from 1. 1 to 3.7 gallons of benzol, 

 with a small quantity of toluol, to say 

 nothing of 10,000 cubic feet of gas. 



In other words, the odors of the bee- 

 hive coke oven, if properly handled, are 

 worth, at current prices, from two to 

 four dollars for every ton of coal — 

 worth more indeed than the coal itself 

 sold for before 1916. In addition to this 

 wonderful saving, it was found that an 

 improved type of oven, such as is neces- 

 sary to save what would otherwise go up 

 in smoke, produces 75 pounds of coke 

 for every 100 pounds of coal, whereas 

 the beehive oven gets only 65 pounds of 

 coke out of each 100 of coal. It is esti- 

 mated that in 1913 alone, a year of nor- 

 mal prices, the natural wealth that went 

 up in smoke was approximately as great 

 as the total earnings of all the working- 

 men engaged in the manufacture of au- 

 tomobiles and agricultural implements. 



PROFITS FROM THE TAR-POT 



The by-product coke oven overcomes 

 all this. With 40,000,000 tons of coke 

 required annually, and each ton repre- 

 senting a possible saving of materials 

 now worth at least three dollars a ton, it 

 will be seen what a boon the new type of 

 oven is. 



In making by-product coke the bitumi- 

 nous coal used is ground to a very fine 

 grain. It is then dumped into the ovens, 

 a battery of which may be said to re- 

 semble a series of giant lockers arranged 

 side by side, about 12 feet tall, 37 feet in 

 horizontal depth, and tapering in width 

 from 18 inches at one side to 21 inches at 

 the other. Great heating flues surround 

 each oven and soon make the coal white 

 hot, driving off all of the gases. These 

 gases pass out through a pipe in which 

 they are made to surrender the ammonia 

 and tar they contain. About half of the 

 gas, after being thus deprived of its load 

 of tar and ammonia, is forced to return 

 to the task of heating the oven for future 

 charges of coal, while the other half is 



138 



