Photograph from Brown Brothers 



STEEL RAIL PASSING THROUGH A ROLLING MILL 



After the liquid steel has been poured into the ingot mold and has cooled sufficiently to 

 become hard, the mold is slipped off, and a long-armed crane picks up the ingot and sets it 

 down in a small pit, where it is heated for an hour and a half, so that it will become of 

 uniform texture and hardness throughout. Then the temperature is raised and it is tem- 

 pered to rolling-mill softness. Then the crane comes back and lifts it over on the bed of 

 the mill. Trembling and writhing as if in anticipation of the stress it is about to endure, it 

 plunges in between two big rollers, each a yard in diameter and ten feet long. Once it gets 

 through these, it is long and slim, mayhap like a pancake, mayhap like a rod, mayhap like a 

 bar. Again and again it goes through rollers of varying shapes, finally coming out either 

 as a steel rail, a rod, or a plate, according to the shape of the roller and the number of 

 rollings. 



available for driving the blast engines of 

 the furnace, illumination, etc. 



When the coal has given off all its 

 gases, a huge electric ram comes up, the 

 door of the oven flies open, and the ram 

 begins to push. On the other side of the 

 oven another door swings open and out 

 into a steel car the glowing carbon falls. 

 An electric engine picks up the blazing 

 load, and down the track it goes to the 

 quenching station. Here, amid a great 

 hissing and an immense cloud of steam, 

 the coke is cooled down by a bis: stream. 

 Then it is hauled away, dumped into a se- 

 ries of small bins, picked up in regulated 

 quantities on an endless belt, and carried 

 to a grader and screener. Thence it goes 

 to the blast furnace, where it is mixed in 



proper proportions with limestone and 

 ore, and the last process in pig-iron mak- 

 ing begins. 



How much the country may save in its 

 natural resources is shown by the won- 

 derful plant of the United States Steel 

 Corporation at Gary, Ind. In a recent 

 year more than a million tons of coal 

 were saved — more indeed than is re- 

 quired to furnish light and heat and 

 power for the nation's capital. 



The third ingredient of the metallurgi- 

 cal wizard's boiling cauldron, the blast 

 furnace, is limestone. Soul-mates and 

 affinities there are a-plentv in the chem- 

 ical world, but none more striking than 

 limestone and the impurities in iron ore. 

 The metallurgist knows the weakness of 



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