MASSACHUSETTS— BEEHIVE OF BUSINESS 



209 



gram, and the Bay State is moving in 

 that direction. 



THE HOME OF THE CONVEYING MACHINE 



Massachusetts has long been preemi- 

 nent in the development and introduction 

 of labor-saving devices, but in no field 

 more so than in the evolution of auto- 

 matic conveying machines. 



Go into a chain drug store, a large de- 

 partment store, or a big business office, 

 and the pneumatic tubes and cash-carriers 

 installed there probably came from Mas- 

 sachusetts. Very probably your sterilized 

 milk is handled in the dairy on Massa- 

 chusetts-made gravity conveyers. 



Indeed, at every turn one comes into 

 contact with something that has been car- 

 ried by these Massachusetts step-savers — 

 mail, shoes, hats, watches, money, books, 

 hotel food. 



Mechanical messengers "made in Mas- 

 sachusetts," which are as fast as their 

 human prototypes are slow, are found in 

 every State. Some of them seem to act 

 with even more intelligence than the lead- 

 shod messenger of flesh. In one type 

 there may be a dozen or more receiving 

 stations along its route, but it unfailingly 

 carries its burden to the one to which it 

 is directed by the sender. 



In a big bank the paying tellers cannot 

 always tell the status of certain accounts 

 when checks are presented ; but down be- 

 neath the counter of their cages they have 

 pneumatic tubes. Into one of these the 

 teller puts the check in question ; it is 

 conveyed to the bookkeeper, who scrib- 

 bles his initials of approval upon it, and 

 before the patron at the window has time 

 to suspect that the drawer's account is 

 being examined, the check has been re- 

 turned to the teller and payment is made. 



MASSACHUSETTS ANNUALLY MAKES A 



SHOE FOR EVERY FOOT IN THE 



UNITED STATES 



Space forbids even the enumeration of 

 the many services performed by gravity, 

 pneumatic and electric belt carriers, but 

 millions of hours of labor, millions of 

 dollars' worth of customers' time are 

 saved every day in America by "made in 

 Massachusetts" automatic messengers 

 and merchandise movers. 



A COTTON CARD AT WORK 



Here the big rolls of "lap" are fed between 

 two cylinders which are covered with leather 

 or cloth, studded with tens of thousands of 

 tiny spikes. These barely miss each other, but 

 they comb out the fibers of cotton until they 

 all lie parallel to one another (see page 212). 



The story of the factories of the Bay 

 State is a narrative of an astonishing 

 concentration of human endeavor. 



In quantity no less than in value do the 

 manufactures of Massachusetts amaze. 

 A boot, shoe, or slipper for every human 

 foot in the United States ; more cotton 

 goods than the whole world produced 

 when John Adams was President ; enough 

 hosiery to cover 40,000 miles of feet and 

 legs ; sufficient woolen goods to put a 

 twenty-foot bandage around the waist of 

 Mother Earth — these are some of the 

 yardsticks that measure the annual ac- 

 tivities of this beehive of industry. 



Of course, when one thinks of Massa- 

 chusetts industry, the manufacture of tex- 

 tiles comes immediately to mind. 



Think of twelve million flying spindles 

 converting fiber into yarn and thread, 

 each of them dancing around its own axis 

 at rates varying from 5,000 to 10,000 



