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Title: Scientific American Supplement, No. 481, March 21, 1885
Author: Various
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Scientific American Supplement, No. 481, March 21, 1885" ***
[Illustration]
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN SUPPLEMENT NO. 481
NEW YORK, MARCH 21, 1885
Scientific American Supplement. Vol. XIX, No. 481.
Scientific American established 1845
Scientific American Supplement, $5 a year.
Scientific American and Supplement, $7 a year.
* * * * *
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
I. ENGINEERING AND MECHANICS.--The Righi Railroad.--With
3 engravings.
The Chinese Pump.--1 figure.
The Water Clock.--3 figures.
New Self-propelling and Steering Torpedoes.
Dobson and Barbour's Improvements in Heilmann's Combers.--1 figure.
Machine for Polishing Boots and Shoes.
II. TECHNOLOGY.--The Use of Gas in the Workshop.--By T.
FLETCHER.--Placing of lights.--Best burners.--Light lost by
shades.--Use of the blowpipe.--Gas furnaces.--Gas engines.
The Gas Meter.--3 figures.
The Municipal School for Instruction in Watchmaking at
Geneva.--1 engraving.
III. ELECTRICITY, ETC.--Personal Safety with the Electric
Currents.
A Visit to Canada and the United States; or, Electricity in
America in 1884.--By W.H. PREECE.
IV. ARCHITECTURE.--The House of a Thousand Terrors, Rotterdam.--With
engraving.
V. GEOLOGY.--On the Origin and Structure of Coal,--With full page
of illustrations.
VI. POLITICAL ECONOMY.--Labor and Wages in America.--By D.
PIDGEON.--Who and what are the operatives.--Native labor.--Alien
employes.--Housing of labor.--Sobriety.--Pauperism.--Artisans'
homes.--Interest of employer in the condition of his
employes.--Wages in Europe and America.--Expenditures of
workingmen.--Free trade and protection.
VII. MISCELLANEOUS.--Ice Boat Races on the Mueggelsee, near
Berlin.--With engraving.
VIII. BIOGRAPHY.--DUPUY DE LOME--With portrait.
* * * * *
THE RIGHI RAILROAD.
In the year 1864, the well-known geographer, Heinrich Keller, from Zurich,
on ascending to the summit of the Righi Mountain, in the heart of
Switzerland, discovered one of the finest panoramic displays of mountain
scenery that he had ever witnessed. To his enthusiastic descriptions some
lovers of nature in Zurich and Berne listened with much interest, and in
the year 1865, Dr. Abel, Mr. Escher von der Luith, Aulic Councilor, Dr.
Horner, and others, in connection with Keller himself, subscribed money to
the amount of 2,000 marks ($500) for the purpose of building a hotel on
the top of the mountain overlooking the view. This hotel was simple
enough, being merely a hut such as is to be found in abundance in the
Alps, and which are built by the German and Austrian Alpine Clubs. At
present the old hotel is replaced by another and more comfortable
building, which is rendered accessible by a railway that ascends the
mountain. Mr. Riggenbach, director of the railway works at Olten, was the
projector of this road, which was begun in 1869 and completed in 1871.
Vitznau at Lucerne is the starting point. The ascent, which is at first
gradual, soon increases one in four. After a quarter of an hour the train
passes through a tunnel 240 feet in length, and over an iron bridge of the
same length, by means of which the Schnurtobel, a deep gorge with
picturesque waterfalls, is crossed. At Station Freibergen a beautiful
mountain scene presents itself, and the eye rests upon the glittering,
ice-covered ridge of the Jungfrau, the Monk, and the Eiger. Further up is
station Kaltbad, where the road forks, and one branch runs to Scheideck.
At about ten minutes from Kaltbad is the so-called "Kanzli" (4,770 feet),
an open rotunda on a projecting rock, from which a magnificent view is
obtained. The next station is Stoffelhohe, from which the railroad leads
very near to the abyss on the way to Righi-Stoffel, and from this point it
reaches its terminus (Righi-Kulin) in a few minutes. This is 5,905 feet
above the sea, the loftiest and most northern point of the Righi group.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.--STARTING POINT OF THE RIGHI RAILROAD.]
[Illustration: FIG. 2.--THE RIGHI RAILROAD.]
The gauge of this railroad is the same as that of most ordinary ones.
Between the rails runs a third broad and massive rail provided with teeth,
which gear with a cogwheel under the locomotive. The train is propelled
upward by steam power, while in its descent the speed is regulated by an
ingenious mode of introducing atmospheric air into the cylinder. The
carriage for the passengers is placed in both cases in front of the
engine. The larger carriages have 54 seats, and the smaller 34. Only one
is dispatched at a time. In case of accident, the train can be stopped
almost instantaneously.
[Illustration: FIG. 3.--NEW LOCOMOTIVE ON THE RIGHI RAILROAD.]
We give herewith, from _La Lumiere Electrique_, several engravings
illustrating the system. Fig. 1 shows the starting station. As may be seen
on Figs. 2 and 3, the method selected for obtaining adhesion permits of
ascending the steepest gradients, and that too with entire security.
* * * * *
HIGH SPEED STEAM ENGINE.
The use of rapidly rotating machinery in electric lighting has created a
demand for engines running from 400 to 1,200 revolutions per minute, and
capable of being coupled directly to a dynamo machine. We have already
illustrated several forms of these engines, and now publish engravings of
another in which the most noticeable feature is the employment of separate
expansion valves and very short steam passages. Many high-speed engines
labor under the well-grounded suspicion of being heavy steam users, and
their want of economy often precludes their employment. Mr. Chandler, the
inventor of the engine illustrated above, has therefore adopted a more
elaborate arrangement of valves than ordinarily obtains in engines of this
class, and claims that he gains thereby an additional economy of 33 per
cent. in steam. The valves are cylindrical, and are driven by independent
eccentrics, the spindle of the cut-off valve passing through the center of
the main valve. The upper valve is exposed to the steam on its top face,
and works in a cylinder with a groove cut around its inner surface. As
soon as the lower edge of the valve passes below the bottom lip of the
groove, the steam is cut off from the space between it and the main valve,
which is fitted with packing rings and works over a latticed port. This
port opens directly into the cylinder. The exhaust takes place chiefly
through a port uncovered when the piston is approaching the end of its
stroke. The remaining vapor left in the cylinder is exhausted under the
lower edge of the main valve, until cushioning commences, and the steam
from both upper and lower ports is discharged into the exhaust box shown
in Fig. 2. The speed of the engine is controlled by a centrifugal governor
and an equilibrium valve. This is a "dead face" valve, and when the engine
is running empty it opens and closes many times per minute. The spindle
on which the valve is mounted revolves with the governor pulley, and
consequently never sticks. To prevent the small gland being jammed by
unequal screwing up, the pressure is applied by a loose flange which is
rounded at the part which presses against the gland. The governor is
adjustable while the engine is running.
[Illustration: IMPROVED HIGH SPEED STEAM ENGINE.]
Another economy claimed for this engine is in the use of oil. The cranks
and connecting rods work in a closed chamber, the lower part of which is
filled with oil and water. The oil floats in a layer on the surface of the
water, and at every revolution is splashed all over the working parts,
including the interior of the cylinder, which it reaches through holes in
the piston. The oil is maintained exactly at one level by a very ingenious
arrangement. The bottom of the crank chamber communicates through a hole,
C, with an outer box, which receives the water deposited by the exhaust
steam. The level of this water is exactly determined by an overflow hole,
B, which allows all excess above that level to pass into an elbow of the
exhaust pipe, out of which it is licked by the passing steam and carried
away. Thus, as the oil is gradually used the pressure of the water in the
other leg of the hydrostatic balance raises the level of the remaining
portion. When a fresh supply of oil is poured into the box, it forces out
some of the water and descends very nearly to the level of the hole, B.
The engine is made with either one or two cylinders, and is, of course,
single-acting. The pistons and connecting rods are of forged steel and
phosphor-bronze. The following is a list of their sizes:
_Single Engines_.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Brake | | | | |
Horsepower| Bore of | Revolutions| | |
at 62 lb.| Cylinder. | per minute.| Height. |Floor Space.|
Boiler | | | | |
Pressure. | | | | |
----------|-----------|------------|---------|-------------
| in. | | in. | in. in. |
2¼ | 4 | 1,100 | 26 | 14 by 14 |
3½ | 5 | 1,000 | 28 | 14 " 15 |
6 | 6½ | 800 | 30 | 16 " 16 |
10 | 8 | 700 | 32 | 18 " 18 |
-----------------------------------------------------------
_Double Engines_.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Brake | | | | |
Horsepower| Bore of | Revolutions| | |
at 62 lb.| Cylinder. | per minute.| Height. |Floor Space.|
Boiler | | | | |
Pressure. | | | | |
----------|-----------|------------|---------|-------------
| in. | | in. | in. in. |
4½ | 4 | 1,100 | 26 | 14 by 20 |
7¼ | 5 | 1,000 | 28 | 14 " 20 |
12 | 6½ | 800 | 30 | 16 " 26 |
20 | 8 | 700 | 32 | 18 " 32 |
-----------------------------------------------------------
The manufacturer is Mr. F.D. Bumstead, Hednesford,
Staffordshire.--_Engineering_.
* * * * *
THE CHINESE PUMP.
If a glass tube about three feet in length, provided at its upper
extremity with a valve that opens outwardly, and at its lower with one
that opens inwardly, be dipped into water and given a series of up and
down motions, the water will be seen to quickly rise therein and finally
spurt out at the top. The explanation of the phenomenon is very simple.
Upon immersing the tube in the water it fills as far as to the external
level of the liquid, and the air is expelled from the interior. If the
tube be suddenly raised without removing its lower extremity from the
water, the valve will close, the water will rise with the tube, and,
through the velocity it has acquired, will ascend far above its preceding
level. Now, upon repeating the up and down motion of the tube in the water
five or six times, the tube will be filled, and will expel the liquid
every time that the vertical motion occurs.
[Illustration: THE CHINESE PUMP.]
We speak here of a _glass_ tube, because with this the phenomenon may be
observed. Any tube, of course, would produce the same results.
The manufacture of the apparatus is very simple. The tube is closed above
or below, according to the system one desires to adopt, by means of a
perforated cork. The valve is made of a piece of kid skin, which is fixed
by means of a bent pin and a brass wire (Fig. 2). It is necessary to wet
the skin in order that it may work properly and form a hermetic valve. The
arrangement of the lower valve necessitates the use of a tube of
considerable diameter (Fig. 1). We would advise the adoption of the
arrangement shown in Fig. 2. Under such circumstances a tube half an inch
in diameter and about 3 feet in length will answer very well.
It is better yet to simply use one's forefinger. The tube is taken in the
right hand, as shown in Fig. 3, and the forefinger placed over the
aperture. The finger should be wetted in order to perfect its adherence,
and should not be pressed too hard against the mouth of the tube. It is
only necessary to plunge the apparatus a few inches into the liquid and
work it rapidly up and down, when the water will rise therein at every
motion and spurt out of the top.
This is an easy way of constructing the _Chinese Pump_, which is found
described in treatises upon hydraulics. Such a pump could not, of course,
be economically used in practice on account of the friction of the column
of water against a wide surface in the interior of the tube. It is
necessary to consider the pistonless pump for what it is worth--an
interesting experimental apparatus that any one can make for himself.--_La
Nature_.
* * * * *
THE WATER CLOCK.
_To the Editor of the Scientific American_:
Referring to the clepsydra, or water clock, described and illustrated in
the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN SUPPLEMENT of December 20, 1884, it strikes me
that the ingenious principle embodied in that interesting device could be
put into a shape more modern and practical, doing away with some of its
defects and insuring a greater degree of accuracy.
[Illustration: Fig 1.]
I would propose the construction given in the subjoined sketch, viz.: The
drum, A (Figs. 1 and 3), is mounted in a yoke suspended in such a manner
as to bring no unnecessary, but still sufficient, pressure on the friction
roller, B, to cause it to revolve the friction cone, C (both cone and
roller being of wood and, say, well rubbed with resin so as to increase
adhesion).
[Illustration: Fig 2.]
The friction roller should be movable (on a screw thread), but so arranged
that it can be fixed at any point, say by a lock nut, screw, clamp, or
other simple means. It will be evident that, by shifting the roller, a
greater or less speed of the cone can be effected, and as to the end of
the cone's axis an index hand sweeping an ordinary clock face is attached,
the speed of this index hand can be regulated to a nicety, in proportion
to that of the drum. Of course, before fixing the size and proportion of
the disk and cone, the number of revolutions of the drum in a given time
must be ascertained by experiment. For instance, the drum being found to
make 15 revolutions in 12 hours, the proportions would be:
Circumference of roller = 12 units.
Circumference of middle part of cone = 15 units.
Or, the drum making 2½ revolutions in 3 hours, equal to 9 revolutions in
12 hours:
Circumference of roller = 12 units.
Circumference of middle part of cone = 9 units.
Any slight inaccuracy can be compensated by the cone and disk device.
The drum, or cylinder, is caused to gradually revolve by a weight attached
to an endless cord passing once around the drum. The latter might be
varnished to prevent slipping. The weight should be provided with an
automatic wedge, allowing it to be slipped along the cord in an upward
direction, but preventing its descent. The weight is represented partly in
section in the engraving. This weight should not be quite sufficient to
revolve the drum, it being counterbalanced by the liquid raised in the
chambers of the drum. The liquid, however, following its tendency to seek
the lowest level, gradually runs back through the small hole, D, in the
partitions, but is continually raised again, with the chamber it has just
entered, by the weight slightly turning the cylinder as it (the weight)
gradually gains advantage over the as gradually diminishing weight of each
chamber raised.
As to the drum, the same might be constructed as follows, viz.: First
solder the partitions into the cylinder, making them slanting or having
the direction of chords of a circle (see Fig. 2). The end disks should be
dish shaped, as shown. Place them on a level surface, apply heat, and melt
some mastic or good sealing wax in the same. Then adjust the cylinder
part, with its partitions, allowing it to sink into the slight depth of
molten matter. In this way, or perhaps by employing a solution of rubber
instead of the sealing wax, the chambers will be well isolated and not
liable to leak. The water is then introduced through the center openings
of the disks before hermetically sealing the drum to its axis.
[Illustration: Fig. 3.]
The revolving parts of the clock being nicely balanced, a pretty accurate
timepiece, I should think, would be the result. It is needless to mention
that the "winding" is effected by slipping the weight to its highest
point.
Of course I am far from considering the above an "instrument of
precision," but would rather look upon it in the light of a contrivance,
interesting, perhaps, especially to amateur mechanics, as not presenting
any particular difficulties of construction.
ED. C. MAGNUS.
Crefeld, January 5, 1885.
* * * * *
NEW TORPEDO.
We illustrate a new form of self-propelling and steering torpedo, designed
and patented by Mr. Richard Paulson, of Boon Hills, Langwith, Notts. That
torpedoes will play an important part in the next naval war is evident
from the fact that great activity is being displayed by the various
governments of the world in the construction of this weapon. Our own
Government also has latterly paid great attention to this subject.
The methods hitherto proposed for propelling torpedoes have been by means
of carbonic acid or other compressed gas carried by the torpedoes, and by
means of electricity conveyed by a conductor leading from a controlling
station to electrical apparatus carried by the torpedo. The first method
has, to a considerable extent, failed on account of the inefficient way in
which the compressed gas was employed to propel the torpedo. The second is
open to the objection that by means of telephones placed in the water or
by other signaling apparatus the torpedo can be heard approaching while
yet at a considerable distance, and that a quick speeded dredger, kept
ready for the purpose when any attack is expected, can be run between the
torpedo and the controlling station and the conductor cut and the torpedo
captured. The arrangements for steering by means of an electrical
conductor from a controlling station are also open to the latter
objection. The torpedo we now illustrate, in elevation in Fig. 1, and in
plan in Fig. 2, is designed to obviate these objections, and possesses in
addition other advantages which will be enumerated in the following
description.
As stated above, the torpedo is self-propelling, the necessary energy
being stored up in liquefied carbonic acid contained in a cylindrical
vessel, E, carried by the torpedo. The vessel, E, communicates, by means
of a small bent pipe extending nearly to its bottom, with a small chamber,
B, the passage of the liquid being controlled by means of the cock or tap,
F. The chamber, B, is in communication, by means of a small aperture, with
the nozzle, G, of an injector, T, constructed on the ordinary principles.
The liquid as it passes into the chamber, B, volatilizes, and the gas
passes through the nozzle of the injector, which is surrounded by water in
direct communication with the sea by means of the opening, W. The gas
imparts its energy in the well-known manner to the water, being itself
entirely or partially condensed, the water thus charged with carbonic acid
gas being forced through the combining cone of the injector at a very high
speed and pressure. Preferably the water is here divided into two streams,
each driving a separate rotary motor or turbine, H, themselves driving
twin screws or propellers, I. The motors exhaust into the hollow shafts,
J, of the propellers, which are extended some distance beyond the
propellers, so that the remaining energy of the water may be utilized to
aid in propelling the torpedo on the well known principle of jet
propulsion. The torpedo is preferably steered by means of the twin screws.
A disk or other valve, A, is pivoted in an aperture in a diaphragm
dividing the outlet of the injector, and is operated by means hereafter
described, so as to diminish the stream of water on one side and increase
it on the other, so that one motor, and consequently the corresponding
propeller, is driven at a higher speed than the other, and so steers the
torpedo.
[Illustration: PAULSON'S SELF PROPELLING AND STEERING TORPEDO.]
The valve, A, is operated automatically by the following arrangement: A
mariner's compass, P, placed in the head of the torpedo has its needle
connected to one pole of a powerful battery, D. A dial of non-magnetic
material marked with the points of the compass is capable of being rotated
by the connections shown. This dial carries two insulated studs, _p_, each
electrically connected with one terminal of the coils of an electromagnet,
K, whose other terminal is connected to the other pole of the battery.
These two magnets are arranged on opposite sides of an armature fixed on a
lever operating the disk or valve, A. Before launching the torpedo the
dial is set, so that when the torpedo is steering direct for the object to
be struck, or other desired point, one end of the needle of the compass,
P, is between the steeds, _p_, but contact with neither, the needle of
course pointing to the magnetic north. Should the torpedo however deviate
from this course, the needle makes contact with one or other of the studs
according to the direction in which the deviation takes place, and
completes the circuit through the corresponding electromagnet, which
attracts the armature and causes the disk to move, so as to diminish the
supply of water to one motor and increase it to the other, and so cause
the torpedo to again assume the required direction. Supposing the object
which it is intended that the torpedo should strike be a large mass of
iron, such as an ironclad, the needle will be attracted, and, making the
corresponding contact, will cause the torpedo to be steered directly away
from the object. In order to prevent this, a second compass, Q, is mounted
in the front of the torpedo, and when attracted by a mass of iron, it
short-circuits the battery, D, and thus prevents the armature being
attracted, and consequently the torpedo from deviating. This needle is
also capable of slight movement in a vertical plane, so that when passing
over or under a mass of iron it is attracted downward or upward, and
completes a circuit by means of the stops, which operate so as to explode
the charge. The charge can also be exploded in the ordinary manner, viz.,
by means of the firing pin, X, when the torpedo runs into any solid
object.
The depth at which the torpedo travels below the surface of the water is
regulated by means of a flexible diaphragm, M, secured in the outer casing
and connected to a rod sliding freely in fixed bearings. A spiral or other
spring, O, is compressed between a color on the rod and an adjustable
fixed nut, by which the tension of the spring is regulated so that the
pressure of water on the diaphragm, A, when the torpedo is at the desired
depth just counterbalances the pressure of the spring, the diaphragm being
then flush with the outer casing. The rod is connected by suitable levers
to two horizontal fins, S, pivoted one on either side of the torpedo, so
that they shall be in equilibrium. Should the torpedo sink too deep or
rise too high, the diaphragm will be depressed or extended, and will
operate on the lines so as to cause the torpedo to ascend or descend as
the case may be.
In order to avoid the risk of a spent torpedo destroying a friendly
vessel, a valve is arranged in any suitable part of the outer casing, and
is weighted or loaded with a spring in such a manner that when under way
the pressure of the water keeps the valve closed, but when it stops the
valve opens and admits water to sink the torpedo.
In our description we have only given the main features of the invention,
the inventor having mentioned to us, in confidence, several improvements
designed to perfect the details of his invention, among which we may
mention the steering arrangement and arrangements for attacking a vessel
provided with what our contemporary, _Engineering_, not inaptly terms a
"crinoline," _i. e._, a network for keeping off torpedoes. The transverse
dimensions of our engravings have been considerably augmented for the sake
of clearness.--_Mech. World._
* * * * *
DUPUY DE LOME.
M. Dupuy De Lome died on the 1st Feb., 1885, at the age of 68. It may be
questioned whether any constructor has ever rendered greater services to
the navy of any country than those rendered by M. Dupuy to the French Navy
during the thirty years 1840-70. Since the fall of the Empire his
connection with the naval service has been terminated, but his
professional and scientific standing has been fully maintained, and his
energies have found scope in the conduct of the great and growing business
of the _Forges et Chantiers_ Company. In him France has undoubtedly lost
her greatest naval architect.
The son of a naval officer, M. Dupuy was born in October, 1816, near
L'Orient, and entered _L'Ecole Polytechnique_ when nineteen years of age.
In that famous establishment he received the thorough preliminary training
which France has so long and wisely provided for those who are to become
the designers of her war-ships. After finishing his professional
education, he came to England about 1842, and made a thorough study of
iron shipbuilding and steam navigation, in both of which we then held a
long lead of France. His report, subsequently published under the title of
"Memoire sur la Construction des Batiments en Fer"--Paris, 1844--is
probably the best account given to the world of the state of iron
shipbuilding forty years ago: and its perusal not merely enables one to
gauge the progress since made, but to form an estimate of the great
ability and clear style of the writer. We may assume that this visit to
England, coming after the thorough education received in Francem did much
toward forming the views to which expression was soon given in designs and
reports on new types of war ships.
[Illustration: M. DUPUY DE LOME.]
When the young constructor settled down to his work in the arsenal at
Toulon, on his return from England, the only armed steamships in the
French Navy were propelled by paddle-wheels, and there was great
opposition to the introduction of steam power into line-of-battle ships.
The paddle-wheel was seen to be unsuited to such large fighting vessels,
and there was no confidence in the screw; while the great majority of
naval officers in France, as well as in England, were averse to any
decrease in sail spread. M. Dupuy had carefully studied the details of the
Great Britain, which he had seen building at Bristol, and was convinced
that full steam power should be given to line-of-battle ships. He grasped
and held fast to this fundamental idea; and as early as the year 1845 he
addressed a remarkable report to the Minister of Marine, suggesting the
construction of a full-powered screw frigate, to be built with an iron
hull, and protected by a belt of armor formed by several thicknesses of
iron plating. This report alone would justify his claim to be considered
the leading naval architect of that time; it did not bear fruit fully for
some years, but its recommendations were ultimately realized.
M. Dupuy did not stand alone in the feeling that radical changes in the
construction and propulsion of ships were imminent. His colleagues in the
"Genie Maritime" were impressed with the same idea: and in England, about
this date, the earliest screw liners--the wonderful converted "block
ships"--were ordered. This action on our part decided the French also to
begin the conversion of their sailing line-of-battle ships into vessels
with auxiliary steam power. But M. Dupuy conceived and carried out the
bolder scheme of designing a full-powered screw liner, and in 1847 the
Napoleon was ordered. Her success made the steam reconstruction of the
fleets of the world a necessity. She was launched in 1850, tried in 1852,
and attained a speed of nearly 14 knots an hour. During the Crimean War
her performances attracted great attention, and the type she represented
was largely increased in numbers. She was about 240 ft. in length, 55 ft.
in breadth, and of 5,000 tons displacement, with two gun decks. In her
design boldness and prudence were well combined. The good qualities of
the sailing line-of-battle ships which had been secured by the genius of
Sané and his colleagues were maintained; while the new conditions involved
in the introduction of steam power and large coal supply were thoroughly
fulfilled. The steam reconstruction had scarcely attained its full swing
when the ironclad reconstructor became imperative. Here again M. Dupuy
occupied a distinguished position, and realized his scheme of 1845 with
certain modifications. His eminent services led to his appointment in 1857
to the highest office in the Constructive Corps--Directeur du
Materiel--and his design for the earliest seagoing ironclad, La Gloire,
was approved in the same year. Once started, the French pressed on the
construction of their ironclads with all haste, and in the autumn of 1863
they had at sea a squadron of five ironclads, not including in this list
La Gloire. It is unnecessary to trace further the progress of the race for
maritime supremacy; but to the energy and great ability of M. Dupuy de
Lome must be largely attributed the fact that France took, and for a long
time kept, such a lead of us in ironclads. In the design of La Gloire, as
is well known, he again followed the principle of utilizing known forms
and dimensions as far as was consistent with modern conditions, and the
Napoleon was nearly reproduced in La Gloire so far as under-water shape
was concerned, but with one gun deck instead of two, and with a completely
protected battery. So long as he retained office, M. Dupuy consistently
adhered to this principle; but he at the same time showed himself ready to
consider how best to meet the constantly growing demands for thicker
armor, heavier guns, and higher speeds. It is singular, however,
especially when his early enthusiasm for iron ships is remembered, to find
how small a proportion of the ships added to the French Navy during his
occupancy of office were built of anything but wood.
Distinctions were showered upon him. In 1860 he was made a Councilor of
State, and represented the French Admiralty in Parliament; from 1869 to
1875 he was a Deputy, and in 1877 he was elected a Life Senator. He was a
member of the Academy of Sciences and of other distinguished scientific
bodies. Of late his name has been little connected with ship design; but
his interest in the subject was unabated.
In 1870 M. Dupuy devoted a large amount of time and thought to perfecting
a system of navigable balloons, and the French Government gave him great
assistance in carrying out the experiments. It does not seem, however,
that any sufficient success was reached to justify further trials. The
theoretical investigations on which the design was based, and the
ingenuity displayed in carrying out the construction of the balloon, were
worthy of M. Dupuy's high reputation. The fleet that he constructed for
France has already disappeared to a great extent, and the vessels still
remaining will soon fall out of service. But the name and reputation of
their designer will live as long as the history of naval construction is
studied.--_The Engineer_.
* * * * *
THE USE OF GAS IN THE WORKSHOP.
At a recent meeting of the Manchester Association of Employers, Foremen,
and Draughtsmen of the Mechanical Trades of Great Britain, an interesting
lecture on "Gas for Light and Work in the Workshop" was delivered by Mr.
T. Fletcher, F.C.S., of Warington.
Mr. Fletcher illustrated his remarks with a number of interesting
experiments, and spoke as follows:
There are very few workshops where gas is used so profitably as it might
be; and my object to-night is to make a few suggestions, which are the
result of my own experience. In a large space, such as an erecting or
moulder's shop, it is always desirable to have all the lights distributed
about the center. Wall lights, except for bench work, are wasteful, as a
large proportion of the light is absorbed by the walls, and lost. Unless
the shop is draughty, it is by far the best policy to have a few large
burners rather than a number of small ones. I will show you the difference
in the light obtained by burning the same quantity of gas in one and in
two flames. I do not need to tell you how much the difference is; you can
easily see for yourselves. The additional light is not caused, as some of
you may suppose, by a combined burner, as I have here a simple one,
burning the same quantity of gas as the two smaller burners together; and
the advantage of the simple large burner is quite as great. It is a
well-known fact that the larger the gas consumption in a single flame, the
higher the duty obtained for the gas burnt. There is a practical limit to
this with ordinary simple burners; as when they are too large they are
very sensitive to draught, and liable to unsteadiness and smoking. I have
here a sample of a works' pendant or pillar light, which, not including
the gas supply-pipe, can be made for about a shilling. For all practical
purposes I believe this light (which carries five No. 6 Bray's union jets,
and which we use as a portable light at repairs and breakdowns) is as
efficient and economical a form as it is possible to make for ordinary
rough work. The burners are in the best position, and the light is both
powerful and quite shadowless; giving, in fact, the best light underneath
the burners. It must, of course, be protected in a draughty shop; and on
this protection something needs to be said.
Regenerator burners for lighting are coming into use; and, where large
lights are required for long periods, no doubt they are economical.
Burners of the Bower or Wenham class would be worth adopting for main
street or open space lighting in important positions; but when we consider
that, with the fifty-four hours' system in workshops, artificial light is
only wanted, on an average, for four hundred hours per annum, we may take
it as certain that, at the present prices of regenerator burners, they are
a bad investment for use in ordinary work. We must not forget that the
distance of the burner from the work is a vital point of the cost
question; and, for all except large spaces, requiring general
illumination, a common cheap burner on a swivel joint has yet to meet with
a competitor. Do not think I am old-fashioned or prejudiced in this
matter. It is purely a question of figures; and my condemnation of
regenerator burners applies only to the general requirements in ordinary
engineering and other work shops where each man wants a light on one spot
only.
Some people think that clear glass does not stop any light. This is a
great mistake, as you will find it quite easy to throw a distinct shadow
of a sheet of perfect glass on a white paper, as I will show you. Opal and
ground glass throw a very strong shadow, and practically waste half the
light. It is better to have a white enameled or whitewashed sheet-iron
reflecting hood, which will protect the sides from wind, if such an
arrangement suits other requirements.
I have endeavored in the engraving below to reproduce the shadows thrown
by different samples of glass. This gives a fair idea of the actual loss
of light involved by glass shades.
When lights are suspended, it is a common and costly fashion to put them
high up. When we consider that light decreases as the square of the
distance, it will be readily understood that to light, for instance, the
floor of a moulding shop, a burner 6 feet from the floor will do as much
work as four burners, the same size, placed 12 feet from the floor. It is
therefore a most important matter that all lights should be as low as
possible, consistent with the necessities of the shop, as not only is the
expense enormously increased by lofty lights, but the air becomes more
vitiated and unpleasant, interfering with the men's power of working. Any
lights suspended, and, in fact, all workshop lights, must have a
ball-joint or universal swivel at the point where they branch from the
main, as they are liable to be knocked in all directions, and must,
therefore, be free to move to prevent accidents. It is better to have
wind-screens, if necessary, rather than glass lanterns, as not only does
the glass stop a considerable amount of light when clean, but it is in
practice constantly dirty in almost every workshop or yard.
[Illustration: PILLAR LIGHT OR PENDANT FOR WORKSHOPS.]
For bench work and machine tools, each man must have his own light under
his own control; and in this matter a little attention will make a
considerable saving. The burners should be union jets--_i. e._, burners
with two holes at an angle to each other--not slit or batswing, as the
latter are extremely liable to partial stoppage with dust. Where batswing
burners are used, I have often seen fully 90 per cent. more or less choked
and unsatisfactory; whereas a union jet does not give any trouble. It is
not generally known that any burner used at ordinary pressures of gas
gives a much better light when it is turned over with the flat of the
flame horizontal, until the flame becomes saucer-shaped, as I show you.
You can see for yourselves the increase in light; and in addition to this
the workman has the great advantage of a shadowless flame. In practice, a
burner consuming 5 cubic feet of gas per hour with a horizontal flame is a
better fitter's than an upright burner with 6 cubic feet per hour. I do
not believe in the policy of giving a man a poor light to work by--it does
not pay; and I never expect to get a man to work properly with smaller
burners than these. We have a good governor on the main: and the lights
are all worked with a low pressure of gas, to get the best possible duty.
As a good practical light for a man at bench moulding, the one I have here
may be taken as a fair sample. It is free to move, and the light is as
near the perfect position as the necessities of the work will permit. When
the light is not wanted, by simply pushing it away it turns itself down;
the swivel being, in fact, a combined swivel and tap.
[Illustration: LOSS OF LIGHT BY GLASS SHADES.]
You will see on one of the lights I have here, a new swivel joint, which
has been patented only within the last few days. The peculiarity of this
swivel is that the body is made of two hemispheres revolving on each
other in a ground joint. It will be made also with a universal movement;
and its special advantage, either for gas, water, or steam, is that there
is no obstruction whatever to a free passage--in fact, the way through the
swivel body is larger than the way through the pipes with which it is
connected. It can easily be made to stand any pressure, and if damaged by
grit or dirt it can be reground with ease as often as necessary without
deterioration, whereas an ordinary swivel, if damaged by grit, has to be
thrown away as useless.
[Illustration]
For meals, where a steam-kettle is not used, it is the best policy to have
a cistern holding about 1½ pints for each man, and to boil this with a
gas-burner. The lighting of the burner at a specified time may be deputed
to a boy. If the men's dinners have to be heated, it is easy to purchase
ovens which will do all the work required by gas at a much cheaper rate
than by coal, if we consider the labor and attention necessary with any
coal fire. Not that gas is cheaper than coal; but say we have 100 dinners
to warm. This can be done in a gas-oven in about 20 minutes, at a cost for
gas of less than 1d.; in fact, for one-fourth the cost of labor only in
attending to a coal fire, without considering the cost of wood or coals.
Gas, in many instances, is an apparently expensive fuel; but when the
incidental saving in other matters is taken into consideration, I have
found it exceedingly profitable for all except large or continuous work,
and in many cases for this also. I only need instance wire card-making and
the brazing shops of wire cable makers to show that a large and free use
of gas is compatible with the strictest economy and profitable working.
Of all the tools in a workshop, nothing saves more time and worry than two
or three sizes of good blowpipes and an efficient blower. I have seen in
one day more work spoilt, and time lost, for want of these than would have
paid for the apparatus twice over; and in almost every shop emergencies
are constantly happening in which a good blowpipe will render most
efficient service. Small brazing work can often be done in less time than
would be consumed in going to the smith's hearth and back again,
independently of the policy of keeping a man in his own place, and to his
own work. The shrinking on of collars, forging, hardening, and tempering
of tools, melting lead or resin out of pipes which have been bent, and
endless other odd matters, are constantly turning up; and on these, in the
absence of a blowpipe, I have often seen men spend hours instead of
minutes. Things which need a blowpipe are usually most awkward to do
without one; and men will go fiddling about and tumbling over each other
without seeing really what they intend to do. They are content, as it all
counts in the day's work; that it comes off the profits is not their
concern. It will, perhaps, be new to many of you that blowpipes can easily
be made in a form which admits of any special shape of flame being
produced. I have made for special work--such as heating up odd shapes of
forgings, brands, etc.--blowpipes constructed of perforated tubes formed
to almost every conceivable shape; these being supplied with gas from the
ordinary main and a blast of air from a Root's or foot blower. I have here
an example of a straight-line blowpipe made for heating wire passed along
it at a high speed. The same flame, as you no doubt will readily
understand, can be made of any power and of any shape, and will work any
side up; in fact, as a rule, a downward vertical or nearly vertical
position is usually the best for any blowpipe. As an example of this class
of work, I may instance the shrinking on of collars and tires, which, with
suitable ring-burner and a Root's blower, could be equally heated in five
minutes for shrinking on; in fact, the work could be done in less time
than it would usually take to find a laborer to light a fire. When the
rings vary much in size, the burners can easily be made in segments of
circles. But then they are not nearly so handy, as each needs to be
connected up to the gas and air supply; and it is, in practice, usually
cheaper to have separate ring burners of different sizes. Of course, you
will understand that a ½-inch gas-pipe will not supply heat enough to make
a locomotive tire red hot, and that for large work a large gas supply is
necessary. Our own rule for burners of this class is that the holes in the
tube should be 1/8 to 1/10 inch in diameter, from ¼ to ½ inch pitch; and
the area of the tube must be equal to the combined area of the holes. The
gas supply-pipe must not be less than half the area of the burner-tube.
Those of you who wish to study this matter further will, I think, find
sufficient information in my paper on "The Construction of High-Power
Burners for Heating by Gas," printed in the Transactions of the Gas
Institute for 1883, and in the papers on the "Use and Construction of the
Blowpipe" and "The Use of Gas as a Workshop Tool."
[Illustration]
No doubt many of you have been troubled with the twisting of some special
light casting, and will, perhaps, spend hours in the risky operation of
bending an iron pattern so as to get a straight casting. A ladleful of
lead and tin, melted in a small gas-furnace, will, in a few minutes, give
you a pattern which you can bend and adjust to any required shape. It
enables you to make trials to any extent, and get castings with the utmost
precision. There is also this advantage, that a soft metal pattern can be
cut about and experimented with in a way which no other material admits
of. Awkward patterns commence with us with plaster, wax, sheets of wet
blotting paper pasted together on a shape or wood; but they almost
invariably make their appearance in the foundry after being converted into
soft metal by the aid of a gas-furnace. I refer, of course, to thin,
awkward, and generally difficult castings, which, under ordinary
treatment, are either turned out badly or require a great amount of
fitting. As an illustration of the use of this system of pattern-making, I
have here two castings of my own, from patterns which, under the ordinary
engineer's system, would be excessively costly and difficult to make as
well as these are made. The surface is a mass of intricate pattern work
and perforations. To produce the flat original, as you see it, a small
piece of the pattern is first cut, and from this a number of tin castings
are made and soldered together. From this pattern, reproduced in iron for
the sake of permanence, is cast the flat center plate you see. To produce
the curved pattern I show you, nothing more is necessary than to bend the
tin pattern on a block of the right shape, and we now get a pattern which
would puzzle a good many pattern-makers of the old style.
[Illustration]
I will now show you by a practical utilization of the well known flameless
combustion, how to light a coke furnace without either paper or wood, and
without disturbing the fuel, by the use of a blowpipe which for the first
minute is allowed to work in the ordinary way with a flame to ignite the
coke. I then pinch the gas tube to extinguish the flame, allow the gas to
pass as before, and so blow a mixture of unburnt air and gas into the
fuel. The enormous heat generated by the combustion of the mixture in
contact with the solid fuel will be appreciable to you all, and if this
blast of mixed air and gas is continued, there is hardly any limit to the
temperatures which can be obtained in a furnace. I shall be able to show
you the difference in temperature obtained in a furnace by an ordinary air
blast, by a blowpipe flame directed into the furnace, and by the same
mixture of gas and air which I use in the blowpipe being blown in and
burnt in contact with the ignited coke. In each case the air blast, both
in quantity and pressure, is absolutely the same; but the roar and the
intense, blinding glare produced by blowing the unburnt mixture into the
furnace is unmistakable. The heat obtained in the coke furnace I am using,
in less than ten minutes, is greater than any known crucible would stand.
I am informed that this system of air and gas or air and petroleum vapor
blast, first discovered and published by myself in a work on metallurgy
issued in 1881, is now becoming largely used for commercial purposes on
the Continent, not only on account of the enormous increase in the heat,
and the consequent work got out of any specified furnace, but also because
the coke or solid fuel used stands much longer, and the dropping, which is
so great a nuisance in crucible furnaces, is almost entirely prevented; in
fact, once the furnace is started, no solid fuel is necessary, and the
coke as it burns away can be replaced with lumps of broken ganister or any
infusible material. Few, if any, samples of firebrick will stand the heat
of this blast, if the system is fully utilized. You will find it a matter
of little difficulty, with this system of using gas, to melt a crucible of
cast iron in an ordinary bed-room fire grate if the front bars are covered
with sheet iron, with a hole (say) three inches in diameter, to admit the
combined gas and air blast. The only care needed is to see that you do not
melt down the firebars during the process. I will also show you how, on an
ordinary table, with a small pan of broken coke and the same blowpipe,
used in the way already described, you can get a good welding heat in a
few minutes, starting all cold. In this case the blowpipe is simply fixed
with the nozzle six inches above the coke, and the flame directed
downward. As soon as the coke shows red, the gas pipe is pinched so as to
blow the flame out, and the mixture of gas and air is blown from above
into the coke as before. With this and a little practice, you can get a
weld on a 7/8 inch round bar in 10 minutes.
There is one use of gas which has already proved an immense service to
those who, in the strictest sense, live by their wits. In a small private
workshop, with the assistance of gas furnaces, blowpipes, and other gas
heating appliances, it is a very easy matter to carry out important
experiments privately on a practical scale. A man with an idea can readily
carry out his idea without skilled assistance, and without it ever making
its appearance in the works until it is an accomplished fact. How many of
you have been blocked in important experiments by the tacit resistance of
an old fashioned good workman, who cannot or will not see what you are
driving at, and who persists in saying that what you want is not possible?
The application of gas will often enable you to go over his head, and do
what, if the workman had his own way, would be an impossibility. When a
man is unable or unwilling to see a way out of a difficulty, a master or
foreman has the power to take the law in his own hands; and when a workman
has been met with this kind of a reply once or twice, he usually gives
way, and does not in future attempt to dictate and teach his master his
own business. In carrying out this matter, it is not necessary that a
specimen of fine workmanship shall be produced. A man usually appreciates
the wits which have produced what he has considered impossible. In purely
experimental work I think I may fairly state that the use of gas as a fuel
in the private workshop and laboratory has done incalculable service in
the improvement of processes and trades, and has played an important part
in insuring the success and fortunes of many hundreds of experimenters,
who have brought their labors to a successful issue in cases where, in its
absence, neither time nor patience would have been available. I need only
to call to your mind the number of new alloys which, for almost endless
different purposes, have come into use during the last eight or ten years.
I think the use of small gas furnaces in private workshops and
laboratories may fairly be said to have enabled the experiments on most,
if not all, of these alloys to be carried out to a successful issue.
I have been asked to say something regarding gas engines. The only thing I
can say is that I know very little about them. In my own works we have
about 300,000 cubic feet of space, all of which requires to be heated,
more or less, during the greater part of the year. For this purpose we
must have a steam boiler, and having this steam, it costs little to run it
first through the engine, and so obtain our power for a good part of the
year practically without any cost. It would not pay, under any
circumstances, to have two separate sources of power for summer and
winter; and therefore the use of gas for power has never been considered.
For irregular work and comparatively small powers, gas-engines have
special and great advantages; and in this respect they may, perhaps, class
with gas melting furnaces. If I wanted 1, or 10, or 20 lb. of melted
metal, I could melt and make the casting in less time and with less cost
than would be required to light a coke fire. There is no possible
comparison in the two, as to convenience and economy; but if I wanted to
melt 3 or 4 cwt. or 3 or 4 tons every day, I should not dream of using gas
for the purpose, as the extra cost of gas in such a case would not be
compensated by the saving in time. In commercial matters we must always
consider first what is the most profitable way of going about our work;
and, so far as I myself am concerned, I have always found it advantageous
to expend some money annually on proving this by direct experiment. It is
almost always possible to learn something, even from a failure.
I will now, with a blowpipe and small foot blower, heat a short length of
locomotive boiler tube to a brazing heat on the table; and, in conclusion,
will convert the table into a small foundry. I cannot cast you a flywheel
for a factory engine; so will try at something smaller, and will reproduce
a medallion portrait of Her Majesty, in cast iron, the original of which
is silver, commonly valued at half a crown. From the time I light the
furnace until I turn you out the finished casting I shall perhaps keep you
eight or nine minutes. I can remember in the good old times 25 years ago,
before I used gas furnaces, that it sometimes took about two hours to get
a good wind furnace into condition to put the crucible in. My time in
those days was not worth much; but if I valued it at 2s. 6d. per week, it
would even then have been cheaper to use gas to do the same thing,
irrespective of the cost of coke.
The age of gaseous fuel is commencing; and I feel daily, from the
correspondence I receive, that there is a growing impression that gas is
going to perform miracles. We do not need to go mad about it; and my own
precept and practice is to employ gas only where its use shows a profit,
either in time or money. Many of those present know that I am as ready to
totally condemn gaseous fuel where it does not pay as to advise its use
where some advantage is to be gained. You will understand that my remarks
apply to coal gas only. As to producer or furnace gases, I know
practically nothing, except that sometimes it pays better to burn your
candle as a candle than make it into gas, and burn it as a gas afterward.
The use of producer gas no doubt pays on a large scale; and things on a
large scale, so far as gas is concerned, are not matters with which I have
time to concern myself. The commercial use of coal gas has yet to be
developed. It is in its infancy; and there are very few, if any, who have
any conception of its endless uses, both for domestic and manufacturing
purposes. The more general the information which can be given about its
uses, the sooner it will find its own level, and the sooner the gas
companies will appreciate the fact that their best customers are to be
found among those who can use coal gas as a fuel for special work in
manufacturing industries because it is profitable to use, and saves
expensive labor. My own experiments with alloys of the rarer metals, which
have not been concluded without profit to myself, would certainly never
have been undertaken except with the use of gas furnaces, which were both
practically unlimited in power and admitted of the most absolute precision
in use; and I may safely say, without violating any confidence, that many
of the precious stories and so-called "natural" products make their
appearance in the world first in a crucible in a gas furnace.
At the conclusion of my lecture before the Institute at Leeds, on
"Combustion and the Utilization of Waste Heat," Mr. Kitson, the Chairman,
remarked that if he were a dreamer of dreams, he might look forward to the
time when he would be growing cucumbers with the waste heat of his iron
furnaces. Many wilder dreams than this have come true in the science of
engineering; and the realization has brought honor and fortune to the
dreamers, as you must all know. The history of engineering is full of the
realization of "dreams," which have been denounced as absurdities by some
of the best living authorities.
* * * * *
THE GAS METER
The gas meter was invented by Clegg in 1816. Since that epoch no essential
modification has been made of its structure. Fig. 1 shows the principle of
the apparatus, _mnpq_ is a drum movable around a horizontal axis. This is
divided by partitions of peculiar form into four vessels of equal
capacity, and dips into a closed water reservoir, RR'. A tube, _t_, near
the axis, and the orifice of which is above the level of the water, leads
the gas to be measured. This latter enters under the partition, _l'm_, of
one of the buckets, and exerts an upward thrust upon it that communicates
a rotary motion to the drum. The bucket, _l'mi_, closed hydraulically,
rises and fills with gas until the following one comes to occupy its place
above the entrance tube and fills with gas in turn. Simultaneously, as
soon as the edge of each bucket emerges at _e_, the gas flows out through
the opening that the water ceases to close, and escapes from the reservoir
through the exit aperture, S. The gas, in continuing to traverse the
system, is thus filling one bucket while the preceding one is losing its
contents; so that, if the capacity of each bucket is known, the volumes of
the gas discharged will likewise be known when the number of revolutions
made by the drum shall have been counted. The addition of a revolution
counter to the drum, then, will solve the problem.
[Illustration: THE GAS METER.]
The instrument, as usually constructed, is shown in Figs. 2 and 3.
The reservoir, RR' contains the measuring drum, _mmmm_, movable around the
horizontal axis, _aa'_. The gas enters at E, passes at S into an opening
that may be closed by a valve, and is distributed through the box, BB',
which communicates with the reservoir through an orifice in the partition,
_hh'_. This orifice is traversed by the axle, _aa'_. The box, like the
reservoir, contains water up to a certain level, _r_. Through a U-shaped
tube, _lnl'_, the gas passes from the box, BB', into the movable drum,
sets the latter in motion, and makes its exit at S. In order to count the
volume discharged, that is to say, the number of revolutions of the drum,
the axle terminates at a in an endless screw which, by means of a cog
wheel, moves a vertical rod that traverses the tube, _gg_, and projects
from the box. As the tube, _gg_, dips into the water, it does not allow
the gas to escape, and this permits of the revolution counter that the rod
actuates being placed in an external case, CC'.
The counter consists of toothed wheels and pinions so arranged that if the
first wheel makes one complete revolution corresponding to a discharge of
1,000 liters, the following wheel, which indicates cubic meters, shall
advance one division, and that if this second wheel makes one complete
revolution marked 10 cubic meters, the third, which indicates tenths,
shall advance one division, and so on. Hands fixed to the axles of the
wheels, and movable over dials, permit the volume of gas to be read that
has traversed the counter.
The object of the other parts of the instrument are to secure regularity
in its operation by keeping the level of the liquid constant. It is
evident, in fact, that if the level of the water gets below _r_, the
capacity of the buckets will be increased, and the counter will indicate a
discharge less than is really the case, and _vice versa_. If the level
descends as far as to the orifice in the partition, _hh'_, the gas will
flow out without causing the apparatus to move. The water is introduced
into the counter through _f_, which is closed with a screw cap, and
passes through the opening shown by dotted lines into the reservoir, RR',
whence it flows to the box, BB', When it has reached the desired level, it
gains the orifice, _r_, of a waste pipe, escapes through the siphon,
_ruv_, and makes its exit through the aperture, _b'_, when the screw cap
of the latter is removed. If, by accident, the level of the water should
fall below a certain limit, a float, _f_, which follows its every
movement, would close the valve, _s_, and stop the flow of the gas.
Finally a tube, _tt'_ soldered to the lower part of the tube, _lnl'_, and
dipping into the water of a compartment, P, serves to allow the surplus
water to flow out at _b'_. To prevent the apparatus from being disarranged
upon the drum being revolved in the opposite direction, there is fixed to
the axle, _aa'_, a cam which lifts a click, _z_, when the rotation is
regular, but which is arrested by it when the contrary is the
case.--_Science et Nature_.
* * * * *
DOBSON AND BARLOW'S IMPROVEMENTS IN HEILMANN'S COMBERS.
Next to the mule, there is no doubt that the most beautiful machine used
in the cotton trade is Heilmann's comber. Although the details of this
machine are hard to master, when once its action is understood it will be
found to be really simple. The object of combing is to remove the short
staples and the dirt left in after the carding of the cotton, such as is
used in the spinning of fine and even coarse numbers. The operation is an
extremely delicate one, and its successful realization is a good
illustration of what is possible with machinery. Combing machines are
usually made with six heads, and sometimes with eight. As the working of
each head is identical, we only speak of one of them. By means of a pair
of fluted feeding rollers a narrow lap, about 7½ in. wide, is passed into
the head, in which the following action takes place: Assuming that the
stroke is finished, the lap is seized near its end by a pair of nippers,
so as to leave about half the length of the staple projecting. These
projecting fibers are combed by a revolving cylinder, partially covered
with comb teeth. When the front or projecting ends of the fibers are thus
combed, a straight comb in front of the nippers drops into them, the
nippers open, and the fibers are drawn through the straight comb. This
combs the tail ends, and at the same time the fibers, now completely
combed, are placed on or pieced to the fibers that had been combed in the
previous stroke, producing in this way a continuous fleece of combed
cotton. In short, in this most striking operation, the fiber during the
combing is completely detached from the ribbon lap, carried over, and
pieced to the tail end of the combed fleece, for a moment having no
connection with either. Since the expiry of the patent, Messrs. Bobson and
Barlow, of Bolton, have constructed a great many of these machines, and
have found that, as compared with the original make, it was possible to
greatly increase their efficiency. They accordingly devoted much attention
to this object, and have patents for several improvements. To describe
these so as to be understood by everybody would be a most difficult task,
and would take more space than we can afford. We simply wish to record
what these improvements are, and will suppose we are writing for those
who have a good acquaintance with Heilmann's comber.
[Illustration: DOBSON AND BARLOW'S IMPROVEMENTS IN HEILMANN'S COMBERS.]
We give herewith a perspective view of the improved machine. On
examination it will be noticed that an alteration is made in the motion
seen at the end of the machine for working the detached rollers. This
alteration we believe to be a decided improvement over Heilmann's original
arrangement. It dispenses with the large detaching cam, the cradle, the
notch-wheel, the catch and its spring, the large spur wheel which drives
the calender roller, and the internal wheels for the detaching
roller-shaft, substituting in their stead a much simpler motion,
consisting of a smaller cam, a quadrant, and a clutch. The arrangement,
having fewer parts, is also much more compact than the old one, for with
the driving pulleys in the best position it enables the machine outside
the framing to be shortened 10 in., an important point in a room full of
combers. The action of this detaching motion is positive, and enables the
machine to be run at a high speed without danger of missing, as happens
when the point of the catch for the old notch-wheel becomes broken or worn
away. Another important feature of the new arrangement is that it allows
the motion of the detaching-roller to be varied. By an adjustment, easily
made in a few seconds, the delivery may be altered to suit different
classes of cotton or kinds of work without the necessity of changing the
cams or the notch-wheels.
An improvement has been made in the construction of the nippers. In the
ordinary Heilmann's comber, the upper blade has a groove in its nipping
edge, and the cushion plate is covered with cloth and leather, the fibers
being held by the grip between the leather of the cushion plate and the
edges of the groove in the upper blade, or knife, as it is called. The
objections to this mode of construction were that the leather on the
cushion plate required frequent renewing, and unless the adjustment was
more accurate than could always be relied on, the grip of the nippers was
not perfect, for while at one end the nipper might be closed, at the other
end it might be open wide enough to allow the cotton to be pulled through
by the combing cylinder, and made into waste. In Messrs. Dobson and
Barlow's nipper there is neither cloth nor leather on the cushion plate.
Its edge is made into a blunt ^, upon which the narrow flat surface of a
strip of India rubber or leather fixed in the knife falls to give the nip.
By this plan the cushion is applied to the knife instead of to the plate,
which of course makes the cushion plate, after it has once been set, a
fixture; it also dispenses with the accurate setting, as is now necessary
in the old arrangement. It further does away with the frequent and
expensive covering of the cushion-plate with roller leather and cloth,
thus effecting a considerable saving, not only in cost of material, but
also in labor, inasmuch as the nipper knives can be taken off, recovered,
and replaced in one-sixth the time required to cover the cushion plates
and replace them on the old system. American cotton of 7/8" staple to silk
of 2½" staple can also be combed by this improved arrangement, an
achievement which has been attempted by many, but hitherto without
arriving at any success. Messrs. Dobson and Barlow have however overcome
the difficulty by their improvements, which combine three important
qualities, viz., simplicity, perfection, and cheapness. Many hundreds of
other makers' machines have been altered to their new arrangements. The
cam for working the nipper has also been altered to give a smoother motion
than usual; one that moves the nipper quietly and without jerks when the
machine runs from 80 to 95 strokes per minute. A very decided improvement
has been made in the construction of the combing cylinder. The combs are
always fixed on a piece called the "half-lap," which, in its turn, is
secured to a barrel called the "comb-stock." Now it is very desirable and
important that these half-laps should be perfectly true and exactly
interchangeable. When one half-lap is taken off for repairs, another
half-lap must be ready to take its place on the cylinder. The original
mode in which the cylinders were made rendered it a matter of mechanical
difficulty--almost an impossibility in the machine shop--to produce them
exactly alike. To avoid this difficulty, Messrs. Dobson and Barlow have
reconstructed the combing cylinder, and the parts being fitted together by
simple turning or boring, accuracy and interchangeability can always be
depended upon. The screws which fasten the cylinder to the shaft are also
cased up with the cylinder tins, thus avoiding any accumulation of fly on
the screw heads.
The motion for working the top detaching, the leather, or the piecing
roller, as it is variously called, has also been improved. The ends of
this roller are always carried on the top of two levers that are
oscillated by a connecting rod attached to their bottom ends. In the new
motion the connecting rod is dispensed with, and one joint saved. The
joint that remains is at the foot of the levers that carry the leather
roller. This joint is constructed so that it may be easily altered, and by
its means one of the most delicate settings of the combing machine, viz.,
that of the leather roller, may be made with greater readiness than with
the old system. Further, from the mode of mounting these rollers another
advantage is gained in the facility of setting them. In setting with the
old arrangement, only one end of the roller is adjusted at a time; in the
new, the adjustment sets the ends of two rollers. With regard to the
leather roller also, it was found that as the round brass tubes in which
its ends revolved had very little wearing surface, they got worn into
flats on the outside, and thus worked inaccurately. In the machine under
notice this defect is remedied. The tubes are made square on the outside,
and having ample bearing surface they keep their adjustment perfectly.
On the top of the detaching roller is a large steel fluted roller carried
at each end by a small arm called a "horse tail." In the original machine
this roller simply kept its place upon the detaching roller by its weight,
and when the machine came to be run at high speeds it was found that owing
to its lightness the contact thus obtained was not reliable, the flutes or
ribs of the roller slipping upon those of the detaching roller, which for
good work is undesirable. This is remedied by placing a heavier top roller
in the horse tails, which is made with a broader bearing so as to give
greater solidity to the top roller. Another good idea we noticed in this
machine was in the application of a treble brush carrier wheel, which
permits of the brushes being driven at three different speeds as they
become worn. For instance, when the brushes are new the bristles are long,
and consequently they are not required to revolve as quickly as when the
bristles are far worn. By this improvement the brush lasts considerably
longer than in any other system of machine. Their speed can also be
regulated according to the length of the bristles, and the change from one
speed to the other can be effected in a very few minutes.
A common defect in combing machines is the flocking that frequently
happens. This is the filling up of the combs on the cylinder with dirt and
cotton, which the brush fails to remove. Although in general appearance
the cleaning apparatus is the same as the ordinary one, modifications are
introduced which make its action always effective and reliable. We were
informed by a mill manager, who has a great number of these combers, that
he meets with no inconvenience from flocking from one week end to another.
Altogether, it will be seen that Messrs. Dobson and Barlow have almost
reconstructed the machine, strengthening and improving those parts which
experience showed it was necessary to modify. As a result their improved
machine works at a high speed (80 to 95 strokes per minute, according to
the class of cotton), with great smoothness and without noise, and from
the almost complete absense of vibration the risk of breakages is reduced
to a minimum.--_Textile Manufacturer_.
* * * * *
THE MUNICIPAL SCHOOL FOR INSTRUCTION IN WATCH-MAKING, AT GENEVA.
When, in 1587, Charles Cusin, of Autun, settled at Geneva and introduced
the manufacture of watches there, he had no idea of the extraordinary
development that this new industry was to assume. At the end of the
seventeenth century this city already contained a hundred master watch
makers and eighty master jewelers, and the products of her manufactures
soon became known and appreciated by the whole world.
The French revolution arrested this impetus, but the entrance of the
Canton of Geneva into the Confederation in 1814, rendered commerce, the
arts, and the industries somewhat active, and watch-making soon saw a new
era of prosperity dawning.
On the 13th of Feb., 1824, at the instigation of a few devoted citizens,
the industrial section of the Society of Arts adopted the resolution to
form a watch-making school, which, having been created by private
initiative, was only sustained through considerable sacrifices.
[Illustration: CLASS IN ESCAPEMENTS AT THE WATCH MAKING SCHOOL, GENEVA.]
In 1840 the school was transferred to the granary building belonging to
the city. In 1842, when it contained about fifty pupils, it was made over
to the administrative council of the city by the committee of the Society
of Arts. From 1824 to 1842 the school had given instruction to about two
hundred pupils. From 1843 to 1879 it was frequented by nearly eight
hundred pupils, two-thirds of whom were Genevans, and the other third
Swiss of other cantons and foreigners.
The school, then, has furnished the watch-making industry with the
respectable number of a thousand workmen, among whom large numbers have
been, or are yet, distinguished artists.
The rooms of the granary, where the school remained for nearly forty
years, became inadequate, despite the successive additions that had been
made to them, and it became necessary to completely transform them. The
magnificent legacy that the city owes to the munificence of the Duke of
Brunswick was partly employed in the reorganization, and the school is now
located in a vast building designed to answer the requirements of
instruction. This structure, which is located in Necker Street, presents
an imposing and severe aspect. The main building embraces most of the
workshops, the office, the library, and the classroom for instruction in
mechanics, all of which receive a direct light. At right angles with the
main building are two wings. The one to the north contains in its three
upper stories workshops occupied by classes in escapements, bezil setting,
compensating balances, and ruby working. On the ground floor are installed
juvenile schools.
The south wing contains halls for lectures on theory, and two workshops
looking toward the north. The ground floor is used for the same purpose as
that of the north wing.
Finally, in the center of the main building is a wing parallel with its
two mates. It is in this that is located the vast staircase that leads to
spacious landings at which ends on every story a large corridor common to
all the halls and workshops. It is in this part of the building that we
find the amphitheater of physics and chemistry and the laboratories. Here
also is located the museum in course of formation (gotten up in view of
the historical study of watch-making), and the amphitheater designed for
certain public lecture courses.
In the way of heating and lighting all parts of the building nothing has
been neglected, and special care has been taken to have the ventilation
perfect.
At present the instruction comprises a practical and a theoretical course.
_Practical Instruction_.--This is divided into three sections: (1) an
elementary one having in view the construction of the simple watch in its
essential parts; (2) a higher section in which the pupils learn to
recognize the complicated parts; and (3) a section of mechanics applied to
watch-making and to the study of the construction of machines and tools
for facilitating and improving the manufacture.
1. _Elementary Section, First Year_.--The pupil must manufacture all the
small tools necessary for making unfinished movements; that is, drills,
reamers, punches, files, etc. He must then learn to file and turn, and to
make use of the finishing lathe with the bow, or of the foot lathe.
In general, the time taken by an apprentice to manufacture his tools is
from two to three months, and he can scarcely go to work on the movements
before this.
In this class the regular pupils have to execute seven pieces of work in
the rough, two for horizontal escapements with key and regulating wheel,
and five for various other escapements. Among these there is one for
simple repetition and one for minute piece. Aside from the work fixed by
the programme, the pupils may manufacture all the other complicated pieces
upon obtaining the authority for it from their masters and the director.
The average time employed in performing the work imposed by the programme
necessarily depends upon the capacity of the pupil, but we may say that in
general ten months are necessary.
_Second Year_.--After executing his last piece of work in a satisfactory
manner, the apprentice passes into the class in regulators, where he
begins to manufacture the small tools that he will require.
In this work, as in the preceding, he must take all his pieces from the
crude metal, and he must do the forging himself, as well as the roughing
down, the turning, filing, and shaping, and finally the finishing, without
the aid of any other machine than the dividing one.
In general, after eighteen months of work, the apprentice goes to the
finishing shop, where the delicate and minute work begins, pivoting,
putting the wheels in place, and practical study of gearings. After
learning how to divide a wheel correctly, he is set to work on pinions and
wheels in the rough, which he must rivet, finish, and pivot according to
the different planes of the pieces that have been calculated and executed
by him under the direction of the master.
The programme to be followed by the pupils of the class in finishing is,
as regards number of pieces, the same as that of the preceding classes,
that is to say, seven.
In general, the pupil passes from the class in finishing to the class in
dial-trains, where he makes two of these for his pieces--one a simple and
the other a minute train. The teaching of this part is very important as
regards the manufacture of escapements. In constructing the dial train,
the pupil perfects his filing and learns to make the adjustments correct.
The last class in the elementary instruction is the one in escapements
(Fig. 1), the programme of which includes several distinct parts: (1) The
tools that are strictly necessary; (2) escapement and cylinder adjustment;
(3) making the compensating balances for the pupil's pieces; (4) pivoting,
putting in place, and finishing the escapements in regulating pieces.
Here, as in the preceding classes, the pupils must do all the work
themselves. During their stay in the elementary classes the work done is
submitted to the director, who examines it and sends it back to the
instructors accompanied with a bulletin containing his estimate as to its
value, and his observations if there is occasion to make any.
Pupils who cannot or who do not wish to go over the entire field of the
programme stop here, and are now capable of earning their living and of
lightening the load that oppresses their parents.--_Science et Nature_.
* * * * *
MACHINE FOR POLISHING BOOTS AND SHOES.
The principle of an apparatus for blackening boots and shoes dates back to
1838, the epoch at which a machine of this kind was put into use at the
Polytechnic School. Since then it seems that not many applications have
been made of it, notwithstanding the services that a machine of this kind
is capable of rendering in barracks, lyceums, hotels, etc. Mr. Audoye, an
inventor, has recently taken up the question again, and has proposed to
The Société d'Encouragement a model that gives a practical solution of it.
The use of this will allow a notable saving in time and trouble to be
effected.
This brush (see engraving) revolves around a horizontal axle supported by
a cast iron frame similar to that of a sewing machine. Motion is
communicated to it by a double pedal, which actuates a connecting rod and
a system of pulleys. The external surface of the brush contains three
channels in which the foot gear to be polished is successively placed. In
the first of these the dust and mud are removed, in the second the
blacking is spread on, and in the third the final polish is obtained.
[Illustration: MACHINE FOR POLISHING BOOTS AND SHOES.]
In order to guide the blacking to that part of the brush which is to
receive it, Mr. Audoye protects the lower part of the latter by a
half-cylinder of sheet iron. On this there is placed a vessel containing
the blacking, and into which dips a copper cylinder having a grooved
surface. The horizontal axis of this cylinder is movable; when at rest it
is so placed that the cylinder is an inch or so below the brush, but when
the operator pulls a button that is within reach of his left hand, the
axis is lifted, a contact takes place between the brush and the cylinder,
and the former is thus given a rotary motion. As the cylinder still
continues to dip into the blacking, the latter is thus spread ever the
brush.--_La Genie Civil_.
* * * * *
PERSONAL SAFETY WITH THE ELECTRIC CURRENTS.
_To the Editor of the Scientific American_:
In your paper of the 21st of February there is an article on personal
safety with electric currents, by Prof. A.E. Dolbear. He says that a Holtz
machine may give through a short wire a very strong current. For if E =
50,000 volts, R = 0.001 ohm, then C = 50000/0.001 = 50,000,000 amperes.
Now that is a very large quantity of electricity, and is equal to an
enormous horse power. I think the person receiving that charge would not
need another. According to Ohm's law, the strength of current is
proportional to the electromotive force divided by the total resistance,
external and internal. The last is a very important element in the Holtz
machine, and will make a big difference in the current strength. Here are
some of the results obtained from experiments made with the Holtz machine.
A machine with a plate 46 in. in diameter, making 5 turns in 3 seconds,
produced a constant current capable of decomposing 3½ millionths of a
milligram in a second. This is equal to the effect produced by a Grove's
cell in a circuit of 45,000 ohms resistance. The current produced would be
about 0.0000044 ampere. That is rather small compared with the Professor's
result. Rossetti found that the current is nearly proportional to the
velocity of rotation. It increases a little faster than the velocity.
The electromotive force and resistance is constant if the velocity is
constant. The electromotive force is independent of the velocity, but
diminishes as the moisture increases, and is about equal to 52,000 Daniell
cells. The resistance when making 120 revolutions per minute is 2,810
million ohms. At 450 per minute, 646 million.
Taking it at 450, C = 53950/64600000.001 = 0.0000835 ampere, against the
Professor's 50,000,000, amperes, and it would be equal to about 0.006
horse power, which I think would be the more correct of the two; calling E
equal to 50,000 Daniell cells.
Yours, Respectfully,
E. ELLSWORTH.
Portland, Me., March 5, 1885.
* * * * *
A VISIT TO CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES IN THE YEAR 1884.
[Footnote: A lecture delivered before the Society of Telegraph Engineers
and Electricians, London, Dec. 11, 1884.]
By Mr. W.H. PREECE, F.R.S.
I do not know what the sensations of a man can be who is about to undergo
the painful operation of execution; but I am inclined to think his
sensations must be somewhat similar to those of a lecturer, brimful of
notes, who has to wait until the clock strikes before he is allowed to
address his audience.
The President has been kind enough to refer to the paper I propose to give
you, as "Electricity in America in the year 1884;" but I would rather,
after having thought more about it, that it be called "A Visit to Canada
and the United States in the year 1884."
It will be in the recollection of a good many who are present that in the
year 1877 I visited America, in conjunction with Mr. H.C. Fischer, the
Controller of our Central Telegraph Station, to officially inspect and
report upon the telegraph arrangements of that country; and on the 9th
February, 1878, I had the pleasure of communicating to the members of this
Society my experiences of that visit.
During the present year my visit was not an official one; I went for a
holiday, and specially to accompany the members of the British
Association, who, for the first time in the history of that association,
held a meeting outside the limits of the United Kingdom.
We sailed from Liverpool in a splendid steamship called the Parisian.
There were nearly 200 B.A. members on board; and notwithstanding the fact
that rude Boreas tried all he could to prevent us from reaching the other
side of the Atlantic; notwithstanding the fact that the Atlantic expressed
its anger in the most unmistakable terms at our audacity in turning from
our native shore; notwithstanding the fact that Greenland's icy mountains
blew chilly blasts upon us, and made us call out all the warm things we
possessed--I say notwithstanding all this, we reached the Gulf of St.
Lawrence in safety, and I do not think that a merrier or a happier crew
ever crossed the Atlantic.
There is one very interesting fact that is not generally known, and I
certainly was unaware of it before I started, in connection with this
particular route across the Atlantic, and that is, that by it the ship
passes within only 200 miles of Greenland. The great circle that directs
the shortest route from the north of Ireland to the Straits of Belle Isle
passes within the cold region, and hence, while you were all sweltering in
heat in London, we were compelled to bring out our ulsters and all our
warm garments, to enable us to cross with any degree of comfort. The
advantage of this particular route is supposed to be the fact that only
five days are spent upon the ocean, and the remainder of the voyage is
occupied in the calms and comforts of the Gulf and River St. Lawrence. But
I am inclined to think that the roughness of the ocean and the coolness of
the weather at all seasons are quite sufficient to prevent anybody from
repeating our experience.
We arrived at Montreal in time to attend the opening meeting of the
British Association; and at Montreal we were received with great
hospitality, great attention, and great kindness from all our brethren in
Canada, and we held there certainly a very successful and very pleasant
gathering. There were 1,773 members of the British Association altogether
present, and of that number there were 600 who had crossed the Atlantic;
the remainder being made up of Canadians, and by at least 200 Americans,
including all the most distinguished professors who adorn the rolls of
science in the United States. As is invariably the rule in these British
Association meetings, we had not only papers to enlighten us, but
entertainments to cheer us; and excursions were arranged in every
direction, to enable us to become acquainted with the beauties and
peculiarities of the American continent. Some members went to Quebec, some
to Ottawa, others to the Lakes, others to Toronto, many went to Niagara;
and altogether the arrangements made for our comfort and pleasure were
such, that I have not heard one single soul who attended this meeting at
Montreal express the slightest regret that he crossed the Atlantic.
The meeting at Montreal certainly cannot be called an electricians'
meeting. The gathering of the British Association has often been
distinguished by the first appearance of some new instrument or the
divulgence of some new scientific secret; but there was nothing of any
special interest brought forward on this occasion. The only real novelty
or striking fact that I can recall as having taken place was a remarkable
discussion that originated by Professor Oliver Lodge, upon the "Seat of
the Electromotive Force in a Voltaic Cell."
This was an experiment on the part of the British Association.
Discussions, as a rule, have not been the case at our meetings. Papers
have been read and papers have been discussed; but on this occasion three
or four subjects were named as fit for discussion, and distinguished
professors were selected to open the discussion.
On this particular subject, Professor Oliver Lodge opened the discussion,
and he did so in an original, an efficient, and in a chirpy kind of manner
that took by storm not only the professors who knew him, but those who did
not know him; and I am bound to say that I do not think we could possibly
better spend an evening during the coming session, or more profitably,
than by asking Professor Oliver Lodge to bring the subject before this
Society, so as to allow us on this side of the water to discuss the same
subject.
Of course the prominent figure at our meetings was Lord Rayleigh; and I do
not think that any person could possibly have been present at those
meetings of the British Association without feeling an intense personal
admiration for this man, and an affection for the way in which he
maintained the position of an English gentleman and the credit of an
English scientific body, to the astonishment and delight of every one
present. Then, again, we had our past President, Sir William Thomson, who
was not quite so ubiquitous as usual; he did not dance from section to
section as he usually does, but remained as president of his own section,
A. I think he only left his section for a day, and that was to attend the
electrical day in Section G; but in his own section he brought down those
words of wisdom that one always hears from him, and which make one always
regret that there is not always present about him a shorthand writer to
take down thoughts and ideas that never occur again, and are only heard by
those who have the benefit of being present.
The subjects brought forward were not of intense interest. We had a paper
by Dr. Traill, describing the Portrush Railway, and there were various
other papers; and I can pass over some of the other subjects, because I
shall have to deal with them under another head. But while we were in
Montreal, a deputation of American professors and members of the American
Association came over, and invited a good many of those who were present
at Montreal to visit the American Association at Philadelphia. I was one
of those who went over to America simply and solely for a holiday, and I
am bound to say that I set my face determinedly against going to
Philadelphia. I traveled with two charming companions, and we all decided
not to go to Philadelphia. But the compact was broken, and we capitulated,
and went from the charming climate of Montreal into the most intense heat
and into the greatest discomfort that I think poor members of the
Telegraph Engineers' Society ever experienced. We entered a heat that was
100° by day and 98° by night; and I do not think there is anybody in this
room, unless he has been brought up in the furnace-room of an Atlantic
steamer, who can fully appreciate the heat of Philadelphia in these summer
months. The discomforts of the climate were, however, amply compensated
for by the hospitality and kindness of the inhabitants. We spent, in spite
of the heat, a very pleasant time.
Before referring further to the meetings at Philadelphia, I may just
mention the other journeys that I took. My holiday having been broken by
the rupture of the union to which I have alluded, I had to devote it then
to other purposes, and, in addition to Montreal and Philadelphia, I went
to New York (to which I shall refer again), from New York to Buffalo, then
to Lake Erie and Cleveland, and on to Chicago, where I spent a week or
more. From Chicago I went to see the great artery of the West--the
Mississippi. I stopped for a day or two at St. Louis. One remarkable fact
came to my knowledge, and I dare say it is new to many present, and that
is, that the Mississippi, unlike other rivers, runs uphill. It happens,
rather curiously, that, owing to the earth being an oblate spheroid, the
difference between the source of the Mississippi and the center of the
earth is less than that of its mouth and the center of the earth, and you
may see how this running up hill is accounted for.
From St. Louis I went to Indianapolis, thence to Pittsburg, where they
have struck most extraordinary wells of natural gas. Borings are made in
the earth from the crust to a depth of 600 or 700 feet, when large
reservoirs of natural gas are "struck." The town is lighted by this gas,
and it is also employed for motive power. In Cleveland, also, this natural
gas is found, and there is no doubt that it is going to economize the cost
of production very much in that part of the country. From Pittsburg I went
to Baltimore, where Sir William Thomson was occupied in delivering
lectures to the students of the Johns Hopkins University. In all these
American towns one very curious feature is that they all have great
educational establishments, endowed and formed by private munificence. In
Canada there is the McGill University, and in nearly every place one goes
to there is a university, like the Johns Hopkins at Baltimore, where Johns
Hopkins left 3,500,000 dollars to be devoted entirely to educational
purposes; and that university is under the management of one of the most
enlightened men in America, Professor Grillman, and he has as his
lieutenants Professors Rowland, Mendenhall, and other well-known men, and
each professor is in his own line particularly eminent. Sir William
Thomson delivered there a really splendid course of lectures. From
Baltimore I went through Philadelphia to Boston. I visited Long Branch,
and I spent a long time in New York, so that from what I have said you
will gather that I spent a good deal of my time in the States. Wherever I
went I devoted all my leisure time to inquiry into the telegraphic,
telephonic, and electric light arrangements in existence. I visited all
the manufactories I could get to, and I did all I possibly could to enable
me to return home and afford information, and perhaps amusement, to my
fellow-members of this Society.
As an illustration of the intense heat we experienced, I may mention that
it was at one time perfectly impossible to make the thermometer budge. The
temperature of the blood is about 97 or 98 degrees, and if the temperature
of the air be below the temperature of the blood, of course when the hand
is applied to the thermometer the mercury rises. In one of our journeys up
the Pennsylvania Road we tried to make the thermometer budge as usual, but
could not, which proved that the temperature of the air inside the Pullman
car in which we traveled was the same as that of the blood.
The American Association is of course based on the British Association.
Its mode of administration is a little different. It is divided into
sections, as is the British Association, but the sections are not called
the same. For instance, in the British Association, Section A is devoted
entirely to physics, but in the American Association, Section A is devoted
to astronomy and Section B to physics. In the British Association, Section
G is devoted to mechanics, but in America Section D is devoted to that
subject. But with the exception of just a change in the names of some
sections which are familiar as household words to members of the British
Association, the proceedings of the American Association do not differ
very much from ours. They have, however, one very sensible rule. The
length of every paper is indicated upon the programme of the day's
proceedings, and the continuation or the stopping of any discussion on
that paper is in the hands of the section. For instance, if the President
thinks that a man is speaking too long, he has only to say, "Does the
meeting wish that this discussion shall be continued, or shall it be
stopped?" A majority on the show of hands decides. Such a practice has a
very wholesome effect in checking discussion, and I certainly think that
some of our societies would do well to adopt a rule of the same character.
The meeting of the American Association, again, was not distinguished by
any particular electrical paper, or any new electrical subject. The main
subject that was brought before us was the peculiar effect called "Hall's
effect," that Professor Hall, now of Harvard College, and then assistant
to Professor Rowland, discovered in the powerful field of a magnet when a
current was passed through a conductor; and a description of that effect
(which he at one time thought was an indication that electricity was
something separate from matter) formed the subject of two debates that
lasted for nearly the whole of two days. I am bound to say that in that
prolonged discussion the members of this Society held their own. I see two
very prominent members present who spoke on most of the electrical
subjects dealt with--Professor G. Forbes, who knows what he says and says
what he knows, and Professor Silvanus Thompson, who held his own under
very trying circumstances.
At the same time that this meeting of the American Association was being
held at Philadelphia, where we were treated with marvelous
hospitality,--excursions, soirées, dinners, parties, etc., etc.--and as
though it were not quite sufficient to bring over humble Britishers from
this side of the Atlantic to suffer the intense heat at one meeting of the
Association, they held at the same time an Electrical Conference. There
was a conference of electricians appointed by the United States
Government, that was chiefly distinguished on the part of the American
Government by selecting those who were not electricians. But many attended
the Electrical Conference who stand high as electricians, one especially,
who, though perhaps from want of experience he did not shine very
brilliantly as a chairman, certainly stands as one of the ablest
electricians of the day--I mean Professor Rowland. The Conference was held
under Professor Rowland's presidency, and nearly all the well-known
professors of the United States attended. The Conference was established
by the United States Government to take into consideration the results and
conclusions arrived at by the Congress of 1884, held in Paris. The Paris
Congress decided upon adopting certain units of resistance of
electromotive force, of current, and of quantity, and they determined the
particular length of a column of mercury that should represent the ohm--a
column of mercury 106 centimeters long and of one square millimeter in
section. It was necessary that the United States should join this
Conference, so a commission was appointed to consider the whole matter.
All these units were brought before them, as well as the other conclusions
of the Paris Congress, such as the proper mode of recording earth currents
and atmospheric electricity. The Paris units were adopted in face of the
fact that the length determined upon at Paris was not the length that
Professor Rowland himself had found as that which should represent the
ohm. It differed by about 0.2, as near as I can remember; but it was
thought so necessary that uniformity and unanimity should exist all over
the world in the adoption of a proper unit, that all differences were laid
aside, and the Americans agreed to comply with the resolutions of the
Paris Congress.
There were two units that I had the temerity to bring forward, first, at
the British Association, and secondly, before the Electrical Conference.
It will be remembered, that at the meeting of the British Association at
Southampton in 1882, the late Sir W. Siemens proposed that the unit of
power should be the watt, and that the watt, which was derived from the
C.G.S. system of absolute units, should in future, among electricians, be
the unit of power. This was accepted by the British Association at
Montreal, and it was also accepted by the American Electrical Conference
at Philadelphia. But I also, at Montreal, suggested that as the watt was
the unit of power, so we ought to make some multiple of that unit the
higher unit of power, comparable to that which is now represented by the
well-known term "horsepower." Horsepower, unfortunately, does not form
itself directly into the C.G.S. system. The term horsepower is a
meaningless quantity; it is not a horsepower at all. It was established by
the great Watt, who determined that the average power exerted by a horse
was equal to about 22,000 foot pounds raised per minute; but this was
thought by him to be too little, so he increased it by 50 per cent., and
so arrived at what is the present horsepower, 33,000 foot pounds raised
per minute. Foot pounds bear no relation to our C.G.S. system of units,
and it is most desirable that we should have some unit of power, somewhere
about the horsepower, to enable us to convert at once watts into
horsepower. For that purpose I proposed that 1,000 watts, or the kilowatt,
should replace what is now called the horsepower, and suggested it for the
consideration of engineers. It has been received with a great deal of
consideration by those who understand the subject, and a considerable
amount of ridicule by those who do not. It is rather a remarkable thing
that, as a rule, one will always find ridicule and ignorance running side
by side; and it is an almost invariable fact that when a new proposition
is brought forward, it is laughed at. I am always very glad to see that,
because it always succeeds in drawing attention to the matter. I remember
a friend of mine, who had written a book, being in great glee because it
was severely criticised by the _Athenæum_, a fact which drew public
attention to the book, and caused it to make a great stir. So when I
proposed that the horsepower should be increased by 33 per cent., and made
equivalent to 1,000 watts, I was not at all sorry to find that I had
incurred the displeasure of the leader writers in nearly all our
scientific papers, and I was quite sure that the attention of those who
would not perhaps have thought of it would thereby be drawn to the matter.
Some people object to the use of a name, this name "watt." When you have
fresh ideas, you must have fresh words to express those ideas. The watt
was a new unit, it must be called by some name, otherwise it could
scarcely be conveyed to our minds. The foot, the gallon, the yard, were
all new names once; and how do we know that they were not derived from
some "John Foot," "William Gallon," or "Jack Yard," or some man whose name
was connected with the measure when introduced? The poet says:
"Some mute, inglorious Milton here may rest--
Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood:"
so in these names some forgotten physicist or mute engineer may be
buried. At any rate, we cannot do without names. The ohm, the ampere, the
volt, are merely words that express ideas that we all understand; and so
does the watt, and so will the 1,000 watts when you come to think over the
matter as much as some of us have done.
At this Conference several other subjects were brought up which attracted
a good deal of attention. Professor Rowland brought forward a paper on the
theory of dynamos that certainly startled a good many of us; and it led to
a discussion that is admirably reported in our scientific papers. I think
that the discussion evolved by Professor Rowland's paper on the theory of
dynamos deserves the study of every electrician; it brought very strongly
into prominence one or two English gentlemen who were present. Professor
Fitzgerald, of Dublin, spoke with a considerable amount of power, and
showed a mastery of the subject that was pleasant not only to his friends,
but must have been gratifying to the Americans who heard him. On this
particular subject of dynamos it was truly wonderful how the doctors
disagreed. Two could not be found who held the same views on the theory
and construction of the dynamo, and that shows that we still have a great
deal to learn about the dynamo, and that the true principle of
construction of it has yet to be brought out.
It is a very curious thing, and I thought about it at the time, that when
you consider the dynamos in use, you see how very little has been done to
perfect the direct working dynamo in England. Although the principle of
the dynamo originated with Faraday, yet all the early machines, Pacinotti,
Gramme. Hefner von Alteneck, Shuckert, Brush, Edison, and several others
who have improved the direct action machine, have not been found in
England. But when we deal with alternate-current machines, then we find
the Wilde, Ferranti, and various others; so that the tendency in England
has been very much to improve and work upon the alternate-current
machines. In other countries it is exactly the reverse; in fact, in
America I never saw one single alternate-current machine. When Professor
Forbes wanted an alternate-current machine to illustrate a lecture that he
gave, it was with the greatest difficulty that one could be found, and, in
fact, it was put together specially for him.
The other subjects brought before this Conference were Earth Currents,
Atmospheric Electricity, Accumulators or Secondary Batteries, and
Telephones. There was an extremely able paper brought forward by Mr. T.D.
Lockwood, the electrician of the American Bell Telephone Company, on
Telephones, and the disturbances that influence their working. When that
paper is published, it will well be worth your careful examination.
Papers were also read on the Transmission of Energy, and there were papers
on many other subjects.
So much for the Electrical Conference.
Now, the Americans at the present moment are suffering from a mania which
we, happily, have passed through, that is, the mania of exhibitions.
While we were at Philadelphia, there was an exceedingly interesting
exhibition held. I do not intend to say much about that exhibition, for
the simple reason that Professor G. Forbes has promised, during the
forthcoming session, to give us a paper describing what he saw there, and
his studies at Philadelphia; and I am quite sure that it will be a paper
worthy of him, and of you. But, apart from this exhibition at
Philadelphia, I could not go anywhere without finding an exhibition. There
was one at Chicago, another at St. Louis, another at Boston; everybody was
talking about one at Louisville, where I did not go; and there were rumors
of great preparations for the "largest exhibition the world has ever
seen," according to their own account, at New Orleans. However, I
satisfied myself with seeing the exhibition at Philadelphia, which
consisted strictly of American goods, and was not of the international
nature general to such exhibitions. But it was a fine exhibition, and one
that no other single nation could bring together.
_Telegraphs_.--When I spoke to you in 1878, my remarks were almost
entirely confined to telegraphs, for at that day the telephone was not, as
a practical instrument, in existence. I brought from America on that
occasion the first telephones that were brought to this country. Then the
practical application of electricity was applied to telegraphs, and so
telegraphs formed the subject of my theme. But while in 1877 I saw a great
deal to learn, and picked up a great many wrinkles, and brought back from
America a good many processes, I go back there now in 1884, seven years
afterward, and I do not find one single advance made--I comeback with
scarcely one single wrinkle; and, in fact, while we in England during
those seven years have progressed with giant strides, in America, in
telegraph matters, they have stood still. But their material progress has
been marvelous. In 1877, the mileage of wire belonging to the Western
Union Telegraph Company was 200,000 miles; in 1884, they have 433,726
miles of wire; so that during the seven years their mileage of wire has
more than doubled. During the same period their number of messages has
increased from 28,000,000 to over 40,000,000; their offices from 11,660 to
13,600; and the capital invested in their concern has increased from
$40,000,000 to $80,000,000--in fact, there is no more gigantic telegraph
organization in this world that this Western Union Telegraph Company. It
is a remarkable undertaking, and I do not suppose there is an
administration better managed. But for some reason or other that I cannot
account for, their scientific progress has not marched with their material
progress, and invention has to a certain extent there ceased. There really
was only one telegraphic novelty to be found in the States, and that was
an instrument by Delany--a multiplex instrument by which six messages
could be sent in one or other direction at the same time. It is an
instrument that is dependent upon the principle introduced by Meyer, where
time is divided into a certain number of sections, and where synchronous
action is maintained between two instruments. This system has been worked
out with great perfection in France by Baudot. We had a paper by Colonel
Webber on the subject, before the Society, in which the process was fully
described. Delany, in the States, has carried the process a little
further, by making it applicable to the ordinary Morse sending. On the
Meyer and Baudot principle, the ordinary Morse sender has to wait for
certain clicks, which indicate at which moment a letter may be sent; but
on the Delany plan each of the six clerks can peg away as he chooses--he
can send at any rate he likes, and he is not disturbed in any way by
having any sound to guide or control his ear. The Delany is a very
promising system. It may not work to long distances; but the apparatus is
promised to be brought over to this country, to be exhibited at the
Inventors' Exhibition next year, and I can safely say that the Post Office
will give every possible facility to try the new invention upon its wires.
One gratifying effect of my visit to the telegraph establishments in
America was that, while hitherto we have never hesitated in England to
adopt any process or invention that was a distinct advance, whether it
came from America or anywhere else, they on the other hand have shown a
disinclination to adopt anything British; but they have now adopted our
Wheatstone automatic system. That system is at work between New Orleans
and Chicago, and New York and New Orleans--1,600 miles. It has given them
so much satisfaction that they are going to increase it very largely; so
that we really have the proud satisfaction of finding a real, true British
invention well established on the other side of the Atlantic.
The next branch that I propose to bring to your notice is the question of
the telephone.
The telephone has passed through rather an awkward phase in the States. A
very determined attempt has been made to upset the Bell patents in that
country; and those who visited the Philadelphia Exhibition saw the
instruments there exhibited upon which the advocates of the plaintiff
relied. It is said that a very ingenious American, named Drawbaugh, had
anticipated all the inventors of every part of the telephone system; that
he had invented a receiver before Bell; that he had invented the
compressed carbon arrangement before Edison; that he had invented the
microphone before our friend Professor Hughes; and that, in fact, he had
done everything on the face of the earth to establish the claims set
forth. Some of his patents were shown, and I not only had to examine his
patents, but I had to go through a great many depositions of the evidence
given, and I am bound to confess that a more flimsy case I never saw
brought before a court of law. I do not know whether I shall be libelous
in expressing my opinion (I will refer to our solicitor before the notes
are printed), but I should not hesitate to say that I never saw a more
evident conspiracy concocted to try and disturb the position of a
well-established patent. However, I have heard that the judgment has been
given as the public generally supposed it would be given; because as soon
as the case was over the shares of the Bell company, which were at 150,
jumped up to 190, and now the decision is given I am told that they will
probably reach 290.
We cannot form a conception on this side of the Atlantic of the extent to
which telephones are used on the other side of the Atlantic. It is said
sometimes that the progress of the telephone on this side of the water has
been checked very much by the restrictions brought to bear upon the
telephone by the Government of this country. But whatever restrictions
have been instituted by our Government upon the adoption of the telephone,
they are not to be compared with the restrictions that the poor
unfortunate telephone companies have to struggle against on the other side
of the Atlantic. There is not a town that does not mulct them in taxes for
every pole they erect, and for every wire they extend through the streets.
There is not a State that does not exact from them a tax; and I was
assured, and I know as a fact, that in one particular case there was one
company--a flourishing company--that was mulcted is 75 per cent. of its
receipts before it could possibly pay a dividend. Here we only ask the
telephone companies to pay to the poor, impoverished British Government 10
per cent.; and 10 per cent. by the side of 75 per cent. certainly cuts but
a very sorry figure. But the truth is, the reason why the telephone is
flourishing in America is that it is an absolute necessity there for the
proper transaction of business. Where you exist in a sort of Turkish bath
at from 90° to 100°, you want to be saved every possible reason for
leaving your office to conduct your business; and the telephone comes in
as a means whereby you can do so, and can loll back in your arm chair,
with your legs up in the air, with a cigar in your mouth, with a punkah
waving over your head, and a bottle of iced water by your side. By the
telephone, under such circumstances, business transactions can be carried
on with comfort to yourself and to him with whom your business is
transacted. We have not similar conditions here. We are always glad of an
excuse to get out of our offices. In America, too, servants and messengers
are the exception, a boy is not to be had, whereas in England we get an
errand boy at half a crown a week. That which costs half a crown here
costs 12s. to 15s. in America; and, that being so, it is much better to
pay the telephone company a sum that will, at less cost, enable your
business to be transacted without the engagement of such a boy.
The Americans, again, adopt electrical contrivances for all sorts of
domestic purposes. There is not a single house in New York, Chicago, or
anywhere else that I went into, that has not in the hall a little
instrument [producing one] which, by the turn of a pointer and the
pressing of a handle, calls for a messenger, a carriage, a cab, express
wagon (that is, the fellow who looks after your luggage), a doctor,
policeman, fire-alarm, or anything else as may be arranged for. The little
instrument communicates to a central office not far off, and in two
minutes the doctor, or messenger, or whatever it may be, presents himself.
For fire-alarms and for all sorts of purposes, domestic telegraphy is part
and parcel of the nature of an American, and the result was that when the
telephone was brought to him, he adopted it with avidity. On this side of
the Atlantic domestic telegraphy is at a minimum, and I do not think any
one would have a telephone in his house if he could help it.
When you want a thing, you must pay for it. The Americans want the
telephone, and they pay for it. In London people grumble very much at
having to pay £20 to the Telephone Company for the use of a telephone. I
question very much whether £20 a year is quite enough; at any rate, it is
not enough if the American charge is taken as a standard. The charge in
New York is of two classes--one for a system called the law system, which
is applied almost exclusively for the use of lawyers, which is £44 a
year; the other being the charge made to the ordinary public, and which
will compare with the service rendered in London, which is charged for at
£35 a year, against £20 a year in London. The charge in Chicago is £26 a
year; in Boston, Philadelphia, and a great many other places it is £25 a
year. At Buffalo a mode of charging by results is adopted; everybody pays
for each oral message he sends--every time he uses the telephone he pays
either four, five, or six cents, according to the number for which he
guarantees. Supposing any one of us wanted a telephone at Buffalo, the
company will supply it under a guarantee to pay for a minimum of 500
messages per annum. If 1,000 messages are sent, the charge is less _pro
rata_, being six cents, if I remember rightly, for each message under 500,
and five cents up to 1,000 messages, four cents per message over 1,000
messages; and so everybody pays for what work he does. It is payment by
results. The people like the arrangement, the company like it because they
make it pay, and the system works well. But I am bound to say that, up to
the present moment, Buffalo is the only city in the United States where
that method has been adopted.
The instruments used in the States are no better--in fact, in many cases
they are worse--than the instruments we use on this side of the Atlantic.
I have heard telephones in this country speak infinitely better than
anything that I have heard on the other side of the Atlantic. But they
transact their business in America infinitely better than we do; and there
is one great reason for this, which is, that in America the public itself
falls into the mode of telephone working with the energy of the telegraph
operator. They assist the telephone people in every way they can; they
take disturbances with a humility that would be simply startling to
English subscribers; and they help the workers of the system in every way
they can. The result is, that all goes off with great smoothness and
comfort. But the switch apparatus used in the American central offices is
infinitely superior to anything that I have ever seen over here, excepting
at Liverpool.
A new system has just been brought out, called the "multiple" system,
which has been very lately introduced. I saw it at many places, especially
at Indianapolis, at Boston, and at New York, where three exchanges were
worked by it with a rapidity that perfectly startled me. I took the times
of a great many transactions, and found that, from the moment a subscriber
called to the moment he was put through, only five seconds elapsed; and I
am told at Milwaukee, where unfortunately I could not go, but where there
is a friend of ours in charge, Mr. Charles Haskins, who is one of our
members, and he says he has brought down the rate of working to such a
pitch that they are able to arrange that subscribers shall be put through
in four seconds.
You will be surprised to learn that there are 986 exchanges at work in the
United States. There are 97,423 circuits; there are nearly 90,000 miles of
wire used for telephonic purposes; and the number of instruments that have
been manufactured amounts to 517,749. Just compare those figures with our
little experience on this side of the Atlantic. I have a return showing
the number of subscribers in and about New York, comprising the New Jersey
division, the Long Island division, Staten Island, Westchester, and New
York City, and the total amounts to 10,600 subscribers who are put into
communication with each other in the neighborhood of New York alone; and
here in England we can only muster 11,000. There are just as many
subscribers probably at this moment in New York and its neighborhood as we
have in the whole of the United Kingdom.
I am sorry to delay you so long. I have very few more points to bring
before you. I spoke only last week so much about the electric light that I
have very little to say on that point. High-tension currents are used for
electric lighting in America, and all wires are carried overhead along the
streets. A more hideous contrivance was probably never invented since the
world was created than the system of carrying wires overhead through the
magnificent streets and cities in America. They spend thousands upon
thousands of pounds in beautifying their cities with very fine buildings,
and then they disfigure them all by carrying down the pavements the most
villainous-looking telegraph posts that ever were constructed. The
practice is carried to such an extent, that down Broadway in New York
there are no less than six distinct lines of poles; and through the city
of New York there are no less than thirty-two separate and distinct
companies carrying all their wires through the streets of the city. How
the authorities have stood it so long I cannot make out. They object to
underground wires--why, one cannot tell. It is something like taking a
horse to the pond--you cannot make him drink. So it is with these
telephone companies: the public of America and the Town Councils have been
trying to force the telephone and telegraph companies to put their wires
underground, but they are the horses that are led to the pool, and they
will not drink. It is said that the Town Council of Philadelphia have
issued most stringent orders that on the first of January next, men with
axes and tools are to start out and cut down every pole in the city. It is
all very well to threaten; but my impression is that any member of Town
Council or any individual of Philadelphia who attempts to do such a thing
will be lynched by the first telephone subscriber he meets.
This practice of running overhead wires has great disadvantages when the
wires are used for electric-lighting purposes as well as for ordinary
telephone or telegraph purposes. No doubt the high-tension system can be
carried out overhead with economy; but where overhead wires carrying these
heavy currents exist in the neighborhood of telephone circuits, there is
every possible liability to accident; and in my short trip I came across
seven distinct cases of offices being destroyed by fire, of test boxes
being utterly ruined, of a whole house being gutted, and of various
accidents, all clearly traceable to contacts arising from the falling of
overhead wires, charged with high-tension current, upon telegraph and
telephone wires below. The danger is so great and damage so serious that,
at Philadelphia, Mr. Plush, the electrician to the Telephone Company, has
devised this exceedingly pretty cut-out. It is a little electro-magnetic
cut-out that breaks the telephone circuit whenever a current passes into
the circuit equal to or more than an ampere. The arrangement works with
great ease. It is applied to every telephone circuit simply, to protect
the telephone system from electric light wires, that ought never to be
allowed anywhere near a telephone circuit.
Fire-alarms are used in America; but in England, also, the fire systems of
Edward Bright, Spagnoletti, and Higgins have been introduced, and in that
respect we are in very near the same position as our friends on the other
side of the Atlantic. Some members present may remember that, when I
described my last visit to America, I mentioned how in Chicago the
fire-alarm was worked by an electric method, and I told you a story then
that you did not believe, and which I have told over and over again, but
nobody has yet believed me, and I began to think that I must have made a
mistake somewhere or other. So I meant, when at Chicago this time, to see
whether I had been deceived myself. There was very little room for
improvement, because, as I told you before, they had very near reached
perfection. This is what they did: At the corner of the street where a
fire-alarm box is fixed, a handle is pulled down, and the moment that
handle is released a current goes to the fire-station; it sounds a gong to
call the attention of the men, it unhitches the harness of the horses, the
horses run to their allotted positions at the engine, it whips the clothes
off every man who is in bed, it opens a trap at the bottom of the bed and
the men slide down into their positions on the engine. The whole of that
operation takes only six seconds. The perfection to which fire-alarm
business has been brought in the States is one of the most interesting
applications of electricity there.
Of course during this visit I waited on Mr. Edison. Many of you know that
a difference took place between Mr. Edison and myself, and I must confess
that I felt a little anxiety as to how I should be received on the other
side. It is impossible for any man to receive another with greater
kindness and attention than Mr. Edison received me. He took me all over
his place and showed me everything, and past differences were not referred
to. Mr. Edison is doing an enormous amount of work in steadily plodding
away at the electric light business. He has solved the question as far as
New York is concerned and as far as central station lighting is concerned;
and all we want on this side is to instill more confidence into our
capitalists, to try and induce them to unbutton their pockets and give us
money to carry out central lighting here.
I met another very distinguished electrician--a man who has hid his light
under a bushel--a man whose quiet modesty has kept him very much in the
background, but who really has done as much work as any body on that side
of the Atlantic, and few have done more on this--and that is Mr. Edward
Weston. He is an Englishman who has established himself in New York. He
has been working steadily for years at his laboratory, and works and
produces plant with all the skill and exactitude that the electrician or
mechanic could desire.
Another large factory I went over was that of the Western Electric Company
of Chicago, which is the largest manufactory in the States. That company
has three large factories. While I was there, the manager, just as a
matter of course, handed me over a message which contained an order for
330 arc lamps and for twenty-four dynamo machines. He was very proud of
such an order, but he tried to make me believe that it was an every-day
occurrence.
There are no less than 90,000 arc lamps burning in the States every day.
The time has passed very rapidly. I have only just one or two more points
to allude to. I think I ought not to conclude without referring to the
more immediate things affecting travelers generally and electricians in
particular. It is astounding to come across the different experiences
narrated by different men who have been on the other side of the Atlantic.
One charming companion that we had on board the Parisian has been
interviewed, and his remarks appeared in the _Pall Mall Gazette_ of
Tuesday last, December 9th. There he gave the most pessimist view of life
in the United States. He said they were a miserable race--thin, pale faced
and haggard, and rushed about as though they were utterly unhappy; and the
account our friend gave of what he saw in the United States evidently
shows that the heat that did not affect some of us so very much must have
produced upon Mr. Capper a most severe bilious attack. Well, his
experiences are not mine. Throughout the whole States I received
kindnesses and attentions that I can never forget. I had the pleasure of
staying in the houses of most charming people. I found that whenever you
met an educated American gentleman there was no distinction to be drawn
between him and an English gentleman. His ways of living, his modes of
thought, his amusements, his entertainments, are the same as ours; there
is no difference whatever to be found. In Mr. Capper's case I can readily
imagine that he spent most of his time in the halls of hotels, and there
you do see those wild fellows rushing about; they convert the hall of the
hotel into a mere stock exchange, and look just as uncomfortable as our
"stags" who run about Capel Court. You may just as well enter a
betting-ring and come away with the impression that the members represent
English society, or that that is the most refined manner in which English
gentlemen enjoy themselves.
Well, gentlemen, there are just as exceptional peculiarities here as on
the other side of the water. The Americans are the most charming people on
this earth. When we enter their houses and come to know them, they treat
us in a way that cannot be forgotten. I noticed a very great change since
I was in America before. Whether it is a greater acquaintance with them or
not I cannot say, but there is an absence of that which we can only
express by a certain word called "cockiness." It struck me at one time
that there was a good deal of cockiness on that side of the Atlantic, that
has entirely disappeared. Constant intercourse between the two countries
is gradually bringing out a regular unanimity of feeling and the same mode
of thought.
But there are some things in which the Americans are a little lax,
especially in their history. At one of their exhibitions that I visited,
for instance, there was a placard put up--
"The steed called Lightning, say the Fates,
Was tamed in the United States.
'Twas Franklin's hand that caught the horse;
'Twas harnessed by Professor Morse."
Now, considering that Franklin made his discovery in 1752, and the United
States were not formed till about thirty years afterward, it is rather
"transmogrifying" history to say the lightning was tamed in the United
States.
Again, where the notice about Professor Morse was put, they say that the
instrument was invented by Morse in 1846, while alongside it is shown the
very slip which sent the message, dated 1844; so that the slip of the
original message sent by Morse was sent by his instrument two years before
it was invented.
Again, that favorite old instrument of ours which we are so proud of, the
hatchment telegraph of Cooke and Wheatstone, invented in 1837, was labeled
"Whetstone and Cook, 1840," so while I am sorry to say they are loose in
their history, they are tight in their friendships, and all the visitors
receive the warmest possible welcome from them generally, and especially
so from every member of our Society belonging to the States.
* * * * *
THE HOUSE OF A THOUSAND TERRORS, ROTTERDAM.
[Illustration: THE HOUSE OF A THOUSAND TERRORS, ROTTERDAM.]
This building, which is situated at the corner of the Groote Market and
the Hang, is one of the oldest houses in Rotterdam, besides being one of
the most interesting from a historical point of view. There is a tradition
which states that when the city was invaded and pillaged by the Spaniards,
who in accordance with their usual custom, proceeded to put the
inhabitants to the sword, without regard to age or sex, a large number of
the leading citizens took refuge within the building, and having secured
and barricaded the entrance, they killed a kid and allowed the blood to
flow beneath the door into the street; seeing which the soldiery concluded
that those inside had already been massacred, and without troubling to
force an entry passed on, leaving them unmolested. Here the unhappy
citizens remained for three days without food, by which time the danger
had passed away, and they were enabled to effect their escape. It is from
this incident that the building takes its name. The house is built in a
species of irregular bond with bricks of varying lengths, the strings,
labels, copings, etc., being in stone. The upper portion remains in pretty
much the same condition as it existed in the 16th century, but is much
disfigured by modern paint, which has been laid over the whole of the
exterior with no sparing hand. Within the last few years the present shop
windows facing the Groote Market have been put up and various slight
alterations made to the lower part of the building to suit the
requirements of the present occupiers. The drawing has been prepared from
detail sketches made on the spot.--_W.E. Pinkerton, in Building News._
* * * * *
ON THE ORIGIN AND STRUCTURE OF COAL.
The origin of coal, that combustible which is distributed over the earth
in all latitudes, from the frozen regions of Greenland to Zambesi in the
tropics, utilized by the Chinese from the remotest antiquity for the
baking of pottery and porcelain, employed by the Greeks for working iron,
and now the indispensable element of the largest as well of the smallest
industries, is far from being sufficiently clear. The most varied
hypotheses have been offered to explain its formation. To cite them all
would not be an easy thing to do, and so we shall recall but three: (1) It
has been considered as the result of eruptions of bitumen coming from the
depths, and covering and penetrating masses of leaves, branches, bark,
wood, roots, etc., of trees that had accumulated in shallow water, and
whose most delicate relief and finest impressions have been preserved by
this species of tar solidified by cooling. (2) It has also been considered
as the result of the more or less complete decomposition of plants under
the influence of heat and dampness, which has led them to pass
successively through the following principal stages: _peat, lignite,
bituminous coal, anthracite_. (3) Finally, while admitting that the
decomposition of plants can cause organic matter to assume these different
states, other scientists think that it is not necessary for such matter to
have been peat and lignite in order to become coal, and that at the
carboniferous epoch plants were capable of passing directly to the state
of coal if the conditions were favorable; and, in the same way, in the
secondary and tertiary epochs the alteration of vegetable tissues
generally led to lignite, while now they give rise to peat. In other
words, the nature of the combustible formed at every great epoch depended
upon general climatic conditions and local chemical action. Anthracite and
bituminous coal would have belonged especially to primary times, lignites
to secondary and tertiary times, and peat to our own epoch, without the
peat ever being able to become lignites or the latter coal.
As for the accumulation of large masses of the combustible in certain
regions and its entire absence in others belonging to the same formation,
that is attributed, now to the presence of immense forests growing upon a
low, damp soil, exposed to alternate rising and sinking, and whose debris
kept on accumulating during the periods of upheaval, under the influence
of a powerful vegetation, and now to the transportation of plants of all
sorts, that had been uprooted in the riparian forests by torrents and
rivers, to lakes of wide extent or to estuaries. Not being able to enter
in this place into the details of the various hypotheses, or to thoroughly
discuss them, we shall be content to make known a few facts that have been
recently observed, and that will throw a little light upon certain still
obscure points regarding the formation of coal.
(1) According to the first theory, if the impressions which we often find
in coal (such as the leaves of Cordaites, bark of Sigillarias and
Lepidodendrons, wood of Cordaites, Calamodendrons, etc.) are but simple
and superficial mouldings, executed by a peculiar bitumen, formerly fluid,
now solidified, and resembling in its properties no other bitumen known,
we ought not to find in the interior any trace of preservation or any
evidence of structure. Now, upon making preparations that are sufficiently
thin to be transparent, from coal apparently formed of impressions of the
leaves of Cordaites, we succeed in distinguishing (in a section
perpendicular to the limb) the cuticle and the first row of epidermic
cells, the vascular bundles that correspond to the veins and the bands of
hypodermic libers; but the loose, thin-walled cells of the mesophyllum are
not seen, because they have been crushed by pressure, and their walls
touch each other. The portions of coal that contain impressions of the
bark of Sigillaria and Lepidodendron allow the elongated, suberose tissue
characteristic of such bark to be still more clearly seen.
Were we to admit that the bitumen was sufficiently fluid to penetrate all
parts of the vegetable debris, as silica and carbonates of lime and iron
have done in so many cases, we should meet with one great difficulty. In
fact, the number of fragments of coal _isolated_ in schists and sandstone
is very large, and _without any communication_ with veins of coal or of
bitumen that could have penetrated the vegetable. We cannot, then, for an
instant admit such a hypothesis. Neither can we admit that the penetration
of the plants by bitumen was effected at a certain distance, and that they
have been transported, after the operation, to the places where we now
find them, since it is not rare to find at Commentry trunks of
Calamodendrons, Anthropitus, and ferns which are still provided with roots
from 15 to 30 feet in length, and the carbonized wood of which surrounds a
pith that has been replaced by a stony mould. The fragile ligneous
cylinder would certainly have been broken during such transportation.
The carbonized specimens were never fluid or pasty, since there are some
that have left their impressions with the finest details in the schists
and sandstones, but none of the latter that has left its traces upon the
coal. The surface of the isolated specimens is well defined, and their
separation from the gangue (which has never been penetrated) is of the
easiest character.
The facts just pointed out are entirely contrary to the theory of the
formation of coal by way of eruption of bitumen.
(2) The place occupied by peats, lignites, and bituminous and anthracite
coal in sedimentary grounds, and the organic structure that we find less
and less distinct in measure as we pass from one of these combustibles to
one more ancient, have given rise to the theory mentioned above, viz.,
that vegetable matter having, under the prolonged action of heat and
moisture, experienced a greater and greater alteration, passed
successively through the different states whose composition is indicated
in the following table:
H. C. O. N. Coke. Ashes. Density.
Peat 5.63 57.03 29.67 2.09 ---- 5.58 ----
Lignite 5.59 70.49 17.2 1.73 49.1 4.99 1.2
Bitumin. coal 5.14 87.45 4 1.63 68 1.78 1.29
Anthracite 3.3 92.5 2.53 ---- 89.5 1.58 1.3
Aside from the fact that anthracite is not met with solely in the lower
coal measures, but is found in the middle and upper ones, and that
bituminous coal itself is met with quite abundantly in the secondary
formations, and even in tertiary ones, it seems to result from recent
observations that if vegetable matter, when once converted into lignites,
coal, etc., be preserved against the action of air and mineral waters by
sufficient thick and impermeable strata of earth, preserves the chemical
composition that it possessed before burial. The coal measures of
Commentry, as well as certain others, such as those of Bezenet, Swansea,
etc., contain quite a large quantity of coal gravel in sandstone or
argillaceous rocks. These fragments sometimes exhibit a fracture analogous
to that of ordinary coal, with sharp angles that show that they have not
been rolled; and the sandstone has taken their exact details, which are
found in hollow form in the gangue. In other cases these fragments exhibit
the aspect of genuine shingle or rolled pebbles. These pebbles of coal
have not been misshapen under the pressure of the surrounding sandstone,
nor have they shrunk since their burial and the solidification of the
gangue, for their surface is in contact with the internal surface of their
matrix. Everything leads to the belief that they were extracted from
pre-existing coal deposits that already possessed a definite hardness and
bulk, at the same time as were the gravels and sand in which they are
imprisoned. It became of interest, then, to ascertain the age to which the
formation of these fragments might be referred, they being evidently more
ancient than those considered above, which, as we have seen, could not
have been transported in this state on account of their dimensions and the
fragility of made coal. Thanks to the kindness of Mr. Fayol, we have been
enabled to make such researches upon numerous specimens that were still
inclosed in their sandstone gangue and that had been collected in the coal
strata of Commentry. In some of their physical properties they differ from
the more recent isolated fragments and from the ordinary coal of this
deposit. They are less compact, their density is less, and a thin film of
water deposited upon their surface is promptly absorbed, thus indicating a
certain amount of porosity. Their fracture is dull and they are striped
with shining coal, and can be more easily sliced with a razor.
From a fresh fracture, we find by the lens, or microscope, that some of
them are formed of ordinary coal, that is, composed of plates of variable
thickness, brilliant and dull, with or without traces of organization, and
others of divers bits of wood whose structure is preserved. When reduced
to thin, transparent plates, these latter show us the organization of the
wood of _Arthropitus, Cordaites_, and _Calamodendron_, and of the petioles
of _Aulacopteris_, that is to say, of the ligneous and arborescent plants
that we most usually meet with in the coal measures of Commentry in the
state of impression or of coal.
In a certain number of specimens the diminution in volume of the tracheæ
is less than that that we have observed in the same organs of
corresponding genera. The quantity of oxygen and hydrogen that they
contain is greater, and seems to bring them near the lignites.
We cannot attribute these differences to the nature of the plants
converted into coal, since we have just seen that they are the same in the
one case as in the other. Neither does time count for anything here,
since, according to accepted ideas, the burial having been longer, the
carbonization ought to have been more perfect, while the contrary is the
case.
If we admit (1) that vegetable remains alter more and more through
maceration in ordinary water and in certain mineral waters; (2) that,
beginning with their burial in sufficiently thick strata of clay and sand,
their chemical composition scarcely varies any further; and (3) that these
are important changes only as regards their physical properties, due to
loss of water and compression, we succeed quite easily in learning what
has occurred.
In fact, when, as a consequence of the aforesaid alteration, the vegetable
matter had taken the chemical composition that we find in the less
advanced coal of the pebbles, it was in the first place covered with sand
and protected against further destruction, and it gradually acquired the
physical properties that we now find in it. At the period that channels
were formed, the coal was torn from the beds in fragments, and these
latter were rolled about for a time, sometimes being broken, and then
covered anew, and this too at the same time as were the plants less
advanced in composition that we meet with at the same level. These latter,
being like them protected against ulterior alteration, we now find less
advanced in carbonization (notwithstanding their more ancient origin) than
the other vegetable fragments that were converted into coal after them,
but that were more thoroughly altered at the time of burial.
There are yet a few other important deductions to be made from the
foregoing facts: (1) the same coal basin may, at the same level, contain
fragments of coal of very different ages; (2) its contour may have been
much modified owing to the ravines made by the water which transported the
ancient parts into the lowest regions of the basin; and (3) finally, since
the most recent sandstones and schists of the same basin may contain coal
which is more ancient, but which is formed from the same species of plants
that we find at this more recent level, we must admit that the conversion
of the vegetable tissues into coal was relatively rapid, and far from
requiring an enormous length of time, as we are generally led to believe.
If, then, lignites have not become soft coal, and if the latter has not
become anthracite, it is not that time was wanting, but climatic
conditions and environment. Most analyses of specimens of coal have been
made up to the present with fragments so selected as to give a mean
composition of the mass; it is rare that trouble has been taken to select
bits of wood, bark, etc., of the same plant, determined in advance by
means of thin and transparent sections in order to assure the chemist of
the sole origin and of the absolute purity of the coal submitted to
analysis. This void has been partially fitted, and we give in the
following table the results published by Mr. Carnot of analyses made of
different portions of plants previously determined by us:
Carbon Hydrogen Oxygen Nitrogen
1. Calamodendron (5 specimens) 82.95 4.78 11.89 0.48
2. Cordaites (4 specimens) 82.94 4.88 11.84 0.44
3. Lepidodendron (3 specimens) 83.28 4.88 11.45 0.39
4. Psaronius (4 specimens) 81.64 4.80 13.11 0.44
\----v----/
5. Ptychopteris (1 specimen) 80.62 4.85 14.53
6. Megaphyton (1 specimen) 83.37 4.40 12.23
As seen from this table, the elementary composition of the various
specimens is nearly the same, notwithstanding that the selection was made
from among plants that are widely separated in the botanical scale, or
from among very different parts of plants. In fact, with Numbers 1 and 2
the analysis was made solely of the wood, and with No. 3 only of the
prosenchymatous and suberose parts of the bark. Here we remark a slight
increase in carbon, as should be the case. With No. 4 the analysis was of
the roots and the parenchymatous tissue that descends along the stem, and
with No. 6 of the bark and small roots. One will remark here again a
slight increase in the proportion of carbon, as was to be foreseen. The
elementary composition found nearly corresponds with that of the coal
taken from the large Commentry deposit.
Carbon. Hydrogen. Oxygen and
Nitrogen.
Regnault 82.92 5.39 11.78
Mr Carnot 83.21 5.57 11.22
Although the chemical composition is nearly the same, the manner in which
the different species or fragments of vegetables behave under distillation
is quite different.
In fact, according to Mr. Carnot, the plants already cited furnish the
following results on distillation:
Volatile Fixed Coke.
matters. residue.
Calamodendron 35.5 64.7 Well agglomerated.
Cordaites 42.1 57.8 Quite porous.
Lepidodendron 34.7 55.3 Well agglomerated.
Psaronius 29.4 60.5 Slightly porous.
Ptychopteris 39.4 60.5
Megaphyton 35.5 64.5 Well agglomerated.
Coal of the Great Bed 40.5 59.5 Slightly porous.
These differences in the proportions of volatile substances, of fixed
residua, and of density in the coke obtained seem to be in harmony with
the primitive organic nature of the carbonized tissues. We know, in fact,
that the wood of the Calamodendrons is composed of alternately radiating
bands formed of ligneous and thick walled prosenchymatous tissue, while
the wood of Cordaites, which is less dense, recalls that of certain
coniferæ of the present day (Araucariæ).
We have remarked above that the portions of Lepidodendron analyzed
belonged to that part of the bark that was considerably thickened and
lignefied. So too the portion of the Megaphyton that was submitted to
distillation was the external part of the hard bark, formed of hypodermic
fibers and traversed by small roots. The Psaronius, on the contrary, was
represented by a mixture of roots and of parenchymatous tissue in which
they descend along the trunk.
It results from these remarks that we may admit that those parts of the
vegetable that are ordinarily hard, compact, and profoundly lignefied
furnish a compact coke and relatively less volatile matter, while the
tissues that are usually not much lignefied, or are parenchymatous, give a
bubbly, porous coke and a larger quantity of gas. The influence of the
varied mode of grouping of the elements in the primitive tissues is again
found, then, even after carbonization, and is shown by the notable
differences in the quantities and physical properties of the products of
distillation.
The elementary chemical composition, which is perceptibly the same in the
specimens isolated in the sandstones and in those taken from the great
deposit, demonstrates that the difference in composition of the
environment serving as gangue did not have a great influence upon the
definitive state of the coal, a conclusion that we had already reached
upon examining the structure and properties of the coal pebbles.
We may get an idea of the nearly similar composition of the coal produced
by very different plants or parts thereof, in remarking that as the cells,
fibers, and vessels are formed of cellulose, and some of them isomeric,
the difference in composition is especially connected with the contents of
the cells, canals, etc., such as protoplasm, oils, resins, gums, sugars,
and various acids, various incrustations, etc. After the prolonged action
of water that was more or less mineralized and of multiple organisms,
matters that were soluble, or that were rendered so by maceration, were
removed, and the organic skeletons of the different plants were brought to
a nearly similar centesimal composition representing the carbonized
derivatives of the cellulose and its isomers. The vegetable debris thus
transformed, but still resistant and elastic, were the ones that were
petrified in the mineral waters or covered with sand and clay. Under the
influence of gradual pressure, and of a desiccation brought about by it,
and by a rising of the ground, the walls of the organic elements came into
contact, and the physical properties that we now see gradually made their
appearance.
The waters derived from a prolonged steeping of vegetables, and charged
with all the soluble principles extracted therefrom, have, after their
sojourn in a proper medium, deposited the carbonized residua that have
themselves become soluble, and have there formed masses of combustibles of
a different composition from that resulting from the skeletons of plants,
such as _cannel coal, pitch coal, boghead_, etc.
A thin section of a piece of Commentry cannel coal shows that this
substance consists of a yellowish-brown amorphous mass holding here and
there in suspension very different plant organs, such as fragments of
Cordaites, leaves, ferns, microspores, macrospores, pollen grains,
rootlets, etc., exactly as would have done a gelatinous mass that upon
coagulating in a liquid had carried along with it all the solid bodies
that had accidentally fallen into it and that were in suspension.
It is evident (as we have demonstrated) that other cannel coals may show
different plant organs, or even contain none at all, their presence
appearing to be accidental. The composition itself of cannel coal must be,
in our theory, connected with the chemical nature of the materials from
whence it is derived, and that were first dissolved and then became
insoluble through carbonization. Several preparations made from Australian
(New South Wales), Autun, etc., boghead have shown us merely a
yellowish-brown amorphous mass holding in suspension lens-shaped or
radiating floccose masses which it is scarcely possible to refer to any
known vegetable organism.
Among the theories that we have cited in the beginning, the one that best
agrees with the facts that we have pointed out is the third, which would
admit, then, two things in the formation of coal. The first would include
the different chemical reactions which cannot yet be determined, but which
would have brought the vegetable matter now to the state of soft coal
(with its different varieties), and now to the state of anthracite. The
second would comprehend the preservation, through burial, of the organic
matter in the stage of carbonization that it had reached, and as the
result of compression and gradual desiccation, the development of the
physical properties that we now find in the different carbonized
substances.
We annex to this article a number of figures made from preparations of
various coals. These preparations were obtained by making the fragments
sufficiently thin without the aid of any chemical reagent, so as to avoid
the reproach that things were made to appear that the coal did not
contain. This slow and delicate method is not capable of revealing all the
organisms That the carbonaceous substance contains, but, per contra, one
is riot absolutely sure of the pre-existence of everything that resembles
organs or fragments of such that he distinguishes therein by means of the
microscope.
Our researches, as we have above stated, have been confined to different
cannel coals, anthracite, boghead, and coal plants isolated either in coal
pebbles, or in schists and sandstones.
[Illustration: 12a: FIG. 1.--Lancashire cannel coal; longitudinal section,
X200.]
[Illustration: 12b: FIG. 2.--Lancashire cannel coal; transverse section,
X200.]
Figs. 1 and 2 (magnified two hundred times) represent two sections, made
in rectangular planes, of fragments of Lancashire cannel coal. In a
certain measure, they remind one of Figs. 4 and 5, Pl 11, of Witham's
"Internal Structure of Fossil Vegetables," and which were drawn from
specimens of cannel coal derived likewise from Lancashire, but which are
not so highly magnified. There is an interesting fact to note in this
coincidence, and that is that this structure, which is so difficult to
explain in its details, is not accidental, but a consequence of the
nature of the materials that served to produce the coal of this region.
In the midst of a mass of blackish debris, _a_, organic and inorganic,
and immersed in an amorphous and transparent gangue, we find a few
recognizable fragments, such as thick-walled macrospores, _b_, of
various sizes, bits of flattened petioles, _c_, pollen grains, _d_,
debris of bark, etc. In Fig. 2 all these different remains are cut
either obliquely or longitudinally, and are not very recognizable. It is
not rare to meet with a sort of vacuity, _e_, filled with clearer matter
of resinoid aspect, without organization.
[Illustration: 12c: FIG. 3.--Commentry cannel coal, X200.]
In Fig. 3, which represents a section made from Commentry cannel coal,
the number of recognizable organs in the midst of the mass of debris is
much larger. Thus, at _a_ we see a macrospore, at _b_ a fragment of the
coat of a macrospore, at _c_ another macrospore having a silicified
nucleus, such as has been found in no other case, at _d_ we have a
transverse section of a vascular bundle, at _e_ a longitudinal section
of a rootlet traversed by another one, at _f_ we have a transverse
section of another rootlet, at _g_ an almost entire portion of the
vascular bundle of a root, and at _h_ we see large pollen grains
recalling those that we meet with in the silicified seeds from Saint
Etienne.
Cannel coal, then, shows that it is formed of a sort of dark brown gangue
of resinoid aspect (when a thin section of it is examined) holding in
suspension indeterminable black organic and inorganic debris, which are
arranged in layers, and in the midst of which (according to the locality
and the fragment studied) is found a varying number of easily recognized
vegetable organs.
[Illustration: 12d: FIG. 4.--Pennsylvania anthracite, X200.]
It is very rare that anthracite offers any discernible trace of
organization. Preparations made from fragments of Sable and Lamore coal
could not be made sufficiently thin to be transparent; the mass remained
very opaque, and the clearest parts exhibited merely amorphous,
irregular granulations. Still, fragments of anthracite from Pennsylvania
furnished, amid a dominant mass of dark, yellow-brown, structureless
substance, a few organized vegetable debris, such as a fragment of a
vascular bundle with radiating elements (Fig. 4, _a_), a macrospore,
_b_, and a few pollen grains or microspores, _c_.
[Illustration: 12e: FIG. 5.--Boghead from New South Wales, X500.]
From what precedes it seems to result, then, that anthracite is in a much
less appreciable state of preservation than cannel coal, and that it is
only rarely, and according to locality, that we can discover vegetable
organs in it. Soft coal comes nearer to amorphous carbon. Boghead appears
to be of an entirely different character (Fig. 5, magnified X300). It is
easily reduced to a thin transparent plate, and shows itself to be formed
of a multitude of very small lenses, differing in size and shape, and much
more transparent than the bands that separate them. In the interior of
these lenses we distinguish very fine lines radiating from the center and
afterward branching several times. The ramifications are lost in the
periphery amid fine granulations that resemble spores. We might say that
we here had to do with numerous mycelia moulded in a slightly colored
resin. Preparations made from New South Wales and Autun boghead presented
the same aspect.
If boghead was derived from the carbonization of parts that were soluble,
or that became so through maceration, and were made insoluble at a given
moment by carbonization, we can understand the very peculiar aspect that
this combustible presents when it is seen under the microscope.
The following figures were made in order to show the details of anatomical
structure that are still visible in coal, and to permit of estimating the
shrinkage that the organic substance has undergone in becoming converted
into coal.
It is not rare in coal mines to find fragments of wood, of which a portion
has been preserved by carbonates of iron and lime, and another portion
converted into coal. This being the case, it was considered of interest to
ascertain whether the carbonized portion had preserved a structure that
was still recognizable, and, in such an event, to compare this structure
with that of the portion of the specimen that was preserved in all its
details by mineralization.
[Illustration: 12f: FIG. 6.--_Arthropitus gallica_, St. Etienne; transverse
section, X200.]
Fig. 6 shows a transverse section of a specimen of _Arthropitus Gallica_
found under such conditions. The region marked c is carbonized; the
organic elements of the wood-cells, tracheæ, etc., have undergone but
little change in shape. Moreover, no change at all exists in the
internal parts of another specimen (Fig. 8), where we easily distinguish
by their form and dimensions the ligneous cells, _aa_, and the elements,
_bb_, of the wood itself.
[Illustration: 12h: FIG. 8.--_Arthropitus gallica_, St. Etienne; transverse
section through the carbonized part.]
In the region, _b_, of Fig. 6, the ligneous elements have undergone an
evident change of form, and the walls have been broken. This region,
already filled by petrifying salts, but not completely hardened, has not
been able to resist, as the region, _a_, an external pressure, and has
become more or less misshapened. As for the not yet mineralized external
portion, _c_, it has completely given way under the pressure, the walls of
the different organic elements have come into contact, the calcareous or
other salts have been expressed, and this region exhibits the aspect of
ordinary coal, while at the same time preserving a little more hardness on
account of the small quantity of mineral salts that has remained in them
despite the compression.
From the standpoint of carbonization there seems to us but little
difference between the organic elements that occupy the region, _a_, and
those that occupy _b_. If the former had not been filled with hardened
petrifying matter, they would have been compressed and flattened like
those of region _c_, and would have given a compact and brilliant coal,
having very likely before petrifaction reached the same degree of
carbonization as the latter. The layer of coal in contact with the
carbonized or silicified part of the specimens is due, then, to a
compression of the organic elements already chemically carbonized, but in
which the mineral matter was not yet hardened and was able to escape.
[Illustration: 12g: FIG. 7.--_Arthropitus gallica_, St. Etienne; tangential
longitudinal section.]
If this be so, we ought to find the remains of organic structure in this
region _c_. In fact, on referring to Fig. 7, which represents a
tangential, longitudinal section of the same specimen, we perceive at _ab_
a ligneous duct and some unchanged tracheæ situated in the carbonized
region, and then at _c_ the same elements, though flattened, in which,
however, we still clearly distinguish the bands of the tracheæ; at _d_ is
found a trachea whose contents were already solidified, and which has not
been flattened; then, near the surface, in the region, _e_, the pressure
having been greater, it is no longer possible to recognize traces of
organization in a tangential section. In a large number of cases, the fact
that the coal does not seem to be organized must be due to the too great
compression that the carbonized cells and vessels have undergone when yet
soft and elastic, at the time this slow but continuous pressure was being
exerted.
It also became of interest to find out whether, through the very fact of
carbonization, the dimensions of the organic elements had perceptibly
varied--a sort of research that presents certain difficulties. At present
we have no living plant that is comparable, even remotely, with those that
grew during the coal epoch. Moreover, the organic elements have absolutely
nothing constant in their dimensions.
Still, if we limit ourselves to a comparison of the same carbonized wood,
preserved on the one hand by petrifaction, and on the other hand
non-mineralized, we find a very perceptible diminution in bulk. The
elements have contracted in length, breadth, and thickness, but
principally in the direction of the compression that they have undergone
in the purely carbonized specimens.
In the vicinity of the carbonized portions, those of the tracheæ that have
not done so have perceptibly preserved their primitive length, which has,
so to speak, been maintained by their neighbors, but their other
dimensions have become much smaller--a quarter in thickness and half in
length.
[Illustration: 12i: FIG. 9.--_Calamodendron,_ Commentry; prosenchymatous
portion of the wood carbonized, X200.]
If the two fragments of the same wood are, one of them silicified and the
other simply carbonized and preserved in sandstone, the diminution in
volume will have occurred in all directions in the latter of the two.
[Illustration: 12j: FIG. 10.--_Calamodendron,_ fragment of the vascular
portion of the wood carbonized.]
Figs. 9 and 11, which represent a portion of the _fibrous_ region of
Calamodendron wood, may give an idea of the shrinkage that has taken place
therein. In Figs. 11 and 12, which show a few tracheæ and medullary rays
of the ligneous bands of the same plant, we observe the same phenomenon.
We might cite a large number of analogous examples, but shall be content
to give the following: Figs. 13 and 15 represent radial and tangential
sections of the bark of _Syringodendron pes-capræ_. This is the first time
that one has had before his eyes the anatomical structure of the bark of a
_Syringodendron_, a plant which has not yet been found in a petrified
state. It is coal, then, with its structure preserved, that allows of a
verification of the theory advanced by several scientists that the often
bulky trunks of _Syringodendron_ are bases of _Sigillariæ_.
[Illustration: 12k: FIG. 11.--_Calamodendron,_ from Autun; prosenchymatous
portion of the wood silicified, X200.]
[Illustration: 12l: FIG. 12.--_Calamodendron,_ from Autun; vascular portion
of the wood silicified.]
If we refer to Fig. 13, which represents a radial vertical section running
through the center of one of the scars that permitted the specimen to be
determined, we shall observe, in fact, a tissue formed of rectangular
cells, longer than wide, arranged in horizontal series, and very analogous
in their aspect to those that we have described in the suberose region of
the bark of Sigillariæ. Fig. 15 shows in tangential section the fibrous
aspect of this tissue, which has been rendered denser through compression.
Fig. 14 shows it restored. In Fig. 13, the external part of the bark is
occupied by a thick layer of cellular tissue that exists over the entire
surface of the trunk, but particularly thick near the scars, exactly as in
the barks of the Sigillariæ that we have formerly described. Finally, at
_b_, we recognize the undoubted traces of a vascular bundle running to the
leaves. If the bundle appears to be larger than that of the Sigillariæ,
this is due to the flattening that the trunk has undergone, the effect of
this having been to spread the bundle out in a vertical plane, although
its greatest width in the first place was in a horizontal one.
[Illustration: 12m: FIG. 13.--_Syringodendron pes-capræ_; from Saarbruck;
radial vertical section, X200.]
[Illustration: 12n: FIG. 14.--Suberose cells restored.]
In anatomical structure, the barks of the Syringodendrons are, then,
analogous to those of the Sigillariæ. If, now, we compare the dimensions
of the tissues of these barks with the same silicified tissues of the
barks of Sigillariæ, we shall find that there was likewise a diminution in
the dimensions, but yet a less pronounced one than in the woods that we
have previously spoken of. The corky nature of this region of the bark was
likely richer in carbonizable elements than the wood properly so called,
and had, in consequence, to undergo much less shrinkage.--_Dr. B. Renault
(of Paris Museum) in Le Genie Civil_.
[Illustration: 12o: FIG. 15.--_Syringodendron pes-capræ;_ tangential
vertical section in the corky part of the bark, X200.]
DESCRIPTION OF THE FIGURES.--Fig. 1, Lancashire cannel coal; longitudinal
section, X200. Fig. 2, Lancashire cannel coal; transverse section, X200.
Fig. 3. Commentry cannel coal, X200. Fig. 4, Pennsylvania anthracite,
X200. Fig. 5, Boghead from New South Wales, X500. Fig. 6, _Arthropitus
gallica_, St. Etienne; transverse section, X200. Fig. 7, same; tangential
longitudinal section. Fig. 8, same; transverse section through the
carbonized part. Fig. 9. _Calamodendron_, Commentry; prosenchymatous
portion of the wood carbonized, X200. Fig. 10, same; fragment of the
vascular portion of the wood carbonized. Fig. 11, same, from Autun;
prosenchymatous portion of the wood silicified, X200. Fig. 12, same,
Autun; vascular portion of the wood silicified. Fig. 13, _Syringodendron
pes-capræ_; from Saarbruck; radial vertical section, X200. Fig. 14,
Suberose cells restored. Fig. 15. _Syringodendron pes-capræ_; tangential
vertical section in the corky part of the bark, X200.
* * * * *
ICE BOAT RACES ON THE MUEGGELSEE, NEAR BERLIN.
The interest in sports of different kinds is increasing considerably in
the capital of the German Empire. Oarsmen and sailors show their ability
in grand regattas; roller-skating rinks are very, popular; numerous
bicycle clubs arrange grand tournaments; and training, starting, trotting,
swimming, turning, fencing, walking, and running are practiced everywhere.
As this winter has been quite severe in Germany, first class courses have
been made for ice boats. Ice boat, races are well known in the United
States, but are quite novel in Germany; at least, in the neighborhood of
Berlin, as they have been known only on the coast of the Baltic Sea.
[Illustration: ICE BOAT RACES ON THE MUEGGELSEE, NEAR BERLIN.]
These vessels are quite simple in construction, the base consisting of an
equilateral triangle made of beams and provided at the corners with
runners. The two front runners are fixed, but the one at the apex of the
triangle is pivoted, and serves as a rudder. The mast is on the front
cross beam, and between the front cross beam and the side beams sufficient
space is left for the helmsman.
The annexed cut, taken from the _Illustrirte Zeitung_, shows a race of the
above described ice boats on the Mueggelsee (Mueggel Lake), near Berlin.
It will be seen from the clumsy construction of the boats that the Germans
have not yet learned the art of building these vehicles.
* * * * *
LABOR AND WAGES IN AMERICA.
[Footnote: A paper recently read before the Society of Arts, London.]
By D. PIDGEON.
The United States of America are, collectively, of such vast extent, and,
singly, so individualized in character, that to speak of their labor
conditions as a whole would be as impossible, in an hour's address, as to
describe their physical geography or geology in a similar space of time. I
shall, therefore, confine what I have to say this evening on the subject
of labor and wages in America to a consideration of the industrial
condition of certain Eastern States, which, being essentially
manufacturing districts, offer the best instances for comparison with the
labor conditions of our own country. That this field is of adequate extent
and of typical character may be inferred from the fact that the three
States composing it, viz.. New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut,
contain together nearly one-half of the whole manufacturing population of
America, while Connecticut and Massachusetts are the very cradle of
American manufacture, and the home of the typical Yankee artisan. In
addition, the State of Massachusetts is distinguished by possessing a
Bureau of Statistics of Labor, whose sole business is to ventilate
industrial questions, and to collect such facts as will afford the
statesman a sound basis for industrial legislation. We shall find
ourselves, in the sequel, indebted for spine of our chief conclusions to
this excellent public institution.
If we ask ourselves, at the outset of the inquiry, "Who and what are the
operatives of manufacturing America?" the answer involves a distinction
which cannot be too strongly insisted upon, or too carefully kept in mind.
These people consist, first, of native-born, and, secondly, of alien
workers. The United States census, reckoning every child born in the
country as an American, even if both his parents be foreigners, I would
make it appear that only six and a half millions out of its fifty millions
are of alien birth, but, for our purpose, these figures are misleading.
There is a vast difference, in many important respects, between
"Americans" derived from a stock long settled in the States and
"Americans" with two or even with one alien parent. In the former case,
the hereditary sense of social equality, the teaching of the common
school, and the influence of democratic institutions, produce a certain
type of character which I distinguish by the epithet "American" because it
is of truly national origin. In the latter case, the so-called "American"
may really be a German, an Irishman, an Englishman, or a Swede, but the
qualities which I would distinguish by the word "American" have not yet
been developed in him, although they will probably be exhibited by his
later descendants.
Setting the census figures aside, therefore, we find, from the
Registration Reports of Massachusetts, that fifty-four out of every
hundred persons who die within the limits of this State are of foreign
parentage. Now bearing in mind that Massachusetts is essentially a Yankee
State, where comparatively few European emigrants settle, it seems
probable that, going back several generations, the numbers, even of
Massachusetts men, who may be truly called "Americans" would dwindle
considerably. These men, however, the children of equality, of the common
school, and of democratic institutions, may be considered as leaven,
leavening the lump of European emigration, and shaping, so far as they
can, the character of the American; people that is yet to be.
Native American labor is best described by reference to a recent past,
when it filled all the factories of the United States, and challenged, by
its high tone, the admiration of Europe. At the beginning of this century,
public opinion in America was most unfriendly to the establishment of
manufactories, so great were the complaints of these made in Europe as
seats of vice and disease. Thus, when Humphreysville, the first industrial
village in America, was built, in 1804, by the Hon. David Humphreys, who
wished to see the colony independent of the mother country for her
supplies of manufactured goods, parents refused to place their children in
his factories until legislation had first made the mill-owner responsible
both for the education and morality of his operatives. Similarly, when the
cotton mills of Lowell, and the silk mills of Hartford, began to rise,
between 1832 and 1840, the American people held the capitalist responsible
for the moral, mental, and physical health of the people whom he employed,
with the result that all England wondered at the stories of factory
operatives, and their so-called "refinements," which were given to this
country by writers like Harriett Martineau and Charles Dickens.
Lowell, between the years 1832 and 1850, was, perhaps, the most remarkable
manufacturing town in the world. Help, in the new cotton mills, was in
great demand, and what were then thought very high wages were freely
offered, so that, in spite of the national prejudice against factory
labor, operatives began to flow from many quarters into the mills. These
people were, for the most part, the daughters of farmers, storekeepers,
and mechanics; of Puritan antecedents, and religious training. In the mill
they were treated kindly, and, although their hours were long, they were
not overworked. A feeling of real, but respectful, equality existed
between them and their employers, and the best hands were often guests at
the houses of the mill owners or ministers of religion. They lived in
great boarding-houses, kept by women selected for their high character,
and it is of these industrial families, and of their refined life, that
observers like Dickens, Lyell, and Miss Martineau spoke with enthusiasm.
The last writer has made us acquainted, in her "Mind among the Spindles,"
with the height to which intellectual life once rose in Lowell mills,
before the wave of Irish emigration, following on the potato famine, swept
native American labor away from the spindles. The morality of the early
mill-girls, again, was practically stainless, and, strict as the rules of
conduct were in the factories, these were really dead letters, so high was
the standard of behavior set and sustained by the mill-hands themselves.
Such was the character of native American labor, less than forty years
ago, and such, almost, it still remains in those, now few, centers of
industry where it has been little diluted with a foreign element. Nowhere
is this so conspicuously the case as in Massachusetts and Connecticut, and
especially in the western valleys of the former State, where important
mill-streams, such as the Housatonic, the Naugatuck, and the Farmington,
are lined with mills still largely manned by native Americans.
Aside from wages, which will be separately considered, the housing,
education, sobriety, and pauperism of any given industrial community form
together the best possible test of its social condition. In regard to the
housing of labor, there is no more important fact to be discovered than
the proportion of an operative population who possess in fee simple the
houses in which they dwell. This proportion among the wage-earners of
Massachusetts is remarkably high, one working man in every four being the
proprietor of the house in which he lives. Of the remaining three-fourths,
45 per cent. rent their houses, and 30 per cent. are boarders. With regard
to inhabitancy, the average number of persons living in one house in
Massachusetts is rather more than six, while the average number of the
Massachusetts family is four and three quarter persons. Hence, lodgers
being excepted, almost every operative family in this State lives under
its own roof, while one fourth of all such roofs are owned by the heads of
families dwelling therein.
I leave, for a moment, the agreeable task of describing one of these homes
of native American labor, and pass on to the question of education, whose
universality among native Americans is perhaps most vividly illustrated
by the following facts. Of 1,200 persons born in Massachusetts, whether of
native or foreign parents, only one is unable to read or write, while four
Germans and Scotch, six English, twenty French Canadians, twenty-eight
Irish, and thirty-four Italians, out of every 100 emigrants of these
nationalities respectively are illiterate. The total number of public,
elementary, and high schools in the United States is 225,800, or about one
school for every 200 of the entire population, and one for, say, every
fifty of the 10,000,000 pupils who attended school during the census year
of 1880. Finally, referring once more to Massachusetts, there are nearly
2,000 free libraries in this single State, or one to every 800
inhabitants, and these, together, own 3,500,000 volumes, and circulate
8,000,000 of volumes annually.
With regard to sobriety, it is well known that local option succeeds in
closing the liquor saloons in very many operative American towns, and with
the happiest results. The county of Barnstaple in Massachusetts, for
example, with a population of 32,000 souls, and having no licensed liquor
saloons, yields a crop of only three convictions per annum for
drunkenness. The county of Suffolk, on the other hand, with a population
of nearly 400,000, and a license for every 175 of its inhabitants,
acknowledges one drunkard for every 50 of its population. The labor in one
case is nearly all native; in the other, largely foreign.
It is almost, if not quite, impossible to obtain the statistics of
pauperism in America. The "indoor" poor, as paupers in almshouses are
called, can be found and counted with comparative ease, but how can the
outdoor paupers be found? It is no use inquiring for them from door to
door, and the poor-master's disbursements are so limited in amount that
his bills for pauper relief become mixed up with other items, so that they
cannot be separately stated. The total number of paupers resident in
American almshouses is 67,000, or about one in every 70,000 of the whole
population. In England, we have still one pauper in every fifty thousand
of the population. Such being the more important aspects of native
American labor, as displayed by the statistician, it is time for the
social observer to give his account of a typical American artisan's home.
We are at Ansonia, in the Naugatuck valley, one of the chief towns of
"Clockland," where, within a radius of twenty miles, watches and clocks
are made by millions and sold for a few shillings apiece. Our friend Mr.
S. is an Ansonia mechanic who occupies a house with a basement of cut
stone and a tasteful superstructure of wood, having a wide veranda,
kitchen, parlor, and bed-room on the ground floor and three bedrooms
above. The house is painted white, adorned with green jalousies, and
surrounded by a well-tilled quarter acre lot. Its windows are aglow with
geraniums, and from its veranda we glance upward to the wooded slopes of
the Green Mountain range, and downward to the River Naugatuck, whose blue
mill-ponds look like tiny Highland lakes surrounded by great factories.
Within, a pleasant sitting-room is furnished with all the comforts and
some of the luxuries of life, the tables are strewn with books, and the
walls decorated with pretty photographs. Mr. S.'s wife and daughter are
educated and agreeable women, who entertain us, during an hour's call,
with intelligent conversation, which, turning for the most part on the
events of the War of Independence, is characterized by ample historical
knowledge, a logical habit of mind, and a remarkable readiness to welcome
new ideas. No refreshments are offered us, for no one eats between meals,
and, in private houses, as in the public refreshment rooms, where native
labor usually takes its meals, nothing stronger than water is ever drunk.
Such are the homes of men whom I would distinguish as "American" artisans,
and such, also, are those of many foreign workmen who have been long under
native influence.
It is not in the valleys of Massachusetts, however, that the greatest
manufacturing cities of the Union are to be found, the towns already
referred to containing usually only a few thousand inhabitants, and being
still, for the most part, rural in their surroundings. They are, indeed,
the fastnesses, so to speak, to which the Yankee artisan has retired,
after having been almost literally swept out of the great manufacturing
cities by successive waves of emigrant labor, chiefly of Irish and
French-Canadian nationality. To these great cities we must now turn for
examples of a condition of operative society which contrasts most
unfavorably with that which has already been sketched; it being,
meanwhile, understood that a penumbral region, of more or less mixed
conditions, graduates the brightness of the one into the darkness of the
other picture.
The city of Lowell, whose brilliant past is so well known, exemplifies, on
that very account, better than any other manufacturing town in the States,
the character of recent alterations in American labor conditions. The
mill-hands, formerly such as I have described them, have been almost
entirely replaced by Canadians and Irish, who have given a new character
and aspect to the Lowell of forty years ago. "Little Canada," as the
quarter inhabited by the former people is called, exhibits a congeries of
narrow, unpaved lanes, lined with rickety wooden houses, which elbow one
another closely, and possess neither gardens nor yards. They are let out
in flats, and are crowded to overflowing with a dense population of
lodgers. Peeps into their interiors reveal dirty, poorly furnished rooms,
and large families, pigging squalidly together at meal times, while
unkempt men and slatternly women lean from open windows, and scold in
French, or chatter with crowds of ragged and bare-legged children, playing
in the gutters.
The Irish portion of the town has wider streets, and houses less crowded
than those of "Little Canada," but is, altogether, of scarcely better
aspect. Slatternly women gossip in groups about the doorways. Tawdrily
dressed girls saunter along the sidewalks, or loll from the window-sills.
Knots of shirt-sleeved men congregate about the frequent liquor-saloons,
talking loudly and volubly. No signs of poverty are apparent, but
everything wears an aspect of prosperous ignorance, satisfied to eat,
drink, and idle away the hours not given to work. Such is the general
aspect of operative Lowell to-day; but some of the old well-conducted
boarding-houses remain, sheltering worthy sons and daughters of toil.
Similarly, the outskirts of the city are adorned with many pretty white
houses, where typical American families are growing up amid wholesome
moral and physical surroundings, and enjoying all the advantages of
schools, churches, libraries, and free institutions which the Great
Republic puts everywhere, with lavish profuseness, at the service even of
its least promising populations.
Concerning the Lowell mill-hands of to-day, I prefer, before my own
observations, to quote from an article entitled "Early Factory Labor in
New England," written by a lady, herself one of the early mill-girls, and
published in the "Massachusetts Labor Bureau Keport for 1883." She says:
"Last winter, I was invited to speak to a company of the Lowell
mill-girls, and tell them something of my early life as a member of their
guild. When my address was over, some of them gathered round and asked me
questions. In turn, I questioned them about their work, hours of labor,
wages, and means of improvement. When I urged them to occupy their spare
time in reading and study, they seemed to understand the need of it, but
answered, sadly, 'We will try, but we work so hard, and are so tired.' It
was plain that these operatives did not go to their labor with the
jubilant feeling of the old mill-girls, that they worked without aim or
purpose, and took no interest in anything beyond earning their daily
bread. There was a tired hopelessness about them, such as was never seen
among the early mill-girls. Yet they have more leisure, and earn more
money than the operatives of fifty years ago, but they do not know how to
improve the one or use the other. These American-born children of foreign
parentage are, indeed, under the control neither of their church nor their
parents, and they, consequently, adopt the vices and follies instead of
the good habits of our people. It is vital to the interests of the whole
community that they should be brought under good moral influence; that
they should live in better homes, and breathe a better social atmosphere
than is now to be found in our factory towns."
The city of Holyoke, another great cotton center, having 23,000
inhabitants, is in some respects the most remarkable town in the State of
Massachusetts. It was brought into existence, 35 years ago, by the
construction of a great dam across the Connecticut River; and, around the
water power thus created, mills have sprung up so rapidly that the
population, whose normal increase is eighteen per cent. every ten years in
Massachusetts, has doubled, during the last decade, in Holyoke. But eighty
out of every 100 persons in the city are of foreign extraction, the
prevailing nationality being French-Canadian, a people who are so rapidly
displacing other operatives, even the Irish themselves, in the
manufacturing centers of New England that they must not be dismissed
without remark.
The Canadian-French were recently described in a grave State paper as a
"horde of industrial invaders," and accused of caring nothing for American
institutions, civil, political, or educational; having come to the States,
not to make a home, but to get together a little money, and then to return
whence they came. The parent of these immigrants is the Canadian
_habitan,_ a peasant proprietor, farming a few acres, living
parsimoniously, marrying early, and producing a large family, who must
either clear the soils of the inclement north, or become factory
operatives in the States. They are a simple, kindly, pious, and cheerful
folk, with few wants, little energy, and no ambition; ignorant and
credulous, Catholic by religion, and devoted to the priest, who is their
oracle, friend, and guide in all the relations of life. Such are the
people--a complete contrast with Americans--who began, some twelve years
ago, to emigrate to the mills of New England. They came, not only
intending to return to their own country with their savings, but enjoined
by the Church to do so. Employers, however, soon found out the value of
the new comers, and Yankee superintendents preferred them as operatives
before any other nationality, not only on account of their tireless
industry and docility, but because they accepted lower wages, and kept
themselves clear of trade-union societies. Thus, finally, it has come
about that nearly 70 per cent. of the cotton operatives at Holyoke are of
French-Canadian origin, and the social condition of all these people is
precisely similar to that which has already been described as
characterizing the inhabitants of "Little Canada" in Lowell.
It has already been said that the average rate of inhabitancy is six
persons per house in the State of Massachusetts, but the presence of the
French in Holyoke actually doubles the inhabitancy of the whole town, with
what effect upon their own special quarter may easily be imagined.
Probably nowhere in Europe could there be found more crowded houses, and
worse physical conditions of life, than in the quarters inhabited by
certain alien operatives in many manufacturing towns of the United States.
Sharp contrasts as they are, these sketches fairly picture the heights and
depths of industrial conditions in a region which, as I would again remind
you, contains nearly one-half of all the factory operatives in America.
More than this, while the States in question would yield to no others
their claims to represent advanced civilization, Massachusetts, the
creation of the Puritan refugees, and the cradle of American independence,
stands confessedly at the head of all her sister States for enlightened
philanthropy. There are no greater lovers of right, honorers of industry,
and friends to education in the world than its people, yet the present
social condition of Holyoke and of Lowell, as of many other manufacturing
cities, would have shocked all America thirty years ago, and been
impossible less than half a century back. It is time we should ask, How is
America going to treat a problem, formerly the danger and still the
perplexity of Europe, for which democratic institutions have failed to
furnish the solution once confidently, but unfairly, expected from them?
The State, the Church, and the School are all doing their best to prevent
the lapse to lower conditions which seems to threaten labor in the States,
each of them trying their utmost to "make Americans" of alien laborers, by
means of the political, religious, and educational institutions of the
country. How inadequate these unaided agencies are for the accomplishment
of their gigantic task is nowhere so clearly realized as in the common, or
free, schools of the States. These, in districts such as I have
distinguished as "American," are filled with boys and girls, of all ages
from five to eighteen, whose appearance and intelligence bespeak high
social conditions. Whatever the occupation which these young people may
ultimately adopt--and all of them are destined for work-a-day lives--an
observer feels quite sure that they are more likely to raise the character
of their several employments, than to be themselves degraded to lower
social levels, on quitting school.
But no similar confidence in the future of American labor is engendered by
visits to the schools where sits the progeny of alien labor. In the case
of the Canadians, indeed, parents and priests alike bend all their
energies to the establishment of "parochial schools," which, if they
forward the cause of the Church, do little for education in the American
sense of requiring good citizens, even more than good scholars, at the
hands of the national teachers.
The primary schools of great industrial towns, such as Fall River, the
Manchester of America, are filled, to quite as great an extent as similar
schools in Europe, with ignorant, ragged, and bare-footed urchins. These
children are, indeed, no less well cared for and taught than their Yankee
fellows, and one cannot sufficiently admire the energy and enthusiasm with
which school-teachers generally endeavor to "make Americans" of their
stolid and ragged little alien charges. In these cases, however, where
often the children have had no schooling at all before they are old enough
to work, it is quite clear that the school cannot do all that is required
to raise the labor of to-day up to the levels it occupied in the past.
And, if the school itself is ineffective in this regard, how much more so
must be the Church, to which immigrant youth is a comparative stranger; or
those democratic institutions which are based, to quote the words of
Washington himself, upon "the virtue and intelligence of the people."
Whether the present condition of labor in America will ever again be
lifted to the levels of the past depends, in truth, less upon the State,
the Church, and the School, than upon the part which the American employer
is taking or about to take in this question. It is impossible for any
unprejudiced observer to be long in the States, and especially in the New
England States, without coming to the conclusion that a large number of
employers are very anxious about the character of the labor they employ,
and willing to assist to the utmost of their power in improving it. In
spite of the love of money and luxury which is so conspicuous a feature of
certain sections of American society, a high ideal of the proper function
of wealth has arisen in the States, where large fortunes are chiefly
things of recent date, among large and influential classes having an
enlightened regard for the best welfare of the country. This regard finds
expression now in the establishment of a factory, managed with one eye on
profits and another on the elevation of the artisan, and now in the
endowment of free libraries or similar institutions, offering
opportunities of improvement to all.
To give only a few instances of the former movement: Mr. Pullman, the
great car-builder, has recently established, on Lake Calumet, a vast
system of workshops and workmen's homes, a description of which reads like
a chapter from More's "Utopia." The Waterbury Watch Company has lately
built a factory, employing 600 hands, on similar lines to those of Mr.
Pullman. Cheney Brothers' silk mills at South Manchester remain now, after
Irish labor has entirely taken the place of native hands, at almost the
same high level as that which, in common with Lowell, they held forty
years ago. Messrs. Fairbanks, of St. Johnsbury, in Vermont, conduct a
large establishment, where every married _employe_ owns a house in the
village, almost an Eden for beauty and order, which has grown up around
these remote but remarkable scale works. Similarly, the Cranes at Dalton,
in Massachusetts; Messrs. Brown, Sharpe and Co., at Providence, Rhode
Island; Mr. Hazard at Peacedale, Narragansett; and last, not least, Col.
Barrows, at Willimantic, in Connecticut, have all succeeded in restoring
the past conditions of native American labor among operatives, now, for
the most part, of alien origin.
I wish that time permitted me to sketch, however briefly, the mills to
which I have last alluded. It must suffice to say that the devoted labors
of Col. Barrows, President of the Willimantic Thread Co., have succeeded
in creating, out of Irish labor, social conditions of industrial life
which approach ideal perfection as nearly as the work of imperfect man can
possibly do. And, better still, the high morality and intelligence of Col.
Barrow's 1,600 operatives, the comfort and seemliness of their homes, the
cleanly and cheerful character of the mill work, even the refinements of
the music and art schools attached to the mill, can be proved, by hard
figures, to be paying factors in the undertaking, viewed from a purely
commercial standpoint.
So far, I have endeavored to show that a great contrast exists between
what once was and now is the condition of factory labor in America. I
have, further, described certain survivals of an earlier and happier state
of things, and indicated the forces now at work tending to lift the
Holyoke of to-day, for example, to the social levels of old Lowell. I have
given my reasons for believing that the democratic institutions of America
are incapable, unaided, of accomplishing such a task as this charge
implies, and concluded that its accomplishment depends mainly on the
action of the American employer. What this action as a whole, and what,
therefore, the future of labor in America is likely to be, I confess
myself in grave doubt--doubt from which I turn, with something like a
sense of relief, to discuss those economical considerations affecting
wage-earners which have hitherto been made to give place to social
inquiries.
We have now to ask what are the wages of labor in the States, their
relation to the cost of subsistence, and to wages and cost of subsistence
in our own country? Finally, I shall briefly consider certain propositions
of the American political economist which are so inextricably mixed up
with the question of labor and wages in the States that it is impossible
to discuss the one without taking some note of the other.
Until quite recently, no complete investigation, bringing the rates of
wages paid in industries common to the United States and European
countries, has ever been made, although the results of such an
investigation have been constantly and earnestly called for both by the
press and people of America. Permit me to remark, in passing, that we know
little in this country of the desire for full, trustworthy, and accessible
statistics, concerning all matters of national interest, which dominates
the public mind of America; and as little of the willingness with which
American citizens of all classes place the particulars of their private
business at the service of the statistician. This desire for statistical
bases whereon the statesman and economist may build, is vividly
illustrated by that publication, perhaps the most wonderful in the whole
world, entitled a "Compendium of the Census of the United States," issued
with every decade. These volumes, accessible to everybody, and arranged
with marvelous skill and lucidity, offer to the social observer a
complete, accurate, and suggestive survey of every field comprised within
the vast domain of the national interests. An evening's address would not
more than suffice to indicate the scope and appraise the value of this
work, which is a mine wherein, the ore ready dressed to his hand, the
politico-economic or industrial essayist might work for years without
exhausting its riches.
But the United States Census does not treat specifically of wages and
subsistence, and it is to the Massachusetts Labor Bureau that we must
again turn for such information as we now require. Dr. Edward Young,
indeed, the late chief of the United States Bureau of Statistics,
published an elaborate work upon this subject in 1875, but his comparisons
as to the relative cost of living in America and Europe, good in
themselves, are rendered of little value by the absence of such statistics
as would give the true percentage of difference between American and
foreign wages. Several elaborate wages reports were also published between
1879 and 1882, which, while they gave the American side of the question
with great fullness, presented foreign wages very incompletely.
Always, however, impressed with the importance of making an accurate
comparison between wages and the cost of subsistence on the two sides of
the Atlantic, but unable to undertake a very wide inquiry with the funds
at its disposal, the Massachusetts Bureau determined, in the fall of 1883,
upon reducing to narrower limits than heretofore the field of
investigation. Instead of America and Europe, Massachusetts and Great
Britain were selected for comparison, the former as the chief
manufacturing State of America, the latter as her leading competitor.
With this view, a number of agents were sent to gather personally, from
the pay rolls of American and English manufactories, the rates of wages
paid in twenty-four of the leading industries which are common to the two
districts respectively. It was, at first, sought to extend the inquiry to
thirty-five different industries, a number which would practically have
covered the whole ground, but nine of these were finally abandoned for
want of sufficient British information.
It is a perfectly easy thing, as already indicated, to gather wage or
other statistics in the counting-houses of Massachusetts manufactories,
but quite a different matter when a collection of similar information is
attempted in this country, where most proprietors are unwilling, and many
altogether refuse, to give any information regarding their industries.
The following table, of which an enlarged facsimile, marked A, appears on
the wall, specifies the twenty-four industries from which the returns in
question were made, and the number of establishments making such returns
in each industry in either country:
_Table A_.
Industries. Massachusetts. Great Britain. Total
Agricultural implements 4 1 5
Artisans' tools 3 4 7
Boots and shoes 18 2 20
Brick 3 1 4
Building trades 32 24 56
Carpetings 1 1 2
Carriages and Wagons 11 3 14
Clothing 10 4 14
Cotton goods 10 9 19
Flax and jute goods 2 3 5
Food preparations 5 2 7
Furniture 11 1 12
Glass 1 3 4
Hats (fur wool and silk) 3 2 5
Hosiery 5 3 8
Liquors (malt and distilled) 10 1 11
Machines and machinery 12 15 27
Metals and metallic goods 25 13 38
Printing and publishing 12 7 19
Printing, dyeing and bleaching etc 3 4 7
Stone 10 1 11
Wooden goods 12 1 13
Woolen goods 4 2 6
Worsted goods 3 3 6
210 110 320
Thirty-two cities in Massachusetts, and twenty-six in Great Britain, were
visited in search of returns, of which almost all our great industrial
centers yield their quota.
It being, of course, impossible to obtain wage returns for all the
_employes_ of these various industries in either country, the
investigation aimed at covering at least 10 per cent. of such totals, and,
in the case of Massachusetts, succeeded in getting returns for 36,000
hands, or 13 per cent. of the whole number of artisans employed in the
twenty-four industries examined. Great Britain, on the other hand, made
returns for about half that number of hands, but their proportion to the
totals employed cannot be similarly stated, first, because we have here no
specific industrial census, and, second, because many of the English
returns were made for an indefinite number of _employes_.
The comparison was made in the following way: For each of the twenty-four
industries, a table, consisting of four sections, was constructed, viz.,
"Occupation," "Aggregation," "Recapitulation," and "Comparison." The first
gave the names of the various branches of each industry, classifying these
as minutely as possible, because the names indicating subdivisions of
labor are, generally, so different in the two countries that the actual
"matching" of occupations, desirable for a perfect comparison, is
impossible. The second, or "Aggregation" section, brings the various
occupations in the same industry into juxtaposition, and supplies
opportunities for direct comparison. The third, or "Recapitulation"
section, is drawn from the "Occupation" section, and shows the number of
men, women, young persons, and children for whom wages are given; whether
these are paid by the day, or by piece; and whether the wage returns show
the actual amounts paid to a definite number of _employes_, or an average
wage for a definite or an indefinite number of _employes_. The fourth, or
"Comparison" section, brings the highest, lowest, and general average
weekly wages into final comparison.
The first three sections of the table, being either simply enumerative or
collective in character, are easily understood without illustration, but
an example of the "Comparative" section, marked Table B, hangs on the
wall, and shows all the final comparisons at a glance.
_Table B_.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
---------------------------------------
Classification. |Massac- | Great | Massac- | Great
|husetts.| Britain.| husetts.| Britain.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Average highest weekly | dols. | dols. | dols. | dols.
wage paid to-- | | | |
Men | 37.00 | 13.39 | 25.41 | 11.36
Women | 5.50 | ... | 8.57 | 4.10
Young persons | 7.00 | 3.65 | 6.94 | 3.04
Children | 5.70 | ... | 4.64 | 1.05
| | | |
Average lowest weekly wage | | | |
paid to-- | | | |
Men | 7.60 | 3.21 | 7.09 | 4.72
Women | 5.00 | ... | 4.62 | 2.27
Young women | 4.50 | 1.46 | 4.26 | 1.66
Children | 3.00 | ... | 3.09 | .60
| | | |
Average weekly wages | | | |
paid to-- | | | |
Men | 12.04 | 8.07 | 11.85 | 8.26
Women | 5.12 | ... | 6.09 | 3.37
Young persons | 5.76 | 2.52 | 5.10 | 2.40
Children---- | 5.31 | ... | 3.81 | .79
---------------------------------------
General average weekly wage | | | |
paid to all _employes_ | 11.75 | 8.07 | 10.32 | 6.96
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Result: General average | |
weekly wages higher in | 45.60 | 48.28
Massachusetts by per cent | per cent. | per cent.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
The two first columns of the table are simply illustrative of the method
applied to a single industry, exhibiting the highest average, lowest
average, and average weekly wages, whether to men, women, young persons,
or children, in the particular business of "machine-making," together with
the general average wages paid to all the _employes_ in such industry. The
general average weekly wages in this industry are thus shown to be 45.6
per cent. higher in Massachusetts than in Great Britain.
The 3d and 4th columns of the table consolidate all the twenty-four
industries, and yield, in similar terms, as in the case of machine-making,
an average comparison applying to the whole group of industries under
examination, giving, as a grand result, that the general average weekly
wages of Massachusetts are higher by 48.28 per cent. than those of Great
Britain.
It is, however, explained that the British wage returns were made in three
different ways, viz., for a definite number of _employes_, by percentage
returns, and by general returns; both of the latter being for an
indefinite number of _employes_. Where more than one wage-basis was given,
the highest figure was used in the calculations, and, this being the case
in eighteen out of the twenty-four industries, its effects on the grand
result are considerable; for, by crediting Great Britain with the
_average_ instead of the _high_ weekly wage, the average percentage in
favor of Massachusetts rises from 48.28 per cent. to 75.94 per cent.
In order truly to indicate the higher percentage of average weekly wages
in Massachusetts, we must, therefore, agree upon a figure somewhere
between these two extremes, viz., that of 48.28 per cent., derived from
tables in which Great Britain is credited with the high wage, and that of
75.94 per cent., derived from those tables in which she is credited with
the average of the returns made upon the different bases. The mean of
these figures is 62.11 per cent., which is considered to be the result of
the investigation, and may be formulated as follows: The general average
weekly wages paid to _employes_ in twenty-four manufacturing industries
common to Massachusetts and Great Britain is 62 per cent., higher in the
former than the general average weekly wages paid in the same industries
in the latter country.
But the question of wages forms only one side of the working man's
account; on the other stands the cost of living, and no comparisons of
prosperity, in given industrial communities, are of any value which omit
to take into consideration the relative ease with which such communities
can procure the means of subsistence. Table C presents a summary of
prices, gathered in 1883, of the chief items in a working man's
expenditure, and their cost in Massachusetts and Great Britain.
_Table C_.
---------------------------------------------------------
Articles. |Percentage higher | Percentage higher
| in Mass. | in Great Britain
---------------------------------------------------------
Groceries | 16.18 | -
Provisions | - | 20.00
Fuel | 104.98 | -
Dry goods | 13.26 | -
Boots and shoes | 42.75 | -
Clothing | 45.06 | -
Rents | 89.62 | -
---------------------------------------------------------
Having agreed that wages are probably 62 per cent. higher in
Massachusetts than in Great Britain, it would be easy, if we could
ascertain what proportion of a working man's income is spent respectively
in groceries, provisions, clothing, etc., to determine what advantage an
operative derives from the higher wages of the United States. Dr. Engel,
the chief of the Prussian Bureau of Statistics, puts us in possession of
this information, and, as the result of a laborious inquiry, has
formulated a certain economic law which governs the relations between
income and expenditure. From him we learn (see Table D) that:
_Table D_.
A working man with an income of £60 per annum
spends as follows:
Per cent.
of income. Shillings.
/ meat.... 248
1. On subsistence 62 or \ groceries 496
2. " clothing 16 " 192
3. " rent 12 " 144
4. " fuel 5 " 60
5. " sundries 5 " 60
------
Total shillings 1,200
Or £60
Now, referring to Table C, it will be seen that the same man's expenditure
in America would be:
Shillings. S.
1. On subsistence / meat.... 248 - 20 p.c. = 198.4
\ groceries 496 + 16 " = 575.3
2. " clothing 192 + 45 " = 278.4
3. " rent 144 + 89 " = 272.1
4. " fuel 60 + 104 " = 122.0
5. " sundries 60 + 50 " = 90.0
--------
Total 1,536.2
Or £76 16s.
In other words, a workman earning £60 per annum in Great Britain would
receive £99, or 62 per cent. more wages in the States, but living there
would cost him £77, or £17 more than here, giving him a net advantage of
only 28 per cent., instead of 62 per cent., derived from living and
working in America.
But this result does not exhaust the question. The standard of life is
very different among working men in the States and in Great Britain, and
the almost inexhaustible statistics of the report, already so often
quoted, enable us to gauge this difference with accuracy. It has been
proved, by a recent investigation, whose details we need not follow, that
the expenditure of working men's families, of similar size, in
Massachusetts and in Great Britain, stand to each other in the ratio of 15
to 10. By introducing this new factor into our calculations, we find that
a man who spends £60 per annum in England would spend £90, instead of £77,
per annum in the States, paying American prices for subsistence, and
living up to American standards. In other words, he would be a gainer to
the extent of only £9 per annum by living and working in the United
States. Finally, if we presume that 48 or 50 per cent., rather than 62 per
cent., measures the higher wages of Massachusetts, the same man's
increased wages would be £90 instead of £99, and he would-neither lose nor
gain in money by becoming an American citizen, and adopting American
habits.
That these conclusions agree with those rough and ready practical
illustrations which, without being scientific, are generally trustworthy,
let the following story evidence.
Some years ago, a skillful moulder, in my then firm's employ, left us for
the States, where he permanently settled. After a long absence, he
returned for a few weeks' holiday, when I asked him whether he earned
higher wages and found life more agreeable in America than in England.
"Well, as to money" was his reply, "I think, taking all things into
consideration, I did about as well in the old shop as I do now; but,
socially speaking, I am somebody there, while here I am only a moulder."
Social advantage, indeed, probably measures almost all the difference
between the position of a skilled factory operative in the States and in
England.
Let me not seem, however, to undervalue that difference. Statistics, after
all, do not dominate human nature; on the contrary, human nature
determines the statistician's figures. Every artisan emigrant to America
gains opportunities of advancement of which his European fellows know
nothing. If he have brains, the way to success is open there, while it is
practically barred to anything short of genius for men of his class in
Europe. Our Australian colonies, where unskilled labor can earn 7s. 6d. a
day, and live for a trifle, are, indeed, a paradise for the mere
wage-earner, who can scarcely help becoming also a wage-saver; but America
is the country which, with wage conditions such as I have attempted to
portray, still offers the best possible opportunities of success, and even
of great careers, to clever working men, and especially to clever
mechanics. That man, however, is not worthy of a home in the great
republic, who does not appreciate the higher social levels at which native
labor desires to live, who is not anxious to make the most of the
advantages which democratic institutions offer him, who does not, in
short, ardently desire to become a "good American."
There remains the question already alluded to as inextricably bound up
with American labor problems: How does the American tariff affect wages?
The idea that these are determinable by the tariff is the corner stone of
protection in the States. The artisan has been so sedulously educated to
believe that the chief object of import duties is to protect him from
falling into a ruinous competition with what is called the "pauper labor
of Europe," that no movement on the part of workmen in the direction of
free trade is ever likely to arise in America. I am not now about to argue
the question of protection, except in so far as it relates to labor; but
it may be remarked, in passing, that internal competition, rather than the
people, is the enemy from whom the tariff will probably receive its death
blow in the future. Protection will ultimately break down by its own
weight in the States. Production already exceeds demand, the cry for a
"wider market" and for "raw materials free" is in every manufacturer's
mouth; and if America upholds her protective legislation too long, the
produce of her factories and mills will, by and by, force its way, in
spite of the tariff, into the open markets of the world, but it will be
through the gate of national suffering. Few people in this country are, I
think, aware of the extraordinary fervor with which the doctrine that
protection benefits labor is preached in the States. We are ourselves
accustomed to hear the question of free trade argued only from the
economic standpoint, but this is by no means so commonly the case in
America. I shall try, by paraphrasing certain recent addresses of an able
personal friend and enthusiastic protectionist, to illustrate the position
taken by those persons who advocate the tariff, not upon economic grounds,
but in the avowed interests of labor.
Referring to the words "Free Trade," the speaker in question begins by
asking, "What is the essential nature of that which we call trade?" And
answers himself as follows:
"The grim, ugly fact is that trade is a fight, the markets are battle
fields, the traders are gladiators, carrying on a true war around
questions of values, with no care whether the opposing party or the
community at large can afford that the trade is made. This contest is
always going on, whether a lady buys a pair of gloves, or a syndicate
corners Erie. Antagonism is so fixed an element of trade, and so often
defeats the object it blindly follows, as to make laws which seek to
mitigate the ferocity of the struggle as welcome to the far-sighted man of
business as they are to the foredoomed victims of this relentless
warfare."
On the other hand, competition is said to be a--
"Wonder worker in developing energy in the strongest individuals, and
massing wealth in masterful states; but, since competitive trading can
never be wholly beneficent, it should be strictly controlled, in the
interests of the toiling millions, who are too weak successfully to oppose
its attacks. The results of forcing on the naturally weak, by means of
competition, hard and unequal bargains which are evaded by the strong, are
appalling in their magnitude, dividing whole peoples permanently into
castes, rich and poor, injuring the former by excess, and the latter by
deprivation, making a nation strong in the trading instinct, and rich in
accumulated wealth, but weak and poor in all its other parts. This abuse
is saddest of all when, failing to be recognized as an evil, the doctrines
of free trade are wrought into the policy and social life of a people."
Protective remedies for this state of things are introduced as follows:
"Wherever the value of competition has been fully recognized, but
supplemented by wise control of its energies, the results are excellent.
This fact forms the foundation of our protective laws, whose very name
'protective' implies assailants; those hard bargains, to wit, driven on
the fighting side of trade, under the motto of 'let the fittest survive.'
When a small army is attacked by a large one, it covers itself by
earthworks. Similarly, where there are sheep, and wolves abound, the
farmer puts up fences which effectually protect his flock; and, in the
same way, tariffs are 'forts,' whence the artisan may hope successfully to
defend himself against the attacks of his powerful and unscrupulous enemy,
capital; or they may even be considered as a pistol, which a little fellow
points at a big bully who threatens him with a thrashing."
Such are the arguments which are urged with great fervor, and immense
effect, upon the American artisan, who fully and firmly believes that
protection is the only agent capable of lifting his lot above those,
dreaded levels at which the "pauper labor of Europe" is universally
believed to live.
The simple answer to all this rhetoric appears to be that, while it might
be valid as an indictment of the competitive system as a whole, it is
valueless when directed against a part of that system only. Advocates who
are not prepared to say that every bargain shall be controlled by
beneficence, and who distinctly admire the chief results of competition,
cannot logically demand that labor, alone of all salable commodities,
shall be bought and sold on altruistic principles.
In what immediately precedes, I have endeavored to indicate the character
of the pleadings which make American artisans universally supporters of
the tariff, and we must now return to the question, What, after all, is
really the effect of protection on wages in America? I answer that no
legislative schemes can add to, although they may injure, the material
resources of a state. Capital can only support the labor for which the
annual harvest of such resources pays, and all that legislation can do is
artificially to divert labor and capital from directions which they would
take under the influence of natural laws.
America is selling, at the present time, about £160,000,000 worth of food
and other raw products in Europe. These, together, represent her chief
branch of business, in which nearly fifty per cent. of her population is
engaged, and all this merchandise is sold in the free trade markets of the
world. Wages in America, therefore, cannot possibly be regulated by the
tariff, because, whatever wages can be earned by men engaged in the
production of agricultural products--the prices of which are fixed in
Liverpool--must be the rate of wages which will substantially be paid in
other branches of business. Wages, like water, seek a level; if
manufacture pays best, labor will quit agriculture; if agriculture pays
best, manufactures will decline, and agriculture progress.
A glance at the condition of industrial society in America vividly
illustrates this conclusion. Any man, with a few dollars and a strong pair
of arms, can win far greater rewards from the soil than he could possibly
obtain by the same effort in Europe. His wages are high, because the grade
of comfort to be obtained from the land by means of a little labor is
high, and the artisans' wages must follow suit, if men are to be tempted
from the field into the workshop. American politicians, however, would
have us believe that American labor owes its prosperity to taxation; in
other words, that what the immigrant seeks is not the rich prizes offered
him by a free and fertile soil, but the blessings which flow from a tariff
that adds an average 40 per cent. to the cost of everything he needs
except food.
One more illustration, and I have done. Upon the wall hangs a diagram
which shows the movements of American wages, of English wages, and of the
tariff from 1860 to 1883. I have already argued that a tariff cannot
determine wages, and the diagram affords positive proof that it has not
determined them in America, as between 1860 and the present time. On the
contrary, their movements are evidently due to the same causes as have
influenced wages here during this period, while it is certainly remarkable
that they have fallen sooner, fallen lower, and recovered less completely
in America, where industry is "protected," than in Great Britain, were it
is "unprotected."
Shortly to recapitulate all that has been advanced, I have endeavored to
show:
1st. That a great change has occurred in the social condition of labor in
the United States during the last forty years, and that, spite of all the
existing agencies of improvement, it is doubtful whether the working
classes of America are not, at the present moment, falling still further
from those high ideals of operative life which once so brilliantly
distinguished the United States from European countries.
2d. That, although wages are probably some 60 per cent. higher in the
chief manufacturing districts of America than in Great Britain, yet an
English artisan would find himself little richer there than at home, after
paying the enhanced prices for subsistence, and conforming to the higher
standard of life which prevails in the States. At the same time, his whole
social position and opportunities of advancement would be immensely
improved.
3d. I have tried to demonstrate that the tariff, to which the higher wages
of America are so confidently attributed, has really no influence whatever
upon them, and that it is not therefore an engine, such as it is glowingly
represented to the American artisan, constructed for the purpose of
raising his lot above that of the so-called "pauper labor of Europe." Any
inquiry into the character of the work really accomplished by the engine
in question would lead me into regions of controversy forbidden in this
room.
Finally, if I am asked why, in a review of American labor and wages, I
have said nothing of trade unionism on the one hand, and of co-operative
production on the other, I can only answer that to have introduced these
among so many other interesting, but subsidiary, subjects which crowd
around questions of labor and wages, would have doubled the volume of this
address, and more than halved the patience with which you have kindly
listened to it.
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