Mary Elting

“ There are even very quick ways of loading and unloading. Machines called gantries stand on the pier where the ship ties up. The gantries carry the big bunches of bananas in soft canvas pockets arranged in an endless chain. Men on the dock lay the bunches, one after another into the pockets. Men inside the ship take them out and stow them away.
A banana boat sailor does just about the same things that sailors on other cargo vessels do. He steers and stands lookout and works on deck. And like all sailors he has lifeboat drills. Every ship that sails the seas must have lifeboats. ”

“ Charlie is the man who can tell you about driving a caterpillar tractor. He works in a city, helping to put up big buildings, and he knows how to use other construction machines, too. In fact, Charlie grew up with machines, for his father and his uncles and his grandfather were construction workers. It often happens that families pass along their knowledge of building from the older to the younger men, and they are very proud of their skills. Charlie uses the caterpillar tractor with a bulldozer blade to push heaps of earth and rock into a pile, ready for the shovel to load on a truck. ”

“ On many new height trains the conductor or the brakeman can call immediately by radio telephone and tell the engineer to stop for a stinker. But on older trains, the conductor can only pull the emergency air-brake, which stops the whole train fast.
Although a hot box is dangerous, it’s easy to remedy. The box only needs to be re-packed with fresh oil-soaked waste.
Everybody who works on a railroad watches for smoking journal boxes. Suppose a freight train has stopped on a siding to let a fast passenger train go by. The head freight brakeman stands beside the track. ”

“ Maybe you think the conductor of a passenger train is only the man who takes tickets and says “All Aboard.” But he really is the boss of the whole train. Even the engineer must follow his signals. That’s why they call the conductor the Captain.
The brakeman is the conductor’s helper. Together they collect tickets or fares and help passengers on and off at stations.
On the slick, fast trains called streamliners the conductor has quite a job to do. Many of the passengers are making long trips, so they have complicated tickets that allow them to stop at several places and then come home again. ”

“ In one minute its scoop can bite out as much dirt as 3,600 men could dig just using their muscles to lift ordinary hand shovels!
The giant shovel is one of the biggest machines ever made, but there’s another that can lift even bulkier things. It is an overhead crane that works in a shipyard.
Often the crane hoists big boilers out of ships so that repair men can work on them. It is so huge that it carries another crane on its back. The piggy-back crane—that’s its real name—reaches down and lifts things off the deck of the ship, too. ”

“ A ship is a marvellous thing. It took ships—and the men who sail them—to circle the world and tie it all together into one round ball. Brave seamen from a thousand ports have faced storms and unknown dangers, first to make the world a bigger place for people to live in, then to bring all people close together. ”

“ More than forty different kinds of locomotive work for the railroads. Some of them haul freight, and some are passenger train engines. Some are steam locomotives, some are not.
Steam locomotives all need water to make the steam that makes the wheels turn. But they don’t all get it in the same way. One kind never has to stop and wait for its tender to be filled. Instead it has a scoop that dips down as the engine passes over a long track-pan of water set between the rails. With no time lost, the scoop sucks up water into the tank. ”

“ Many people call road rollers “steam rollers.” That’s because the first ones really were driven by steam engines. Men have a lot less fuss and bother with a modern Diesel-engined tandem. There’s no need to start the fire or shovel coal to keep steam up. You can still see some steam rollers at work, though, because they are strong machines that last a long time. But when one wears out, it is replaced with a modern roller.
After the roller finished smoothing all the asphalt down, Charlie’s road was ready for traffic, but the job still wasn’t quite done. ”

“ But a ferry could never go to sea. She is built very broad, with very little of her under the water and a great deal above. Big ocean waves would tip her over.
Men have used ferries from the earliest times. Hundreds and even thousands of years ago people and animals were ferried across rivers on rafts. Even today there are raft-like ferries which men guide across our rivers by steel cables.
Train ferries take loaded freight cars across harbors where there are no railroad{80} bridges. In some harbors, the cars travel on flat-bottomed barges which tugboats shove along. ”

“ Some railroads have solved the problem with bombs! Into every journal box go two little gadgets that explode when an unoiled axle begins to heat up. One bomb lets out a big puff of smoke that can easily be seen. The other spills a nasty smelling gas that is sure to make passengers complain, in case the conductor doesn’t notice it himself. ”

“ The sea anchor floats ahead of the boat and keeps it pointed toward the wind,{46} while the oil drips slowly out and calms the waves. It’s important to be pointed into the wind, because a boat that bobs around sidewise can easily be tipped over by a wave. Long ago sailors discovered what a wonderful help oil can be in stormy weather, and that’s where the expression “oil on troubled waters” came from. It means to calm things down.
A blast from the ship’s whistle tells seamen when it’s time for lifeboat drill. Every man knows which boat he’s supposed to use. ”

“ Cotton is a crop that has always taken an enormous amount of work. Even after cultivating machines were invented, men had to go through the fields twice every year and hoe out weeds around the plants by hand. One farmer rigged up a contraption that made hoeing{37} easier. He hitched an air compressor to his tractor and ran hoses from the compressor to four special hoes. Then the escaping air jiggled the hoes in the men’s hands and saved the work of swinging them up and down.
Nowadays some of the big cotton farmers have an easier way of solving the problem. ”

“ A railroad yard is a noisy place. Usually the engineer can’t possibly talk with a switchman down the track, no matter how loud he shouts. So railroaders have{33} worked out a whole sign language in which they can talk to each other from a distance. The pictures tell what some of these special signals mean.
After a new freight train has been made up at the classification yard, a car inspector puts a blue flag on the engine and another on the caboose. Then he checks up carefully on the whole train to make sure everything is in good working order. ”

“ The old-fashioned engines that used to explode are gone now. So are the candles and whale-oil lamps that lighted ships. All these caused fires in wooden vessels. But even today, when most ships are made of steel, with fireproofing equipment, there’s work for fireboats to do.
The seamen aboard fireboats belong to the Fire Department. They do deck work or engine work, and they also handle the pumps and nozzles that shoot enormous streams of water. The pumps suck in water through holes in the side of the boat and force it through hoses and nozzles that can be aimed like big guns. ”

“ The giant shovel digs; the overhead crane lifts; the pile driver pounds. All machines multiply the power that’s in the muscles of men—or of animals. The pushingest animal is an elephant. In some places in the world, elephants are trained to clear land by putting their foreheads against a tree and heaving until the tree topples over.
A tree-dozer can out-push an elephant. The one in the picture has a special forehead built in front. With a slow, steady shove, it clears the way for roads or opens up fields for farms.
Farmers used to dig their fields by hand. ”

“ Most loaded freight cars weigh between forty and eighty tons.
Sometimes a factory wants to ship a very tall machine by freight. So the railroad has it loaded onto an underslung flat car that looks as if it had had a bite taken out of its middle. It’s called a depressed center car.
But still the machine may stick up too high to go through underpasses. Then a special department gets to work figuring out what to do. Men who know every mile of track work out a route that has no low underpasses. This sometimes means that the machine will make a dozen detours before it is delivered. ”

“ DRILLING MACHINES
Everybody knows that oil wells and derricks go together. The tall derrick towers are needed to hoist drilling equipment in and out of the hole.
When men start to drill a well, they fasten a cutting tool, called a bit, to a piece of pipe which hangs upright{70} in the derrick. Machinery turns the whole thing round and round, so that the bit grinds down into the earth. When one length of pipe, called a joint, has almost disappeared into the hole, men screw another joint onto the top of it. Now the engine turns the double-length pipe, and the bit digs down deeper. ”

“ Today the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey carries on the work Hassler started. Using many ships and small boats with marvellous equipment, the scientific men of the sea go about their important and often dangerous work. It’s their job to map the earth that lies under the oceans, rivers and harbors. ”

“ Fast freight cars, and slow ones, too, now have air brakes which are squeezed against the wheels by compressed air. Every car has an air hose that runs underneath it to the brake machinery. The hose from each car can be joined to the hose on the ones behind and in front, and finally to the locomotive’s hose. A pump in the locomotive compresses the air for the whole train. Now if the engineer wants to stop, he just moves a lever. A whoosh of air tightens the brakes on every car. ”

“ People often call the shovel a “steam shovel,” but that’s not its right name. You hardly ever see a real steam shovel any more. Years ago the big digging machines were driven by regular steam engines. Before they could start to work on a job, the men had to build a fire in the boiler and wait until they had enough steam pressure to make the shovel go. Of course, this wasted a lot of time. So, when very strong gasoline and Diesel engines came along, builders began using them for their shovels instead of steam engines. ”

“ On some ships there is a big piston, like the driving rod on railroad engine wheels. One end of it moves in a circle. The oiler has to squirt oil in a little cup at the end of the piston. Every time the cup swings up where he can reach it, he aims his oil can. He is very careful to aim straight. If he misses the cup, oil splashes all over.
No matter how careful he is, some oil does get spilled and spattered around. It is the job of the oiler{31} to wipe it up and to polish all the brass fixtures, which he calls the brightwork. On deck, ordinary seamen polish the brightwork. ”

“ Not every freight yard has a hump or car retarders or radio telephones. Only the biggest ones have all these{31} things. In many yards the switch engine pushes the whole train first onto one track and then onto another, dropping a car each time.
There are several kinds of switch engine, built especially for their jobs. But switching is often done with very old engines that aren’t fast enough for regular runs any more. Railroad men call an old wheezy engine a teakettle. An ordinary switch engine is a bobtail or a yard goat. ”

“ Harbors and rivers must be kept safe for ships. If mud and sand pile up in a thick layer on the bottom, ships may get stuck. So dredges go to work clearing the mud and sand away. Often a clean-up job takes a long time. The men who run the machinery live on board the dredge, just as sailors live on a ship.
Some dredges have scoops that dig under water. Others, like the one in the picture, use giant suction pumps. The mud or sand they suck up is called spoil.{15}
If there’s hard-caked mud on the bottom, cutter heads break it up. ”

“ A tug is a vessel that looks small but has an enormously powerful engine—an engine almost as big as one that moves a cargo ship. In fact, the tugboat’s job is to push and pull cargo and passenger ships around. ”

“ The engineer and the fireman sit in the cab at the very front of a Diesel-electric. They can watch the track through front windows.
The cab is at the front of the engine shown on this page, too, but it is a steam locomotive. It burns oil instead of coal, so the cab doesn’t have to be right next to the tender. The men call it the Big Wamp. It hauls tremendously long freight trains across the Rocky{40} Mountains. One siding where the men stop to eat is so long that there has to be a restaurant at each end! ”

“ Men do nothing but throw the junk away and let the beets slide into the truck that travels alongside.
A farmer always has to keep an eye on what his implements are doing, unless he has a helper who rides along on machines like this big reaper. When the tractor{43}
{44}
pulls a cultivator or a planter, the driver must turn his head often to see how the work is going. For a long time, farmers complained that this was a pain in the neck, and they really meant that their necks hurt from turning so much. ”

“ Machinery pulls the whale up the ramp and onto the deck. There men with knives that look like big hockey sticks cut up the blubber and throw it into vats where the whale oil is boiled out.{49}
Hour after hour the killer boats bring in whales, sometimes forty or fifty a day—or even more! Everybody works day and night, with very little time to eat and sleep. The oil tanks in the factory ship begin to fill up. Now an ordinary tanker comes alongside. The whale oil is pumped from the factory ship to the tanker which delivers it at some big port thousands of miles away. ”

“ A whole train made up of nothing but cars loaded with coal is called a black snake. Since rain and snow won’t hurt coal, it travels in cars without tops. One kind of coal car has sloping ends like the one on this page. It is called a hopper car. You load the coal in at the top, but you unload it by opening trapdoors in the bottom which let the coal drop into chutes.
Coal also travels in gondolas, which are just square-ended bins on wheels. They have to be unloaded by hand or by a dumping machine. It is hard to believe how fast some of these machines work. ”

“ At ports on the Great Lakes, machines reach down into ore-carrying ships and unload them with great speed. At the end of each of these unloaders hangs a clamshell bucket. Just above the bucket is a little room where a man sits and watches what goes on. He signals to the operator, telling him just where to drop the bucket so it can pick up a mouthful of ore. The ship can be unloaded by two men who do nothing but signal to each other and push levers. But usually there are several machines working at the same time so that the job goes as quickly as possible. ”

“ Actually, they aren’t boats, although they do carry bananas. They are refrigerator ships. Seamen call them reefers—just as railroad men call a refrigerator car a reefer. Everything about a banana boat is arranged to keep her cargo cool. She is even painted white, because white things reflect some of the sun’s rays into the air{44} instead of absorbing their heat. Inside the ship, blowers send cool air circulating around the bananas all the time. It isn’t enough just to chill them once and leave them there. Bananas actually make heat themselves. ”

“ Trains cannot bump into each other when CTC is at work. It is a wonderful system of electric wires that run along the tracks, all the way to an office building in a railroad town. The wires end in a long board that’s dotted with lights and small levers. Now when train wheels travel over the rails, the wires carry electric messages to that long board. Lights flash on and tell the man who watches the board exactly where the train is. If he wants it to go onto a siding, he pushes a lever. Electric switches miles away guide the train’s wheels off the main track. ”

“ At cotton picking time, machines now do the work{38} in many places. Cotton is ready to pick when the little round heads of white fluff called bolls break open. Not all the bolls on one plant burst at the same time. A man who picks by hand can tell by looking which ones are ready. Of course the machine doesn’t have eyes, but its tiny barbed steel fingers catch up only the opened bolls. The fingers are fixed on a turning drum. They pluck the cotton from the plant, carry it around to be pulled off and blown through a big pipe into a large basket behind the driver. ”

“ When you walk around a big railroad shop, everything seems noisy and helter-skelter. Noisy it is. Wheels screech, hammers pound, fires roar. But the work is really planned out in a very orderly way. And nothing goes to waste. When big machine parts get worn down, they can often be shaved and smoothed and made over into smaller parts for a different purpose. ”

“ Today almost five hundred modern cargo vessels{61} shuttle back and forth on the Lakes, carrying the wealth that the descendants of those pioneers have created.
A Great Lakes ship doesn’t look like any other. She is broad and low and very long—so long, in fact that she is less rigid than most ships. Seamen say she feels “willowy” if she steams along in heavy weather after her cargo is unloaded. The wheelhouse of a Lakes ship is forward in the bow, along with quarters for the officers and a few passengers. The engine and the crew’s quarters are away at the stern. ”

“ It would take a whole book just to list the other machines that help different kinds of farmers. But here are some that are fun to know about:
One clever contraption attached to a tractor grabs hold of nut trees and gives them a hard shaking. The nuts fall on the ground, ready for a kind of giant vacuum sweeper to come and suck them into a truck.{42}
Crops that grow underneath the earth need their own sort of harvesting machine. There are potato diggers and many others. The sugar beet digger works in a particularly clever way. Machine fingers feel for the beet tops. ”

“ When railroad workers give a good look at a running train, they say that they’ve made a running inspection. Telegraph operators and station agents come out on the platform and make running inspections whenever trains go by.
The newest, fastest cars on both passenger and{44} freight trains get fewer hot boxes than old ones. Their axles have roller bearings to help them turn smoothly, and the oil in their journal boxes is supposed to last for a long time. Still, an inspector may forget to check the oil, or it may leak out. ”