Various

“ If, through superior intelligence and capital, the Standard Oil Company can control the oil business of Pennsylvania, then, according to the principles of common sense, it must be permitted to do so.
What right, then, has the oil producer to complain? Why, if all that is alleged is true, will they persist in sinking more wells, when, as they say, they are controlled by the Standard Oil Company? No one forces them to lose money by continuing in the business. Let them find other employment. ”

“ It is an insult to human intelligence. A load of loose hay is an uncertain quantity. You are never sure of getting it into the barn. Top heavy, one sided, too wide or too high for the doors; and even with the best of luck, a good percentage has drizzled in the wake of the wagon over the lot to the barn. A 100 or 200 lb. bale, with an inclined plane, or a pulley on side or aft of a good strong rack, and all this barbarism has succumbed to civilization. ”

“ Under the empire of that universal antagonism which is the very essence of the economic constitution of modern societies, and which too often only profits one man by ruining another, machinery has been employed to make the rule of the strong weigh more heavily on the weak. There is not a single mechanical invention which has not been a subject of anguish and a cause of distress to thousands of fathers of families from the moment it began to work. ”

“ The addition of chloride of iron, or of a salt of nickel, renders them green, and this opens the way for a very pretty experiment: If a winter landscape be drawn in India ink, and the sky be painted with a wash of cobalt alone, and the branches of the trees be clothed with leaves executed with a mixture of cobalt and nickel, and the snow-clad earth be washed over with the same mixture, a magic transformation at once takes place on the application of heat, the winter landscape changing to a summer scene. ”

“ American inventors should bear in mind that, as a general rule, any invention that is valuable to the patentee in this country is worth equally as much in England and some other foreign countries. Five patents—embracing Canadian, English, German, French, and Belgian—will secure to an inventor the exclusive monopoly to his discovery among about one hundred and fifty millions of the most intelligent people in the world. The facilities of business and steam communication are such that patents can be obtained abroad by our citizens almost as easily as at home. ”

“ In times like the present, when even with good management our best machine shops are enabled to exhibit but small margins of profit, and shops with indifferent management exhibit margins on the wrong side, it is a question of paramount importance what kind of economy should be pursued in order to maintain a successful business. ”

“ To-day coals still burn, and tobacco solaces millions of the civilized world. If the Royal Baking Powder Company (what a misnomer) possessed royal prerogatives, the advocates of exsiccated alum would fare no better than they did under the sumptuary laws of England. Professor Mott has fulminated ex cathedra his blast, but we survive. "Truth is a torch, the more 'tis shook it shines." Our strength is in the intelligence of the age. ”

“ The owner often charges his trouble to the character of his workmen. Let him review his course, and see if the great cause is not in his own management. Mechanics are keen and observing. If the business is poorly managed they are not slow to mark it, and when a cut is made in wages can generally cipher out the cause. It is good economy to keep a systematic record of the cost of everything. ”

“ The advantage of a steel rail is its homogeneity, but a good iron rail, such as those made under the direction of the speaker, for the Reading Railroad Company, is likely to prove better than one of poor steel. The life of a steel rail is chiefly affected by the temperature at which it is rolled and annealed. It ought not to wear off more than 1 mm. for 20,000,000 tons of traffic, and is usually calculated to wear 10 mm. before it is taken up. In other words, it would last about 20 years on roads doing as much business as the New York Central. ”

“ The electric fluid in the form of lightning oftentimes proves itself a very efficient wood cutter, and it has occurred to some ingenious gentleman in India that artificial electricity may be so applied and controlled as to cut down trees a good deal faster than the clumsy ax or that American notion the chain saw. The two ends of the copper wires of a galvanic battery are connected with platinum wire, which of course instantly becomes red hot, and while in that state it is gently seesawed across the trunk of the trees to be felled. ”

“ It is a trick—for it deserves no better name—of our rivals to show by chemical analysis that my powder contains alum, but are careful neither to state the kind nor the change it undergoes in baking. The manufacturer who knowingly misrepresents the goods of a rival, may well be doubted when he speaks of the quality of his own.
"Great stress is laid on the fact that cream tartar is a vegetable acid, the product of the grape, hence it must be healthy. They forget that cream tartar is not entirely vegetable, but principally second handed minerals. ”

“ It is the essence of communism to drag down those who succeed to the level of the unsuccessful.
If men cannot compete with others in any business they must accept the fact, and try some other employment. ”

“ The facility for making a permanent die, even from a thin paper original, capable of producing a thousand copies, would have opened a wide door to successful fraud if the process had been known to unscrupulous persons; for by its means, Mr. Bessemer states, there is not a government stamp, or the paper seal of a corporate body, that every common office clerk could not forge in a few minutes at the office of his employer or at his own home. The production of a die from a common paper stamp is the work of only ten minutes ”

“ The merinos and grades in the United States exceed 25,000,000. Merino wool is for clothing what wheat is for food; it is the chief material for cloth at the present day, the coarsest as well as the finest. While the softest, it is the strongest of all fibers. From its fulling and spinning qualities, it is the best adhesive for the cheap fabrics—coarser wool, cotton, or shoddy; the mixture of merino wool increasing indefinitely the material for cheap clothing. An abundance of merino wool is the greatest boon the world has received from the animal kingdom in the last century. ”

“ What an awkward, ungainly spectacle a man presents, struggling at one end of a six foot pole, with a ten pound lock of hay at the other end, endeavoring with all his might and main to elevate it 12 or 15 feet on top of a load! ”

“ If crystallized or fused nitrate of silver be placed upon glowing charcoal, combustion forthwith takes place, the silver remaining behind in a metallic form, while nitrous oxide and carbonic acid are freely given off. The nitrate of silver is fused by the heat developed by the reaction, and is imbibed through the pores of the charcoal; as every atom of consumed carbon is replaced by an atom of metallic silver, the original form and structure of the charcoal are preserved intact in pure silver. ”

“ In one shop you scarcely hear a murmur—no angry meetings—no threats of a strike—no growling at the head of the establishment. The intelligent workmen understand the reasons for the reduction without a wordy explanation, and accept it, feeling confident that it has not been unjustly made. ”

“ It is well known that the efficient preservation of iron against rusting is at present only provided for in cases where human life would be endangered by failure, as in the case of railway bridges and steamers. Thus, for example, at Mr. Cramer-Klett's ironworks at Nuremberg every piece of iron used for his bowstring bridges is dipped in oil heated to eight hundred degrees. The very great care which is at present taken in this matter may be judged from the current practice of most bridge and roofing manufacturers. ”

“ We propose putting in a steam engine of 20 horse power, and we are informed there is an engine that weighs 2,700 lbs., that has a balance wheel weighing 500 lbs., cylinder 10 x 10 inches; cutting off at 3⁄4 stroke, running at 180 to 200 revolutions a minute, and they say that it is 20 horse at 70 lbs. steam. Will such an engine develop 20 horse power? A. The engine would develop 20 horse power under the above conditions, if well constructed. 2. How can we calculate the power of an engine? ”

“ In 1807 Sir Humphry Davy from this crude tartar first made the metal potassium. Of lime it is unnecessary to speak. The potash and lime form the bulk of cream tartar. In ammonia alum there is no more mineral substance than in cream tartar. The chemistry of nature is wonderful. Vegetation lives on minerals—wheat, corn, potatoes, are all mineral compounds. Lime, soda, potash, magnesia, sulphur, iron, etc., are all found abundantly in water and grain, and all these minerals are essential in food. ”

“ A block is secured to each pair of legs for supporting a pair of ordinary grindstone rollers, which form a bearing for the balance wheel shaft. This shaft has formed in it two cranks, and it carries an ordinary balance wheel, to the side of which is secured by means of hook bolts a grooved wooden rim for receiving the driving belt. The cranks are connected, by means of hooks of ordinary round iron, with a treadle that is pivoted on the gas pipe at the rear of the table. The shaft will work tolerably well, even if it is not turned. ”

“ If men were properly united in the bonds of association, he said, if the solidarity of interests were realized, "the happy result of the application of mechanical power to industry would be equal production, with less of effort, for all. The discovery of an economic method would never have the lamentable consequence of robbing men of the work by which they live. ”

“ The light per lamp was of course reduced, but there was the remarkable fact that ten lights were maintained by a comparatively weak machine, driven by an engine exerting the power of only two horses.
The light of each of these ten lamps was stated to be that of 40 candles, making, therefore, a total of 400. A reduction of light, consequent on the further division of the current, is thus apparent; but for this loss there may be ample compensation in the superior economy of a distributed light as compared with one that is concentrated. ”

“ The practical workman never has, nor, we believe, ever will, act so foolishly; certainly not until the limit of man's capacity to enjoy has been reached. When the united products of manual and mechanical effort fully satisfy the desires of all men, and leave no margin of want unfilled, then and then only will men be satisfied with the reduction of effort demanded by the socialists. ”

“ The process that benzine is subject to, to produce naphtha, is not a separate business, but is carried on by the regular oil refiners in the same stills and retorts that the refined oil is produced. The benzine is treated with sulphuric acid, and the result is naphtha, which is in wide demand in Europe, especially in France, for the purpose of producing aniline dyes, while it is also put to many other purposes. ”

“ Every application, in which the fees have been paid, is sent complete—including the model—to the Patent Office the same day the papers are signed at our office, or received by mail, so there is no delay in filing the case, a complaint we often hear from other sources. Another advantage to the inventor in securing his patent through the Scientific American Patent Agency, it insures a special notice of the invention in the Scientific American, which publication often opens negotiations for the sale of the patent or manufacture of the article. ”

“ A piece of iron exposed to the action of superheated steam, in a close chamber and under a certain pressure, becomes gradually covered by a skin of this black oxide, of a thickness depending upon the temperature of the steam and the duration of the experiment. For instance, exposure during five hours to steam superheated to five hundred degrees will produce a hermetical coating capable of resisting for a considerable time the application of emery paper and of preserving the iron from rust even in a humid atmosphere, if under shelter from the weather. ”

“ There are too many of them for harmonious and concerted action against the powerful corporations they complain of; and if they should succeed in securing equal transportation facilities the prices would still be regulated by the monopolists, who carry more than four-fifths of the accumulated stock of the oil regions.
The proposed appeal to Congress to pass some law whereby each producer can compel railroad companies to carry his produce at regular rates, amounts to a confession of the desperate straits of the producers and of their weakness as well ”