Steelyard

“ This proposition throws a new light upon the question of weighing-machines and steelyards, and, after some little deliberation, it is resolved to abide by the old plan of letting the white trader decide the weight himself in his own way, for it is clear that the steelyard is a great medicine which no brave can understand, and which can only be manipulated by a white medicine-man. ”

“ The Cannon Street Railway Station covers approximately the whole site of the Steelyard except the strip on the north front cut off for the widening of Upper Thames Street. See Philip Norman, “Notes on the Later History of the Steelyard in London,” Archæologia, vol. lxi. pt. ii. (1909) , pp. 389-426; Wykeham Archer, Once a Week, vol. v. (1861) ; J. E. Price, Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archæological Society, vol. iii. 67 (1870) . See also for the whole history of the Steelyard, Lappenberg, Urkundliche Geschichte des Hansischen Stahlhofes zu London, Hamburg, 1851. ”

“ Steelyards are simple, trustworthy and durable, but unless special contrivances are introduced for ascertaining the position of the travelling poise with very great accuracy there will be a little uncertainty as to the reading, and therefore steelyards are not in general so accurate as scale-beams. When carefully nicked they are well-adapted for weighing out definite quantities of goods, such as 1 ℔, 2 ℔, &c., as in such cases there is no question of estimation. ”

“ When the load on the platform is large, so that the value of the goods may be considerable, it is convenient to measure the larger part of the value by loose weights which, when hung at the end of the steelyard, represent each a certain money value, and the balance of the value is determined by the sliding poise Q.
In the machines commonly used to weigh loads exceeding 2 cwt. the power is applied at the end of the long arm of the steelyard and multiplied by levers from 100 to 500 times, so that the weights used are small and handy. ”

“ It is a scene of incredible industry, but also of incredible completeness.
To look down upon the village and the yard from the throbbing roof of the steel mill, seven hundred and seventy feet long and a hundred and eighty-eight wide, is a thrilling sight. Within the yard, confined on three sides by its high fences and buildings and on the fourth by Weymouth Fore River, one sees, far below, locomotives moving up and down on their tracks; great cranes stalking long-leggedly back and forth; smoke from foundry, blacksmith shop, and boiler shop; men hurrying to and fro. ”

“ In the beginning of the last century, a furnace was erected on the outside of the town, for the conversion of iron into steel, and houses being erected in its vicinity, they were denominated Steelhouse-lane. That the woollen manufactory is of great importance to this kingdom must be admitted, but if the demand for fine steel goods should ever revive again, and be equally brisk as it was thirty years back, there is not in my mind a doubt, but the iron and steel trade would produce more profit to the nation than that of woollen, if it does not at the present time. ”

“ On the day he left, he went out the usual gate at the tempered after-work pace, walked the gravel path to the railroad embankment, and stopped for a moment to look back at the mill. He stood like a stone-pile on the embankment for a quarter of an hour, looking at the cluster of steel buildings and stacks. He had spent a life in them, making pipe, and I haven't a doubt this was the first time it came to him in perspective. From my own brief memories, I could guess at those fifteen minutes: pain, struggle, monotony, rough-house, laughter, endurance, but principally toil without imagination. ”

“ One portion of the works which seldom fails to interest visitors is the steel works, which, at the time of their opening in 1864, consisted of a converting house with two converters, a cogging shop, and a small forge, but have since been greatly enlarged, the steel-making plant being now capable of producing 50,000 tons of steel per annum, besides which there have been added a large forge, iron, brass and steel foundries, rail- rolling mills, a boiler shop, and several repairing and other shops. ”

“ Southward the shed faces a yard of about ten acres in extent. This is bounded on every side by other workshops and premises, all built of the same dingy materials — brick, slate, and iron — blackened with smoke, dust, and steam, surmounted with tall chimneys, innumerable ventilators, and poles for the telephone wires, which effectually block out all perspective. To view it from the interior is like looking around the inner walls of a fortress. There is no escape for the eye; nothing but bricks and mortar, iron and steel, smoke and steam arising. ”

“ The Steel Factory or Rolling-mill. One of the foremost pictures in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is a picture of a steel-mill. It seems to be a prosaic subject but it makes an appealing picture, and one typical of our modern world. Some one has described a steel-mill as a modern materialization of Dante’s Inferno. The sky above Pittsburgh, Birmingham, and other steel centers is aflame at night as the process of manufacturing is carried on in the miles of buildings that contain the workers and the machinery. ”

“ With a steel structure a settlement of a couple of inches would not in the least impair its efficiency, as the members would adjust themselves by flexure to meet the new condition. This property of a steel structure is of great advantage where the foundations must be located in soil saturated more or less 3with water, as would be the case near the sea or a large river. Where brick or stonework is built on such foundations, the masonry would be quite likely to crack. ”

“ But now the place was noted for its great steel mills, where the famous Williams Drop Forge Steel was made and shipped27 to all parts of the world. Three hundred workmen were employed in the low brick buildings that stood on the edge of the town to the north, close to the railway tracks; and most of these workmen lived in pretty new cottages that had been built on grounds adjoining the mills, and which were owned and rented to them by Chester D. Williams, the sole proprietor of the steel works. ”

“ Clean-up man in the pit was my first job, which I held until I passed to third-helper on the open-hearth. Later I worked in the cast-house, became a member of the stove-gang, and at length achieved the semi-skilled job of hot-blast man on the blast-furnace. I acquired the current Anglo-Hunky language and knew speedily the grind and the camaraderie of American steel-making. In these chapters I have put down what I saw, felt, and thought as a steel-worker in 1919.
Steel is perhaps the basic industry of America. ”

“ A trip through one of the large steel plants with its furnaces, its blooming and slabbing mills, its rail, plate, structural and rod mills is one of the most interesting that can be taken. If the visitor is not afraid of smoke or dust or of what seems to him an uncomfortable heat 276on a warm day he will discover new worlds. No particular attention is paid to the casual visitor to the plant, but, for those who show real interest, steel men have a warm welcome, from manager to the sample boys. ”

“ To know these men you must see them at work; you must stand beside the open-hearth helper as he taps fifty tons of molten steel from his furnace, you must feel the heat of the Bessemer converters as you watch the vessel-men and the steel pourer, and above the crash and roar of the blooming mills you must talk with rollers and hookers, while five-and ten-ton steel ingots plunge madly back and forth between the rolls. ”

“ To serve but one of these cities,—to bring its food and take away its manufactures,—I see a thousand railroad trains,—trains of steel running on rails of steel. Compared with these the iron shod trains we know and think so marvellous are merely toys. I see ships of steel so vast in size that on the side of one the little vessel in which Columbus found a new world would swing like a silly skiff. I see steel in all its power—towers, tunnels, aqueducts, fantastic structures I cannot sense the meaning of. ”

“ The steel companies which are located here do not have to bring their materials laboriously from a distance but possess, immediately at hand, apparently endless store of the three things needful for making steel—iron ore, coal, and limestone. All these territories have their personal romances and their heroes, many of them quite as picturesque as those of the Pittsburgh group.
It is doubtful indeed if American industry presents any figure quite as astonishing and variegated as that of John W. Gates, the man who educated farmers all over the world to the use of wire fencing. ”

“ There is a great fascination, too, in standing near the furnace and watching the sparkling, hissing mass of metal being withdrawn by the crane, or seeing the heated bars removed from the oil forge and clapped quickly on the steel dies to be beaten into shape. No one can withstand the attraction of the steam-hammers; even those who have spent a lifetime in the shed like to stand and watch the stampers and forgers at work.
Forging and smithing are, without doubt, the most interesting of all crafts in the factory ”

“ Born and raised in a city of mills, he had, from the age of fourteen, played his little part in the making of steel. For three summers and at every other available hour he had toiled at steel. Bare to the waist, brown, heat-burned, perspiring, he had dragged at long bars, raking away at steel bars, but recently formed by rushing, crashing rollers, that were still smoking hot. Other hours he had spent on the gridiron. The one helped the other. Struggling with steel, he had become like steel himself, hard, elastic, resisting. ”

“ But the ladle continues to pour, with twenty tons of steel to go. It can't be allowed to make a steel floor for the pit. It must get into those moulds.
So the craneman swings her on to the next mould, with the stream aspurt. It's like taking water from the teakettle to the sink with a punctured dipper: half goes on the kitchen floor. But the spattering of molten metal is much more exciting. A few little clots affect the flesh like hot bullets. So, when the craneman gets ready to swing the little stream down the line, the workers on the platform behave like frightened fishes in a mill pond. ”

“ The great East, with its railroad and manufacturing development, has been supplied with its steel—from Pittsburg. Now it is the West and South-west, and the Orient, to which our great volumes of steel trade will turn. It is Duluth’s chance. Because the ore is at her doors, she can turn out iron and steel cheaper than any other city in the world; and she is the nearest distributing point to the West. This movement to Duluth is inevitable. The world’s steel industry has been constantly moving and changing. ”

“ Of the forging and the rolling of the steel a whole book might be written. It is enough now to say that of the 50,000,000 pounds of steel, every pound was made on honor. The railroad had its inspectors everywhere, but the rolling-mill men held to their formulas for perfect steel, and perfect steel was the result. A slight flaw in the metal, and possibly at some unexpected day, a great catastrophe. The safety of human life was upon the men who forged the steel, and they forged honor into every great girder, into every rod and bolt and plate. ”

“ The hot metal train had long since pulled away over the bridge, on its way to the mills, where the ingots would either be rolled in their crude state or placed in the open-hearth furnaces to be transformed into ingots of steel.
"I guess I can keep out of the way, now that I know what to keep out of the way of."
"I'll put you on the dolly to-morrow, and make a monkey-man of you. If you don't get incinerated we'll make a real man of you." ”

“ The smaller gobs of molten stuff made minor centres of spatter of their own. It was a spectacle that burned easily into memory.
The gang of men at the edge of the pit watched the thing with apparent enjoyment. I wondered slowly two things: one, whether anyone ever got caught under such a molten Niagara, and two, whether the pit was going to have a steel floor before it could be stopped. How could it be stopped, anyway?
The craneman had been busy for some minutes picking up a ladle from Number 4, and at that instant he swung it under, and the process of steel-flooring ceased. ”

“ To the left I could make out tracks. Railroads seem to run through a steel mill from cellar to attic. And at intervals, from above the tracks, torrents of sparks swept into the dark, with now and then a small stream of yellow fire.
We stumbled over bricks, mud, clay, a shovel, and the railroad track. In front of a narrow curtain of molten slag, falling on the floor, we waited for some moments. We were under the middle furnaces, I [Pg 18] calculated. Gradually the curtain ceased, and Pete leaped under the hole from which it had come. ”

“ The even whirr of the power house increased it, and the shrieks of machinery gave it a streaky quality. There were staccato punctuations, of course, by the whistles, [Pg 119] and when a distant "blaw" came to me, I thought how loudly it drove into the ears of the hot-blast man, turning his wheel by a stove. But it was mostly the summed-up roar that occupied your head—an insistent thing, that made you excited and weary at the same time. The mills had been running for ten years; they always had a night-shift in Bouton.
It is easy to get excited about a steel-mill sky at night. ”

“ What with the quarters of the boiler-makers, the carpenters, the machinists and the fitters, the old shops straggled out over a goodly length of ground, and a grimy, ramshackle, dirty, blackened, Godforsaken looking structure it was. To-day, thanks to that fire and the Big Strike when it came along, there’s a modern affair of structural steel—and the rest is but a memory. However——
Night in the mountains in the Fall comes early, and by nine o’clock on the night the fire broke out it had shut down pitch dark. ”