one-fourth, the ladle moves on, and another ingot is cast. And so the work goes The con on. day's midnight begins afresh. And while the new-born ingot is yet coral red, other cranes lay hold of it, and a brisk little locomotive winds in among the sparks and flames and din, tooting a warning as it speeds away with the ingots to the "blooming" and "rail" mill. At the latter place the ingot is attacked by ponderous machinery, and passed through successive processes, until it issues from the last pair of rolls a perfect steel rail for the foot of the iron horse. VIEW CORNER OF FIFTH AVENUE AND WOOD STREET, PITTSBURGH. corner set apart for bright levers, presses one of these. Water, at a pressure of 300 pounds to the square inch, acting through suitable mechanism, tilts the huge converter to a horizontal position, permitting its "converted" contents to fall into a Brobdingnag ladle swung be- From this rail mill there issued in March tween a pair of twin cranes. Another of the present year 9538 tons, or 1000 miles shout, and the boy touches another lever of finished steel rails-enough to band toin the gallery of levers, irreverently term-gether in double lines the distant cities of ed the "pulpit." The twin cranes lift New York and Pittsburgh. the brimming fiery ladle between them as deftly as would a brace of country lasses carry an overfull pail of milk. Hand in hand these giants of iron, whose muscles are of water as dense as quicksilver, convey the eight-ton ladle to the ingot moulds in waiting. Still another pull at the distant lever, and the ladle halts, while a valve below is opened. Lightened by And this is but a single one of Pittsburgh's wonderful workshops. To fittingly describe her acres of similar industries would fill a large volume. There are squares of great foundries, streets of machine-shops and locomotive-works and engine-making establishments, besides huge shops that send wrought-iron and steel bridges into the world, that furnish steel steamers for South American rivers, cold rolled shafting for Antipodes, and ploughs for "all creation," and that send iron tanks into the oil regions to hold the surplus of Oildom. There are hundreds of other objects of interest directly relating to the iron industry that must be passed with this mere mention. Were Pittsburgh not the Iron City, she certainly should be the Coal City, and did she deserve neither appellation, assuredly she would be the Glass City. Since shrewd old General James O'Hara and Major Isaac Craig "fired up" Pittsburgh's first glass furnace in 1796, this industry has found in that city such con Inwardly they glow with the fervor shown by their neighbors the iron furnaces. Outwardly they are dusty with sand and lime, and suggestive of a country grist-mill. The racket of wheels, however, is conspicuous by its absence. Nor is there puff of escaping steam, or hurrying tread of workmen; only the great upward roll of deep black smoke from the mouth of the giant ink-bottle, and the glare of the round, staring, fiery eyes of the furnace. Internally this 'glass-house" is almost as full of weird beauty as is the steel-melters' domain. In and about the glass pots and furnaces of Pittsburgh there labors an army of five thousand men and boys. These, as to genial soil that to-day ninety glass furnaces silently swell the overhanging cloud of smoke. In these furnaces, exposed to a heat that would appall a Shadrach, there stand eight hundred big, queer "pots," nestling in the clear, bright heat, and holding a syrupy mass that is molten glass. These furnaces, or "glass-houses," are bulbous pyramids of brick, so encompassed with frame buildings as to their lower three-fourths as to closely resemble from a distance great square inkstands. the former, are strong of muscle, and stronger of lung; as to the latter, duly observant of the adage referring to throwing stones in glass houses, and deft in the handling of fragile things. A glassblower's daily duties call for an amount of lung duty that would appall a Levy, or disgust an Arbuckle. In this phase of glass-making, i. e., the "blowing" of window and other glass, there has been little or no advance in half a century. Every other avenue in the industry has been made wider and smoother by the inventor | is fitted with a revolving floor like a railand the skilled mechanic, but the window-way "turn-table." On this are laid the glass factory of 1880 is a counterpart of cylinders, and slowly they are borne the factory of 1825. A straight blow-pipe through positive and comparative to suand a bench are the workman's appliances. perlative degrees of heat. The fracture With the former he dips from the "pot' being uppermost, the softening cylinder a lump of sticky melted glass, and, if he of its own weight parts along the upper be a notably good blower, will in five side. A workman, with a bit of soft minutes convert that forty-pound lump of wood on the end of a rod, then operates cherry-red shapeless stickiness into a on the demoralized cylinder as a launsplendid cylinder six feet long and fifteen dress would work in ironing a big cuff. inches in diameter a cylinder whose The block, pushed over the uneven surpolished crystal walls are uniformly thin face, flattens the cylinder upon its stone in every part to the minutest fraction of bed, where it lies, prone and pretty, like an inch; so that when this cylinder is split a huge sheet of clear gelatine. A turn of and flattened it will be a mammoth plate the furnace floor, and another cylinder of "blown" glass, measuring forty-five comes within reach of workman and flatby seventy-six or eighty inches. The tener, while the same movement carries blower at work challenges admiration, as the finished sheet to a cooler place, eventhis tremendous lungs force air into the ually to find its way to the cutter, the growing bubble at the end of his pipe. packer, and the distant sash of the "conIts cooling walls grow thinner, and yet sumer." the swelling air-cell within is never permitted to burst its fragile prison. As the mass takes on a cylindrical shape, the man calls to his aid the force of gravity, and the pipe becomes a pendulum, with the growing cylinder for a "bob." And so, by skillful twirling, constant blowing, and laborious but graceful swinging, the perfect cylinder appears, while the gazer is puzzled which to most admire, cause or effect, workman or work. The finished cylinder is now split from end to end by the touch of a red-hot bar, and with others is borne to a queer furnace, whose interior In the converting of molten glass into table-ware, "bar-ware," bottles, lamps, chimneys, and a thousand other objects, improved machinery is springing into existence, each device greeted with more or less disfavor by the workmen. But as yet no inventor has succeeded in displacing the big-armed, deep-chested "blower. He defies machinery, lives to a good old age, and surely earns his twenty-five and fifty dollars per week. The latter figure is attained by the few men who can "blow" a sheet of the dimensions already given. At Pittsburgh is made not only lamp and chimney, but the cheap and wonderful fluid that feeds the wicks. The first two are turned out in myriads in her glassworks, and the latter necessity pours from her vast odoriferous refineries. To the latter there flows a steady stream of crude oil, 12,000 barrels per day, from the wells of the "regions," twenty-five miles away as the crow flies. A round dozen there are of these refineries. They are to the nose what "tuning-time" in a grand orchestra is to the ear. Every shade or semi-tone of abominable smell, from the overwhelming stench of "residuum" and "refuse" to the pungent and more tolerable odor of high-test refined petroleum, is born and bred into lusty maturity at the Pittsburgh refinery. These rather unsightly affairs are located in a portion of the city set apart for their occupancy; and in this portion of the City of Smoke even the most persistent sight-seer lingers but long enough to absorb the whole gamut of smells that issue from "tank" and "still" and "agitator." It is also a region of great iron tanks, that seem sweet morsels for the electric destroyer. And here a stroke of lightning means death and destruction. The soil is saturated with oil in this unlovely region, and the stoutesthearted fireman in Pittsburgh feels a tremor when the big bell booms the number of an alarm-box located among the refineries. 1 The oil industry has lent a powerful hand to the iron industry of Pittsburgh. Each well in the regions of petroleum must be fitted with at least two thousand feet of iron pipes, great and small, and every barrel produced ultimately enters an iron tank. The mills of Pittsburgh supply both. An order for fifty or one hundred miles of pipe does not worry a Pittsburgh pipe-maker in the least; and among the sights to see there is the working of ponderous machinery that draw a long strip of white-hot iron from the furnace mouth and converts it into a hollow, perfect pipe in the twinkling of an eye, and with the noise also of a near stroke of thunder, and a play of fire-works as though a meteor had exploded. And as these lines are written Pittsburgh men and machinery are working night and day upon tremendous sheet-iron oil tanks, to hold 30,000 barrels each, that are to store away 2,000,000 barrels of "dollar crude" for a single company. Then there are engines and boilers and pumps to be built for the oil men. These are examples only of the great industrial activity which has made the city of Pittsburgh the Sheffield of America. Pittsburgh rivers have been compared PIPE-MAKING. VOL LXII.-No. 367-5 |