Fire Syringe.

To understand the Diesel principle let us begin by remembering that to the compression of a charge in a gas engine there is a moderate limit; if this be exceeded the heat of compression prematurely ignites the gases, so as to prevent due action. The air in a bicycle tire is compressed but moderately, and yet every man who has worked a bicycle air-pump with energy knows that soon its cylinder grows warm to the touch. On this very principle, that mechanical work is convertible into heat, our grandfathers had an ingenious mode of producing fire. In a syringe with a glass barrel they placed a piston fitting snugly. In a cavity of this piston they fastened a bit of cotton wool soaked in bisulphide of carbon. On forcing the piston suddenly into the cylinder, the air, quickly compressed, became hot enough to set the cotton wool on fire. The heat evolved in the compression of air is turned to account in the Diesel oil engine so as to make it the most economical converter of heat into work ever devised. First the mechanism compresses air alone to 500 pounds per square inch, then and then only the oil for combustion is injected, to take fire instantly from the heat of the compressed air. A governor regulates the period of burning; this is usually during one tenth part of the stroke, the expansion of the burned products completing the stroke. Because 500 pounds is a pressure out of the question for the compression of the mixed charge of air and combustible gas in an ordinary gas cylinder, the Diesel engine excels in economy any gas engine thus far built. At Ghent in 1903 a Diesel engine developed 165 brake horse-power from crude Texas oil with the extraordinary net efficiency of 32.3 per cent. At the St. Louis Exposition, 1904, three Diesel engines, using oil costing three cents per gallon, delivered for seven months, during eleven hours each day, at half-load, an average of 250 kilowatts at an expense for fuel of but three tenths of one cent per kilowatt hour on the switchboard, including all generator and line losses. Engineers of the first rank are convinced that the Diesel principle may be successfully embodied in gas engines. That done, with a success approaching the effectiveness of Diesel’s oil motor, we may expect steam engines and turbines to be largely dismissed from service.

Gasoline Engines.

Gasoline, although higher in price than petroleum, is commonly used in automobiles and launches. It can be atomized more quickly and fully, and without heat. To equalize motion, minimize jars, and reduce the weight of its fly-wheel, an automobile of high power has usually four cylinders with cranks set at an angle of 90 degrees with each other. The inlet valve is operated positively and, as a rule, is interchangeable with the exhaust valve. The ignition spark is furnished by a motor-driven magneto, or by a battery operating an induction coil; the lubricant is distributed by a sight-feed system, hand regulated. Cooling is effected by water circulated by a pump through jackets surrounding all cylinders and valves, each jacket having a surface of the utmost extent upon which a swiftly rotated fan drives a stream of air.

Alcohol Engines.

For some years France and Germany have used alcohol as a fuel in engines, no excise tax being imposed on alcohol employed for industrial purposes. On January 1, 1907, this will also be the case in the United States, so that we may expect alcohol to take a leading place as fuel in motors. “It has,” says Professor Elihu Thomson, “gallon for gallon less heating power than gasoline, but equal efficiency in an internal combustion engine, because it throws away less heat in waste gases and in the water jacket. A mixture of alcohol vapor with air stands a much higher compression than does a mixture of gasoline and air without premature explosion. . . . There is now beginning an application of the internal combustion engine for railroad cars on short lines which are feeders to main lines. The growth of this business may be hampered in the near future by the cost of gasoline. In this case alcohol, producible in unlimited amount, could be substituted.”

An important advantage in using alcohol is its comparative safety. In case of fire oils and gasolines float on the water intended to quench a blaze; alcohol blends with that water and the flame is subdued.

Whether oil, gasoline or alcohol be their fuel, internal combustion motors gain steadily in public acceptance. On the farm they are gradually displacing the horse. An engine, which costs nothing when it is idle, shells corn, saws wood, cuts fodder, grinds feed, separates and churns cream, drives a thrasher, turns a mill, lifts water, and performs a hundred other chores quickly, simply and cheaply.

Steam and Gas Motors United.

Mr. Henry G. Stott, chief engineer of the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, New York, has recently discussed power plant economies in so thorough and suggestive a manner as to elicit the interest of engineers the world over.[42] Basing his remarks on the records of the huge plant of his Company at 74th Street and the East River, New York, he presents this table of the average losses in converting the heat from one pound of coal into electricity:—

[42] Before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, New York, January 26, 1906.

Heat of the coal as burned, 14,150 British thermal units 100.0 %
Returned by feed water heater 3.1  
Retrned  „   economizer 6.8  
  109.9  
Loss in ashes 2.4 %  
Loss to stack 22.7  
Loss in boiler radiation and leakage 8.0  
Loss in pipe radiation 0.2  
Delivered to circulator 1.6  
Deliered t „  feed pump 1.4  
Loss in leakage and high pressure drips 1.1  
Delivered to small auxiliaries 0.4  
Heating 0.2  
Loss in engine friction 0.8  
Electrical losses[470] 0.3  
Engine radiation losses 0.2  
Rejected to condenser 60.1  
To house auxiliaries 0.2   99.6
Delivered to bus-bar 10.3 %

Carbon dioxide (CO²) is absorbed by a solution of caustic potash. The Ados recorder based upon this absorption has enabled Mr. Stott to learn the proportion of carbon dioxide in the gases passing to the stack, the higher that proportion, the more thorough the combustion. He finds first as an element of economy careful firing, so as to avoid “holes” or thin places in a fire, through which air wastefully pours, chilling the furnace. Next in importance is adapting draft to fuel: small anthracite requires a draft of 1.5 inches of water; with a draft of but .2 inch of water one pound of dry bituminous coal has evaporated 10.6 pounds of water, with a draft of 1 inch this fell to 8.7 pounds. Mr. Stott estimates that scientific methods of firing can reduce losses to the stack to 12.7 per cent., and possibly to 10 per cent.

Respecting the loss of 8 per cent. in boiler radiation and leakage, he maintains that this is largely due to the inefficient setting of brick which, besides permitting radiation, admits much air by infiltration. The remedy is to employ the best methods of boiler setting, such as an iron-plate air-tight case enclosing a carbonate of magnesia lining outside the brickwork.

Regarding the main loss, that of 60.1 per cent. to the condenser, Mr. Stott points out that superheating could reduce this by 6 per cent. He observes that in the higher pressures of a steam cycle a reciprocating engine has an advantage, while in the lower pressures a steam turbine is more efficient. Combine them, he remarks, and use each where it is the more profitable. But in his view for the utmost economy a new type of plant should unite both steam and gas driven units.

“Over a year ago,” he says, “while watching the effect of putting a large steam turbine having a sensitive governor in connection with reciprocating engine-driven units having sluggish governors, it occurred to me that here was the solution of the gas engine problem; for the turbine immediately proceeded to act like an ideal storage battery; that is, a storage battery whose potential will not fall at the moment of taking up load, for all the load fluctuations of the plant were taken up by the steam turbine, and the reciprocating engines went on carrying almost constant loads, whilst the turbine load fluctuated between nothing and 8,000 kilowatts in periods of less than ten seconds.

“The combination of gas engines and steam turbines in a single plant promises improved efficiency whilst removing the objection to the gas engine, namely, its inability to carry heavy overloads. A steam turbine can easily be designed to take care of 100 per cent. overload for a few seconds; and as the load fluctuation in any plant will probably not average more than 25 per cent. with a maximum of 50 per cent. for a few seconds, it would seem that if a plant were designed to operate normally with one half its capacity in gas engines and one half in steam turbines, any fluctuations of load likely to arise in practice could be taken care of.”

Discussing in detail the performance of such a plant, Mr. Stott concludes that its average total thermal efficiency would be 24.5 per cent., as against 10.3 per cent. in the plant whose record he had presented.

Heating and Power Production United.

In the bill of particulars drawn up by Mr. Stott it was shown that no less than 60.1 per cent. of the total heat from his fuel had gone into the condenser where, joined to the stream of the East River, it had been wasted. Had he used non-condensing motors the loss in exhausts would have been larger, and yet when a non-condensing motor is joined to a heating plant the whole investment may be much more profitable than where condensing motors throw away all the heat of their exhausts. Long ago some pioneer of unrecorded name, using a non-condensing steam engine, warmed his factory or mill with its exhaust steam. In summer that steam sped idly into the air, in winter it saved him so much coal that his motive power cost him almost nothing. By thus uniting the production of power and heat he showed, as few men have shown, how a great waste may be exchanged for a large profit. In the Northern States and in Canada the main use for fuel is for heating not only dwellings, but the furnaces that pour out iron and steel, the ovens that bake pottery, tiles, and so on. When but moderate temperatures are desired, as in warming a house, exhaust steam serves admirably, and so might the exhausts from gas engines. Indeed we here strike the key-note of modern fuel economy which is that wherever possible fuel should first deliver all the motive power that can be squeezed out of it, when and only when the remainder of its heat, much the larger part of the whole, should be used for warming.[43] This plan, already adopted in a good many cases, can be vastly extended with profit. In blast furnaces the first task of the fuel is performed at an extreme temperature; that work completed the gases of combustion may be purified and sent into gas engines to produce motive power at little cost.

[43] An excellent work, “The Heating and Ventilating of Buildings,” by Rolla C. Carpenter, professor of experimental engineering, Cornell University, is published by John Wiley & Sons, New York. Fourth edition, largely rewritten and fully illustrated. 1902, $4.00. It incidentally describes the best methods of heating with exhaust steam.

Heating and Ventilating by Fans.

A word was said on page 380 regarding the method now growing in favor for heating machine-shops by sending warmed air where it is needed, and not allowing it to go where it would proceed of itself and be wasted. Two illustrations show a Sturtevant ventilating fan-wheel, without its casing, and a Monogram exhauster and solid base heater, as used in many modern installations. The net gain in sending warmed air just where it does most good is comparable with the profit in mechanical draft for a furnace as compared with natural draft. Either live or exhaust steam may be used in the heating coils through which the air is forced by the fan. See also illustration on page 380.

Sturtevant fan-wheel, without its casing.

Steam plants which furnish both heat and electricity are being rapidly multiplied throughout America. In many cases these plants supply a single large hotel, or office building. The installation at the Mutual Life Building, New York, is of 2400 horse-power, vying in dimensions with many a central plant. In Fostoria and Springfield, Ohio, in Milwaukee, Atlanta and other large cities, a central station provides heat and light and motive power to a considerable district.

Sturtevant Monogram exhauster and solid base heater.

District Steam Heating.

At Lockport, New York, a city of about 20,000 population, more than 350 dwellings and business premises are heated by the American District Steam Company, a concern which has installed more than 250 similar plants throughout the Union. The advantages of this system are plain:—cleanliness is promoted; customers handle no coal or ashes, tend no fires or boilers; the heat is more steadily and equably supplied than if it came from individual boilers; heat is ready day or night during the heating season; the hazard from fire is lowered and the risk of boiler explosion is abolished; water may be heated for laundries, bath-rooms and kitchens. Cheap fuel may be used, and stoked by machinery. An individual boiler in a building has to be large enough for its heaviest duty; in many cases it is called upon for but one tenth to one fifth of its full power, with much incidental waste. At a central station only as many boilers of a group are employed at a time as may be worked to their full capacity, responding to the demands of the weather.

At Lockport the steam-pipes are of wrought iron covered with sheet asbestos and enclosed in a round tin-lined wood casing, having a shell 4 inches thick, with a dead air space of about one inch between the tin and the asbestos. In its largest size this pipe has shown a total loss by radiation and conduction of but one part in four hundred in one mile; for the same distance the smallest pipe has suffered a loss of six per cent. Live steam is used at Lockport, but as a rule heating plants are supplied with exhaust steam. When intensely cold weather prevails this may be supplemented by boilers in reserve which supply live steam.

It is worth while to remark the tendency to unify, on lines of the best economy, a service of both heat and electricity. In Atlanta there were recently in operation twenty-two isolated electric plants. The central station installed a steam heating system, and as a result in less than a year all but two of the isolated plants went out of business.

Isolated Plants.

The success of the central station at Atlanta is due to the moderate scale of its charges. In the past there has been some complaint of the rates levied by central stations. In the future this complaint is likely to diminish, because an isolated plant for the production of heat and electricity was never before so low in cost, so efficient in working, as to-day. Well managed central stations broaden their market by putting a premium upon the utmost possible use of electricity. In Brooklyn, for example, the Edison Electric Company charges 10 cents per horse-power hour to customers using 100 to 250 horse-power hours per month; as consumption increases so do discounts until the customer who buys 5,000 horse-power hours pays 4 cents. The demand for current in all its diverse applications is stimulated with energy and address. A house or apartment of seven rooms is wired for twelve lights, with all fixtures complete, for $95. Signs for advertising purposes are provided gratis, on condition that they be lighted by the Company. The economy of a small ice machine or a refrigerator is pointed out all summer long, while in winter the comfort and convenience of electric heat is as plainly kept before the public. Such a policy as this takes account of the irrepressible facts of present day competition. When gas was the sole illuminant, producible only on a vast scale, served by an elaborate scheme of piping that from the nature of the case fell into a single hand, there was a liability to extortion. To-day in towns and cities electricity, the chief source of light, can be ground out anywhere simply, cheaply and without offence, incidentally affording when desired almost as much heat as if the fuel had been burnt to produce nothing else. Among the gifts bestowed by the electrician not the least is this conferring at the lowest price two prime necessities of life. But however liberal the management of a central station, many a fat plum will remain outside its pudding. A huge hotel, an office-building, factory, or department store, is best served by a plant of its own designed to furnish both heat and electricity, in which case the electric current will cost much less than if bought from a central station.

On occasion an isolated plant supplies a neighborhood, and at prices lower than those of a large central station which may be at a considerable distance. At Newark in the New Jersey Freie Zeitung building a 400 kilowatt plant is installed which supplies the neighbors in two blocks with electricity at 6 to 8 cents per kilowatt hour, according to the extent of their consumption. A necessary conduit crosses Campbell Street in this service. It seems likely that small power-centres of this kind, requiring no franchise, may be common in the near future, especially if united with heating systems. An inviting field for such installations is in the new residential quarters of our cities and towns, where in many cases a whole block might be cheaply and effectively served from a single plant.

Gas for Heat, Light and Power.

Heat, light and motive power may be provided either by steam or by gas. Modern industry does not tie itself to any particular servant, but chooses in turn whichever, under the circumstances of a case, will serve it well at least cost. Where natural gas is to be had at a low price it holds the field. But the area thus favored is small, so that producer gas is employed on a much larger scale. We have already seen (page 461) how coal may be gasified, valuable by-products seized, and a cheap gas be piped for miles with no liability to the condensation which befalls steam, while available for heating and for motive power. When this gas burns at a fairly high temperature, as does Dowson gas, it gives with thorium mantles a good light, so as to be an all round rival of electricity. Producer gas is preferable to solid coal because perfectly clean; it banishes the smoke nuisance, and is regulated by a touch. Mr. F. W. Harbord in his work on Steel (see page 177), says:—

“The ease with which perfect combustion of a gas can be obtained by regulating the supply of gas and air, the readiness with which it can be conducted to any required point, superheated or burned under pressure, made to give an oxidizing or a reducing flame at pleasure, and the general control that can be exercised over the size and temperature of the flame, in most cases more than compensate for the reduction in heat units due to gasification. . . . The necessity for superheating the fuel, and for keeping solid fuel out of contact with the bath of metal, make gaseous fuel indispensable in the open hearth furnace, and until Siemens solved the problem of cheap gasification of coal, this process of steel-making was impossible.”

Gaseous fuels are employed not only in steel making but in the manufacture of glass, pottery, chemicals, and much else.

When gas is used in gas engines to produce motive power, the exhausts having high temperatures may be profitably applied to heating water, or raising steam, for warming purposes.

Whether central stations employ steam or gas, or unite both, it is certain that a unification of the service of heat, light, and motive power including that required for traction, would in all our towns and cities be attended by great economy, by the abolition of much discomfort and unnecessary drudgery. A large city, such as New York or Chicago, could be supplied with these three cardinal necessities from comparatively few centres.

NEW YORK CENTRAL R. R. ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVE WITH FIVE-CAR TRAIN.

Electric Traction.

Such centres may, before many years elapse, be found stretching out into the distant suburbs of cities, and linking town to town. This chiefly because electricity has become a formidable rival to steam in interurban locomotion. By the time this page is printed, the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad will have begun operating its suburban trains from New York by electricity. For this service locomotives built by the General Electric Company, Schenectady, New York, will be in commission. Each will develop 2,200 to 3,000 horse-power. In careful tests a locomotive of this kind reached a speed of fifty miles an hour in 127 seconds, whereas a “Pacific” steam locomotive required 203 seconds; an important difference, especially where stops are frequent. Each locomotive, with its train of cars, weighed 513 tons. The steam locomotive with its tender weighed 171 tons; its electric rival weighed but 100 tons. So much for the gain in leaving both furnace and boiler at home, while their power is received through a special rail at rest.


CHAPTER XXXII
A FEW SOCIAL ASPECTS OF INVENTION

Why cities gain at the expense of the country . . . The factory system . . . Small shops multiplied . . . Subdivided labor has passed due bounds and is being modified . . . Tendencies against centralization and monopoly . . . Dwellings united for new services . . . Self-contained houses warmed from a center . . . The literature of invention and discovery as purveyed in public libraries.

The Drift to Cities.

In the closing chapter of this book it may be permissible to glance for a moment at a few of the social and national consequences of invention. While, as we have seen in earlier chapters, the economic gains of ingenuity surpass computation, the work of the inventor has brought in its train evil as well as good, and this evil, with the further march of invention, is being plainly lessened year by year. A century ago about one tenth of the people in North America lived in cities and towns; to-day these centers of population hold nearly one half the families of the continent. Many observers regard this drift from country to city and town with dislike and alarm, without recognizing it to be inevitable. They paint pictures of country folk attracted by the superficial allurements of the city, a poor exchange for the wholesomeness and freedom of life in the country. They argue that with wise education the boys and girls reared on the farm will remain there, greatly to the gain of themselves and the nation. These critics leave out of view the feats of the inventor. Between 1870 and 1880 the self-binding harvester was perfected and introduced. Before its advent six or seven men followed every harvester to tie its shocks of grain. After the self-binder came into vogue, five of these men were no longer needed. Other inventions, planters, corn-shellers, and the like, as economical of labor, have been placed in the farmer’s hands within the past thirty years. The result being that to raise on farms the food for a million men, women and children, a greatly reduced staff in the field suffices to-day in comparison with the number required thirty or forty years ago. And what has become of the country population thus thrown out of work by thews of steel and brass? It has quietly betaken itself to towns and cities where, for the most part, it is manufacturing new comforts and luxuries for all the people, whether in town or country. In 1870 out of 100 wage-earners in the United States, 29 were engaged in manufactures, trade and transportation; in 1900 the corresponding figure had risen to 40. Enter this morning the house of a thrifty farmer or mechanic: you tread on a neat carpet, you see good furniture, a piano in the parlor, a bicycle in the barn. On the walls are attractive pictures, flanked by shelves of books and magazines. In not a few such houses one may find a telephone and electric lamps. As recently as 1870 some of these things did not exist at all, even for the rich. To-day they are enjoyed by millions. So with clothing: it is to-day better and cheaper than ever before. Food, too, is more varied and more wholesome than of yore, thanks to the express train, the quick steamer, the cold storage warehouse. All these agencies of betterment, and many more, are conducted in cities as the centers of capital, industry and population. While invention has, in the main, tended to make cities bigger than ever, it is now modifying that tendency by its rapid trolley lines to suburbs, its steamboat and railroad services constantly quickened in pace and lowered in fares. On the outskirts of Greater New York it is still possible for a wage-earner to buy land for a house and small garden, the burden of rent, liable to yearly increase, being escaped for good and all.

The Factory System and Checks Thereto.

It was in England toward the end of the eighteenth century that inventors first lifted the latch for an industrial revolution. When James Watt devised his steam engine, and its power was applied to spinning and weaving, these tasks were driven from the home to the factory, there to be more economically performed. Other industries followed, all the way from paint grinding to nail making, so that in a few years a profound change came over the field of labor. Under a scheme of subdivided toil the factory hand succeeded to the journeyman who, with a few mates, had split nails or drawn wire in a shop no bigger than some day he might own for himself. With the need to occupy large premises, to install engines and elaborate machinery, the capital of an employer has to be vastly more than of old, creating a new dependence on the part of the workman, and rendering it all but impossible that he should ever have a factory of his own. While the factory system of production is general in America, it is far from universal. Many leading manufactures, those of textiles, of boots and shoes, and so on, are usually conducted in factories, while some important industries, that of clothing, for example, are for the most part carried on at the homes of work people, or in small shops. Massachusetts in 1900, according to the U. S. census of that year, had 200,508 hands in 1078 textile mills and boot and shoe factories. Apart from these industries were 28,102 factories and shops, employing 291,418 hands, an average of but 10.57 each.[44] Taking the United States as a whole, the census for 1900 reports that the hand trades in small shops representing a product of $500 or less each, numbered 127,419. Presumably in all these cases the worker toiled by himself, usually as a repairer or a jobber rather than as a maker of new wares. All the other manufacturing concerns, 512,675 in number, employed on an average only 10.36 persons each. It is clear that the American factory is not as engulfing as many critics believe it to be. In larger measure than is commonly supposed workmen are to-day their own masters, or are busy in shops small enough to give scope to individual ingenuity and skill.

[44] Quoted by Edward Atkinson in a paper on the tendencies of manufacturing. American Social Science Association, 1904.

Let us grant that a shoemaker, say in St. Louis, at work in a stall of his own is a better and happier man than if in a nearby factory he fastened eyelets, or burnished heels, day in and day out for years together. While the harm to the toiler wrought by extreme subdivision of labor is plain, its evils are being abated in more ways than one. First of all the productiveness of the modern factory has so augmented the joint dividend of capital and labor that while the working day grows shorter, wages are increased, every earned dollar buying more manufactured wares than ever before. Secondly, in some large railroad and other shops the workmen are given a variety of tasks in succession, so as to be more versatile, more useful in emergencies, than if ever punching steel, or threading bolts. Even if the result of such a plan is to diminish the total output in the course of a year, it is worth while to lose some money that human nature may be redeemed from stupefying monotony of toil. High wages and large dividends cost too much when bought at the expense of hurt to muscle, nerve and brain.

Handicrafts Revived.

And a notable group of artisans, few in number but steadily increasing, with electric motors at their elbows, to-day enjoy complete emancipation from the factory bell. A woodcarver, bookbinder, leather stamper, forger of ornamental iron, rug weaver, potter, lens grinder, or printer, can have to-day a shop of his own and take pleasure in the chosen and constantly varied toil that gives him bread. In their simpler forms the modern lathe, loom, printing press, are cheap enough to be within the means of poor men, while their product when it displays taste and originality is sure of a market. In times past Palissy, Hargreaves, and many another master of a handicraft, has perfected a remarkable invention in a small shop. We may expect the arts to receive golden gifts in the future from the successors of these men, feeling as they do the stimulus of a broadening demand for work executed on new lines of excellence.

Tendencies Against Centralization.

Until within a few years past economic forces in America threatened soon to place its chief industries in the hands of a few men, so strong and unscrupulous as to be able to extort weighty and increasing tribute. For this danger remedies legislative and judicial are being sought, with the prospect of eventual success. In this place it may be allowable to remark how the progress of invention is working hand in hand with the aims of social justice. In the pages immediately preceding this chapter we have seen how cities and towns are working themselves loose from monopoly. A gas supply, on the old basis of manufacture at least, must be a unit, with a strong temptation to overcharge its customers. To-day the lighting field is shared with electricity, showing many isolated plants; when these purvey heat as well as light their rivalry with central stations may become formidable. In American villages and small towns the principal source of light is petroleum, largely controlled by the Standard Oil Company. From its exactions there opens escape as the farmer finds a source of cheap alcohol in his corn, potatoes and beets, even in his unmarketable fruit or damaged grain, ready to give him more light than petroleum ever did, and besides propel his machinery, or carry his crops to the nearest market town. The betterment of common roads throughout the Union proceeds in earnest. As that reform goes forward we may see motor-driven cars and wagons exerting a restraining influence on local railroad rates. Already the steam railroads are facing keen competition from interurban electric lines. Wherever these lines resist absorption, or control, by the steam carriers they serve the farmer so well and cheaply as to be one of the chief boons he has received at the inventor’s hands.

Take one instance chosen from many as striking. Dayton, Ohio, is a center of interurban lines which enfold in their sweep Urbana, Columbus, Hamilton and Cincinnati. Upon 220 miles of these lines the Southern Ohio Express Company picks up cans of milk, cases of eggs, crates of berries, packages of tobacco, from a thousand farmsteads. In the larger business of carrying grain and live stock the expansion is constant, so that the day seems near at hand when the company will find profit in placing a switch at every farm along its lines, sending cars there for everything the farmer has to sell. And the countryman finds Dayton as good a place to buy in as to sell in; its merchants offer better and cheaper wares than are to be had in the home village or the neighboring small town. To-day a farmer or market-gardener, a dairyman or stockbreeder, does not find the smallness of his capital the drawback it would have been ten years ago. With an interurban line passing near his home, or in front of his door, with a cheap telephone at hand, and enjoying a free rural mail delivery, he can sell his produce when he pleases and at the best market prices, paying but a light tax to the middleman, or completing a transaction with a directness that leaves the middleman out altogether.

Steam railroads seek large trainloads to be moved long distances; an electric freight and express service coins dimes into dollars by picking up market baskets, bundles for the seamstress and the laundress, a bunch or two of saplings for the orchard. The trunk lines of America, with their wide-spreading branches, enable merchants in the cities and the larger towns to replenish their counters and shelves every day. Stocks, therefore, need not be so large as of old, when, let us say, a whole winter’s goods were laid in by October. The change reduces the amount of capital required, the outlays for rent and insurance, the liability to shrinkage and deterioration of values. The interurban roads are extending these advantages to the village storekeeper who, in the morning telephones his wants to Toledo, Cleveland, or Detroit; and in the afternoon disposes the ordered wares on his shelves.[45]

[45] Outlook, New York, January 7, 1905.

New Domestic Architecture.

American dwelling houses, whether in city or country, have within forty years been much improved in plan and equipment. To speak only of dwellings in cities, we may note how designers and inventors have promoted comfort and convenience, healthfulness and cheer. At the close of the Civil War an ordinary house in Philadelphia, or Chicago, as it left the builder’s hands was little else than a bare box. Stoves for warming and cooking had to be brought into it, wardrobes heavy and clumsy were placed beside its walls, cupboards meant to be moved and not moved easily held the raiment and table linen. In rented houses the gas fixtures might belong to the tenant; when he took them away ugly breaks appeared in walls and ceilings. To-day all this is of the past: in important details the design of the mansion is embodied in dwellings comparatively small. Furnaces for heating, ranges for cooking, form part and parcel of the building; fixtures for gas and electricity, yielding both light and heat, are provided just as water faucets are; every bedroom has its clothes closet instead of the lumbering wardrobe. In the kitchen we find dressers and china closets built into the walls; the laundry has stationary washtubs and, in some cases, a drying room as well, so that the laundress does not care should it rain on washing day. The aim throughout is that the house and its equipment shall as far as possible make up a unit, that the labor of housekeeping be minimized to the utmost by a judicious outlay of capital when the house is built.

Electricity at Home.

Since 1900 the American householder, as well as the American business man, has fairly awakened to what the telephone can do for him. It is estimated that in 1905 the telephone in the United States earned four times as much as the telegraph. The day is at hand when every household but the poorest will enjoy the wonderful gift of Professor Bell. In somewhat the same fashion it is dawning upon the public that electricity stands ready to perform other services, each minor, but all, in the aggregate, going far to promote health and comfort at home.

At Schenectady, New York, Mr. H. W. Hillman, apart from heating in winter, has adopted electricity for many household tasks, with results described and illustrated in the Technical World, Chicago, July, 1906. His kitchen outfit for a family of five persons comprises an electric table, oven, griddle-cake cooker, meat broiler, cereal cooker, water heater, egg boiler, potato steamer, frying pan, coffee percolator, and a stove for ordinary cooking utensils. A three pound nickel plated electric iron is provided for the laundry. In the dining-room is an electric chafing dish and a percolator. On the verandah and in the den are electric cigar lighters. In the sewing-room the machine is driven by an electric motor. The bathroom has an electric mug which heats water for shaving in less than a minute; in chilly weather the luminous radiator yields just the slight heat which ensures comfort instead of discomfort. Of course, throughout the house electric lamps furnish light with the maximum of convenience and wholesomeness, the minimum of risk.

How does this service compare in cost with the employment of coal and gas? With coal at $6.50 a ton, and gas at $1.30 per thousand cubic feet, the average monthly expense was formerly $6.00; with electricity the bills are but 69 cents more per month, a mere trifle in comparison with the gain in comfort, the saving of drudgery, the promotion of cleanliness. The rate for electricity used for lighting is 10 cents per kilowatt hour, for heating only half that rate.

Mr. Hillman does not use electric heat for ordinary warming: it would cost him too much. A good many people are puzzled by the fact that an electric current, which yields a perfect light at a reasonable price, should in the sister task of heating fail in rivalry with a common stove or furnace. To solve this puzzle let us place our hands above a cluster of 15 Edison incandescent lamps, each of 16 candle power, representing one horse power, yet emitting no more heat than if three ounces of coal were slowly burning away in the course of an hour. This electricity may cost us ten cents an hour, the coal costs but the fifteenth part of one cent. In producing mechanical motion at a power-house, the engines waste at least ninety per cent. of the applied heat. To this heavy tax must be added the expenses of distribution, administration and maintenance. Until, therefore, the electrician reaches a mode of creating his current from heat without the enormous losses of present practice, we cannot look to him for a system of general heating. A word has already been said in this book about methods of district heating by steam. Another plan is worthy of mention. In Brooklyn the Morris Building Company supplies from a central plant fifty-two dwellings with hot water which serves not only for heating, but for cooking and washing also. The water is heated in part by live steam, in part by exhausts from steam engines.

Suggested Exhibits.

Such an experiment as this, the appliances at work for Mr. Hillman, suggest exhibits which might form part of the premises of agricultural colleges and technical schools. These establishments usually require for their officers such dwellings as are not too large and costly for ordinary householders. These dwellings, carefully designed and equipped, might serve as examples of the best practice in building, planning and appointment; in sound methods of heating from a central plant. At suitable times they might be open to public inspection. They might range in cost from $1,000 to $5,000, the cheapest to be built of wood, others to be built in brick, stone, or concrete. All the furniture and fittings to be chosen with an eye to wholesomeness, durability, and maintenance with the least labor possible. Each house should contain in its main room a card telling the cost of the building, with estimates of cost if executed in other materials. On occasion this plan might be extended to the contents of houses, each item on show days to be duly labeled. A series of such houses would tend to bring ordinary house-planning and housekeeping to the level of the best. Many books and journals offer architectural diagrams which few can understand, but everybody can see how attractive a good plan is when realized in a house to which he pays a leisurely visit. At Expositions, such as those of Chicago and St. Louis, the appeal of the architect and the exhibitor is rather to wonder than to utility. He shows us schlosses from Germany, palaces from Italy, châteaux from France, all appointed with costly magnificence. But while the average American wage is eleven dollars a week these displays can do little good as models for imitation.

NOTE ON THE LITERATURE OF INVENTION AND DISCOVERY

Books on invention and discovery are mentioned here and there throughout this volume. The reader may wish further references, in which case he may find them at the public library nearest home. Within the past few years the public libraries of America have been laying stress on their educational departments, are becoming more and more a worthy complement to the public schools.

At the Carnegie Library, Pittsburg, the department of technology is directed by Mr. Harrison W. Craver, a graduate of a polytechnical institute, who has had experience as a practicing chemist. The collection keeps mainly to lines of local interest, and includes an ample array of trade journals. Indexes to articles in technical journals are maintained. On the shelves are files of patents of the leading nations of the world. Short lists of books on subjects of current interest are from time to time compiled and issued. Workers receive advice and personal assistance from scientifically trained men. Questions are answered by mail and telephone. Notes on books are appended to their titles on the catalogue cards, and in the monthly bulletin.

Mr. Craver’s aid extends to other public libraries, among them to that at Providence. Here the industrial department contains about 7600 volumes, chiefly devoted to the principal industries of the city,—textiles, electrical arts, machinery, and the arts of design, especially in jewelry. A room is at the service of draughtsmen: a dark closet is available for copyists who bring cameras. When a new book comes in the reader or the artist likely to want it is notified.

The Pratt Institute Free Library, Brooklyn, has an applied science reference room which receives 115 scientific, technical and trade journals. It has brought together a large collection of trade catalogues, duly classified, and a collection of cuts of machines and mechanical devices. The custodian makes it his business to visit the neighboring factories and workshops, so as to provide every publication likely to be of help. The use of this department increases steadily, with a marked effect on the proportion of scientific books taken from the general library for home reading.

Newark, a city of many and diverse manufactures, has a public library also of the first rank. Scientific books, as received, are brought to public attention through the press, and by means of the monthly bulletin mailed to any one on request. Short lists of selected works on particular branches of applied science are prepared for gratuitous distribution: in each book of a series the full list is pasted as a guide to extended reading. Readers are invited to ask for any book not in the library which they believe would be of service to them.

These are but a few examples of the work the public libraries are doing throughout the Union. At the headquarters of the American Library Association are issued manifold aids for readers and students: a list of them is given on a page following the index to this book. Let us hope that one of these days the Association may establish a bureau through which the literature of applied science, and all other worthy literature, may be passed upon by a staff of the best critics, for the behoof of all the people. Such a service would inure not only to the good of those who borrow books from public libraries, but would afford help to the men and women who buy books for libraries of their own.


INDEX