TEH
S See, J&nnes V/&VM
EXTRACTS
CHORDAUS LETTERS.
COMPRISING THE CHOICEST SELECTIONS FROM THE SERIES OF ARTICLES ENTITLED
"EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL'S LETTERS," WHICH HAVE BEEN APPEARING
FOR THE PAST TWO YEARS IN THE COLUMNS OF
THE AMERICAN' MACHINIST.
WITH STEEL PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR; ALSO, ORIGINAL
ILLUSTRATIONS BY CHAS. J. TAYLOR.
PREFACE BY THE AUTHOR.
NEW AND ENLARGED EDITION, WITH ADDITIONAL PLATES,
*:::
NEW YORK:
JOHN WILEY & SONS.
1883.
Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1880, by
AMERICAN MACHINIST PUBLISHING Co.,
In the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.
PREFACE.
The letters to the Editor of the AMERICAN MACHINIST.
from which he has made so many extracts under the title of
" Extracts from Chordal's Letters," were written with pleasure
to the author. They were without any continued thought on
any one subject, being intended as the presentation of the
topic, rather than the thought.
With such intentions, it made little difference which side
of a question was taken, or that an opposite side was taken
in a succeeding letter.
There is but little need of consistency, where there is no
tenacity of view.
A pleasure has also followed the writing of these letters. It
has often come to the author's knowledge, that they were
read by people who, as a rule, never read anything. It is not
known that this proves merit in the letters, but there is a
pleasure in knowing that one has in the smallest way, or in
any way, been instrumental in getting anybody into the
habit of reading anything.
There is plenty of shop in these letters; good shop and bad
shop; in fact, they are shop letters, written for shop men, by a
shop man, who has as much interest in the people who go into
the shops, as in the marvelous products which come out of
the shops.
As if there were not enough of the mechanic in these let-
ters, it seems a pity to miss the chance, in a preface, to express
the view that we live in a peculiar land, under a peculiar form
of government, surrounded by peculiar social conditions.
2 PREFACE.
In other lands, the well-being of all depends on the wisdom
of the few who rule. In our land, the well-being of all de-
pends on the wisdom of the mass, who select their rulers. In
other lands, the ignorance of the mass will insure the stability
of the existing civic form.
In our land, the ignorance of the mass will insure the total
destruction of the existing civic form.
The shop men form a large proportion of our civic mass.
They must be more than workmen ; they must be citizens.
They must have more than skill ; they must have education.
Education and wise citizenship cost money. The mechanic
of the Republic must be better paid than the mechanic of the
Monarchy.
Our mechanics are wiser citizens than are the mechanics of
any other land, and they are better paid than in other lands.
The. Republic owes it to its mechanics, that it pay the hire
of good citizens; and the mechanic owes it to the Republic,
that he make himself worthy of a citizen's hire, as well as the
workman's hire.
JAMES W. SEE.
HAMILTON, OHIO.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
Mechanics Who Succeed and Those Who Fail. Reasons Why. What
to do With Money Saved ........9
CHAPTER II.
Sackett and Wycoff in Missouri. Saw Mill Emergencies. Devising
Make-Shifts. Stealing Men and Being Stolen - - - - 16
CHAPTER III.
How the Panic Struck Pete & Cady. A Yankee Contractor in the
Shop 25
CHAPTER IV.
Hunter's Troubles with Foremen. Sackett's Experience 36
CHAPTER V.
How Far Should Purchasers' wishes Influence Manufacturers ? What
to do with Odd Patterns - ..--.-.43
CHAPTER VI.
Mrs. Toodles Runs a Machine Shop. Comparative Cost of Small
Tools. A Machine Screw Missionary. How a Grindstone was
Made to Pay ...-.--.--51
CHAPTER VII.
History of Two Jours. Wycoff's Shop Photographed.. Longevity of
Shops ...........56
CHAPTER VIII.
Ye Heartsick Tramping Jour. How to Get Up in the World. Keep-
ing Mum about Wages. High Wages vs. High First Cost of
Product. What Constitutes a Good Workman - - - 6;
CHAPTER IX.
Extension of Shops. Developing Into a Stock Company. A Time-
Keeping Machine. Hunter's Foundry Accounts. Ownership of
Patterns -- - - - - - ----73
CHAPTER X.
Altering Details to Suit Customers. Journal Boxes and How to Place
Them. Fear of Advertising Somebody - - - - - 79
4 CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XI.
Emery Wheels in the Shop. An Emery- Wheel Man Wanted. Char-
ley as the Champion Oiler. A Mechanical Time-Keeper - - 86
CHAPTER XII.
Shop Nomenclature. Sackett's Planer Arrangement. Milling
Machines and Yankee " Trappery." A Core Device for Foundries 95
CHAPTER XIII.
Taking Things on Trial. Starting New Shops and Starting New
Tools. Shop Ablutions -------- 100
CHAPTER XIV.
Shops in the Sky. Value of Testimonials. Location of Factories.
Selling Agencies -------- - 108
CHAPTER XV.
Tells How Dix and Chordal Established Standard Sizes in Wycoff's
Shop ----_._. -___! iS
CHAPTER XVI.
Outwitting the Almanac. Lighting Shops ----- 124
CHAPTER XVII.
The Lightning Machinist. His Lazy Neighbor. The Soldier on
Duty. Giving Satisfaction to Purchasers. Order in Shops - .135
CHAPTER XVIII.
Chordal's Boy Joe. What Books Shall Machinists Read ? - - 143
CHAPTER XIX.
The Traveled Machinist. Fair Play for Apprentices. Bright and
Black Finish -------.. . j^j
CHAPTER XX.
Sackett's Theories of Wages and Finance. Systems of Gauges. New-
ton's Casting Room. Who Shall Clean Castings? Country
Moulders
CHAPTER XXI.
Journals and Bearings. The Younger Sackett in WycofPs Shop - 172
CHAPTER XXII.
Mr. Huber's New Button Set. Poor Dan Takes the Floor - - 187
CHAPTER XXIII.
Turning Shafting on the Hotchkiss Plan. A Simon Pure Machine
Shop ............ Ig 6
CONTENTS. 5
CHAPTER XXIV.
Geography in Machine Building. Getting Ready for Business. Two
Cases in Point ...-..---. 203
CHAPTER XXV.
Working for Nothing. How Chordal Got Ugly. Sixteen Glasses of
Beer. Money Saved on Mandrels ------ 210
CHAPTER XXVI.
Finding One's Vocation. How Bob Did It. Pattern Making in Coun-
try Shops. Devices Born Too Soon ----- 222
CHAPTER XXVII.
Coarse-Grained Foremen. The Chronic Mistaker. The Blunderer.
The Anxious Man. The Man Who Knows. The Mullet-Head.
Cliques in the Shop. Benches for the North Shop - 229
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Procrastination in Shops. Ingraham's Opening Day. Making Re-
pairs. System and Organization. Sick Lathes, and How to Cure
Them. Short-winded Planers. A Point in Sackett's System - 236
CHAPTER XXIX.
Paint on Machinery. Functional Machines. Shafting and Hangers.
A New Wrinkle in Shafting. A New Tool Wanted - - 249
CHAPTER XXX.
Elasticity of Workmen. How Chordal Got Bounced. A Glorious
Mechanical Tramp. Resurrecting Shops - 258
CHAPTER XXXI.
Successful Things that Won't Do. Screwing-on versus Casting-on.
The Ten- Year-Old Method of Polishing. Migrating Westward - 265
CHAPTER XXXII.
Settling Mechanical Disputes. Advantages of Having no Foundry.
Mechanical Quixotism. Forges and Shelves for the North Shop.
The Steam Engine Indicator. ... - . 274
CHAPTER XXXIII.
Old Castings in the Shop. How New Tools are Suggested. How
They Ought To Be. Combination Machines ... 2 8a
CHAPTER XXXIV.
Arranging Machine Shop Floors. Methods of Finishing Work.
Our Artist Sketches a Common Boiler Front ... 292
CHAPTER XXXV.
Sackett's Experience with a Titled Engineer. Personal Identity of
Bennett, Sackett and Wycoff. Shop Drawings and Symbolism.
Tramping Jours. Starting New Shops. Chordal as a Pilgrim - 302
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
The Men who Design Mills and Shops. Characteristics of Pro-
fessional and Non-Professional Men. Architects who Fail in
Designing Industrial Works. Inconveniences in Machine
Shops. The Usual Experience in Building and Extending
Them ------------- 321
CHAPTER XXXVII.
The Acquisition of Knowledge. Experience of the Country Bank-
er's Son in a Machine Shop - - ------ 328
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Shapes and Styles of Chimneys. Mistakes in Building Chimneys.
How the Ladies Set Out to Improve a Dirty City. Mr.
Sinton's Pride in his Smoke Consumer ----- 336
CHAPTER XXXIX.
Mr. Baker Builds a Mill with Doors and a Lean-to. A Reformed
Consumptive Persuades him to Invest in a Hyphen. How
Things Turned Out - ... 345
CHAPTER XL.
Mr. Marling the Moulder. His Industrial and Social Habits.
His Efforts to Make his Co-workers Miserable. How they
Appreciated his Efforts --------- 354
CHAPTER XLI.
Looking for a Coal Vase with Trunnions. The Confusion Among
Catalogues. A Hardware Clerk's System. Bennett's System
of Keeping Catalogues. Chordal's Own System - 561
CHAPTER XLII.
Altering the Form of a Mechanical Product to Suit Customers.
Some Opinions and Experiences. How the Public School
Principals liked the Ink. How Machine-Shop Principals
may Take a Hint ----- 370
CHAPTER XLIII.
Personal History of a Young Machinist - - 375
CHAPTER XLIV.
Different Kinds of Foremen --------- 385
CHAPTER XLV.
A Shop with Servants for the Workmen - 395
FULL PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS,
Frontispiece. Steel Portrait of the Author.
The Negro Engineer bores out the Cylinder with a Grate Bar, - 17
" There was a Yankee Contractor in Pete & Cady's Shop," 31
" Excuse Me, Gentlemen, got to Shrink this Crank on," - 61
Mechanical Time-keeper in Sackett's Shop, ----- 89
" Never a Day Passed but Something Came Tumbling Down," - - 109
The Lightning Machinist, ---.--.. 133
" Mind You, I am Going to Make an Example of You," - - 161
" Then Poor Dan took the Floor," ------- 191
" Who should Come with our Beer but the same Chap who had asked
for a Job," ----------- 215
" Ingraham Superintended and Smiled Acknowledgments," - - 239
" I Saw a Ten-year-old Nigger-boy finishing Flat Irons on an Emery
Wheel," ----------- 269
"I wish you would Send an Artist *$* to Sketch a common Boiler
Front," __----..--. 297
" I seek Far and Wide for the Man Who can Measure me fora
Shop," ------------- 323
" Mr. Sinton is Very Proud of his Device, and has almost Par-
alyzed his Forefinger," -- 341
" McCann Informs Baker that he is Running on Forty Pounds
of Coal to the Barrel of Flour," - - - 351
" Mr. Marling Takes an Inventory a Trowel, Two Slicks, and
Two Ratty Suits of Clothes," 357
" Bennett's Office Indexing Chordal under his Proper Number,
and Shoving him into a Pigeon Hoje Marked C," - - 367
" He Hears the Foreman Talking ' German,' and it Makes him
Sick," 379
"John Paul on the Ladder," -------- 387
" The Servants of the Machinist," -...-.-- 393
Extracts from Chordal's Letters.
CHAPTER I.
MECHANICS WHO SUCCEED AND THOSE WHO FAIL. REA-
SONS WHY. WHAT TO DO WITH MONEY SAVED.
* * * * There are a lot of mechanics who
manage to get into every shop in the land who
judge of possibilities entirely by their own weak
accomplishments. They are the ones who do the
grumbling. Their weak minds never understand the
circumstances around them, and they foolishly and
blindly give utterance to the stereotyped growl:
" There's no show for a mechanic." It is the miser-
able and contemptible example of such men that
keeps boys with stuff in them out of the shop. They
sagely tell the inquiring youth not to go into a
shop, that there is no decent show in the world, that
they have been there and know. Now these men
lie. They never have been there ; they don't know,
and there is a show. The smart mechanic of to-day
has before him a possibility of prosperity, of useful-
ness, of social position, of home comfort and general
respect, such as the lords of earlier centuries, with
armed retainers, with no forks, and with dogs under
the table, never dared to dream of.
No mechanic in this country dares lift his head
and say his children must do without education, and
go to work at twelve years of age. No mechanic in
this country, when he squats in a town, is compelled
10 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
to hunt up a dirty hut to live in, and pay a premium
on it because it fronts on a sloppy alley.
The mechanic in this country cannot lay special
claim to a dirty home because he is a workingman.
The eggshells thrown into his slop-yard may be
filthier and dirtier than those of his decent neighbor,
but it is not the result of his being a mechanic, for his
neighbor is one also. When his dirty little girl goes
to school in the morning, her dirty stocking may
slouch down off her leg and upon her miserable shoes,
but it can't be explained by saying that these stock-
ings are dirty and slouched down because they are on
the legs of the daughter of a workingman. The
explanation would fail for the simple reason that two-
thirds of this girl's trim and neat companions are
daughters of workingmen. The comforts of life and
home are within the reach of all American working-
men. The best of things that are printed, the finest
efforts of the stage, and the best of home comforts, the
American workingman may enjoy. There is no social
bar whatever to his political distinction. He may choose
whether he will frequent the finest homes in the land
or the lowest pot houses. If he is a low blackguard,
he will be refused decent society, not because he is a
workingman, but because he is a blackguard. Every
prospect for the future which this wide world holds
out for its choicest people, this land holds out for the
smart mechanic. Yet the shiftless, ignorant, thought-
less sluggard sees no show for the workingman !
There is a show, all the show, but maybe none for
him. The sensible mechanic don't gauge his own
accomplishments by the contemptible lack of effort of
the ignorant howler.
* * * * Is there no show for machinists, Mr.
Editor ? Turn to the last pages of the AMERICAN
MACHINIST, and there read the biography of the
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS. II
workingman. The advertising pages tell the tale.
Sixty men put their names on those pages. They
employ five thousand workmen, and over six million
dollars of capital.
Were these sixty men born with these millions in
their pockets ? Did they fall heir to the cash and the
shops at an early age ? Not a bit of it. Look here :
At the age of eighteen, over forty of these men were
working in shops, drilling set screw holes in pulleys,
cutting bolts, chipping new holes in old boilers, con-
triving ways and means to get old broken studs out
of old cylinders, forging square keys out of round
iron, butt-welding erroneous connecting rods, gouging
out core boxes, gluing up segments, spitting white
pine dust, cutting up old boilers, building up new
boilers, putting in new rivets, cutting out old rivets,
bedding floor moulds, ramming copes, filing cores,
and doing everything one man does for another man's
money. They were not preparing themselves to take
charge of probated fortunes. They were working.
Of these forty men, thirty did not, at the age of
eighteen, have fifty dollars they could call their own.
Of the five thousand men they now employ, three
thousand were then their shopmates.
Among these sixty men can be found the names of
some of the highest social powers in this land of ours.
High toned society made no exception among the three
thousand and sixty. Society never said to one of the
sixty: "We find a birth mark on you ; twenty years
from now come to us." Society never said anything.
The sixty said. Fortune never said: " I see a mark,
come to me." Fortune never said anything. The sixty
said. The five thousand in the shop never said to the
sixty: "We see a mark on you; shoot ahead and we
will lag and work for you." The five thousand never
said anything. The sixty said. Providence didn't
12 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
chalk out a future for the sixty. The sixty did their
own chalking and left the five thousand to lean on
Providence.
Civil law never said, " sixty of you chaps must be
smart and prudent thrifty and five thousand of you
must starve in pot houses after work is over." Law
don't push men forward. The sixty did the pushing.
A vile blackguard blows the fumes of cheap whiskey
in my face and tells me there is no future for a me-
chanic. Oh no ! of course not. If a man is foolish
enough to learn the machine trade, of course he can
never hope to call a pane of glass or a rose bush his
own ! Of course, he can never hope to take a daily
paper, nor to own a copy of Comstock's philosophy,
nor twenty dollars worth of general books, nor to be
called on to rule in public councils, nor to head a
public charity, nor to see his children well educated !
There's no show of course! If a man ever touches a
chipping hammer, a wise people will never call on him
to govern the state, If he ever splits a rail, good-bye
to all future prospects.
* * * * Mr. Editor, if you know of a bright six-
teen-years-old boy, smart and independent, with snap,
pride, poverty, good health, and a common school
education, and with a hankering after the mechanical
arts, tell him to go into a machine shop and learn the
trade. You can appear disinterested, but some day he
will be your advertiser.
Tell him, when he earns money, to hunt up some way
to spend it all before the next installment is due ; tell
him to learn only one way of doing things, and to fail
when that way won't fit ; tell him he is to get rich, not
by the amount saved, but by the amount of wages
received ; tell him never to look into the human nature
of his foremen and fellow workmen; tell him always
to hunt up the slums to live in when he moves to a new
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LKTTERS. 13
place; tell him to cultivate the habit of playing seven-
up in a saloon two hours every night; tell him to buy
his groceries by the quarter's worth; tell him when he
is dissatisfied with his wages, not to go to the office by
himself on his own merits, but to find a dozen other
fellows, eight of whom already get more than they are
worth, and march into the office and demand a raise
or threaten a strike; tell him never to hesitate to spend
six months' wages to get a three months' job at ten
cents a day more; tell him to associate with machinists
only; tell him never to pay six dollars to take his folks
to the opera, and never to miss a low performance; tell
him never to read anything relating to the past, present
or future; tell him never to clean up before he goes
home, and never to allow his home and family to be as
neat as a millionaire's; tell him to take his children out
of school as soon as some one will buy them at a
dollar a week; tell him all these things, and see that
he lives up to them and he will never be your adver-
tiser. He will curse you to his dying day, and will tell
you a workingman has no show in this country.
* * * * Norman, one of your correspondents,
states that a late letter of mine provoked discussion.
This is gratifying and pleasant. Were I a high and
mighty power, able to suggest and dictate plans, I could
do much good indeed; but, as it is, the utmost I can
expect of myself is the ability to turn thought in some
certain direction. Thought resulting in discussion,
should result in settled plans. I was in hopes that the
very empty termination of my former remarks would
lead to suggestions as to failures or successes. Men
don't like to talk about such things much, and men like
Norman, who will tell of a failure, are rare.
If a man is of a prudent character, he will act like
all prudent men, and will succeed and fail as all pru-
dent men do. No bank is sure; but the best business
14 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
men deposit in them. If a wealthy man loses all by a
bank, he suffers indeed, for his living capital was there.
He must change his course of life, and commence his
life's work anew. The workman's money in bank is
strictly a surplus, and its total loss need not affect his
life to-day or to-morrow one jot or tittle. But it won't
do for a person, who at middle age commences to save,
to lose it all. It is apt to stop the thing. Men who
have never saved, and who propose to save, should have
a sure thing on it. Savings banks are not a sure thing;
in no state is a depositor guarded absolutely against
discouraging losses. Besides that, there is nothing
compulsory about deposits. Building associations are,
in many ways, superior, especially in some states. The
deposits are compulsory, and the securities excellent,
though not absolute. Loans are dangerous, when
effected by inexperienced men. Profit on savings is no
object to the class I speak of. The saving itself is the
main thing. Real estate, bought on small notes, is a
good investment, if the land is not a swindle. Owning
a lot, whether there is a house on it or not, is not a tie
to any workman. If he loses his job, he can go else-
where and work; his real estate don't need to hold
him; he can go, just as though he didn't have any. If
he can sell it, or can't sell it, he ought not to sell it; if
it can't be rented, don't rent it; if taxes must be paid
on idle property, pay them. To the class I speak of,
the privilege of owning something is worth paying for.
The idea that John Smith can't work in Pennsylvania,
because he bought a lot in Michigan, is a shallow idea.
If the lot is in a good place, it don't make any differ-
ence where the job is; the further off the better. He
won't be so apt to sell the lot.
Stock in corporations is dangerous to the class I
speak of. Such investments need control. The
owner has no chance and no capability. Government
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAIS LETTERS. 1$
bonds are the very best investment ; they are as safe
as can be ; the trouble is in the size of them. The
ten dollar certificates were exactly the thing, but they
were soon used up. If Mr. Sherman would arrange
for an issue of several millions of dollars, in similar
certificates, without interest, convertible into interest-
bearing bonds, in sums of five hundred dollars, the
workman would hail the day. Money invested in
such things is idle, of course, but idle money beats
no money at all. If such certificates should be
issued, manufacturers would see that their men got
them. To a machinist who has a chronic case
of squander on hand, and who wants to get
well, I can suggest a plan as sure and certain as
the stability of this Government. It is this : Every
pay-day go to the post-office and get a money order
for your extra cash. Don't try to make the figure
even, but for any amount, seven, nine, eleven, or
seventeen dollars anything you can ; don't dare to
make the order larger. Get the money on pay-day,
sure. Have the order made payable to the Treasurer
of the United States, and take it home.* This is safe ;
no one can get any good out of these orders, if they
are stolen; if burnt up or lost, you can get duplicates.
Do this every pay-day; never miss a single one under
any circumstances, and when you get a hundred
dollars' worth, take them to any bank, or to the man
you work for, and buy a hundred-dollar Government
bond. Have that bond registered by all means.
* It is best not to hold money-orders longer than one year, as after
that time their collection might be attended with some inconvenience.
l6 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS.
CHAPTER II.
SACKETT AND WYCOFF IN MISSOURI. SAW MILL EMER-
GENCIES. DEVISING MAKE-SHIFTS. STEALING MEN AND
BEING STOLEN.
It was west of the Mississippi that I first met Sack-
ett and Wycoff, who have now returned to the East.
They both started small shops in Missouri, in the same
town, just as the war came on. They found they had
made a mistake, so they returned before they had run
a month. Siegel occupied the town, needed grape-
shot, and, finding a hundred St. Louis moulders in his
command, he "pressed" the two foundries and set the
men at work. The cupolas and moulding floors
had been designed for heats of one ton ; not a
dozen flasks had been made; one hundred and twenty
miles to a railroad or river, and no pig iron or coal on
hand. Candle and soap boxes from the subsistence
department were used for flasks; cook-stoves, flat-irons,
and sash-weights impressed for scraps; and charcoal
used for fuel, The moulders worked all over the build-
ings and yards, and the cupolas ran continuously. It
took six men to carry up charcoal for each one. The
result was tons and tons of grape-shot. Then came a
battle, a defeat, and a retreat. The grape-shot had not
been cleaned or broken from the gates, so they were
all thrown into wells and covered up, to keep them from
the enemy. The enemy, however, thought it cheaper
to dig up these grape-shot than to make new ones.
They were thus well-fixed for grape, but had no iron
for horse-shoes, so they commenced on the saw-mills
in thirty counties, and used up all wrought-iron parts
on hundreds of engines; connecting-rods, piston-rods,
mainshafts, bolts, nuts, and cam-rods all went to heel
the rebellious army mule.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS. 19
The war ended one day and Sackett and Wyckoff
went back and found their tools wrecked. They refitted
and began to reap a rich harvest. All the aforesaid
engines came in for repairs; one hundren dollars for a
single cut through a cylinder, and other work in pro-
portion. The Lehigh coal cost eighty dollars a ton,
for it had to be hauled over a hundred miles, but they
got twelve and a half cents a pound for the heaviest
castings. I need not say they made money, but the
game was up when a railroad came and brought com-
petition within reach. They wisely sold out and came
East again.
* # * * Among the saw mills in this region
could be found many triumphs of unlettered genius.
There were few real mechanics in these mills; shops
hundreds of miles away by wagon road ; and acci-
dents always happening. The stop-valve on the
engine gives out, but the mill must run while a
new one is coming. A brake is put under the fly-
wheel to slow the engine, and a stick of cord-wood
thrown under the connecting rod stops it. Rod
boxes and cross-head "brasses" of oak were com-
mon. A slide-valve of black-walnut was found once
in a while. Oil gives out and water is used till a
hog is killed. The saw gets sprung, and the factory
wants thirty dollars to exercise the saw maker's magic
art upon it, and the mill would stand still three weeks.
The backwoods sawyer straightens it in an hour, with-
out knowing just how he did it. The cylinder gets
cut, and the negro engineer bores it out with a grate-
bar. I saw him doing it. Flange joints are made with
white sand mixed with the white of an egg, and the
main belt is spliced with bark. A boiler wanted new
fire-box and tubes. The negro engineer undertook the
job. He never saw the inside of a boiler shop, and
never saw a piece of machinery outside that mill, but
20 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
the owner had sent for iron, tubes and rivets, and the
man had gone to work in his own way. When I hap
pened in that section, he was boring the twite sheets.
His special tools were a four-by-four scantling and a
five-eighths bolt. All these mills have a ratchet drill.
He laid off and drilled the center holes, put the bolt
through the hole and scantling, drove a cutter through
a mortise in the scantling, and using the scantling as a
lever, walked round and cut the holes, feeding by driv-
ing on the cutter. I was interested enough to caliper
some holes already done, and found them as good as
the ordinary boiler shop job. I am satisfied the fellow
finished 'the thing up in good shape. An educated or
skilled mechanic would never have attempted to do
this work in the woods.
* * * * Some men seem to be deficient entirely
in power for devising make-shifts, or in adaptability
to novel circumstances.
I was told of a well-educated engineer who found
himself fifty miles from port with a broken vacuum
gauge. He showed utter helplessness, and proposed
immediate return. His assistant was a shovel engi-
neer. He saw nothing amiss in a broken gauge, or
in the absence of one. He traded places with his
chief, and made the trip by sense of feeling. When
his condenser felt too hot, he gave her more injection.
We are told of a party of royal astronomers who
went into the northern regions to make observations.
The expedition was an important one, but the weather
was so severe that the mercury forming the artificial
horizon was frozen, thus rendering their instruments
useless. They gave it up and came home without the
idea of a lamp under the mercury having occurred to
them.
* * * * The business boom has brought to our
ears the old charge of stealing men.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS. 21
As near as I can remember, I have heard of no case,
during the last few years, of emissaries slipping around
and seducing men away from one shop to work in
another for better pay. An owner has been thankful
if he could keep his front door open and the line shaft
turning around, and the men have been thankful for a
job at any pay. The dull times lasted so long that
tools were allowed to deteriorate and run down gene-
rally, systems flagged, capital was withdrawn, and
manufacturing facilities were, in many cases, seriously
crippled.
During these times, good workmen in many cases
became disgusted with a trade which paid such
terribly low wages. They quit the business and went
into other things, sometimes more profitable, some-
times less, but they at least succeeded in changing the
general current of their lives. Some shops had such
a poor lot of men left in them that keen-witted boys
would not go among them to learn the trade. The
less cultivated boys could net get into the shops, and
no boy with wit or no wit could learn much from the
lot of men which was left. Such circumstances were
exceptional, of course, but there was a tendency that
way all over. Many good men fell out of the ranks,
and few good boys went into the shops.
Now we find that work is plenty in many sections,
and sharp workmen hard to get. There has always
been some attention paid to keeping good men.
Many owners in the dullest times followed the plan
of always letting the poorest workmen go, and even
replacing them with better ones. Other shops, on the
contrary, kept the poorest men because they were
cheaper.
* * * * Now we hear some poor, over-crowded
owner, with time contracts on hand, with a shop run
down at the heel, and with all the men he can get,
22 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
saying, "So and So steals my men away from me.
He's a low down, contemptible, dirty cur," etc., etc.
* * * * Now, honestly, Mr. Editor, do you
think Mr. So and So is a cur ? How does he steal
men ? By offering them more pay. Auction is theft
according to the morals of some. Now I, for one,
like to see this stealing going on. It's awfully incon-
venient sometimes, but it's a mutual privilege, and out
of the rivalry the poor machinist manages to get his
full value. A machinist is entitled to all the favorable
fluctuation in the labor market, and when the bidding
is spirited all may laugh, for times are good.
* * * * I have had men stolen from me, and
called the stealer a thief. I have stolen men from
other folks and have been called a thief. I have been
stolen myself, and always had the most respect for the
biggest thief. The way to get men is to pay their
value, the way to hold them is to pay their value, and
the man gets and holds his place by making himself
valuable.
There are employers who look upon mechanics as a
class to be bargained with like business men, who
consider a mechanic as having the business ability and
sharpness to look out for his own interest. There are
other employers who feel and know that workingmen
are not business men, and cannot do well by them-
selves, that they deal in force rather than in business
power, and that they can be imposed on with little
effort. They would blush to take advantage of these
circumstances, as they would if tempted to bruise the
weak. This latter class are not exceptional at all.
They are about equal with the first class, and they set
the wages of the world with a justice which is cer-
tainly admirable under the circumstances.
* * * * If a man is filling a situation he brings
down the wrath of his employer if he listens to better
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAl/S LETTERS. 23
offers. I claim that when a man sells his services for
the time being to another man, it is his duty to listen
carefully to every thing which indicates to him his
present or prospective value. A man ought to be
ashamed of himself who does not say every day: "I
expect to be more valuable some day;" and the
employer ought to be ashamed of himself who will
dicker with a man for his present services and then
assume that the man should turn a deaf ear to every
offer. * * * Warwick has a superintendent at
eighteen hundred a year. Both were satisfied. The
superintendent Byron didn't know his real value,
and Warwick didn't care. But Mr. Timmerman
comes along. He don't care anything for Byron,
but he wants a good superintendent; he wants Byron,
and knows his value. He don't propose to pay any
more than he can help, but he does propose to pay
somewhere between eighteen hundred dollars and the
real value of the man, so he goes to Warwick's place
and offers Byron twenty-five hundred dollars a year or
a third interest in his place. Byron is not on a con-
tract. If he was he would not violate it, and if he was,
Timmerman would not be a party to the violation.
Byron goes to Warwick and states the case. Warwick
talks ugly right away, and accuses Timmerman of dis-
honorable conduct in coming into his mill on such an
errand, and accuses Byron of dishonorable conduct
in not kicking him right out. The only questionable
feature I can see in the play is Warwick's conduct.
* * * * I claim that when one man goes to
work for another for the time being, he reserves the
right to constantly exert himself to do better, and also
the right to invite better offers right on the premises.
The idea of presuming that paying a man for present
services gives the right to blindfold him and stop up
his ears forever !
24
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
* * * * Into this question of course comes the
policy of leaving a permanent place for a temporary
place at a higher figure. It is supposed that common
sense will cover such cases, and any man will under-
stand that once in a while somebody will offer him
more than his value, on account of pressing necessities
of service. Wise men never bite at such things. A
little judgment will tell if a figure is too high to be
permanent.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS. 25
CHAPTER III.
HOW THE PANIC STRUCK PETE & CADY. A YANKEE
CONTRACTOR IN THE SHOP.
* * * * Pete & Cady have a shop in a town of
twenty thousand inhabitants. Years ago their busi-
ness was general. They did saw and grist-mill work;
would contract for the iron work for a jail; receive
orders for engines of ten to sixty horse power; kept a
big stock of sash weights on hand; could point to
many nice" jobs of store-front work; had a fair line of
patterns for repairing everything used in their section;
and they had made money.
They had about fifty thousand dollars invested, and
worked about ninety men. They did good work, and
got good prices. Pete was a machinist, and a good
one. Cady was a millwright, and knew lots of things.
They were good men, in every sense of the word ;
'square and honest, no lazy bones in their bodies, and
with business faculties superior to the average. You
will readily see that they owned a machine shop. They
would build an engine, and it would be a good one.
It would take them a good while to build one, but,
when done, there was a margin.
These folks were not manufacturers, and, more than
that, they had never seen any manufacturing done in
their lives. Their business was local, with a slight
tinge of reputation abroad in connection with their
number four circular saw mill. Their work came to
them, and they figured on it and did it, if they got the
order. If they got a whiff of a possible job, Cady
would put on his good clothes, and go, say, fifty miles,
and labor with the party. They did work only when
they had the order. They had made money and had
a surplus. Pete was foreman in the machine shop in
26 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
particular, and superintendent of the concern in
general. Cady was in the pattern shop, when not
engaged outside. The shop was located in the Middle
States, and was booming when the panic struck the
trade.
* * * * The panic made things blue around the
establishment of Pete & Cady few men, little work,
contemptible wages, and the shop losing money. Like
a thousand other men during the panic, they held a
council, and decided that they were engaged in a line
of trade greatly overcrowded. They must hunt up
something to make, which would keep them busy, and
make it pay. They looked around, and struck on the
last thing for a panic-stricken shop to engage in, to
wit : small semi-portable steam engines.
What led them to it, no man knows. Pete said, in
gloomy council, "We have all the tools required in
this little engine business ; we know all about steam
engines ; we can make them up without orders and sell
from stock lots of these things sold."
The fact is, these boys were hatching up a manufac-
turing conspiracy. They thought that manufacturing
consisted in simply engaging in a line which would
permit a stock to be carried to fill orders from, as
distinguished from a line of business dependent on
special orders to fill. They looked no deeper; they
didn't know it was any deeper, or they wouldn't have
gone in.
* * * * After the conception, and a long period
of incubation, there stood upon the shop floor an
elegant little eight-horse power upright engine, just
hatched. It was a machine that the purchaser would
be satisfied with, and one that would be a credit to the
builders.
* * * * They pitched in and built twenty,
following the same plan of " manufacture " that they
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS. 27
did with a single engine. They knew just what the
engine cost; they advertised far and wide, giving a
price, leaving but little margin. A month of advertis-
ing and not a sale not even a real earnest inquiry;
nothing but postal cards from triflers.
This worried the boys, for they knew such engines
were being sold by hundreds. Some friend told them
their price was too high, and scared inquirers away.
They answered that their engine was something extra
good. Friend said, the distant engine needer didn't
get to see the engine; he only saw the price.
* * * * They changed tactics, and advertised
larger than ever, but omitted any mention of price.
This brought heavy mails, and, in response, they quoted
a price ten per cent, off list. They made a few sales
out of all proportion to the mails; they cut another
ten percent., and sales slightly increased. Still the
business amounted to nothing, and there was nothing
in it at twenty off.
* * * * The twenty engines were finally gotten
rid of, and the question arose as to the desirability of
building a new lot. Cady had charge of the disposal-
end of the new scheme, and had got thoroughly
worked up. He insisted on the engines being cut
down in merit, till they could stand simply even with
the others in the markets. " If others use boilers too
small for the engine, we must do the same," said he,
"and we must overhaul the whole thing on the same
plan of economical design."
" Next," said he, " we must have the work done by
the piece; that's the way other makers do. Then we
must rig up for the work. These things taken to-
gether must justify another twenty per cent, cut, and
then everything will be lovely. There are lots of these
engines sold and if we can only get our share of the
trade, we don't need any other work." Pete coincided
28 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
in the scheme, and things were pushed. The engines
were re-designed; what seemed like marvelously con-
venient jigs, etc., were got out; the men were put on
a piece-work price, which drew the sweat, and a new
lot of twenty was begun.
* * * * The castings were out, the boiler iron
was on hand, and a piece-work price put on every
piece, so that it was known just what these engines
would cost. Cady looked at the figures looked
solemn; said it wouldn't do at all. Even at this
price, their cost was still slightly above the selling
price of some competitors. Said Pete must be
handling things wrong, or he could get the thing
down lower. Pete flared up, and said the thing
couldn't be got any lower. The material would not be
much cheaper, if they stole it. Said he knew all
about engine work, and knew there were only two
ways of cheapening it. Either leave off some of the
work, or cut down the men's pay. Said the engine
wasn't more than half made now, and that the men
would burn the shop, if they were cut another cent.
They were working like laborers, and getting about
half the pay they had two years before. The married
men had come down to corn bread, and the single men
had taken to cheap, low boarding houses. The best
men had left the shop, and some had quit the trade.
It cost five hundred and ten dollars to put an engine
in the wareroom, and others were selling the same
engine for five hundred. He defied any man to go
into the shop and get that ten dollars off the cost with-
out a riot.
* * * * These earnest co-workers were at their
wit's ends. Their machine lives had been pleasant.
Nice, well-paid men, and living profits on work had
been their experience. Now, there was no profit, and
there was a constant, bitter antagonism between shop
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS. 29
and men. It all came from these engines, this " man-
ufacturing scheme." Pete suggested, as they had not
yet fairly started in the business, that they drop it and
work on these engines as usual, building only when
they got a decent order. This meant to discharge half
the men, but it was decided on to take place at the
end of the month.
* * * * N ex t week a man walked into Pete &
Cady's office. He didn't have a roll of blue overalls,
with a hammer, a square, and two pairs of calipers
wrapped up in it, under his arm. He had on nice
boots, and nice clothes, and a white shirt, which would
do credit to a lobbyist. He wore a plug hat. He
looked smart and starchy, and had the manner and
approach of a business man. He was not timid or im-
pulsive. This clean looking chap actually asked Pete
& Cady if they needed any machinists; and Pete &
Cady told this clean looking chap " No." Then con-
versation commenced. The chap proved to be a
Yankee, and the Yankeest kind of a Yank at that. He
told where he had been engaged down East; worked
in such a shop; foreman in such a shop; contractor in
such a shop. Said he had come West to stay. Had
sold his house, and had brought his money with him.
Pete smiled. The machinist had brought his money
with him. Pete wanted to ask how freights were, but
didn't.
* * * * Cady had heard a new word drop from
this Yankee. What did he mean by saying he was a
"contractor" in Summit's shop? Yankee explained
what a contractor was. He takes the job from the
owners of the shop for so much money, and goes into
the shop and sees it executed.
f * * * Pete, smiling, remarked that it would
be a good joke on the little engine business to try and
get a contractor s profit out of it, when the men and
30 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
the shop were both starving, in trying to sell the
engines at cost.
* * * * The Yankee's name was Doolittle, and
he was business. In an hour he had pumped the firm
dry; found out their history and present troubles with
little engines, and, at the end of two hours, he had
their permission to stand around the shop a week, to
see how they did things.
* * * * At the end of the week, Doolittle
tackled the firm. Said he had leased a house for a
year, got his wife and babies fixed, had twelve thou-
sand dollars in bonds in the Rhino National Bank, and
now he wanted to go to work. The firm smiled. Doo-
little opened up in this way: " These engines cost you
five hundred and ten dollars. They are a bad job, and
you ought to be ashamed of them. I never associated
with steam engines, but I know all about machine
work. You must sell these engines for five hundred to
sell any. If you can sell for four-fifty, you can prob-
ably sell all you want to, according to your talk. To
sell at four-fifty, they must not cost over four hundred.
Your men are making about a dollar a day at hard
work. You don't know what to do. Well, I do. If
you will furnish stock at the prices you have men-
tioned, I will contract to deliver you a hundred engines
at four hundred dollars each, better built, in every way,
than those you build; and I will give your own Rhino
bank as security for the fulfillment of the contract.
I'll go at it right away, and furnish engines as fast as
you can sell."
* * * * The fi rm dropped its jaw in amaze-
ment at this man's cheek. Cady, who was of an
elastic nature, moved to the new conditions, unfolded.
He worked upon the stolid Pete, until the latter
changed his views, and a lawyer drew the contracts
inside of three hours.
There was a Yanket Contractor inside of Pete & Cody's Shop.Vvgt 33.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS. 33
* * * * There was a Yankee "contractor" inside
of Pete & Cady's shop.
* * * * Notice is served on the engine gang,
and Doolittle sails in. The engine work is in his
hands ; the men are his. He pays them there are
twenty men. He stops every man of them and sets
them at work on tools, fixtures, jigs, etc., etc., and
keeps them there for a month.
* * * * Now he picks out Walter and asks him
how much he got apiece for the cross heads. Walter
says : " Four dollars." Doolittle says : " You must
now make them for one dollar." Walter squeals and
brings out his time book, showing that he only made
a dollar and a quarter a day at four dollars. Doolittle
dries him up by guaranteeing him a rate greater than
a dollar and a quarter. Walter goes at it, and makes
two dollars a day without hard work. Doolittle goes
through every piece, and cuts the price down and
the men's earnings up, in this proportion, all through
the engine.
* * * * Pete & Cady soon became aware of the
fact that their engines were well made and inter-
changeable ; that they were enabled to enter the
market and sell them largely at a profit ; that every
man working on them got nearly twice the pay he did
under the old plan ; and that this starchy Yankee was
making money out of his suicidal contract. The
whole thing looked paradoxical.
* * * * p ete & Cady were happy in their
mystery. They opened out into new lines of manu-
facture, or intended to, rather. Doolittle had a con-
tract for a thousand engines, to be delivered as wanted,
and the whole thing moved swimmingly. Neither of
the firm had yet solved the problem of " what was the
contractor's office ?" They wanted Doolittle to go
into partnership. He wouldn't do it. They proposed
34 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
to contract a thousand corn planters to him. He
wouldn't do it. Said he would send down East and
get them a contractor.
* * * * Doolittle's offer to send for another
contractor to take the corn planters threw light on the
whole question. Cady was the first to see the point.
Pete was tied to the training of his art, and wasn't
much of a man to see things. Cady said : " Pete, I
see it all. We have a skilled supervisor over twenty
men. He is a superintendent getting big pay. We
would think we were going to the dogs, if we paid a
full superintendent the money, as salary, which
Doolittle gets as profit. When you attended to the
engine business, you spread yourself thinly over the
whole shop, and depended on the wits of the men to
execute your desires. You didn't pay the men for
wit, but only for skill and force. Doolittle directs
every stroke made by his few men. He furnishes the
talent, and asks force only of them.
" Every man gets good pay. But if you would go
out in the shop and make them change jobs, they
would starve ; while Doolittle could keep them there,
and raise their earnings as he did before. He knows
what conveniences and advantages are. You spent
a hundred and fifty dollars on what you called a per-
fect outfit for ' manufacturing ' engines. Doolittle
paid twelve hundred dollars out of his own pocket
before he commenced on an engine, and he sent East
for tools that you acknowledged you never had heard
of. He knows how to help a man in his work, and he
charges big money for knowing how. I have been
studying how we could kick our contract over, so we
could pocket Doolittle's profit, but now I believe that
if we kick the contract over we kick the profits over
too."
* * * * Pete & Cady now have five contractors
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
35
in their shop on different classes of work, and they see
these contractors making more money than the shop ;
but they are smart enough to see that the shop and
the men make money, too, and that the credit is
due entirely and solely to the contractors.
36 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL*S LETTERS.
CHAPTER IV.
HUNTER'S TROUBLES WITH FOREMEN. SACKETT'S EX-
PERIENCE.
* * * * Hunter's foreman has left him ; gone
West to start a shop of his own.
Hunter is in real trouble now, and regrets keenly net
having taken my advice, given five years ago, to
encourage and build up the executive qualities of a
workman when they appeared, and thus be at all times
supplied with material raised in and familiar with the
shop, on which to draw in cases of emergency.
Personally, I question the policy of those business
men who make their business dependent entirely upon
their own presence.
We find the able and successful dry goods man buy-
ing his goods to the best advantage, and selling them
to patrons drawn to him by his personal qualities. He
watches his markets keenly and takes advantage of
every opportunity offering chances for low purchases.
He makes his regular trips to his source of supply, and
buys promptly by mail and telegraph. But in all these
operations is his lieutenant with him ? Is he educating
another man to relieve him or to take his place ? If he
gets sick or goes to Paris, is there a man who will do
his work as well as himself ? If there is such a man in
the background, our merchant is a wise man and has
a business which will allow him to leave rt, and enjoy
its fruits once in a while. The average machine-shop
proprietor generally carries his business in his head,
and for some reason, or lack of reason, he declines
engrafting his qualities of success upon a supernumer-
ary who might often be his real salvation.
The really prudent proprietor has in his employ a
man preparing for every important position. Out of
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS. 37
fifty machinists, about two can always be found, who,
by proper encouragement, can fit themselves for the
higher positions. They are not necessarily the best
workmen; in fact, good workmen seldom make good
foremen or superintendents.
A man with the mental qualities required for such
positions generally finds the acquisition of an art dis-
tasteful. It is not always to a man's discredit that he
is not a good workman. There are rarer qualities than
skill, and there is to-day, dull as the times are, a demand
for mechanics men who understand human nature and
the quality of metals, men who can put workmen in
good places where they can, by reason of adaptability,
make their results profitable and their existence pleas-
ant. The eternal fitness of things is the golden key
to the placing of men in the shop. A good foreman is
the most valuable man in the shop, and earns his pay,
not by fooling with chipping chisels and lathes, but by
the discretion shown in parceling out his work among
the men.
A good foreman can earn his pay by the simple
increase in productive power of five men, and he does
damage, if he attempts to " make a hand " himself.
The demand to-day is for foremen who can secure
a maximum of perfection and economy in a product.
The simple or complex power of reducing wages and
controlling disaffected men, will not accomplish these
results. To my knowledge, many of the most profit-
able shops are paying the highest wages to the men.
Hunter is really despondent, and gave vent yesterday
to more philosophy and profanity than I supposed there
was in him. Sackett went over with me, and we list-
ened to Hunter's doleful story. He said to Sackett:
" It's all well enough for you to talk about what you
have always done about foremen, but what consolation
is that to a man who didn't do as you did ?
38 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS.
" I never had a foreman who could or would make a
foreman for me, except Lambert, and it only took Steb-
bins a month to undo all of Lambert's work. Lambert
did get some men into shape for promotion, but Steb-
bins came, and, fearing to see his feathers plucked, put
them out of the shop. They all have good positions
now, and are beyond my reach."
Sackett said he would send him a good man, one of
his own raising, and warrant the quality. This put
Hunter in good spirits, and he told us more of his
experience.
He thinks his foreman ought to be called his tenman,
because he has had two a year for the last five years.
Said he : "I honestly think a foreman ought to have
full control of his part of the machine, but somehow
I can't let go my grip. You know, Chordal, when you
told me to send for DeLow. Well, he came, and we
quickly settled on terms. Then he wished me to under-
stand his views, as he called them. You ought to have
heard them. It sounded too much like law for me and
my government, so I dissented, and he said that was all
there was of it. He wanted supreme control in the
machine shop, and insisted on my passing all instruc-
tions through him. He may have been right, but it
was too strong for me.
" Then I got Walker. He was simply a good work-
man, who had never gotten over it. He had no dignity,
and fraternized too much with the men. He became
the cause of clannish jealousy, and made the shop dis-
agreeable, so I let him go.
" Then I got Morris. He was the worst man I ever
saw, and Wycoff told me he was the best man in the
country. He substituted tyranny for dignified dis-
cipline, had no good judgment as to real economy, and
didn't understand his men. He cut down wages to
curry favor with me, and succeeded in raising the cost
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS 39
of my work past all reason. My cost books are well
kept, and when Morris had " reduced " every really
cheap man out of the shop, and got it full of men who
couldn't get work elsewhere, I found things cost more
than they sold for. It's hard to see through these
things, but I watched the thing for a while in search
of information. You know Cook, who ran that thirty-
inch lathe ? Well, that man didn't seem to amount to
Shucks. He was a good workman, and I knew it, but
he accomplished nothing, had no gumption or ambi-
tion or interest. He didn't steal time or use fine feeds
or slow speeds, but he seemed indolently indifferent
to everything.
" I knew he was doing more irksome work, than if
his ambition had been called into play. He knew how
to run a lathe, but seemed to understand that 4ie
wasn't paid for knowing how, but simply for run-
ning it.
" One day I found Morris blackguarding a man fear-
fully, so I discharged Morris and the man too; Morris
for insulting the fellow, and the fellow for not resent-
ing it. I despise a man who has no self-respect to
defend. You can't make the whole of a good
machinist out of half of a man, so it was small loss
to the shop.
"Then I got Lambert for a foreman. I had just
found out his worth when he died. I could afford to
give a man like him a half interest in the shop and a
salary too, and would make money by it every day.
" He knew the character of every man in a week,
and shipped about half of the men, keeping only those
he knew to be rough diamonds. He sent one man to
another shop, telling him it was impossible for him to
earn much here, as there was no work suitable for him.
Then he took a bolt-cutter man and put him on the
best planer in the shop just where he belonged.
40 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
" The man's pride received a hoist, and he was
giving ten times as much for his money as he was
before. Then he tackled Cook, for he had seen some-
thing in the man. He saw that he was, under the
crust, a real good workman, so he withdrew rough
work from his lathe and raised his pay. Then he put
him on the best lathe in the shop, and gave him the
best work and raised his pay again.
" Cook was now fulfilling his mission. He seemed
to be perfectly satisfied with his position in life,
walked alongside of me on the street, instead of
falling about two inches behind, as he used to do.
He got twenty per cent, more pay, and gave three
timei. as much value in work as he did under Morris.
He wore better clothes, kept a bank account, and used
his brains every day, for he had learned from Lam-
bert that a machine shop was a good place to use
brains in.
" Lambert worked just such changes all through the
shop, and, when he died, I was paying higher wages
and getting cheaper work than anyone else in my
line.
"Then I got Stebbins, and it took him about a
month to knock down Lambert's whole structure.
Then I got Morgan. He was neither good, bad, nor
indifferent, and the only evidence of his having been
here is the vacancy he leaves behind him."
* * * * Sackett gave me a slight insight into
his plan of making machinists and foremen as we
walked home:
"When I started, I was my own foreman. I kept as
many apprentices as I could use, because I could make
better workmen of them than I could hire. When a
town boy became an annoyance around the shop by his
intrusive and impertinent interest in things, I spotted
him for an apprentice.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL'S LETTERS. 41
" Lambert served his time with me, and was one of
a good lot of boys. I notice that those street boys,
who have to be kicked out of shops, are always good
boys, and make not only good machinists but good
mechanics. Lambert worried me considerably before
he came in the shop for good. He loafed around, and
if a planer was idle, he would deliberately take pos-
session and work on some tinkering job he had on
hand, a little engine or some such nonsense. Finally
I set him at work on a three years' apprenticeship. I
first set him to chipping castings, and told him he
could drop such work forever the minute he could do
it well. He seemed to understand my plan, and
passed through the bloody ordeal quickly. Then I
put him on a bolt cutter with the same understanding.
He soon graduated, took a rough lathe, then a better
lathe, then a vise, then a floor. He always did the most
valuable work of which he was capable.
" This was my regular plan in the shop, and secured
for every man his proper sphere of action, and I
always made some small difference in the pay, so
that they could more readily appreciate the matter.
I let the boys play midshipman and take charge of the
ship week about. They were all sensible, proud,
ambitious boys, and I never had any complaint from
workmen at being bossed by these youngsters. Many
of my boys now have high places, and write me
frequently. There are more like them in the shop. I
can leave my business a month, or my foreman can
leave me forever, and it will not interrupt things at all.
" I work on the artillery plan, and train number
Four to number Seven's work, so that firing may be
continued in case of accidents."
* * * * If forcmanship can be a profession,
DeLow was a professional foreman. He is dead now,
but I know you would like to hear something of his
42 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL*S LETTERS.
style, if you are interested in the interior management
of the shop. In another letter I will tell you some-
thing of this very peculiar man, whose memory is
revered by every proprietor or workman with whom
he ever came in contact.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDALS LETTERS. 43
CHAPTER V.
HOW FAR SHOULD PURCHASERS* WISHES INFLUENCE MANU-
FACTURERS ? WHAT TO DO WITH ODD PATTERNS.
* * * * How far should the opinions or desires
of a purchaser influence the manufacturer ? I do not
refer to special jobs for special purposes, but to those
articles which, being upon a manufacturer's price list,
become a standard with him. Is it wise to humor the
whim of every buyer by changing unimportant details
at his request ?
It seems to me that customers fight shy of a builder
who don't seem to know just what he is about, and
take rather to those autocrats, who, collecting and re-
fining the experience of many buyers, develop that
experience into form, and adhere rigidly to details
known to be correct and adequate. A manufacturer
with little experience and poor judgment can-never be
arbitrary, and a weak man can never build up a pro-
duct to a standard. The unyielding builder must
sometimes see a desirable customer depart in a heat,
but often the customer will return after many days and
bow with respect to a more extensive experience and a
firmer judgment.
* * * * Here's a case in point. Sackett builds
a wood-working machine, and has sold several hundred
of them. He don't build any other wood tool, but has
made this a success.
Among other details, this machine contains a cutter
shaft running in babbitt boxes. One journal is grooved
to prevent end-play, as is commonly done with such
shafts. He cuts the grooves in the journal. Some
makers turn them upon the journal, which is much
more expensive, but does not weaken the shaft.
A gear shaft in the machine runs in a long sleeve
44 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS.
bearing, bored in the main frame. The other day, when
I was in Sackett's shop, he showed me about twenty
letters regarding this machine, and called my attention
to two of them. One party wanted the collar rings
mentioned to project from the journal, instead of being
cut into it. The other party asked that the aforesaid
gear-shaft bearing be capped, so wear could be taken
up.
Sackett opened up with : "There's two good cash
orders, which I won't take. I won't alter those things,
for that shaft business would be a useless and annoying
concession, and that gear box is better as it is, a matter
which I know a hundred times more about than those
men. Its my business to know, not what one of these
men thinks, but what is the average or general demand.
My self-interest as a manufacturer demands that I
should reduce a machine to its mean profitable terms
and keep it so. I can't afford to make a bad machine.
If anything is really wrong, it will certainly damage
me more than the buyer, and I should at once demand
the return of the job. How silly I would be to listen
to every suggestion ! I made that machine a success,
the purchasers didn't.
" I didn't guess at the proportions or details of the
thing, for I am no designer, but I had it done by a man
whose vocation and business is to study the wants of
users, develop them into an average, and furnish me
with the scheme and drawing, made with the under-
standing that the machines were to be not only good
to the purchaser, but profitable to the manufacturer.
" He didn't do it in a day, but put details side
by side, and considered closely the relative utility and
cost of each. He knew what he was about, and would
not have made grooves instead of rings without reason.
"Of course I accepted his judgment, but that was
eight years ago, and I have watched the things closely.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS. 45
I notice all these little suggestions come from men who
intend to buy.
" Why don't those who have the machines complain?
Simply because there's nothing to complain about. It's
simply a notion of intending purchasers. I know by
the experience of six hundred uncomplaining buyers,
that things are right.
"That bearing has never in eight years shown
shake, and I know that if it was split and capped it
would never fit just right, even by chance, and would
wear out in a year.
" Why, Chordal, I wish it wasn't too much trouble
to get you out the letters I have received from inquir-
ers. If I listened to all, I would not be able to make
two machines alike; in fact, I would have no machine
that I could call my own, for there isn't a thing that
somebody hasn't struck. That machine stands on its
reputation. I have no patent on it, and competitors
have too much honor to steal my personal thunder,
but would bounce my legal patent, quick as thought,
if I had one, and they could find a hole in it.
" I make those machines good and all alike, and a
man can know just what he's going to get. Why,
there's three thousand dollars worth of special tools
out in the shop, rigged up to make the machines
uniformly good and uniformly cheap. What would
become of my jigs, if I listened to Thomas, Richard
and Henry ? I lose a sale once in -a while by being
stubborn, but I find in the end that stubbornness wins.
I won't change any unimportant detail to suit a
buyer's fancy on anything I make. If I find some-
thing is really wrong, I change for good; but I don't
jump at the first free suggestion made.
" Why, I went up to Backgear last year and ordered
a drill press of Coane. I came the same game on him,
which my patrons try on me. I wanted changes.
46 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS.
Coane builds tip-top drill presses, and I wanted noth-
ing special, but I wanted little changes made just to
suit my whims. I am no tool builder, and Coane would
have told me so, if he had done his duty by me, but
no he's one of those men who want to please cus-
tomers. Now, that drill's a fraud, and its just as I
ordered it. i wish I saw some good ground for suing
him. He ought to have known better than I did, and
ought to have insisted on doing the right thing. Just
come out and look at that fine machine, c altered to
suit the purchaser's fancy !' "
* * * * I interviewed Wycoff next day. He
builds portable engines :
INTERVIEWER Do you change things, if purchaser
says to ?
WYCOFF Every day in the week. Wouldn't sell
anything if I didn't. Guess a man knows what he
wants. There's that engine over there. Making it
for Pittman. Same as usual, only he wanted that
governor. It isn't worth five cents, but that isn't my
look out, and he wanted the valve shortened up,
and the crank pin smaller, to reduce friction, as he
said, and the bearings turned half an inch smaller
than the shaft. I am doing it all, of course.
INTERVIEWER But don't this interfere with regular
plans of work, and make work cost more without
being right ; and don't your name and reputation go
out on engines you are ashamed of ? Will such a man
come to you the second time ?
WYCOFF Oh ! the system ain't anything. I never
could do anything with system. Machine work is
centering and turning and drilling and planing, after
all, and when a man comes after some, I, for one, pro-
pose to do it to suit him. If he is wrong, I have the
satisfaction of one sale, at least. I don't make two
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS. 47
engines alike. They all want something different, and
I give it to them.
INTERVIEWER How much respect would you have
for a tailor, who, acting on your dictation, would make
you ridiculous, and, after finding out your mistake,
would you go to him again, or to the arbitrary tailor
who refused your absurd order, and which of the two
would receive the most orders from you in the next
ten years ?
WYCOFF Now you're going round the question. It
don't make any difference about the other orders, that
ain't what we are talking about, and you can see
yourself who got the order in question. You can't
stuff me with any such talk. Why, look here. Do
you mean to tell me, that, if I order a second machine
of a man,-I must not tell him, and demand that he
should make the bolt heads uniform, and balance the
pulleys ? Nonsense !
INTERVIEWER That's just what I say. If you are
green enough to order anything from a man who has
*o be told his business, you should keep up the thing
Dy using his green machine, till you learned that a
man who accepts such suggestions needs them, and
that if he is open to such criticism, his whole product
should be suspected of immaturity and patchwork.
WYCOFF Now I have a case for you. You see that
screw machine ? I went out to Ohio and got that
from the Niles Works. They made them with a one
and five-eighths inch hole through the spindle, so that
they would make three-quarter bolts. I wanted a two-
inch hole, so I could make inch bolts. Gray said he
wouldn't do it. Said they were tool builders, and had
designed that machine in proper proportion, hole and
all, and that if I wanted to make inch bolts, I ought
to get the larger machine, with a two-inch hole in the
spindle, and with the other parts in proportion. Says
48 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAl/S LETTERS.
he : Suppose I should do as you ask, and our machine
should fail to do what it never was intended to do ?
What then ? Who would lose the most, you or the
Niles Works ? Then I dried him up by saying, that if
he would not make the machine as I wanted it, I did
not want it at all, and more than that, I wouldn't take
it. He showed his sense by giving in. Do you say
he did wrong ?
INTERVIEWER Of course I do. He violated a
principle which, strictly adhered to, would, in the end,
result in more screw machine sales than the plan fol-
lowed. If the thing fails and I should notice it, what
conclusion would I have to come to, in the absence of
knowledge ?
WYCOFF But it didn't fail, and Gray did what any
good business man would do under the circumstances.
If you want patrons, you must study to please them.
Then I left. Here are two voices from two direc-
tions.
* * * * I want to tell you something about
Sackett and Wycoff some day. There is something
rich in their history.
* * * * Two more cases pertaining to this
question. The B Locomotive Works ordered
planers of a well-known shop. Wanted cross rail
changed. . Tool men said, No ; the rail was right.
They wouldn't allow a detail to be questioned after
they had satisfied themselves that it was right ;
claimed superior judgment upon that art, and saw
valuable patronage depart apparently for ever. I
honor that principle and that concern, for having
specific knowledge which they will thus back up. The
B Works may have taken their trade away, but
I believe they left their profound respect, and that
trade will, in the end, seek out and find experience
and judgment of the positive kind.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS. 49
* * * * Another case : McGoon, a master me-
chanic on a Western road, opened negotiations with a
concern for a certain machine. Concern sent cut and
description and price. McGoon doubted the strength
of a certain part. Concern said they had made fifty
of them, and knew them to be all right, but "if you
desire we can alter in any way you see fit to suggest."
The next day McGoon ordered elsewhere. I don't
know why, but have a suspicion.
* * * * Which is the better policy ? To make
patterns as cheap as possible, or to make them as good
as possible ? This question is deeper than it looks,
and will not answer itself as some might at first sup-
pose. There are two important sides to it, and the
subject is worthy of discussion by shop proprietors.
If a man does a jobbing business, and needs odd pat-
terns for one casting, there is certainly no doubt that
the patterns should be made just as cheaply as possi-
ble, durability being no object. What are a lot of
such patterns worth, even if made in the best manner ?
Not one-twentieth of the cost, in nine cases out of ten.
I don't consider odd patterns worth saving. It is bet-
ter to burn such things and make a new one in a hun-
dred years, than to store and insure them that long.
Burn such patterns and put the premiums to the credit
of pattern expense.
* * * * But all patterns are not odd patterns.
Take manufactured machines, gears and other staple
articles. Those patterns are of value. But just how
much we can afford to pay for them is the ques-
tion. A good pattern-maker can, if he sees fit, make
a pattern which will stand daily use and storage for
fifteen years. His work will be solid, wood to wood
all over, five coats of varnish, and an exterior imper-
_vipus to moisture. If he wants to, he could make the
pattern in one-sixth the time, and the exterior shape
3
50 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS.
would be the same, the castings from them identical.
But things won't stand much knocking around, and
time will open the joints and change the shape.
Modern machinery changes its skin every few
months, and new patterns must be made.
This must be considered, for if we pay for durability
and don't use it, we are buying something we don't
need. But of course this is a matter of experience.
* * * * Q makes his patterns perfect. I
don't think they could be better, for he gets the best
pattern makers and tells them to do their best.
His patterns never wear out. He simply changes
his style, and burns up those splendid old patterns and
makes new ones. He sent two wagon loads to my
house for kindling, and I judged them to be worth at
least six hundred dollars. Don't you think he would
have been wiser to have had these patterns made in a
less costly style, and spent a trifle, or many trifles, on
their repair or maintenance ?
* * * * The pattern account is always a big
thing in any shop. One trouble in the matter is that,
if you want patterns to make good castings true to
drawing, you must get a good pattern maker to make
them, and he won't make cheap patterns, and a poor
or cheap pattern maker won't work close. It is very
hard to get a fine pattern maker to make you a pat-
tern just for one casting ; he don't seem to know how.
If pattern makers would be a little more considerate,
and cultivate judgment in this matter, they would
greatly increase their own value, and proprietors would
soon show their appreciation.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS. 51
CHAPTER VI.
MRS. TOODLES RUNS A MACHINE SHOP COMPARATIVE
COST OF SMALL TOOLS. A MACHINE SCREW MISSION-
ARY. HOW A GRINDSTONE WAS MADE TO PAY.
* * * * Mrs. Toodles still lives among us. She
runs a machine shop now, in fact, she runs a great
many shops. Her address is on the books of every
receiver, assignee, trustee, and bankrupt firm in the
country.
They send her lists of tools and general shop plunder,
to be sold on such and such a day. She goes and looks
around and reasons in this style: "What do I want
with that bolt cutter ? That's a good bolt cutter, the
dies are all there, and in good shape. I came to buy a
bolt cutter, but don't want such a one as that. And
that lathe I don't see anything the matter with that.
If the bed ain't sprung, I don't want it. If it is
modern, I don't want it. If the change gears are all
there, I don't want it. If no teeth are broken out of
gears or racks, I don't want it. If it has proper belt
power, I don't want it. Don't care if it is only two
years old, I don't want it. Fitchburg lathe, is it ?
Thirty-inch swing, twelve-foot bed ? And you bought
it for $400! Well, I don't want that lathe. Why, I
run this big lathe forty years ago, when I was a girl.
I know it's a good lathe, and its better than it was
then, for it's been blocked up twice. You take your
Fitchburg lathe, this one suits me. Now, you see, I've
got it only $300. What's that going now ? Babbitt
metal ? Let's see, I don't want that, that ain't old
metal. There's a lot of twist drills, four old drills and
forty old shanks I want them and that vise."
* * * * It is the experience of machine auction-
eers, that old worthless plunder brings half the market
52 EXTRACTS FROM CHORD AI/S LETTERS.
price, while it is difficult to get bids on things of real
value. Mrs. Toodles' auction bill would buy a sensi-
ble person one good lathe, instead of two good-for-
nothing ones. Her twist drills cost her exactly twice
the list price, and when she gets home, she will find
they don't fit her drill sockets ; she will alter the
sockets, and then her other drills won't fit. The plan
of breaking a twist drill in two and calling it two
twist drills suits her.
* * * * It won't do to jump at the cost of small
tools in the shop. Figures printed on a manufac-
turer's price-list often look big, but if accurate cost of
small home-made shop tools is kept, something will
be found out. What shop can make an inch tap as
cheap as one can be bought ? When a concern fits up
specially for a certain class of tools, it is safe to say
that their price-list is about fifty per cent, under the
cost of home-made tools. A one-inch solid, double-
ended caliper for the tool room can be bought for a
dollar and a half. Leaving out any consideration of
accuracy, how much would it cost if a three dollar
man made it with the ordinary facilities ? Gear cut-
ting cutters, so near absolute perfection as to be un-
questionable, can be bought for about six dollars
each. It looks like a great deal of money for very
little steel, but have one made in the shop, and watch
it. A steel forging of unreasonable size keeps a black-
smith and helper busy an hour; your draughtsman
spends an hour drawing a shape on tin ; your best
paid lathesman works a full day turning the cutter, if
he don't make a special tool for it, and he works a day
on the tool, if he does make it ; then half a day goes
in toothing it, and you may put in proper wages and
figure up the cost. When it comes to tempering it, it
may be done, or it may be done for ; it depends on
luck, and if tempered without cracking, the thing may
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL/S LETTERS. 53
be true and may not be ; and if it isn't true, it won't
cut a space anything like the draughtman's tin draw-
ing, which may have been a good shape and may not
have been. Price-lists are often condemned pre-
maturely.
* * * * In a late letter to you, I was guilty of
an injustice to the manufacturers of machine screws.
I stated that their threads were proper pitch and inter-
changed nicely. I must apologize for this misstate-
ment, and can only explain it on the ground that the
awkward variety of sizes of heads had caused so much
trouble in the shops, that I had forgotten entirely the
ordinary nuisance of half-inch screws with a variety
of threads. There is but one standard thread for
half-inch work, and that standard is thirteen threads
per inch. If I order screws or taps from half the
screw shops, I never know what I am going to get,
but I am certain there will be two chances to one
against my getting the standard thing, for many of
the unconverted send out their lists and work as
follows: one-half inch, 12, 13 or 14 threads. The
average looks all right, but it won't fit all right. If
tap and screw makers would go to a little righteous
trouble to discourage the purchase of 12 and 14 thread
half-inch taps, they could, in a year, completely stop
the unholy traffic. The very life of the machine-screw
business rests on the general suitability of the product
to general circumstances.
I have, as a missionary, talked to many machine-
shop owners, with tears in my eyes, seeking to con-
vert them to a sense of the propriety of buying screws
and taps, and have made many converts. Aside from
a few sad experiences of my own, I am often called on,
by some skeptical convert, to defend the sins of some
screw-maker who should and could keep his art above
attack.
54 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL*S LETTERS
* * * * I made money by reorganizing my
grindstone arrangements. I have been using three
foot stones, running slowly in wooden frames, and
have depended on almost anybody in the shop to keep
them true. By the way, did you ever notice that
there was a charm in turning off a grindstone ? It's
so ! This dirty job has positive attractions. The
skillful manipulation of the " tool," the caution re-
quired, the constant muscular and mental strain, all
make the job really unpleasantly pleasant, after it is
started. But about my grindstones. They were most
always out of true ; men put off grinding tools as long
as possible, worked with dull tools, and, of course, did
poor work and wasted lots of time. Let a man be
working on a nice lathe job, the tool gets dull ; he
thinks of the awful grindstone, postpones grinding till
he gets real mad, then does it and gets nervous and
unfit for the work in hand.
I pro'd and conn'd over the thing in this way :
These stones are out of true, because they gouge
easily. They gouge easily, because they run slow.
They run slow for convenience in trueing up. They
don't get trued up, because the shaft is loose in the
shackly frame. A quick-running stone cuts fast and
nice, and a slow-running stone gets cut fast and
awfully. I'll change the whole thing.
* * * * j bought three* solid metal frames,
paid thirty dollars each for them ; I think my old
wooden ones have indirectly cost me a thousand
dollars a piece. These frames are troughs, have heavy
shafts, good solid boxes, convenient rests, a wonderful
contrivance for holding a tank above them, and the
whole establishment is on wheels.
I rigged a pulley out doors, and run the stones out
there at slow speed, and had them turned up nicely.
I, of course, had to go and turn one myself. Then I
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAl/S LETTERS. 55
wheeled them back in the shop, and run them at very
high speed, and fixed pulleys so the speed could be
increased as the stone got smaller. The frames had a
self-trueing apparatus on them, which will true the
stone while it runs wet at high speed, so I don't get
any dust in the shop. I appointed Charley a com-
mittee of one to see that these stones were always
true, not pretty near true, but perfectly true all the
time, without regard to the number of stones used up
in a year. He is also superintendent of the water
works, and sees that no lathesmen have to run after
water for these stones, or to grind dry.
* * * * Between you and me, those things were
paid for in a month. The men work with sharp tools
and neat tools ; they pile great clean chips under the
lathes, and don't require one-quarter the tool-dressing
they did before. Charley keeps the grindstone ma-
chinery swept nice and clean, and it is no longer the
repulsive servant it used to be.
56 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS.
CHAPTER VII.
HISTORY OF TWO JOURS. WYCOFF'S SHOP PHOTO-
GRAPHED. LONGEVITY OF SHOPS.
* * * * j promised you a story with figures in
it. Here it is : Twenty-two years ago, Sherman
Sackett and William Wycoff completed their appren-
ticeships at the Novelty Works. They worked on
three months as journeymen, and then, as journey-
men, they tramped. They were both, in the ordinary
sense of the word, good workmen, and both stood
equal on the pay books. They tramped at the same
time and with equal resources, viz : valise full of
clothes for outfit, and ball pein hammer for plant.
They passed through the vicissitudes usual in the life
of tramping jours : job after job, shop after shop, year
after year. When this stopped, I do not know, but
Sackett is now the mayor of a town, the owner of a
shop, and the employer of sixty men. Wycoff also has
a shop and employs fifty men. They seem to have
prospered. The fact is, they struck rich veins of
work, of which, more anon ; they entered untouched
ripened fields as reapers, when almost tired with
seeking.
* * * * Two years ago a certain patentee, act-
ing on my valuable advice, took both Sackett and
Wycoff a sample of his machine. I say machine, but
the following figures will show that it was a very
trifling affair, but of such products is the kingdom of
industry. He gave each an order for three machines,
with no stipulations as to price, his object being to se-
cure samples of their work, and to ultimately solicit
propositions to build the machines in quantities. This
intention was understood all around. The machines
were built, the quality being about equal, and to sam-
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS. 57
pie. Wycoff's bill was for three machines, at $40 each;
Sackett's, bill was for three machines at $67 each.
Wycoff had given Mr. Patentee an " estimate" of $40
each, and Sackett's estimate had been $70 each.
It will be noticed that there is considerable differ-
ence in these bills, but Mr. Patentee knew something
about the machine business and was not disposed to
find fault. He knew Sackett's bill was based on cost,
plus profit, and that it would not be lowered, and there
was no pressing desire to have Wycoff raise his bill.
* * * * n e now i nv ited proposals for 5,000
machines. Wycoff bid as follows : " Will make 5,000
machines for $24 each, 100 machines per week, pay-
ments weekly." Here is Sackett's bid : " Will make
5,000 machines for $8 each, 1,000 machines per week,
payment on completion of order."
If there was anything strange about the bills, there
is something stranger about these bids. The two men
have about the same capital invested in exactly the
same line of business, and their tools are nearly ident-
ical, and their shops are not a mile apart.
Wycoff's wanting money weekly is accounted for by
the fact that he had no loose capital and could not
carry the job. But what caused the difference between
100 machines per week and 1,000 machines per week,
and what caused the difference of 200 per cent, in
price ? I will say, right here, that Sackett got the
order and filled it, and has filled several more like it
since.
* * * * Knowing the men as I do, I can give
the reasons for their great difference in bills and bids.
The fact is there is over 200 per cent, difference in the
men as manufacturers. Wycoff, in the first place,
didn't know, when he "estimated" on the samples,
what it would cost to build the three machines ; he
guessed at it. He didn't know what they did cost
58 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
after he did build them; he guessed at that. Guessed
he had made money on them, and guessed he could
afford to shorten up on the profit on a large order. It
happened, however, that the larger order " guessed
not." My own opinion is that if he had received the
job at $24 each he would have lost money. Around
his entire premises there is nothing to show what any-
thing ever did cost, except raw material. It is a good
thing he saves old bills. He keeps books, of course,
and knows all about his debits and credits, but nought
else.
Now it happens that Sackett, our successful bidder
and successful manufacturer, carries in his hat the
brains of a systematic manager. His estimate on the
first three machines was not guessed at, but was care-
fully calculated from the nearest parallel cases he
could find in his prime cost books. When the ma-
chines were done, he found things about as he had ex-
pected, and by carefully watching details, had already
mapped out a plan of operations and system of pro-
duction, which would enable him to make these ma-
chines in great quantities and at a low price. There
was nothing surprising to him in the difference be-
tween the first three machines, and those he subse-
quently made ; while in Wycoffs case, I do not think
there would have been much difference.
* * * * The difference between Sackett and
Wycoff, as manufacturers, crops out all over. Sackett
employs good men at good wages and keeps them.
Wycoff employs good men at good wages and can't
keep them. There is something in the atmosphere of
Wycoff's shop that seems to deprive a man of his self-
respect, which is, in reality, the main-stay, sheet-anchor,
and only hope of the workingman. Wycoff puts much
trust in rules and regulations. You will see a string
of them, as long as your arm, as soon as you enter the
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS. 59
shop. They are frequent on the walls, supplemented,
occasionally, by an enlarged edition of some particu-
lar one thought worthy of a separate frame. One
may be noticed with the attractive and endearing
legend, "We expect a day's work for a day's pay."
Wycoff stole this thing somewhere, for there is no
'' \Ve" in his concern.
* * * * I once saw a body of men on a strike.
They had been getting $4 for six hours' work, and de-
manded $6 for four hours' work. This was many feet
below the bottom of the Mississippi river, where the
air was compressed so much that the workmen who
were at all damaged by it were thrown into what the
bridge hands called the " Grecian bend." When the
bent ones straightened out, it was often permanently.
But of course, this is not appropriate. Wycoff's men
didn't have to work in a compressed atmosphere.
Oh no!
* * * * Take a trip through his shop. The tools
are generally modern and good, but wretchedly kept,
and we see no waste that looks as if it would clean
anything. Vender's a chap turning what appears to
be a throttle-stem, for it has an elliptic button on one
end. He is taking a water-cut over it, and that white
lead keg blocked up on the lathe carriage bears a
striking resemblance to the one we saw over the north
grindstone. Those earmarks of grindstone grit make
the matter certain. Here's a bench or counter in the
middle of the shop, and on it some finished work, a
chuck or two, an island of horrible looking waste, half
a dozen flat drills and a piece of twist drill, and here
lies a tap, clean and nice, and we pick it up and ex-
amine it. We see at once that it is home-made, but it
is a beauty, clean cut and neat. You find it impossi-
ble to help admiring this simple tool, for you have
made a tap or two yourself, but none so perfect as
60 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS.
this. You lay it down and go on through the shop.
Next week you may see the dismembered fragments
of our tap in place of its present misplaced perfection.
Here we find Wycoff, coat off and honestly greasy.
Yes, he does keep a foreman, or tries to, rather ; kings
without thrones. " Ah ! Mr. Chordal, how do you do ?
Happy to meet you, Mr. Miller, and you, Mr. Bailey,
and Mr. Moore; excuse my gloves belong to the
laboring classes, you see. Look busy, eh ? should
think I was ; got enough work to excuse me, gentle-
men, got to shrink this crank on."
* * * * \Ve notice that just in front of us, on
trestles, lies a six inch shaft, with an end projecting.
And now, upon the scene, through the blacksmith-
shop door come four men, whom I know to be the best
paid machinists in the shop, bearing a thirty-inch
crank-plate, glowing hot. They quickly place it in
position to start on the shaft, and proceed to urge it.
From the time Wycoff left us, he has not ceased to
speak or excitedly yell over this job. We know a
single yell will spoil a shrinking fit, but Wycoff, prob-
ably, don't know it. Now an excited order to one man
to go for that block ; to this man to raise up ; and to
that one to let down; now a snub to the man who is
really responsible for the job ; now he frantically
grabs a sledge and strikes a lick or two ; now at some-
thing else. Every word spoken seems to be immature,
every action a false one. We walk on. You remark
that Wycoff don't seem to be a cool man, and that if
you had any money invested in that crank, you would
prefer to entrust the job to the jour, whom W. just
snubbed, and who seems to have lost all interest in
the proceeding, simply looking on with servile
disgust.
It's a habit of Wycoff's to take all such jobs into his
own hands, generally nipping them in their fruition.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS. 63
The crank was all right, but it is now stuck half way,
and to-morrow they will try to get it off again.
* * * * \y e g O over towards a new engine on
the floor, when in come four men with a twelve-foot
shaft, red hot. They go over to the long lathe. Up
goes the shaft on the blocks ; now upon the centers ;
now it is revolved and gets chalked; and now it comes
out and gets pounded and dented, and in two hours it
will get straightened. Two hours of what ? Lathes-
men, 60 cents ; two blacksmiths, $1.20 ; one helper, 20
cents; total, $2.00, plus two fires and a lathe standing
still, and those hammer marks.
We go on over to the beforementioned engine ; it's
about half done. You ask if Trumbull didn't furnish
the castings. No ; but he furnished the design. Wy-
coff's pattern maker measured one of Trumbull's en-
gines and made these patterns from those measure-
ments. There is no drawing in the shop for any part
of it, not a memorandum even. The "copy" is in a
mill about a mile from here, and WycofFs foreman has
made over thirty trips, so far, to take a look at details.
Nobody knows how many trips it will take to finish it,
but we know that it will take just as many for the next
engine, and the next. We know what a set of draw-
ings would cost, but no man knows what this engine
will cost, or will not cost. We leave it.
* * * * Here's a planer, splendid tool ! Be-
ment's ; but Bement wouldn't recognize it. . The table
don't look like a planer table at all. Seems as if the
prismatic rays from a spectroscope had fallen on this
table lengthwise, and on these rays have fallen cross-
wise hammer marks, and chisel marks, and sand
marks, and water, and oil, and soap, and chips, and
dirt.
It is not so all over, however, for there a small
place has been cleaned, and that new job will soon be
64 EXTRACTS FROM CHORD A.I/S LETTERS.
fastened there, if Gus can find suitable bolts up
among the lathes.
You knew Gus when he worked at the Empire
Works. He was not such a miserable slouch then ;
he was a good workman, and you wonder if his skill
is not endangered by his present habits. I can tell
you, his skill is now a total wreck. He worked for me
long ago, and left another man once and came to
work for me again. I sent him back. He seemed to
be two different men. He gets good pay and will as
long as he stays here, but his pride of skill and his
self-respect have gone forever.
You have an eye for the tool holders or clamps on
this planer. Three nuts of one size, and one nut of
three other sizes. You look to see what manner of
universal wrench Gus uses for a tool wrench. Finally,
you spy it ; a monkey wrench. Strange, but you
hadn't thought of that. Now we go into the foundry.
Notice that the only way to get into the foundry is
through the machine shop, and the only way for the
castings to get out of the foundry is through the
machine shop, which we find littered up with lamp
posts, grate bars, sash weights, spout guards, in fact,
an index to the foundry order book.
* * * * Here we are in the foundry. Here's a
facing mill, and a blower, and a rattler within six feet
of it, showing little regard for the lungs of the work-
men or the journals of the blower. There's a man
cleaning off a sugar mill roller. Know him, do you ?
No, he is not a cleaner, but a well paid machinist.
We see they intend to run off a heat soon; let's go.
We don't want to see Wycoff at work in here. He will
come in when the iron comes down, will bring the best
men out of the machine shop with him, will tap out,
and skim, and riotously work mud on the end of the
plugging stick, and yell and swear and superintend
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAl/S LETTERS. 65
generally. His foreman is a well-paid man, but help-
Jess. If Wycoff kept cost books he should credit the
foundry with his services at five dollars per hour.
* * * * \y e g O ou t p as f tne planers, past the
Wycoff engine, past -the whole committee on mean
ways of straightening shafting, past the half-way
crank and its ponderous factors, past our beautiful
tap out from under the garish rules and into the
street.
We will see Sackett's shop some time and many
times. His interior, his processes, his men, his man-
agement, will all furnish material for instructive men-
tion in these letters some day.
* * * * Did i t ever occur to you that the re-
publican idea could have an effect upon the tenure of
life of productive concerns ? In the old countries it
takes two generations to get an establishment under
headway, and then future generations follow the bus-
iness up as long as one of the family name lives, and
when all are dead, others continue it under the old
name. Very many foreign shops are run under names
having no real representative on earth. The English
shops, especially, are noticeable for this. These old
shops don't progress any, and, as the people are con-
servative, everything is lovely. Extinction is to be
tolerated, but progress or variation never. Old and
well-established firms have a name as an asset. How
is it in this country ? What man starting business as
a manufacturer seeks an old house to follow ? Where
is there a case of an old house even with the times ?
Our old shops don't retrograde at all ; they simply re-
main, and our republic marches on and leaves them
behind. We are nationally progressive, and enter-
prises in this country must be ever in moving order.
Conservative nations don't move, so there is no danger
of shops being left behind. In our country an old
66 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
shop cannot be sold. No keen man builds a shop on
the ground where one of the old shops stood. An old
name is a damage. There is a limitation to the life of
all manufacturing concerns here. They start even
with the times ; they prosper ; they make money ;
while they settle into habit, the world moves. They
slumber and make less money. They wake, and see
what's up. Too late ! All their former earnings are
lavishly expended in attempts to regain their old
place. It is a waste of money and against the national
nature of things. " Last scene of all ;" Advertisement
"An old established business for sale." The wise
man don't buy it, and don't steal their name, and don't
build next door, and don't copy their product. Not
much ! He goes where their smoke cannot reach his
roof ; he builds new, makes his bow, shows goods
adapted to the day and prospers, and falls into habit
and slumbers, and wakes, and expends, and advertises
"An old established business," etc.
Men, as they leave middle age, become averse to
changes of their customers, and will not yield to them;
they cannot yield and they must fall. It is human
nature against climate, government, youth, growth
and human nature combined. The conflict is inevit-
able, the result certain. To the old something, " Strike
while the iron is hot," let me append, " Heat the iron
while the fires burn, and then quit and live on the re-
sult." Cold iron will never relight dead fires.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS. 67
CHAPTER VIII.
YE HEARTSICK TRAMPING JOUR. HOW TO GET UP IN
THE WORLD. KEEPING MUM ABOUT WAGES. HIGH
WAGES VS. HIGH FIRST COST OF PRODUCT. WHAT
CONSTITUTES A GOOD WORKMAN.
* * * * There certainly can be no better or
surer sign of returning prosperity to the trade than
the growing scarcity of craftsmen. Three years ago
ye heartsick tramping jour, greeted us daily in search
of work at a dollar and a-half a day. He was hard up
and hard looking. He had no tools, not even the
inevitable twisted scriber. His breeches were patched
in the seat, and the patches were worn out. He was
really out of work and in search of work.
Now he don't come at all. He has work at wages
ranging from $1.75 to $3.00 per day, and receives
letters daily asking him if he wants work. He has
had a hard time of it, and will welcome a new order
of things. He has always made one mistake, and the
sooner he finds it out the better. The average ma-
chinist considers all machinists the same, and thinks
they should all receive the same pay. He has a
certain amount of bigotry about him, and cannot be
convinced that he is not as valuable a man as there is
on earth, You find it hard to convince him that he is
worth more or less than others. He will kick, if he
gets less wages than others, and others will kick if he
gets more. I have worked as journeyman in forty
different machine shops, and I give it as my solemn
conviction, that my prosperity has been more retarded
by the narrow-mindedness of my fellow workmen,
than by the greed of my employers. The most un-
comfortable shops I have ever worked in, have been
those where I was best paid. I never failed in making
68 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS.
satisfactory terms with employers, but I never could
make any terms with shop mates. I never yet knew
of a case of one workman lending a helping hand to
another, if that help had a tendency to raise the
helpee above the helper's pay. There's a good time
coming, boys, and a better time to start new in this
thing will never occur. Make yourself as skillful
as your talents will permit. Insist on working in
places and on work where your skill can be best
applied, and insist on receiving market value for the
grade of skill you sell.
Study the thing well and grade yourself. You
know very well of workmen who are worse workmen
than yourselves men who, if you or I had the say so
about it, would quit the bench and go to cleaning
castings or pounding sand. You know they are not
valuable men at the same work you are on. You
know they are not worth the money to the shop that
you are. You think the employer a fool for paying
them the wages he does, when many better men could
be had at the same pay. You and I know this mighty
well. But we also know that there are men far more
valuable than we ; men who do twice the work with-
out sweating half so hard ; men who do nice work
which we never dared to attempt ; men who can do
work without tools, and are never helpless. They are
mighty workmen whose skill we should envy. We
know such a man is worth more money than we are,
and that we are doing ourselves injustice, when we
make things warm for him because he gets a quarter
a day more than we do. It is honest truth, that most
employers treat men with more consideration than the
men treat each other.
* * * * I have raised my pay several times, and
feel justified in giving machinists a little advice on
the subject, and unhesitatingly say, that if you will
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS. 69
follow what I say in the next few lines, you will get
good wages in the next six months. First and fore-
most, settle with yourself what you are good for, and
what you are best for. If you are a lightning man on
fine close work, don't go to a threshing machine shop
for a profitable job. You will be worthless there. If
you are a tip-top lathesman, don't go to botching work
at the vise. Good vise hands are in demand to-day at
fair wages. So are good lathesmen on good work,
and so are crack lathesmen on rough work. Bad ones
can't get jobs at any wages, and all are bad, if working
on something they can't do satisfactorily. If you are a
good and valuable workman in any branch of the
regular machine trade, you can get work in that branch,
if you will use good sense in determining your proper
grade.
Don't haggle about wages, and don't ask for some
other man's wages, till you know that that man is as
valuable a man as yourself.
Prove your worth in the shop, and you will get your
money, and, when you prove more valuable, you will
get more. Now comes the golden rule : Keep your
mouth shut and don't tell any man, woman or child
on the face of the earth what wages you do get, unless
you don't get what you are worth, in which case go to
the office alone and fix it at once. Remember that.
Don't brag about your wages to any soul as long as
you live. If you get a raise and blab it, the bosses will
kick you out for your lack of sense, or the other boys
will freeze you out for your good luck.
No man under heaven could carry on business suc-
cessfully, if he told his competitors all about his
business, and kept his books open for inspection.
Keep mum about your wages. If some bank cashier
asks you how much pay you get, ask him how much
he gets before you answer.
70 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
Good workmen are not only getting scarce, but they
have been scarce for some time. The good workman
is generally a good common-sense sort of a man in
every way, and when the panic struck the trade, he
showed his sense by making other arrangements.
The consequence is, that to-day an increased business
finds that the only source of special supply is a mass
of material first discarded from the shops, on account
of being the least valuable, Those who have served
their apprenticeship during the dull times have
become discouraged at the small wages they were
to receive as jours., and, if they were ambitious, they
quit and abandon the trade. This left the slouchy
cubs in the shop. Those short-sighted employers who
think they can make money out of the machine busi-
ness, if they can only get men at low enough wages,
have had their chance. It will be long before they
will have another such chance, and I now make all
such employers an offer. I will bet a fifty cent
summer hat with each of them, that there is more
profit in a job done by three-dollar men, than there is
in the same job done by one-dollar men, other things
being equal. Low wages means a low grade of work-
men, and that means a high first cost of product. I
speak of comparative wages, of course, comparative
with reference to the grade of work.
* * * * Some machinists, when they speak of a
good workman, mean a man who is fine, close and
accurate. This is not correct one-half the time.
There are just as good men working on rough port-
able engines as you can find in the shops. They
are skillful men. But put them into shops build-
ing tools, and they are gone ; fact is, they should
not have come. In the same way, the tool man
isn't worth his salt on portable engines. He
accomplishes nothing, and is hard at work all
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS. "JI
the time. Some folks think a job can't be done too
well. Nonsense ! There's more work done too well
than too bad. It is no trouble to go and contract for
good work and get it ; but it is -hard to get rough
work properly done. Some one has said that dirt is
simply matter misplaced, and I say that bad work is
simply labor misplaced. If I saw a man painting a
sewing machine shuttle with coal tar, I would say he
was botching the job, and if I saw him putting a
crocus finish on a hand-car crank, I would say the
same thing.
If a man grinds up a sugar mill roll on a Morton
Pool machine, he makes no better job of it than if he
had taken a single roughing cut over it. A skilled
workman is one understanding the tricks and arts of
his trade. If he has the judgment and common sense
which tells him how and where to apply his skill, he is
a good and valuable workman. If he does not know
how and where to apply his skill, he is not a good and
valuable workman. There are more bad skillful work-
men than good ones, and the thing must be equalized
by supervision. The foreman is to supply the judg-
ment, and the workman the skill. A skillful foreman
is generally a bad foreman, for he has judgment
mixed up with his skill, and supposes that every
other skilled workman has judgment also. He will
give a man a job and leave him to his own devices,
and if the job is badly done, he will lay it to the man
because he knows he could have done it properly
himself. Such a foreman often says it is more trouble
to instruct a workman than to do the work. A fore-
man with more judgment and less skill would advise
such a workman to quit the machine trade and go
into the post-hole business, on account of its being
less abstruse.
72 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
CHAPTER IX.
EXTENSION OF SHOPS. DEVELOPING INTO A STOCK COM-
PANY. A TIME-KEEPING MACHINE. HUNTER'S FOUN-
DRY ACCOUNTS. OWNERSHIP OF PATTERNS.
* * * * You honored a former letter by copi-
ously extracting remarks relative to the length of time
manufacturing establishments hold their places in
this country. I often wonder if any one looks at "ex-
tension" in the same light that I do. By extension, I
do not refer to the legitimate outgrowth of a business,
but rather to the uncalled for spread which elated
manufacturers are prone to indulge in.
Can you not call to mind a dozen or a hundred men
who, either alone or in association with a single part-
ner, have built up their business from nothing to a de-
cided success, making money and decidedly prosper-
ous ? Follow them and ask yourselves : Shall we do
as they do ?
* * * * Their course is, too often, after this
manner. They find their business an unaccountable
and overwhelming success. Their money is all in-
vested, their room crowded, their energies and ca-
pacity fully taxed, and they are making money. So far,
so good. But with the expansive desire which leads
on to ruin, they look for outside capital, to admit into
their own well-feathered nest. The modern stock
company suggests itself. They form, incorporate,
print stock, sell it, leave the old shop, move to some
high-bidding town, build new and large, and strike
out with a spoon entirely out of proportion to the
sugar. The first election of officers puts the origina-
tors at the head, of course. Things prosper, and be-
fore another election the new stock-holders get some
experience in the business rubbed off on them by con-
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS. 73
tact, and begin to have an idea or two. The new elec-
tion changes affairs. One of the charter members
finds himself out. Next election the other goes. They
hold their stock, of course, and share the profits, but
what are profits, compared with the privilege of hav-
ing a hand in the control of a business, whose creation
and growth are due entirely >to your own fostering
care and years of labor ?
The new management is often better than the old,
but oftener worse ; and the " original two " wish they
were back in their old concern under the old firm
name, with the blessed privilege of occupation in well-
known channels.
* * * * i can me ntion a case in my own little
State. Three men, whom I will name after their re-
spective trades, F., J3. and J/"., as Foundry-man, Black-
smith, and Machinist, combined their small capital
and went into business with firm name as above.
They all worked every day in the year, and they all
grew rich. Notwithstanding the increase in wealth
they still, through long years, gave their whole time
to the business not as workmen, of course, but as
skilled business managers, for their years of success-
ful experience had given them great ability as busi-
ness men. Each had his department: production,
finance, sales. From young mechanics they had
grown to gray-headed business men, powers in their
community, loved and respected by all. The legiti-
mate growth of their establishment they were able to
foster and father, and their prosperity was such as is
due to unflagging attention and honest motive.
But the demon came, and taking them upon the
pinacle of their highest chimney, seductively charmed
them with visions of further extension, extensions be-
yond their own means, but extensions warranted by
the growing condition of the business. Say the word,
74 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL'S LETTERS.
and unlimited capital would aid them, and unlimited
scope of action could be given to their concern. They
hesitated and were lost. They said the word, and the
tempter himself took to the capital city the death war-
rant which made the f., B. and M. Machine Company an
incorporated concern, as provided for by the act, etc.
The tempter brought back the document with the sec-
retary's sign-manual and the State's great seal at-
tached. This was the document destined to destroy
the bonds which bound the three creators to their life's
creation.
The certificates of stock, with a soaring eagle in the
center flanked by portable engines and threshing ma-
chines, were engraved, engrossed and eagerly pur-
chased by friends. At the election we find F., Presi-
dent, J5., Secretary, and M., Treasurer. They manage
the business as usual and see no darkness. The busi-
ness prospers and election day returns, and B. finds
himself an outside stock holder, with profits and no
duties. The new man becomes an honest element of
dissension and makes honest trouble, so the stock-
holders elect another president from without to aid
him. There is less dissension now, and a new election
makes M. vice-president, with a salary of $3,000 and
no duties. The by-laws gives him no voice in the
management. His old colleagues are worse off than
himself, but are stronger men and can stand it. All
the old avenues of his life are closed, and he finds
that he has not been working all these years for
money, but for occupation. That occupation is gone.
He must not open his head on the premises of the
incorporated company. He prays for duties and oc-
cupation and is told to have recourse to the elegant
leisure of the rich.
The leopard cannot change his spots, nor can the
working man of years throw off the active, interested
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS. 75
habits of a life. He tries to be an idle wealthy citizen
and fails. He broods and tosses in his sleep during
all his waking hours. One sunshiny day the incor-
porated company found the body of their vice-presi-
dent in their pattern loft with a bullet through his
brain, and in his private drawer in the safe they find
this scrawl, " My usefulness and occupation in life are
gone."
There are no such words in the act providing for
the incorporation of stock companies under the laws
of the State.
* * * * You remember that I showed you, not
long ago, a machine in Sackett's office, a mechanical
time-keeper of men's work. This machine keeps the
time of 200 men, shows when they went to work, and
when they quit ; and, by the way, if I can find time
soon, I will send you a full description of this thing
with illustrations. Well, this machine was gotten up by
Quirk, who is one of those masterly designers who has
all of the orthodox mechanical movements at his fingers'
ends. He governs himself by the ethics of design,
and deals only in pure mechanurgy. He wrestled
with this machine many a long month, and succeeded
famously.
When a workman bows before the machine it must
record his name or number, the hour of his appear-
ance, the day, the month, the year, and this it must do
with accuracy.
Quirk got along all right till he came to the devices
for dealing with the days in the month. Thirty days
in one month, thirty-one in another, and twenty-eight
in another, with a variation of a day every few years.
He worried over the thing, piled detail on detail, and
complicated movement on complicated movement, till
the desired result was accomplished.
When completed, the movement was a thing to
76 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS.
stand before, with awe and wonder at the immense
amount of skill and judgment which had been used
up in its design, and the vast sums of money expended
in its construction.
* * * * Quirk did this awe-and-wonder busi-
ness for a time, and then it occurred to him that a
common calendar clock had to do just what this ex-
asperating part of his machine had to do, and that it
would be a good idea to look inside of one. He did
so, and wished he hadn't. A single little insignificant
piece of brass, not worth ten cents, did the whole
thing. In meek humility, he bought a clock for ten
dollars, and with it replaced hundreds of dollars
worth of his tangled complex machinery.
* # # * Here is a sum in arithmetic for you.
The case actually presented itself in Hunter's shop,
and was the cause of much contention. Hunter's
foundry accounts arc kept by themselves ; debit every-
thing in the way of stock, sand, coal, labor, power, in-
surance, &c., which goes into the foundry, and credit
it by the number of pounds of castings coming out. At
the end of a year, the book showed that the castings cost
3^j cents per pound. At that price the foundry made
no money and lost none. In short, Hunter's castings
cost 3^ cents. His foundry pays one cent for heavy
scrap. He got a piece weighing 4,000 pounds into the
machine shop, found it was wrong and had to be broken
up, and a new one made in its place. Question : What
was Hunter's loss on the blunder ? Sackett, whose shop
is just across the street, sells heavy castings at 2^ cents.
You will find knots in this thing.
* * * * i have a legal question to put, and hope
shop owners will feel called upon to express themselves
and cite some case in court which might settle the
question. A man came to Hunter to have a machine
built, and asked Hunter what he would do it for. Hun-
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS. 77
ter said he would not contract for the machine, and
would only do it by the day. Five dollars per day for
the work, and four cents a pound for all material. The
man said he didn't object, but he wanted to know ap-
proximately what the thing would cost, so as to know
whether he could ever pay for it or not. He only had
r > much money at his disposal. Hunter figured the
thing up, and wrote that he thought it would come to
somewhere in the neighborhood of one hundred and
twenty dollars. The man said " Go ahead on $5 per
day and 4 cents per pound." When the machine was
done, Hunter sent in an itemized bill for seven hundred
dollars. Man kicked, they quarreled and kicked over
the thing, and finally came together in my place. They
asked my advice. I told Hunter to sue the man for the
amount of the bill, and told the man to get somebody
else to build a machine, and to sue Hunter for damages
caused by delay. I am a peacemaker, you know, and
try to straighten everything left to me.
But, honestly, what effect is a man's preliminary es-
timate and representation to have on his bill ? This
question comes up frequently, and there should be some-
thing known about the legal status of the matter. A
customer frequently orders a thing on the supposition
that his party can figure somewhere near the cost of
the job. In the above case Hunter was a little " off,"
and the man would never have gone into the thing at
any such figures as the actual time brought out.
* * * * Another question : When Smith orders
a job of Hunter, and Hunter charges Smith with the
cost of the patterns, who is the owner of the patterns ?
It's a common question.
You get a photographer to make a negative of a ma-
chine, pay his expenses, and pay him ten dollars for
making the negative, and he says the negative belongs
to him. He will let you have prints at a certain price,
7 8
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
but will not deliver the negative. There is no known
way of getting a negative out of a photographer, except
with a club. Bone had over a hundred negatives of
woodworking machinery, or thought he had, but when
he tried to change printers, the music began. If I re-
member rightly, the law failed to bring the negatives
and the matter had to be compromised.
Pope had a similar experience. He thought he owned
fifty negatives of steam pumps, but, the first*thing he
knew, his artist had sold the things, and the purchaser
was soliciting his orders for prints from them. If an
artist would make no charge for negatives, I do not
think the ownership would be a matter to question ;
but when the thing is ordered and paid for, and noth-
ing said about prints, it seems to me they should belong
to the man who pays for them.
* * * * i nev er saw a man who had taken a de-
gree seeking information from another man. He al-
ways wishes to impart. The master mechanic keeps
mum, and is always looking for the man who knows.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS. 79
CHAPTER X.
ALTERING DETAILS TO SUIT CUSTOMERS. JOURNAL BOXES
AND HOW TO PLACE THEM. FEAR OF ADVERTISING
SOMEBODY.
* * * * i once gave you a single strain from
Sackett's song about the man who wanted changes
made in a machine which Sackett had made for years,
and which the man had never seen. Dividing boxes
of running journals was the burden of the song. Now
I am made to sing myself. I designed an iron-working
machine for the Tubal works some years ago. They
sold a hundred of them, and this week they send me a
letter from a prospective purchaser who is horrified to
find, by inspecting one in a neighboring city, that sun-
dry shafts of the machine run in boxes bored from the
solid, and having no caps to take up wear. My only
reply to my old patrons is to clip Sackett's music from
an old AMERICAN MACHINIST, and enclose it to them.
* * * * I am now disposed to express my views
on the box question. I will illustrate my sermon by
assuming that I am called upon to design and con-
struct a grindstone frame, and that circumstances,
over which I have no control, force me to construct
the frame of green timber. While scheming upon the
parts, I arrive at the journal boxes. What shall they
be made of, and shall they have adjustable caps ? First,
as to the material. I know that a cast iron box bored
out is the cheapest, and I know that the steel shaft will
run in the cast iron box, and outwear ten babbitted
ones.
But I know the latter to hold good only so long as
the shaft has a fair bearing in the box, and I know that
Hank, or Chris, or Jim, or Bill, in building the rig, will
not get the boxes in line, but will quit the job as soon
8o EXTRACTS FROM CHORD AL'S LETTERS.
as he can turn the shaft in the boxes; and I also know,
that if the boxes were in perfect line they would only
stay so as long as the green wood frame allowed them
to. Furthermore, I know that a cat-a-cornered cast iron
box will cut the shaft and ruin it. If there is going to
be any damage done I want it done to the boxes,
because they are cheaper to replace than the shaft. I
am constrained to abandon cast iron for the boxes and
substitute a babbitted box. I now say that, under
equally favorable circumstances, the babbitt boxes will
have to be rebuilt ten times as often as the cast iron,
but that under unfavorable circumstances, known to
exist, the shaft will last longer than with cast iron
boxes, and that the boxes stand an equal chance of
life. I am forced by circumstances to use babbitt
on account of its yielding, accommodating nature.
Having decided upon babbitting the boxes, I quickly
decide to put caps to the boxes for two reasons. First,
they are easier to babbitt; and, second, they allow the
stone to be lifted out. I never dream of -using these
caps to make the boxes wear longer.
My grindstone has thus got babbitted boxes with
caps and, as in the present case, fitly associated
with a green oak frame.
So much for circumstances beyond my control. But
suppose I am at liberty to control these circumstances
myself, or that a cast iron frame in one piece is called
for. I see fit to bolt the boxes down to seats on the
frame casting. Shall I use the same boxes I used on
the oak frame ? I study over it. I went to the ex-
pense of babbitt boxes on the oak frame, in order to
guard against bad setting and inevitable shrinking.
On account of this durability I want the cast iron
boxes if they are equal in other particulars.
First, I will see about the setting. If I leave the work
to Hank's judgment he will choose between two plans.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL*S LETTERS. 8 1
He will bore the cast iron boxes and accurately dress
their bottoms, then he will dress the scats and line up
the boxes, only he won't. He will do just as he did
with the oak frame, and leave the boxes as soon as he
can turn the shaft; then they will not be in good trim,
and will cut the shaft, and my reputation as a designer
cf grindstone mountings will collapse. Hank has a
second chance. He will bolt the boxes down hap-
hazard, but rigidly, and bore them together. By the
other plan, he did two accurate or nice pieces of work,
and made a bad job, while this way he does no skillful
work and makes a good job. Of the two plans, the
last is fully fifty per cent, cheaper, and my reputation
still stands a chance. Desiring cast iron boxes, can I
object to them now ? They are in line, for they were
bored at once, and they can't get out of line, for they
can't be bolted down out of line; they are not only in
line but awkwardness cannot get them out of line. I
feel satisfied that all objections existing against iron
boxes on the oak frame disappear in the present case.
I have a shaft with a good bearing in iron boxes, and
the bearing will remain good, and the boxes will remain
cast iron. In the case of babbitt box.es, the babbitt soon
wore down, and exposed the cast iron ledges at the
ends of the boxes. These soon cut into the shaft,
unfit it for a new babbitt box, or any other kind of a
box.
I am satisfied that in the present case the material
of my boxes is all right.
In the oak frame case there were bad conditions,
and babbitt had to be used with regret. In the present
case, the conditions are happy ones, and cast iron is to
be used with satisfaction.
Now about the caps. Caps or no caps, that is the
question. Why did I cap the other boxes? To take up
wear? Not a bit of it. Why not ? Simply because I
82 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL*S LETTERS.
don't care to take up the wear. The stone would run
all right in half boxes if the half always came in the
right place. The weight of the stone is down, and the
pull of the belt is, or may be, up, and the belt-pull may
preponderate over the weight, so I desire the shaft to
find a bearing, whichever way it may go. The grind-
stone isn't a reciprocating machine, and slack in the
box is a benefit rather than a damage, for it is evi-
dence that the cap is not acting as a friction brake to
consume power and wear the shaft. I capped the other
boxes for convenience in babbitting and in lifting the
stone out. I don't babbitt these boxes so that part
of the "why" is settled. As for lifting the stone out,
the boxes may come with the shaft. With the old rig"
this would not have been permissible, because the
boxes were delicately located in place, and if removed
would have to be skillfully replaced. Now, however,
I find that the boxes cannot be placed wrong, and
that they may come off with the shaft. This looks as
though I desired boxes without caps, and that I was
not seeking reasons for and against them. This is true.
When discussing the material of the box, I was urged
to use cast iron on account of its durability, and was
compelled to forego it for other reasons. Now I desire
to have the box without caps for the sake of durability,
and will certainly forego solid boxes if reason dictates
the use of caps. Solid boxes are more durable than
capped boxes, for the simple reason that if made to
fit, they will stay fit, while if caps are used, some smart
Aleck will be forever and eternally adjusting them,
and they will never, by any circumstance of good luck,
fit right. He will screw the caps down and wear my
boxes out in a year. I want them to last, and I insure
their doing so, by simply putting it out of the power of
officiousness to defeat me.
Some men have a passion for putting a cap on a box
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS. 83
without regard to whether the box is subjected to
jumping wear or to steady, uniform, rotary wear.
This is my law based on experience :
For simple revolving journals on light or heavy
work, a box without a cap will outwear six boxes with
caps. This outwear assertion refers to shaft and box
alike. Memorandum : There are a hundred geniuses
in the country trying to invent a loose pulley adjusta-
ble for wear. When they succeed in doing so, loose
pulleys with proper length of hub will wear out, and
not till then. There is a difference between " cut " and
''wear." Tightening a cut journal will ruin it. No
man ever saw a cone fit on a lathe worn out during
the lifetime of a lathe. Fortunately there is no way of
taking up wear on them. No man ever saw a lead
screw bearing on a lathe worn out unless it had caps,
in which case he never saw it in shape. An upright
drill spindle running in a something which can be
tightened is never in good trim it's always tight or
loose. If the same spindle runs in a solid something,
it is never tight or loose. It is just right, and will
stay so as long as the other organs of the machine
last.
One more reference as to adjustability. I will make
lathe boxes the subject of a homily some day, but I
wish now to call attention to the well-known fact that
if a lathesman is silly enough to have filed his boxes
open, he will be screwing at them twenty times a day,
and his boxes are never right. If he has the joint come
metal to metal, he never gives them a thought from
week to week, and they are always right. If his work
chatters, he never grabs his tool wrench and goes fool-
ing round the spindle boxes, for he knows the trouble
is somewhere else.
* * * Have y.ou ever noticed how tenderly
you have to handle mechanical subjects to avoid ad-
84 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
vertising somebody ? Did it ever occur to you, that every
step which the world has lately taken in adding to its
wealth and happiness is generally traceable to the sys-
tematic efforts of individuals ? Of late years, the
whole world has organized a system of recognition of
its benefactors. This recognition has taken the form
of a limited monopoly for the inventor, and a monopoly
governed by the law of the survival of the fittest for
the producer. How can progress be hinted at in the
mechanical arts, if the mention of names is improper ?
Must a man blush because, inadvertently, he intimates
the existence of a benefactor when he descants on a
benefit ? Surely we may talk of work done, and not
blush that the worker gains by it. We may do this
without sinking to the low vulgarity of the finer arts,
in which the merit of the product becomes of less sig-
nificance than the name of the producer.
The most excellent book I have ever seen on valve
motions contains hardly a word regarding those mo-
tions which form the basis of the commendable sys-
tems. With the utmost respect for the author, I wish
to enter my earnest protest against mistaken delicacy
of this kind.
* * * Some man makes money out of every
changing emotion of his fellow man. There is no vo-
cation on earth, which is not founded on the tastes
and opinions and requirements of men. How idle,
then, to withhold information, because somebody will
make by it. The managing editor of one of the most
enterprising daily papers in the country said to one
of his reporters last week : "That thing would be an
appreciative piece of news, but I don't see how to
counteract the gratuitous advertising it would result
in."
* * * * Many of our standard works on me-
chanical subjects seem to have been based on the in-
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS. 85
tendon of pointing out progress in the arts, without
touching on anything under seventeen years old,
which is the term of life of an American patent.
* * * * This reminds me of the fact that Fet-
lock, a builder of machinists' tools from other people's
patterns, lately laid down a copy of the AMERICAN
MACHINIST, and asked : " Who is the Chordal who is
always advertising Brown & Sharpe and those other
men ?" And this again reminds me that Chordal is a
machinist keenly appreciative of all that is better and
more useful in connection with his craft ; a machinist
who, as long as he lives, will be alive to the importance
and position of such leaders as by their skill and en-
ergy develop products which help us forward in the
age, and which give us the second blade of grass ; and
a machinist who will be the first to observe and the
first to welcome the tenderest shoot which may spring
from a seed planted and nourished by Fetlock.
86 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS.
CHAPTER XI.
EMERY WHEELS I*N THE SHOP. AN EMERY-WHEEL MAN
WANTED. CHARLEY AS THE CHAMPION OILER. A
MECHANICAL TIME-KEEPER.
* * * Emery wheels do not get justice in the
shop. The common plan is to rig up some outlandish
kitchen-table affair with an illy-proportioned arbor,
and to put an emery wheel on it and say the shop is
fixed for grinding. The whole arrangement is put off
in some place where castings get piled in front of it,
and where no man is going to climb if he can help it.
Keeping the thing in order is nobody's business, and
soon the affair falls into disrepute. So does any other
machine treated in the same way. Let a planer be a
public tool and soon it will be a wretched tool, and be
shunned as the emery wheels are. But the worst is
not told. The truth is, nobody in the shop knows how
to get good results out of the thing, and it is looked
upon as simply one kind of a grindstone, which don't
throw mud and water, and is nice to touch a piece of
iron on once in a while. There is no little arrangement
in the shop which will so well repay investment, and
which will so well justify care in selecting both the
machine and its operator. There are a thousand-and-
one little things turning up every day which a keen-eyed
foreman will see are fit subjects for emery-wheel oper-
ations. I don't mean in a manufacturing business, but
in a simon-pure machine shop, where you don't know
what's coming next. Vise work can often be surfaced
all over to remove scale. Often it can be surfaced and
polished and the vise work left off. Often it can follow
vise work, and do the polishing, and often it can be
used simply to remove metal and change the shape or
dimensions of a piece. All of these things, it will be
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL*S LETTERS. 87
seen, are common operations performed in a manner
not usual in the shop. But one thing must be remem-
bered. A machinist cannot do this work on emery
wheels. That is, he cannot take a job from his vise
and finish it on an emery wheel. Why? First, because,
as before mentioned, the emery rig being everybody's
care is nobody's care and isn't in order ; and, second,
the machinist never gets the swing of emery wheels.
He will file up a hex nut all right, but will ruin it on
an emery wheel. He can chip scale off work and file
it afterwards, but if he tries to scale it on a wheel he
gets it hot, burns his fingers, ruins a wheel, and glazes
his work so a file won't touch it.
As far as shaping a piece of curved work on an
emery wheel is concerned, he might as well try to fly.
He will put a thousand cat faces on it, and take away
all the delicacy of shape the thing ever had. He tries
to shape up a cutting tool ; he turns it blue and wears
it out in filaments which, when removed by some other
process, show that the apparent form was decidedly
deceptive. Don't try to mix machinists and emery
wheels ; they will ruin and corrupt each other. But
they can get along splendidly if they are not mixed.
Step into a hardware factory. Notice a man finishing
a common carpenter's brace. Take one of the rough
braces home and set your best vise-man to finishing it.
Note the time, and the shape he leaves, and the thing
he calls polish.
The man we are watching has a couple of emery
belts and a couple of wheels, may be a hundred and
fifty dollars' worth of tools altogether. With these
and his skill he works on any shape you bring him.
If a drop-forging, like the braces, he roughs and fin-
ishes and polishes and loses no little detail of the
original nicely rounded and purely outlined form. If
he finds a bad spot he goes deeper, but blends the flat
88 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS.
till it is invisible. His polish is real polish, whatever
may be said against it, and is the same all over, while
a vise-man's polish is o. K. where it is easy to get at it
and do it, but slouchy where the kinks are. The
emery-wheelman can't file a finish on a job. Why?
Because he don't know how ; he never learned ; has a
trade of his own. Same with the vise-man. What
does this lead to ? This : Look around the shop and
see how much of your work is similar in shape to what
you see in the market, but far inferior in character of
surface and superior in cost, and ask yourself if there
isn't some art which is not represented in the shop, and
which should be represented. If you find considerable
such work, and if you have thirty hands in the shop, you
certainly will send to some good emery-wheel concern,
and either buy from them or get drawings for the
proper rigs adapted to your work. Let them send
you a man at ten per-cent less wages than you pay
the general run of lathesmen. This man will tell you
more about the wheels and belts you want than your
judgment could tell in a year. Set him to work the
same as you would a lathesman, and in a short time
you will find that you pile an immense quantity of
work around him which you wonder how you ever got
done before. Watch the man. First, there is his
skill, about which nothing can be said, except that
it is skill. He knows how. But you can see that he
keeps a different sort of an establishment from the old
one. The wheels are always in good face, and they
run true, and the arbors are heavy, and stiff, and
steady, and the speeds are right, and a wheel is
always ready for business. You know very well that
bad as the old rig was, its very viciousness was often
inaccessible, because the belt was on a strike, or off
the pulley, or because the oiler didn't see fit to keep
the countershaft oiled.
C 1. Jl
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS. 91
* * * * Honestly and truly, do you have an
oiler? I don't mean a special dignitary with a sinecure,
vitlgo, soft thing, but some man, high or low in posi-
tion, who is responsible for every squeak six feet
from the floor ? If you have such a functionary, does
he oil countershafts, etc., over machines having a
tender? Some shops give a certain laborer the oiling
job, but expect countershafts to be oiled by the man
who runs the machine below them. This is a bad
plan. It's a nasty job that a lathesman don't like,
so he puts it off as long as things will run. When
he does it, he must skirmish around for ladders and
things, and all the time a valuable man and machine
are idle. Then there are always a lot of machines
around a shop which are not run regularly by one
man. They are run by everybody, and it is a notorious
fact, that everybody won't oil anything he can't reach-
If he finds something high up on a drill-press stuck
for lack of oil, he jumps the job if he can, and waits
for somebody else to fix things up. It is a much
better plan to make Charlie oil up everything in the
shop which is higher than his ear.
* * * * I send an illustration of the time-
keeping machine which I showed you in Sackett's
shop. Whether the thing is to be recommended or
not, it is certainly an excellent illustration of one
way of doing things. The machine is intended
to save labor in time-keeping, but has no refer-
ence to detail time-keeping on work. As shown
in the illustration, it consists of a time-keeper's
desk, and furnishes him a place for the perform-
ance of his work, and for the deposit of his pay-
books, etc. It is placed against the wall, past which
all workmen must go as they arrive and depart.
There is a hole in the wall exposing two slots in the
deck of the machine. Underneath this deck is a com-
9 2
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
partment box intermittently revolved by clock-work.
One of the slots in the deck is called the commenc-
ing slot, and the other the quitting slot. When a
workman is hired, he is given a number of brass
checks, all having the same number stamped upon
them. This number is the book number of that man
as long as he stays in the shop. By this number he
is carried on all the books, and by this number he
gives tool-room receipts, &c.
The time book to be used with this machine is gotten
up as follows, the first vertical column being for the
workman's number:
No.
M.
T.
w.
T.
F.
S.
Total.
13
11
5
7
2
k
S
7
14
13
8
U
U
15
11
5
7
* \
U
S
7
Without entering into any description of the mechan-
ical details of the device, we will simply refer to its
plan of operations, and to the plan of booking its
work.
We will assume that the machine is being used
in a shop working ten hours, and keeping time by the
hour. The cylinder shown in the illustration has
twelve compartments, or pockets, near the outer edge,
and twelve more just inside the circle of the first
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS. 93
twelve. The deck covers all these pockets, and the
commencing slot is always over one outside pocket,
and the quitting slot over one inside pocket ; there is
a coiled spring under the desk, which tends to revolve
the cylinder. A pawl hooking into notches upon the
cylinder prevents rotation. This pawl is attached to
the works of a calendar clock in such a manner that
every hour the pawl will lift and allow the cylinder to
turn one notch.
At six in the morning the cylinder is in such a posi-
tion that checks dropped into the commencing slot
will fall into what we may call the seven o'clock pocket.
The cylinder stands this way for an hour, or till two
minutes after seven, at which time the cylinder brings
the eight o'clock pocket under the commencing slot>
and the seven o'clock pocket under the quitting slot.
In an hour it changes again. The slots thus remain
an hour over each pocket. A workman may deposit
his commencing check anytime within the hour before
going to work, and has two minutes margin to go on
after time is up, and he has an hour in which to de-
posit quitting checks. The machine has adjustments
which allow the intervals to be set to suit the rules of
the shop.
The time-keeper, when he gets down to work, re-
volves the cylinder by hand, and pulls drawers out of
the bottom, showing the checks in the properly-labeled
pockets. He takes the checks from the eleven o'clock
quitting pocket, for instance, and finds checks Nos.
13 and 15. It is Monday, and he finds his time-book,
as shown above, ruled for morning and afternoon of
each day. He jots down n for Nos. 13 and 15, and
so on.
When he empties the seven o'clock commencing
pocket, he finds No. 13 and 15 there. He puts seven
under the quitting figure already noted. Afternoon
94
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
the same. He subtracts commencing figures from
quitting and gets the hour's time. The horizontal
row of remainders at the week's end gives the week's
time.
* * * * Several shops have these machines, and
all have the same experience with them. The men
think it part of a deep laid plan to get a full day's
work out of them, and kick accordingly. It is some-
times very hard to explain away, but the fact is, the
machine is not calculated in any way to correct
evil habits, its object being solely to lighten the time-
clerk's work, and to make the workman understand
that he is paid from a time-book of his own posting.
Herron, working four hundred men, got one of
these things, and the men were in arms at once. They
wouldn't have it, and Herron could not make them
see the thing in the right light, so out it came. It
is a good thing, in a way, for the men and for the
proprietors.
It will be noticed, in the illustration, that all the
men are of one kind, and it may be a matter of jus-
tice to state, that if one of these chaps happened to
have side-whiskers or even no whiskers at all, the
machine would record his time all the same.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS. 95
CHAPTER XII.
SHOP NOMENCLATURE. SACKETT*S PLANER ARRANGE-
MENT. MILLING MACHINES AND YANKEE " TRAPPERY."
A CORE DEVICE FOR FOUNDRIES.
* * * * If a German in an American shop asks
in German for an oil-can, he won't be apt to get it, and
we can understand why ; but if an Englishman asks
in English shop-lingo for a monkey-wrench, two things
bother us, first, what he wants, and second, why he
don't ask for what he wants, instead of talking about
slide-spanners and screw-keys.
We would be bothered still more, and lose a little of
our conceit if we were set down in Crewe or Manches-
ter shops. There is really something comical in the
difference in nomenclature in the two countries. With
the English, our steady-rest is a catch-plate, and our
follow-rest, a back-stay. Our engine lathe is their
self-acting lathe. Wm. Sellers & Company have ab-
sorbed the words self-acting and back-stay into their
work, but the words won't stick, after the machines are
out of the shop. Our 24-inch swing-lathe is in mother
English a 1 2-inch centers lathe. The word "swing"
is certainly wrong, as it- is too suggestive of radius,
while we apply it to diameter.
Our belt is with them a strap ; our shipper, a strap-
shifting apparatus, and our counter-shaft, an overhead
driving apparatus, and so on, forever. Special trades
in our own country vary about as much. Men brought
up in railroad shops always call a shaper a compound
planer, and engine-slides, of any description, guide-
bars. But the worst thing the railroad machinist is
guilty of is bringing into shops such words as " six
square nuts," " three square files, etc." He has often
sent cubs running around among the round-house men
96 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL/S LETTERS.
after circular squares, and straight hooks, and won-
dered at the greenness of the boy in supposing for an
instant that there are such things, when he himself
daily uses such outrageous words as " bevel square,"
" four-square file," etc.
We have in this country four names for a connect-
ing-rod : main rod, connecting-rod, pitman, and rod.
Eccentric-rods are often called cam-rods ; cross-heads
tee-heads ; and safety-valve weights are often called
Pees, from P = weight in the equations, I suppose.
The crank-pin with some becomes a wrist. Of course
there is no bigotry in the use of any of these terms,
unless they are unyieldingly adhered to.
* * * * Sackett has got a planer arrangement
which it would pay any one to see and copy. He had
a good forty-inch planer, and, by a slight additional
investment, he has arranged the thing to do work of
any size whatever. The plan is well known in large
shops, but the smaller shops, which need such things
the most, will do well to listen. A heavy, slotted plate
is planted under the planer, about four feet ahead of
the housings. The plate is about five by fifteen feet,
and sits across the planer, connecting equally on each
side. It is truly planed on top, and is set true with
the planer table, and bolted to the planer by short
legs reaching up. It is simply a slotted floor, true
with the planer table. He has a heavy knee with a
broad base to bolt to this plate. The knee is practically
a planer rail set upright and having a saddle, etc.,
the same as a planer. A job too large to go through
the housings may be bolted to the table as usual, and
operated on by the tool in this knee; and, in case of
extra large work, the job may be bolted to the plate,
and the knee bolted to the planer table. The knee has
hand-feeds in all directions, and in connection with this
planer will do the best of work on any sized piece which
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS. 97
can be got into a shop. There is nothing shaky or tem-
porary about the affair, and, to all intents and purposes,
it is as good as a planer which will take in a cathedral.
* * * * j th ere i s an y one s hop tool to which
we owe the national pre-eminence in manufacture,
which we brag so much about, more than to any other,
it is, beyond doubt, the milling machine.
The universality of this machine has been developed
entirely in this country, and from that development
have sprung manufacturing possibilities before un-
dreamed of. But there is no machine whose virtues
are so little understood outside of its New England
home. It is usual for all large shops to have one mill-
ing machine, and if you ask any one around the
premises, from the owner down to the oiler, what that
machine is, you will be told that it is a milling ma-
chine, and that it is used for fluting taps, and reamers,
and such things. How little they know of the
latent power of this machine to produce any sort
of an effect on any metal, and to reproduce this
effect with marvelous uniformity ! As a jobbing
machine, its virtue lies mostly in its universal adap-
tation, but in manufacturing, it is found to be an
unvarying power for good. It is nothing but a
circular saw mill, when you come to look at it, but
if there is any one thing in the shop which don't
get its deserts, it is the circular saw, or many-toothed
cutter. You may file up a nice shape for a special
lathe tool, but you will find it dull in a short time,
and grinding will invariably alter the shape. Not so
with the milling tool. Its sixty teeth distribute the
work between them, not all doing the same work,
because we find human skill fails to make the teeth all
bear alike, but some teeth will cut deeper than others
and put the finishing touch on the job. A cutter with
sixty teeth, cutting at the same velocity as a common
98 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS.
tool, will generally outwear three hundred single tools.
An attempt to cut gearing in a planer will generally
let light in on the real merits of milling operations.
* * * * New England is not only the home of
the milling machine, but it is the national source of
real happy ingenuity. There is a current belief that
Yankee design runs to complexity and "trappery" a
belief not having the least foundation, in fact. When
the New Englander takes it into his head to revise the
work of mechanics from other sections, he starts new,
discards every functional device, and produces the
identical result with much simpler mechanism.
A marvelous gear cutter is brought to our notice,
and, upon analyzing the machine, we must admire
the perfection of every detail, the life-like action of
its automatic devices, the absolute certainty of its
operations, and the masterly manner in which the
whole is constructed. But we look in vain for original
detail, or novel devices. We find only an aggregation
of well-known elements and movements, skillfully
combined, so as to produce a novel and original whole.
We are impressed with the idea that this excellent
machine is, in reality, a combination of many familiar
machines which retain their personality, even in their
novel position. Our New England mechanic desires
the functions of this machine, but does not take to
the means. He designs a new one, discarding every
element of the old one, and produces a machine which
does not suggest anything we have ever seen before.
His machine \sone machine, and so perplexingly simple
at that, that we wonder where the devices are. We
hunt them up, and find that each movement is effected
by entirely original devices of extreme simplicity and
perfect action.
* * * * One peculiarity of New England design,
or construction rather, is the apparent complexity,
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS. 99
which results from dividing things up into small pieces.
Massachusetts planes up two surfaces and bolts pieces
together, while Pennsylvania casts them together, and
produces a smoother exterior and greater appearance
of general simplicity.
* * * * Sackett has a little arrangement in the
foundry which captured me on sight. It is a device
for making common round cores, from one-half inch
to three inches in diameter. Instead of making a car-
load of core boxes every year, he made a set of com-
mon boxes, all eighteen inches long, and for all diam-
eters up to three inches. They were of uniform size
outside. Each core box has an iron plug sliding with-
in it. This plug is cored in one end the shape of the
core prints, and, by the way, all his core prints are of
uniform length and taper, and the other end has a
three-eighths hole in it. The core bench is provided
with a socket in which any of the core boxes will stand
upright and solid. In the center of the socket slides
a graduated rod, on the upper end of which the plugs
will fit. If his coreman wants a two-inch core, ten
inches long, he sets the rod at the figure ten, puts the
two-inch plug on its upper end, and sets the two-inch
core box in the socket, and then makes the core as
usual.
100 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
CHAPTER XIII.
TAKING THINGS ON TRIAL. STARTING NEW SHOPS AND
STARTING NEW TOOLS. SHOP ABLUTIONS.
* * * * What is to be done with customers
who want things on trial, and what is to be done
with parties who want to sell us stuff on trial ? Some
classes of trade have arrived at that stage where all
sales are subject to trial. Printers not only don't
pay for their machines, but they don't order them
till they have tried them a month.
The whole thing is wrong. It has its base in the
fact that Tom or Dick, after getting up some new and
really valuable machine, goes to making it instead of
putting it into the hands of some reputable manu-
facturers already established. As a consequence,
purchasers are met by a hundred irresponsible man-
ufacturers offering their wares. The wares are what
is wanted, if they will act as represented ; but the
trouble is that no confidence can be placed in the
representation. If a man gets up a good machine,
and takes it to a concern engaged in the manufacture
of that line of machines, he can almost always receive
fair treatment. If the machine is apparently good
and wanted, the manufacturers will work it up to a
success as a machine, and will put it on the market
as a first-class rig, with their name on it. Ten per
cent, on the gross receipts is a fair and proper royalty
on machines, and as far as the manufacturer's profit,
which these mushrooms ache over, is concerned, bless
them, there isn't any. I can go to five hundred prema-
ture manufacturing shops in the country, contract to
deliver their machines five per cent, less, and 20 per
cent, better than they are building them ; can go and
sublet the job to real manufacturers, and pocket
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS. IOI
more money than twenty of the small concerns make.
And more than that, not a miller, or printer, or
thresher, or book-binder will ever dare to ask for
thirty days or thirty minutes trial before ordering.
Imagine Wm. Sellers & Co.; the Pratt & Whitney
Co. ; John T. Noye & Son, or George H. Corliss, ship-
ping stuff subject to order, if satisfactory after trial !
Such men don't experiment at the cost of the customer,
and don't put their names on machines not known to
be about what is required. The customer is thus
protected against good things put upon the market
prematurely. Another feature is that trial machines
never get a trial. A man without money-interest in a
machine will not investigate enough to develop the
good there is in a thing. The first mishap condemns
the whole thing, and it is returned as a failure, while
real money-interest would refuse to believe that a
machine was not capable of doing what it was de-
signed for.
* * * * Wycoff had a dozen governors sent on
trial. They came. He unboxed one, and told the
boys to put her on and see about it. They did, and
saw that the pulley came out too far to be in line
with the pulley on the engine shaft. They took the
governor off and threw it under a bench. The maker
of these governors can correspond with W. till dooms-
day, and never get any satisfaction. When he orders
the governors returned he will get them, and will
wonder what kind of a governor trial that is which
never lets steam into the governor. If W. had money
in those governors, it would have been on judgment,
and they would have had a fair show.
If the governors had had a responsible man's name
on them, W. would not have abused an offer, for he
would not have had it. Inventors should be protected
as well as purchasers.
102 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
* * * * There's no joke about a good many
machine men paying themselves more for their pro-
duct than others would charge.
If the future of a product is established, and if the
projector has plenty of money, there is no doubt but
that prudence would suggest the starting of a factory
arranged expressly for the specialty in hand. He has
but ten or fifteen thousand dollars in the world, and is a
man whose services are in demand in certain branches.
What shall he do with his immortal invention? He
can take it into certain localities where manufacture
has run in that line, and can contract to have the
thing built in shops equipped with a world of special
tools adapted to the line, with corps of workmen
skilled in that line; and with market facilities of years
of growth. He gets his machines without investing a
cent in manufacturing facilities. He gets them made
to specification, and runs no risk. If he sees fit to
work the market himself, he has his whole means as a
working capital, and when his device gives way to
something newer or better he quits, with his profits
in cash, and his manufacturers are where they started ;
that is, they have made a profit, and have the same
plant they commenced with.
The other way for our man to go at the thing is
to start a shop. Work close financially, and work
like a major every day, and use up three years' time
getting his system of manufacture reduced to a science,
and then his money is gone, and he is ready for the
market, and some later thing has been in the market
six months. It is certainly a fact that it takes three
years to organize a factory, so a thing can be made
as economically as a well-organized concern already
existing can make it. Our man's small pile of money
won't touch such a thing, and he has to let outsiders
in to share the profits which he might have had him-
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS. 103
self, if he had let the factory project alone. He can
contract for his stuff, go into the market at once, and
come out winner, and quit long before a factory can
get ready to build a thing not wanted when it is ready.
The factory project must certainly start from a desire
to get the manufacturer's as well as the factor's profit ;
but I think, that in a great many cases, the enormous
expense of organization, will by far overbalance that
little thing we call manufacturer's profit, a thing that
in many cases you can stick in your eye without
damage to the eye. And besides that, the manufac-
turer involves a host of officers to share the profit if it
ever comes. The question is : Is the real party's net
gain as much under a manufacturing system as under
a contract system ? It's a big lot of work which he
must do for nothing, and in a few short years there
is one more idle concern, and a hundred employes
idle, who have been seduced into a shop which never
ought to have been started.
* * * * With all the originality of the machine
trade in this country, it must be acknowledged that
too often the inventor finds manufacturers indifferent,
and is forced to work the market on his own account.
His trifle is not enough to justify him, but would be
an important element in the catalogue of an old con-
cern. I do not mean to charge indifference upon
manufacturers generally, but I do mean to say that
in many cases, manufacturers are loth to touch a
thing' which originates outside their own premises.
I think I am justified in saying that those contriv-
ances of the Gentiles, which by their apparent merit
lead disinterested manufacturers to espouse them,
are almost always successes, and that home-devised
arrangements can never be freed from an appearance
of selfish prejudice, which detracts from the force of
every argument advanced in their favor. I . never
104 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
mind setting up my own awkward experiences for
the benefit of others, and am willing to stand for an
illustration of my text.
Years ago I was out continually as a journeyman
erecting new work, in most cases steam machinery in
mills, factories, and lead mines. Two systems of pipes
in such jobs are always the same, to wit : the supply
pipe from well to supply pump, thence to tank ; and
the feed pipe from tank to feed pump, thence to boiler.
These jobs were often hundreds of miles from a shop,
and the outfit of tools taken along was often taxed to
form novel combinations of original tools. As a mat-
ter of course, a great deal of judgment had to be used
so as to take along as much suitably connected piping
as possible. The exit valve for the tank connection of
the feed pipe was one of those pieces always taken.
Every country machinist knows that valve, if it can be
called a valve. It must be built up out of a piece of
pipe having a long thread, a tin-shop strainer soldered
to a coupling screwed upon one end ; a globe-valve
and elbow and nipples screwed to the other end ; and
thick rubber gaskets and specially forged lock nuts
run upon the body. With such a rig one may feel pre-
pared to meet a tank made of sheet iron, or six-inch
wooden staves. But what a thing that is to have to
build up in that manner, and how ugly and inefficient
it is when done! The valve freezes four times per win-
ter, and a new one must be put on, and for that reason
an elbow is used instead of an angle valve, angle valves
being hard to pick up in a hurry. An attempt to put
the valve inside the tank involves trappy and unreli-
able rods to work it. I made such things as this till I
got sick of it. I found them entirely too expensive
and defective, so I got up a new article of manufacture
in which the whole thing was got in good shape, with
the valve inside the tank and the hand wheel outside.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS. 105
It had a downward outlet and a malleable strainer
the body malleable, the valve brass, and long brass
nuts. The thing could be sold for the price of a globe
valve. No such thing could be made in a machine
shop, so I opened up on supply manufacturers. I
tackled the best men in the country with my sketch
and long letters detailing its merits. They all thought
it very nice and so on, but did not remember ever hav-
ing had a call for one. A fine idea ! Who ever had a
call for anything of that character before he put it on
the market ? Besides that, engine men know what
these supply men make just as well as they do them-
selves, and are too smart to order a thing they know
isn't made. I don't put in any tank valves to speak of
now, and, of course, dropped the matter when I could
not help myself. I might have done as the subjects of
my discourse do, and gone into their manufacture. I
would have found that that would not pay alone, so I
would have been forced into staple work. My capital,
barely sufficient for the tank-valve business, would
hardly stand the stretch, and, as a consequence, I would
soon have found myself trying to get bread and butter
out of an imprudent and uncalled-for competition. In
such a business, I could continue to vitiate prices with-
out vivifying my own trade in the least. I would be
simply an excrescence upon the trade and my best
friends, who, if they cared for the greatest good to the
greatest number, would, in such case, do themselves
credit by giving me the coup de grace.
* * * * There are certain lines of trade in which
a demand is always in existence without finding ex-
pression. Known requirements or needs are as good
as imperative demands to a manufacturer. That in-
ventor is the wisest whose invention is based upon
known defects in present systems ; and the progressive
manufacturer is the one who keeps his eyes open to
106 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
the needs as well as the wants of his customers. There
are limits past which prudence dictates we should not
go. We may be aware of the need, but may find that
a missionary bureau is required to apprise the public
of its necessities. Such cases always connect them-
selves with inventions of a radical character. We see
many things upon the market, meritorious with-
in themselves, which purchasers never would have
dreamed of asking for, but long-headed manufacturers,
being aware of actual or easily-made apparent needs,
have entered into projects with an assurance based on
good judgment, and have almost always succeeded.
A manufacturer will often spend years in trying to put
some device of his own upon the market, when his
judgment should tell him that his views are bound to
be prejudiced, which could not be the case with the
purchased invention of another.
* * * * If a machinist has no more pride about
him than to leave the shop and go home without wash-
ing or taking his over-alls off, how much pride can he
have about his work? Sackett picks a man up every
once in a while, as he starts home, and tells him there
is water on tap in the washroom. If a proprietor is
smart, he will provide good washing facilities, and will
have them kept clean by a laborer. Some of these
things are disgusting, and a man with decent tenden-
cies finds himself compelled to furnish a bucket for his
own individual use. If discipline is loose, these pails
will gradually find their way all over the shop, and
every man will wash where he chooses, and throw his
water over all the bright work in the neighborhood.
It is not expecting too much of an owner, that he
should keep a decent washroom while he is keeping
one. I question whether in all England one can find a
shop with washing facilities in it, and it is rarely that
men wash before leaving the shop. Such a plan may
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS. 107
work over there, but in a republic, where the masses
form the power of the land, the decency and intelli-
gence of the masses must be provided for, and are
worth ten thousand times what they cost. As a gen-
eral rule, American workmen never go home before
cleaning up, and foreign workmen never clean up
before going home. A workman who is dirty and
slouchy and dovvn-at-the-heel all over as he leaves the
shop, is the same while in the shop, and the stuff he
sells for the price of labor is not generally extra super.
The finest and cheapest work done in this country is
done by high-priced men, who know a cuff from a col-
lar ; and the coarsest and most expensive work is done
by men who have no soul above clothes which won't
show dirt. I can take you into sections of the United
States where the shops work full gangs of dirty men,
and you will call the products of that section crude or
rough, and you will find the work comparatively ex-
pensive. I can take you to sections where the hands
are neat in appearance, where you can always distin-
guish between a workman and a blue post in the shop,
and their work has astonished the world by its marvel-
ous refinement of accuracy and unaccountable cheap-
ness. I could send you photographs of typical shops
in these two sections, with the men massed in front,
one crowd of eighty men, with six white shirts in the
crowd, and one crowd of four hundred men and twenty
dark shirts, and with the photos I could send the
heaven-bound oaths of the shop-owners, that the men
in either picture didn't have their Sunday clothes on.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS.
CHAPTER XIV.
SHOPS IN THE SKY. VALUE OF TESTIMONIALS. LOCATION
OF FACTORIES. SELLING AGENCIES.
Many heavy old concerns have died the natural
death of American shops, and, in many cases, I find
some short-sighted men trying to do business on one
of these old reputations ; when the short cut would be
to drop the name, and move to the other end of the
city. The old Niles Works in Cincinnati has been
dead and gone for years, and a railroad necessity has
compelled the condemnation and conversion of the
old premises. The Niles Tool Works, which, in
reality, first started business right under the nose
of the Niles Works, is an entirely different concern,
and has a good shop at Hamilton, a few miles out.
When I saw the old Niles Works building, I prayed
that more railroads might some day cut into the
city.
* * * * Property and taxes are high there, and,
as in all other such places, shops move upward instead
of moving outward. At J. A. Fay & Co.'s they have
very heavy planers running in the high stories of a
high shop. Post & Co.'s shops were in the sky, and
one day the sky part got afire. They poured on water
till the fire was out, but the water staid on the top
floors. The firemen went home, and men commenced
ta straighten things up. They moved the machinery
to the center of the upper floor, and found that the
floor would not hold everything up at once. The
floor gave way, and the heavy stuff went down to the
next floor, then through that, and so on clear to the
cellar. I don't know how many men were killed by
the accident, but it was a great many. The value of
a single one of these lives would have put up clean,
J once worked in a shop having open hatchways through the center of the
building. * * * * Never a day passed but something came
tumbling down. Page in.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS. Ill
roomy works outside of the town, where men would
not have to work on ladders.
* * * * i once worked in a shop having open
hatchways through the center of the building, no
elevator, mind you, but simply a lot of holes and a
hoisting rope. I worked on the engine floor on the
lowest story, nearly under the hatchway, and never a
day passed but something came tumbling down into
the space supposed to be reserved for my operations.
To-day it would be a monkey-wrench, to-morrow an
oil-can, or a dinner bucket, or a lathe chuck, or a
portable engine cylinder, or an apprentice, or most
anything. One day the whole back wall of the shop
fell in, and the shop quit business forever. I have
always been thankful, and hope all the walls will fall
in in every shop having hatchways in the middle of
the building.
* I believe that the Western folks are
right about testimonials. They mean nothing what-
ever, and, in most cases, are a fraud. I can mention
one case as a sample of a dozen within my knowledge.
Horace owned the Valley Works, and Bill worked for
him. Bill was a good workman, and was one of these
men who were good in a pinch. If a line-shaft twisted
off, or if a gate broke in the water wheel, or if a crane
broke down, or if a cylinder-head got knocked out, Bill
was the man who would take hold and put forth extra-
ordinary energies till the shop got going again. He
was a valuable man. But in his regular work, when
work piled up and things got in a rush, he would get
on a drunk, and, aside from that, he was the meanest
and most contemptible whelp that ever annoyed a lot
of workmen by his presence. Horace put up with it
for years, but one day discharged Bill, and told him to
go to the devil ! He went, but one day came back and
told a pitiful story about home matters and low funds,
112 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
etc., saying that some little letter, you know, would
get him a good place ; of course it would. Anything
from Horace would do anything, and he had a soft
side, so he wrote the stereotyped letter, bearing testi-
mony to Bill's good qualities. With this he went off and
imposed himself on somebody, who soon found that
Bill was a fraud and Horace a soft cheat.
* * * * How often do we find a foreman who is
laboring under the belief that the shop will break up
if he don't continue to submit to some evil presence in
the shop ? It almost always takes the shape of some
man,'who has been in the shop so long that he thinks,
as the foreman does, that the shop can't exist without
him ; so he gets ugly and " sassy," and has his regular
drunk weeks and his irregular sober ones. His work
is always important, and a foreman should never de-
lude himself into the belief that there is only one man
of a kind made. Barney worked for George, running
gear cutters for ten years. He knew every little trick
of the machines, knew every cutter which was a little
off and not to be used on nice work, etc. He had his
whiskey weeks and the gear cutters had their idle
weeks. George was tender to all men, but after ten
years' cooking he boiled over and kicked Barney out
of the shop, and the next day he had a better man on
the gear cutters. It always happens that way. Wal-
lace's slotter hand thought he was King of the Canni-
bal Islands, and Wallace thought so too, for it isn't
easy to pick up a good slotter hand ; but one day, after
a couple of years' of weak suffering, he let him go,
and found a better man right in the shop. Babbitt
had a man who could run a nice cut right over a six-
inch shaft, and get nice work out in a hurry. Man
was always ugly, and Babbitt always afraid, for he
had seen men fail on that lathe. He screwed up his
courage one day and let the man go, and put a smart
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS. 113
cub in his place, and found he had been submitting to
an unnecessary evil.
* * * * If a man is engaged in the manufacture
of spool thread, or nails, or hinges, or licorice drops,
it don't seem to make much difference where he carries
on his business. He never sees the consumer and never
sells to him. His product is sold through numerous
middle men, and probably he only needs two or three
customers, anyhow. His goods are staple and are
ordered by name and grade. A man wanting a dime's
worth of lemon drops don't question into the manu-
facturing facilities of the several manufacturers before
he places his order. He don't have to go to the factory
to confer as to the advisability of the adaptation of
certain lemon drops to his special maw. He don't do
anything, but go and buy from a dealer, who bought
from a dealer, who bought from a dealer, etc.
The manufacturer of lemon drops finds that he can
go off into the woods and squat by a cheap water-
power, and a sugar mine, and a coal mine, and engage
in business, and actually have a hundred economic
advantages over his competitors in metropolitan cen-
ters. His freights are a trifle more, but his cheap
water, coal, and sugar, will far overbalance the ac-
count. His traveler takes a full line of samples in a
grip-sack, and the cost of selling is no greater than if
he were in a city. He must, of necessity, under all
circumstances, sell through representatives or factors.
* Suppose I take a notion to envy the
man, who is situated among the hills with a coal mine
in his front yard, and a water-power in his back yard,
and a neighbor's iron pile handy. Suppose I manu-
facture wood-working machinery, and suppose I sit
down and figure up how much I can save on power,
fuel, and material in a year. Suppose these figures
show a tip-top income in themselves should I pack
114 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
up and move into this district myself? Would I make
any money by it ? Would I lose any by it ?
* * * * AS a builder of machinery, I would find
it necessary to confer with at least one-third of my
customers. They want to see what they are going to
buy ; they want to see the shop, and they want to see
me. I travel around, and find men have bought of
others, when the order would naturally have come to
me. On inquiry and protest, I am told that "We
didn't have time to go away up there. We can't step
out of the business-world to buy things," etc., etc.
* * * * Manufacturing economies may some-
times be purchased at the expense of business. Go
where orders can be filled cheaply, and the orders
won't come not always, of course, but often. A man
who wants to buy a three-hundred-dollar machine is
willing to go into a certain district and investigate,
but he is unwilling and unable to go all over the coun-
try, or into inaccessible neighborhoods.
* * * * If a man has a factory in Boston, he
is not moving out of reach when he goes to Chelsea.
If in New York, Newark and such places are all
right. Chester and Wilmington are the same to
Philadelphia; Hamilton and Dayton the same to Cin-
cinnati. But when a man moves from a metropolis
off to Smith's side track, a thousand miles from any-
where, and away beyond the jumping-off place, he
will find that he makes a mistake, unless he is engaged
in a business which does not require contact between
producer and consumer. Customers don't know
where the place is, don't know how to get there,
haven't time to go there, and don't want to go there
anyhow. Special friends will take the short cut and
buy elsewhere. If a man is engaged in making
things worth over a hundred dollars apiece, he had
better " stay around" if he wants to sell them.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS. 115
* * * * If a machine builder is unfortunate
enough to find himself off somewhere where his
customers can't and won't get at him, he must, of
necessity, find some way to get at his customers. He
finds, by fine calculation, that, by going to a tank
station to start business, he saved thirty-five hundred
dollars a year, and now he finds he must incur an
expense of about five thousand dollars per year on
account of extra " traveling and advertising." No
matter where a man hangs his shingle, he must travel
and advertise, of course. If ten customers run up
against his premises accidentally, he can bring ninety
more by a judicious investment in printers' ink and
railroad tickets. If he lives in the woods, he must
sell every cent's worth by appeal.
Another way out of the difficulty is to sell through
warehouses ; and here I wish to express my earnest
sympathy with a machine builder, who depends on a
metropolitan agency for business, unless he happens
to own the agency himself. In the latter case, he is
o. k., and if a business can be made extensive enough,
it looks like the right way to do it. Have the " con-
cern" with a full stock in the city, and do the work
anywhere. The disadvantage in this is, that freights
are crossing and adding, and that the expense of
down-town warerooms and offices, and the expense of
carrying complete stocks, and the expense of eternally
running and telegraphing between office and works,
four hundred miles distant, will often exceed the extra
expense of having the whole business, shop and all,
up town, or in an accessible suburb.
* * * * When you depend on a general machin-
ery agent for sales, you knock off a discount, but this
is less than the cost of the sale, if you made it yourself.
Your agent's salesmen may, and may not, be good.
They may lie for, or against, your product.
Il6 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
Your factor may, or may not, keep your goods in
good, attractive condition. He may, or may not,
possess the special knowledge required in suiting
customers. He may treat you squarely, and he may
hold your goods to keep them from other factors,
while he throws his influence in other directions
where better discounts maybe had. Machinery agents
have got as much human nature in them as other men.
A man is wise to deal through them, but, I think, is
unwise and unlucky, if his sole dependence is upon
them. I apply this particularly to wood-working and
iron-working machinery.
* * * * p or rea dy sales of machinery in these
lines, there is nothing like having a good stock on
hand. When a man takes a notion to buy a thing,
he is much like a woman with a letter to mail. She
may have put off writing the letter for several months,
but when it is written, it must go into the mail in-
stanter. If some man won't get out of bed to mail it,
she will go through snow or rain herself. A man has
decided to buy a tool. He has the money in his
pocket, and starts for head-quarters. If he don't find
what he goes after, he gets on his ear. He can't and
won't wait. He never dreamed of buying but from
one builder, but if he fails there, he will go where he
can get instant satisfaction. He is bound to spend
that money before he gets home. He won't be satis-
fied to leave an order. I have known a man to go
nine hundred miles to buy a lathe, exactly twenty-
four inches swing, and exactly twelve feet between
centers ; and with a certain kind of cross-feed and
certain other things to a dot. He wants this lathe
and must have it right away. He didn't find the lathe
in stock, and came back with a little planer that he
had no more use for than a diamond-pointed tool has
for a side-pocket. He is just as well satisfied, how-
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
117
ever, for the money is gone. It's a good plan to keep
something to sell to every man who comes after any-
thing else.
* * * * There are certain classes of machines
which are universally disposed of through factors.
Among these are farm engines, and agricultural im-
plements generally. I don't believe the shop sales to
the consumer, under the most lavish system of travel-
ing and advertising, can be brought to equal ten per
cent, of the trade to be had through resident district
factors. Farmers never have money or confidence
enough to go far from home, and they don't under-
stand the process of doing business by mail.
Il8 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL*S LETTERS.
CHAPTER XV.
TELLS HOW DIX AND CHORDAL ESTABLISHED STANDARD
SIZES IN WYCOFF'S SHOP.
* * * * Carr had his mill work done by Wycoff.
Lots of inch-and-three-quarter and two-inch shafting,
lots of pulleys, lots of spur and bevel gears, lots of
gudgeons, and lots of babbitted boxes. Such is the
character of most orders for mill gearing. There were
probably thirty pieces of two-inch shafting, short and
long. By two-inch shafting, I mean two-inch iron
turned down a sixteenth, and there were probably fifty
pulleys to go on these shafts, many of the pulleys the
same size. I watched Wycoff "s foreman giving orders
in the shop while this work was being done. He would
go to Joe with a piece of iron about a yard long, and
say : "Turn this up to fit that pulley and that bevel
wheel, and turn a journal on each end, so we can bab-
bitt those boxes on them." Joe went at it, but ran
against a snag the first thing. The pulley and the
bevel gear had not been bored the same size. Joe tells
the foreman so. Foreman says : " It's strange ; I told
Charley to bore it to one and fifteen-sixteenths." Joe
says he can't help that ; that pulley won't go on any
shaft which the bevel gear will fit. Foreman takes the
calipers and investigates. Yes ! that's so. Well, you
fit this shaft to the bevel, and I'll have Gus file the
pulley out.
* * * * jj e does have it filed out, and he has
something of the kind filed out every day the shop
runs. Furthermore, about every hole bored in the
shop is tapering ; and furthermore, his one and fifteen-
sixteenths don't mean anything. Charley does his best,
sets his calipers as close as he can to that size, but
bless him, he can't set them the same size to-morrow.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS. 119
If he bores a pulley one and fifteen-sixteenths every
day he will have six different sized holes Saturday
night. This is the best Charley, or any ether lathes-
man, can do. The fault is VVycoff's. The foreman
knows the Monday and Tuesday sizes are not the
same, and he is smart enough to have the hole around
for the shaft man to measure when he fits a shaft.
* * * * Carr comes into Wycoff's office in a few
months and orders a fourteen-inch pulley to go on the
long two-inch shaft down at the mill. Wycoff says he
must send a man down to get the size of the shaft.
Carr says, " Why, you made the shaft yourself. Bore
the pulley to fit your two-inch shafting and it will be
all right." Wycoff says, " It won't be all right ; for no
two pieces of my two-inch shafting are the same size."
Carr says they ought to be, and wonders what will
happen if he wants to transpose anything around the
mill. Wycoff tells him he can't do it ; tells him if he
left his mill and worked at the machine business thirty
years he would find out that machinists never meas-
ured alike, and that every pulley must be fitted where
it belongs. Carr is bold enough to think there ought
to be some way to keep things decently uniform, and
Wycoff is ignorant enough to say there is no way in
which it can be done.
* * * * There are a lot of nice machine men in
the country who will congratulate us on there being
but one Wycoff. There's where they make their mis-
take. Wycoff is ubiquitous : he outvotes finer owners;
he " raises " the most mechanics, he does most of the
work.
* * * * Carr's old mill-gearing was made by
Sackett. Carr never happened to know it, but any
two-inch shaft in the mill would fit any two-inch pul-
ley, and if a short two-inch shaft has shouldered jour-
nals, those journals will fit any similar boxes in the
120 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
mill. Carr can go to Sackett's in three years from
now and order a box, or a pulley, or a shaft, and the
only size wanted is the nominal diameter.
* * * * There is no shouldered shaft in Carr's
new mill which will allow itself to be turned end for
end. The journals are not the same diameter on each
end. Every babbitt box is run on the shaft it is in-
tended for. Sackett's boxes are run on shafts kept in
the shop for that special purpose. They are always
uniform. His pulleys he reams out ; he did just as
good work before he got his reamers, but it cost him a
great deal more money. Why ? Because it took a
more expensive man more time to do the work.
* * * * Dix and I both worked for Wycoff at
the same time. We tried to get Wycoff to do something
to keep sizes uniform. We were simply journeymen,
but we claimed some sense. We were working as
closely as we could, and as close as any other work-
men in the world could, I guess. That is, we set cali-
pers to marks on scales and turned to the calipers.
The mortal don't live who could keep sizes uniform
with these facilities, and this is all a workman is sup-
posed to have.
We knew if we had some better way of getting a
size than by picking it off a scale, we could do more
satisfactory work, and by '' satisfactory " we meant
better work and more of it. We wanted some record,
some monument, some standard of sizes. Something
we could copy every time. Wycoff didn't know of any
such thing ; and more than that, he didn't care. He
had for thirty years, etc. But Dix and I did care. We
decided that if Wycoff would not have good standard
sizes, he should have bad standard sizes some stand-
ard we would have. We two held a meeting, and, on
motion, it was resolved that we would watch our
chances and steal the time and bore out collars to one
EXTRACTS FROM CHORD ALS LETTERS. 121
and seven-sixteenths, one and eleven-sixteenths, one
and fifteen-sixteenths, and two and three-sixteenths.
These collars we would bore as nicely and to as accu-
rate a size as we knew how. These collars we would
hide away somewhere, and when we or the other boys
wanted a size, we would set inside calipers to these
holes, and for shaft work we would try the collars on.
We chose the sizes named, because they were the sizes
in most common use in the shop.
Well, we made the collars and piled them nicely in
a cupboard. We used them all the time, and the other
men appreciated the thing. But one day a collar was
gone, and soon another was gone. When we came to
snort around some, we found Wycoff had found them,
and supposed they were simply extra collars; so he
had used two of them had had them set-screwed and
sent out with work. Our collars were simply common
cast-iron collars, mind you.
* * * \Ve held another meeting, and, as a
result, we invented a collar which Wycoff couldn't-
get-a-set-screw-into. We replaced the two lost ones
and turned a deep groove in each ; that is, we run
down with a cutting-off tool till the collar was nearly
cut in two. No man on earth could get a half-inch
set-screw into such collars, for they were only about
an inch and a half wide anyhow, and the cut came
right in the middle. Our collars worked very well.
We soon added short, wrought-iron plugs, which fit
the collars nicely. These plugs we could try in holes.
We used calipers, just as usual, but we tested every-
thing by these plugs and rings. Soon we actually had
a set of mandrels, which we could go and get, and
know they would fit a job without being fooled with.
However, we soon found we couldn't go and get them,
because somebody else had gone and turned them
down to fit something else. We never were able to
122 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
contrive any plan or plot by which we could keep these
mandrels. Remember, Dix and I were jours., not
bosses or owners. Had we been bosses, there would
have been bloodshed in Wycoff's shop. For a whole
long year, Wycoff's work of these sizes was uniform, and
there was no fussing over sizes, and many, and many,
and many an hour's time was saved to the shop. If
we could have mastered the mandrel problem we
would have been the means of saving Wycoff hundreds
of dollars a year.
* * * * Our fancy gauges had their demerits.
They would wear out of size. They were heavy and
clumsy. The collars could not be got on work without
losing the job, and even then they would not go up
close to a tool. If a shaft began to work large, the
collar could not be got over the big place so as to try
new parts. They were not what we wanted, but they
beat " nothing" all to pieces. Dix struck the keynote
when he said we never ought to use the gauges at all,
except to set calipers by. Then the gauges would never
wear out, and we would still have just as uniform sizes.
* * * * \Ve debated on the question of letting
Wycoff into the thing. He had several times ex-
pressed wonder at a piece fitting in two or three places,
and had remarked at our luck in picking up a mandrel
which would fit a job. Dix opposed exposure said
the inelastic Wycoff would snub the idea of there
being better ways of doing things; that he had for
thirty years, etc. We never did tell him. We one
day left Mr. W.'s shop, and, since that, it has been the
good fortune of both Dix and myself to have a hand in
regulating things in putting into practical use those
sundry little rigs which count in economy. We have
found out how poor our sly standards really were, and
we have found that there are much better ways of
doing the thing.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
123
* * * * When a shop contemplates getting a
new thing, there is one infallible test to apply. Is the
thing an element of economy ? Will it reduce the cost
of bad work ? Will it improve bad work ? Will it
improve good work ? Will it reduce the cost of good
work ? Will it save the parties money, work, repu-
tation, or time ? If all the answers are "no," say we
can't afford to get it. If any answer is " yes," say we
can't afford to do without it.
In ninety-nine machine shops in a hundred there
are no provisions made for uniformity of sizes. Not
even the poor rigs Dix and I got up on the sly. When
a new tap is made it is not the size of the old one.
Nothing can be uniform under such circumstances ;
nothing can be cheap. If you have a machine shop,
Mr. Editor, or if you have any authority in a father-
in-law's shop, study well into the subject of standard
tools. Get decent workmen, pay them decent wages,
give them decent facilities, expect decent work, and
you can make a decent price list. Standard tools you
can't afford to do without.
J24 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
CHAPTER XVI.
OUTWITTING THE ALMANAC. LIGHTING SHOPS.
* * * * The boom has struck us and so has the
evening darkness. As luck will have it, hurried orders
almost always come in just when the days get short.
You can't always make hay while the sun shines in the
machine business. If business moves along at an easy
jog, never slack and never overflowing and rushed, the
change in the length of days is not of so much im-
portance.
The men can be put on short hours, but this is
wrong, for it reduces their pay just when most of them
need the most money. The men understand full well
that the work done on winter mornings and evenings
is of small value, even under the best advantage, and
putting a shoo on short hours in the winter is a fair
transaction. If machinists would work at plastering
or bricklaying, trades which must save up money
enough in summer to keep them over winter, they
would learn a trick or two which might be of use in
their own trade.
* * * * Instead of cutting down the working
hours and the pay, there is another way of outwitting
the almanac. That is to cut down the hours and leave
the pay as it is, and bring the thing all square by util-
izing the long days of summer. I know of many shops
working that way. I have worked that way myself in
every position about a shop, from cub to super., and
found it more satisfactory than any other plan.
There is considerable science required in regulating
and arranging the hours on this plan.
I give here a table of hours, calculated by Mr. Chas.
A. Bauer, Superintendent of the Champion Bar and
Knife Works at Springfield, Ohio.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
I2 5
TIME TABLE. AVERAGE 10 HOURS.
Date.
Go to work
a. m.
Be gone
to Dinner.
Go home
p. m.
Jan. i
7. I"*
i hour
c .
" 8
it
M
C. 1C
29
7 .
c. 30
Feb. 12
7 .
c.4c
" 19
6.4C
6.
Mar 18
M
6. i<;
Sept 16
M
6.
Oct. 7..
M
c.4C
" 14
$ ^o
Nov. TI
7.
C . 1C
Dec. 2
7 .
c .
" 9
7 . ie
c .
" 16
it
4. co
This table is to be hungup in the shop for the guid-
ance of the men and the genius who attends to the
bell or whistle. By carefully going over this table it
will be found that it is made to conform to daylight,
and that it gives the men ten hours pay, and the shop
ten hours work the year round. The pay of the men
is never changed. They get ten hours pay every day.
It will be seen that the longest shop days, by this table,
are from March i8th to September nth, during which
time the days are ten and a half hours long, and that
the shortest are from December i6th to January ist,
during which time they are eight hours and thirty five
minutes long.
This arrangement need not complicate cost accounts,
for it need not enter into them.
The more you look into this thing the more you will
see what you don't see about the cost matter.
It is giving the men the cream off the milk, for they
126 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
get full wages in the winter, while the shop makes no
money in the winter, and has to run the risk on sum-
mer work. But all's well that ends well.
* * * * There are vicious sides to this time-
table plan when taken advantage of by unscrupulous
men, both owners and workmen. I have heard work-
men kicking against the plan, because some rogueish
owner had paid them wages during the summer and
then put them on starvation piece-work in the winter ;
and I have seen owners the victims of sharp workmen
who drew wages during the winter and went to other
shops in the summer. This table is a good gauge for
morals. In smooth-working shops I have seen men
growling in the summer over the long hours. These
men were invariably big fools who knew nothing of
the laws of compensation or the rules of average.
* * * * g ut w hen the boom conies and you can't
get men enough to fill up the shop, compensating laws
and average time tables won't save you. The shop
must not only run ten hours per day, but it must run
twenty-four hours per day sometimes.
The machine business is nice, it's interesting, it's
vocative and intellectual, and all that, but the only
way to get any money out of it is to have plenty of
work and crowd things. Money can't be made deliber-
ately in any machine shop. When I say plenty of work,
I mean all the shop can take care of. A shop a mile
long with self-winders, and self-setting attachments,
and all the modern improvements, is tip top so long as
the shop is full of work. But it takes lots of work to
make it full. When half full, the work costs much
more than if the shop was only half as big. The big
shops have been envying the little ones for several
years, and I know of one large concern who, having
looked into the matters deeply and seriously, thought
of locking up the place and renting a small concern.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS. 127
The word "elephant " simply means big, and don't
refer to material or direction.
* * * * Night work must be done, and some
provision for light must be made. In many shops the
rule is to pay fifty per cent, additional for night work.
This is all right on job work, for the job can be charged
with it if the party is over anxious. But when it comes
to contract or staple work, fetched deep from bids on
an open market, the thing is different.
Here we find that, even with an hour's pay the same,
an hour's work isn't the same. If you know of a shop
doing regular machine work, which can get forty min-
utes' work done in an hour after night, I wish you
would tell me how they do it. This reduction of the
value of an hour adds a big percentage to the cost of
work, without the necessity of adding another fifty per
cent, to the cost of the labor.
* * * * Men can't do much work after night.
If you go into a shop at night, you see a black im-
mensity with little spots of light in it. In the middle
of each of these little light spots you will find a little
machinist trying to do a little work. Gaslight is used,
we will assume. The bracket pipes have half a dozen
elbows, and can be crooked around in every direction,
and they have six-foot burners with lava tips. You
may put more joints in the brackets, you may put on
ten-foot burners with salamander tips, till you can't
rest, but still your light will come from one direction.
Even a vise-man must be forever pulling his light
around, trying to get it into useful positions. The
planer-men are happy while a cut lasts, but when it
comes to setting work or doing any nice measuring or
gauging, trouble begins. Lathesmen ditto, except that
this work calls for light projected into deep holes.
The men working on the floor are at a fearful disad-
vantage. They always want something. They can't
128 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
see it and don't know what direction to go in to look
for it. They have burners on the ends of hose, but
they don't know where to take the thing next. The
same happens when any machinist wants any tool or
any piece. Gas can't be carried around nicely, after a
man does make up his mind where to search for a thing.
* * * * Bad as it looks, it is better to use the
gas for fixed lights and give the men candles. A can-
dle is a supple affair. You can stick it anywhere.
You may devise and construct ingenious candlesticks,
but they will finally yield to a hot-pressed nut. If a
man leaves a lathe, he leaves the gas burning ; he takes
his candle with him, and when he comes back his. gas-
light acts as a beacon, and enables him to find his lathe
again if he don't break his neck in the meantime.
* * * * Once on a time, when I was using can-
dles for movable lights, a silver-tongued pedlar came
along with a gay and festive hand lamp for coal oil.
He talked and exhibited. It was small and light in
weight, and brilliant and cheap. He couldn't blow it
out and I couldn't. He convinced me that it couldn't
explode, and gave me testimonials from many shops
which ^wTbeen using them. I bought fifty and started
the thing up. As was usual with me, I did not deal
them out to the boys as supplies, but I presented one
to each hand. They were charmed with the taking
affairs, and proceeded to do the usual elegant engrav-
ing of names, etc. The plan was well introduced, but
within a week every lamp had been smashed flat
against the only spot of dead wall in the shop. I said
nothing, for they were not my lamps. The men might
use candles, if they preferred them, but I had my own
elegant name on one lamp, and I used the lamp, too.
One night my own lamp flattened itself against that
same wall, and that was the end of coal oil as a port-
able light for me.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS. 129
* * * * After being cured of coal oil as a port-
able light, I gave'Still further attention to the subject-
I saw that all lights were defective for machine work
on account of the light coming so decidedly from one
direction. This I thought it idle to grumble about,
as it couldn't be helped. But I looked deep into the
matter of candles. I had been paying eighteen cents
a pound for star candles by the box. They gave
good light, and were the best I knew of. They
dripped all over the tools, and the men, and the work,
and the shop, but that was a feature of all candles.
One box I got was clear and transparent. They didn't
look like the other candles, and, after the box was
about half gone, a bill of correction came from the
dealers. The candles had been sent by mistake.
They were thirty-five cents a pound, and they wanted
the difference or the candles. They didn't get either.
Something came of this. I noticed that the drip from
these candles didn't stick to anything whatever ; that
is, it would fall off, or could be picked off clean,
while, with the star candles, the stuff had to be scraped
off. This was a feature on bright work, and I soon
found that these candles dripped but very little any-
how, and they didn't gutter any. I then inaugurated a
test, and found that a star candle burned two inches,
nearly, while the others burned an inch. This ac-
counted for their cleanliness. The material was only
melted as fast as needed by the wick, and it was all
used. This put a new face on the thing, and I figured
some. As a result of the figuring, I used these candles,
thereafter, at thirty-five cents, as being cheaper than
the star at eighteen. I forget the brand of these
candles, but I think they were paraffine. They were
elegant looking, and I found the men got into the
habit of chewing them like-gum, and soon I got into
it myself. This ought to be considered in the calcu-
130 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
lations, for, unless you can confine the chewing to
the fag-ends, it will count up.
* * * * I thought the candle business as good
as it could be, but still I was trying to get lots of
work out of a dark shop. I saw that unless the shop,
as a shop, was made fairly light, the night work
never could be brought anywhere near the day work.
I tried to fix things. I gave each man a gas jet, as
usual, and a candle, as usual. Then I put in wall-
brackets everywhere, and put chandeliers with four
lights in every important neighborhood. This did
the business. Men could see each other's noses, and
a man could go and get what he wanted without
sneaking all over the shop, like Judas Iscariot looking
down a rat-hole for eighteen pence.
* * * * The men were now doing lots of work
o'nights, and so was that gas-meter. I kept time and
watch, closely, and found the thing didn't pay. I must
let my pipe-fitter cut the gas-meter's part entirely out
of the play, or else the play must stop. Gas cost
three dollars. I thought of using coal oil for the side-
lights and chandeliers, and then I thought of the
chimneys and wondered how they would stand the
racket. I decided they would not do at all. I could
not use coal oil. Then a happy thought struck me.
- I brought the secretary of the gas company around
to the shop, and had everything prepared for him.
Every burner was doing its loudest, and I told him to
look at that. I showed him last month's big bill, and
told him to look at that. He was pleased. Then I
told him how much we increased the value of the
workmen by the plan, and he was still further pleased.
Then I told him if he didn't give us gas at one-fifty,
I would stop it to-morrow, and put in coal-oil. His
jaw fell, and then rose in high and mighty argument.
I won, and the gas staid in till we joined a couple of
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS. 13!
neighbors on the same block, and put in a gas machine
of our own.
* * * * My experience then and since, has
confirmed me in the opinion that night work can
never approach day work in cheapness, unless the
atmosphere can be made light, as I did it, or other-
wise. Of late years the electric light furore has
opened up something new in this line. Some time
ago, I looked into the electric question as applied to
shops, and finally opened up on the Brush Company.
They sent estimates under guarantee of satisfaction.
The outfit, complete, giving lights for each shop, the
office, etc., would cost only twenty-seven hundred and
eighty dollars. This staggered me. We couldn't
spare the money, and so I came to the conclusion that
the electric light hadn't got completed yet, anyhow.
Last winter, Bennett found his shop running every
night, and he took up the subject of electric lights.
He has a long shop, splendidly suited for it. We
conferred together, and went out to Cleveland. We
found the handsomest man I ever saw, shut up in a
darkened room, with eighteen lights on a single circuit.
It was Mr. Brush. For the first time in my life, I had
the satisfaction of seeing a regular machine shop
really lighted up at night, and doing effective busi-
ness. There was no impediment to travel, no won-
dering if a certain thing was in a certain place. The
inside of the shop was light. The keen satisfaction
we both had was all that came of the trip. Bennett
could not stand the price, and the company had the
good sense to stick to the price while they were full of
orders.
* * * * Talk about illumination in the shop !
I saw a rig in Bennett's foundry the other night,
which was not a bad idea. A heat was being run, and,
of course, it was long after dark. Otto had thrown a
132
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
bushel of soft coal on the floor, stuck a six-foot piece
of inch-and-a-half gas pipe down into the pile of
coal, poured a little melted iron on the coal, thrown
on some sand, and lighted the top of the pipe. Here
was the biggest kind of a gas works gotten up on
the shortest notice. Be it old or new, this hint may
be of value in many a foundry and elsewhere.
The Lightning Machinist. Page 135.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL*S LETTERS. 135
CHAPTER XVII.
THE LIGHTNING MACHINIST. HIS LAZY NEIGHBOR. THE
SOLDIER ON DUTY. GIVING SATISFACTION TO PUR-
CHASERS. ORDER IN SHOPS.
* * * * j)j(j y OU ever have a lightning machin-
ist to work for you one of those quick-blooded
fellows, all energy and activity ? When you walk out
into the shop, you see him going into things for all
that's out. When he strikes with a hammer, he strikes
quick. When he starts for a thing, he starts with a
flash, as though he had been shot out of a gun. When
he lifts a thing, he simply jerks it up. When he lets
it down, he drops it. When he goes to another part
of the shop, he goes on a run. When he goes to
the grindstone, he rushes there, and rushes back.
It is worth the price of admission to a trapeze perform-
ance to watch him at a lathe. He wants to change
his belt, and he snaps at it like a flash. He knocks
his shifter instead of shoving it. When he puts a
three-foot shaft in his lathe, he grabs it from the
floor, snaps a dog on it, fixes one end on the live
center, and lunges out after the tail wheel like a
zouave on fancy drill. This genius not only does this
when you happen to walk into the shop, but he does
it all the time. All day long he jumps, and hops,
and snatches, and strains, and blows, and sweats, and
works hard and energetically generally, and when
night comes he hasn't got any work done. That is
the case ; for this fellow is the biggest kind of a
humbug. This energy of his is not execution. When
you come to look into the chap, you generally find
he hasn't got sense enough to do anything, even if he
took time for it. He is a born fool, or he wouldn't
jump around so. He rushes a diamond point tool
136 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
into the tool post, and screws down on it with a spin.
Then he finds it wrong and unscrews it, and does
it all over, and so on, half a dozen times. He gets
everything he does right by a succession of nervous
twitches. He is chock full of vim, and has no lazy
bones in his body. He generally wins the approval of
short-sighted bosses. He is known to be an honest,
hard-working man, but .he's a fraud of the grossest
order, and isn't worth shop-room.
* * * * Did you ever watch a barber who took
nervous, short strokes with the razor? Every second
his razor flies like lightning from your face to the
paper on your shoulder. He reaches for brushes and
things with vehement energy. My ! but isn't he a
quick barber ! You watch him in the glass as he
shaves you, but he don't seem to get any beard off
your face, and don't seem to get much lather on the
paper. The lazy chap " running" the next chair, has
taken slow, broad swipes, with a clean precision, from
the faces of three customers since you submitted your-
self to your quick man.
* * * * If you want to be shaved in time for
a train, don't get under an energetic barber : and if
you want to get a lathe job done in a hurry, don't go
near one of these quick-moving machinists. And if
you should take your lathe job to such a one, don't tell
him to rush it. If you do, you are gone sure. He
can't rush anything. If you crowd him, he will set
his tools that much more ineffectively ; he will reck-
lessly grind his tools, so they won't cut at all ; he will
recklessly belt to speeds so fast as to prohibit any
iron being removed ; and then will get back to the
proper speed. If he wants to put a file finish on his
horrible job, he can't find time to change to a high
speed, so he goes hammering the job with a mill file,
while the surface of the work moves at eighteen feet
EXTRACTS FROM CHORD AL*S LETTERS. 137
a minute. Every machinist of any sense soon finds
out that filing lathe work at a slow speed is not the
way to hurry a thing, but this energetic dolt never
took time to find out anything. Better put him out in
the yard, and let him practise ground and lofty tum-
bling in breaking scrap iron. His useless gymnastics
have no place in a machine shop. Put such a fellow
on piecework prices, which make a lazy man rich, and
he will starve to death. There is something winning
about the fellow's motions, but there is no good in
them.
* * * * If you want something done in a hurry,
your lazy man is the one to do it. It isn't often he
hurries, but when he does do it he enjoys it. A
hurry once in two or three months is his recreation.
Hurry this man for half a day, and he will be pre-
pared to recommence his old lazy way with renewed
vigor. This lazy fellow is susceptible of being hur-
ried. You can't demoralize him by rushing him, be-
cause he won't hurry that much. He will slouch over
to a grindstone, and fix a diamond point tool as he
seldom fixes one. He will patiently grind the face
down nicely, and give the edge a keener angle than
he usually takes the time to grind to, and he is careful
to grind the back of the cutting edge a little the
lowest. When he gets back to the lathe after a while,
he engineers that tool into its most effective position,
and then he screws down on it. He starts up at a
speed he knows won't glaze that elegant tool, and he
shoves it into a cut as deep as the job will stand.
Soon he will be piling great chips under his lathe, and
your job is under the best possible headway. This
elegant machinist will be sitting down on his tool
board. He's tired, poor man !
* * * * j don't want to defend the lazy machin-
ist, but when you want something in a special rush,
138 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
you will find that he won't do any reckless fussing.
He won't make any false strokes for fear it will make
too much work. He remembers every little thing in
the past, which, by some miscarriage, caused trouble,
and now he takes the sure and certain and effective
path. If you are in a hurry for the job, he is particu-
larly anxious that you shall have it as soon as possible.
He is a man who don't like to have hurried jobs on
his hands any longer than possible. The other kind
suits him best, and he will get back to them as quickly
as he can.
Another good thing about this lazy chap is, that he
never soldiers. He don't need to.
* * * * There is a certain kind of machinists
who seem always to feel guilty of something under-
hand. When the boss comes around, they will antic
about, and you would think they would work their
skins off. This imposition succeeds only with that
class of foremen who take considerable stock in the
energetic fellow we first talked of.
Every smart foreman knows very well that during
this effervescence the men are not doing anything at
all. They are making unusual, idle, quick motions for
a few minutes, just as our energetic chap does all day
long. If they kept on they would get nothing done,
and it is only when they quit this momentary making-
believe, and go* to work, that they commence to accom-
plish anything. If you see a man reaching out lively
when a boss comes around, you can make up your mind
that that chap has been soldiering. Such a man gen-
erally has no honor that you can depend on. You
must watch him. There are tw6 kinds of machinists
that I hate above all men. One is represented by the
man who works furiously in another man's service, and
has nothing at home to show for it, except the sweat
wrung from his dirty shirts by his slouchy family, and
EXTRACTS FROM CHORD ALS LETTERS. 139
the other kind is represented by the man whose general
actions would lead one to suppose he had some honor,
but who, whenever there is a tip-top chance, will be
found comfortably fixed in some out-of-the-way place,
knocking his heels together, and finding true delight in
the hard task of trying to enjoy himself, while he is
battling with conscience and keeping a good lookout
for the boss. This is the soldier on duty. There are
three ways to get along with him. First, kick him out of
the shop for keeps ; second, watch him all the time ;
thirdly, if your work will permit it, have a distinct
understanding with him that he is to work for you five
days a week for pay, and soldier one day at his own
expense. I have tried this latter plan, and if the man
don't drink, it works first rate. One week-day idle in
a busy man's life will make him feel glad to get into
the shop for five days of occupation. In about a year
you can give the man six days work a week with per-
fect satisfaction all around.
* * * * If it was not for the two classes of
workmen I have mentioned, there would be but few
misunderstandings between the two parties mutually
interested in manufacturing, namely, the men who do
the work and the men who hunt up the work and fur-
nish the facilities for doing it.
* * * * I am half convinced that some manu-
facturers look upon the ill-will, or dissatisfaction rather,
of a customer as simply a matter of annoyance. If
Wycoff sells half a dozen nail machines to Woods, and
the machines don't act just right, Mr. Wycoff will be
pretty apt to hear from Mr. Woods. He will keep on
hearing from him, and notwithstanding the fact that
he has got his money for them, he will finally fix the
machines up and make them work right. He don't do
it because he has any particular interest in the nail
machines, but simply because Woods won't let him
140 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
alone till the machines do act right. Wycoff don't seem
to say to himself : " Now, here goes half a dozen nail
machines. If they give good satisfaction, I will sell
lots more of them, and if they don't I Won't."
Apparently the only view he takes of the thing is to
fill the order and wait for the next thing to come along.
It seems to me there is something more than this in
such transactions. It don't pay in the machine busi-
ness to wait too long for the next thing to come. A
certain amount of force must be put into the thing,
and it strikes me that the satisfactory operation of
something already delivered is sure to result in future
orders.
Of course most manufacturers act on this principle,
but Wycoff don't. I know some manufacturers who
look entirely to the satisfaction of customers, and give
no thought to the real merit of the product. This may
look unreasonable, but merit will not always insure
satisfaction. The notion of a large class, the habits or
customs of a section, the ignorance of the mass, the
conservatism of a class, the prestige of some old and
played-out plan, all these things have a bearing on the
question of satisfaction, while they all may be directly
against merit.
* * * * It is astonishing how much ship-shape-
ness and order will tend to economy.
An orderly system and strict discipline in the shop
is not hard on men. It is just the other thing. It pre-
scribes duties within the power of each man, and thus
really lightens the labor of each man. Go-as-you-
please work is the hardest kind of work, and the rigid
lines of duty, if prudently laid, are always easy to follow.
The opposite of order is disorder and shiftlessness.
Shiftlessness in all things results in an accumulation
of things out of place. The replacing of these things
forms the hard work of life.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS. 14!
* * * * I know of no more terrifying job than
cleaning up a machine shop which is only cleaned
when it gets too dirty to work in. One or two such
jobs is enough, and generally will be so vast and un-
pleasant as to put a stop to all future cleaning opera-
tions. The red rust of an hour's production is easy to
remove, but the black rust resulting from two days'
existence of red dust calls for a re-surfacing of metal
work. It is not hard to clean up a clean shop, but
it seems impossible to clean a dirty one. Lack of
neatness in one place will demoralize all places. This
demoralization will show in everything. Tidy machine
work cannot be got out of an untidy machine shop.
Those shops which let things go by the board for
weeks and months, and then have what they call a
grand cleaning up, are never clean, not even the day after
they are cleaned. The job is too great to be well done.
* * * * Sometimes you will see a planer hand
wearing himself out on a cleaning job. He will run
the table off the bed and shovel chips out of the in-
side, and will dig out old oil thick and stiff with cut-
tings. He takes down bottom boxes and cracks gum
off the journals, and bores out the oil holes. He pulls
down the saddle work and wrestles with the down-
feed miters. His planer is too black to clean decently,
and when half done he begins to slouch the big under-
taking. When he gets things in shape again, he does
nice planing for three days, and then the oil holes get
plugged up again and chips accumulate, and the mi-
ters get on a strike and won't work smooth, and Mr.
Planerman begins to get down at the heel all over, and
don't pretend to work closer than a thirty-second.
Maybe the man right next to him never takes a clean-
ing fit, and always has a nice, clean, tidy planer. This
cleaning is really so small a job, when done regularly
and well, that you can never catch him at it.
142
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
* * * * The dirty machine shop is always com-
plaining of the lack of room. Such shops will contin-
ually buy in real estate, and cover it over with a heter-
ogeneous mass of stuff, which, if sorted out and put in
proper place, would not be in the way at all. I always
notice that those shops which are always crying for
room to stretch their neglect in, have ten times more
room than common, and are occupying the biggest
part of one or two blocks of streets and alleys.
Room isn't the thing needed at all. Order is wanted.
Make the decks and hold tidy, and there will be no
complaint of lack of room.
* * * * If no men were shiftless, some men
would starve. I know many men who grow rich in
setting to rights the disorders of careless men.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS. 143
CHAPTER XVIII.
CHORDAL'S BOY JOE. WHAT BOOKS SHALL MACHINISTS
READ?
* * * * Something must be done with my oldest
boy, Joe. He has been knocking around the shop dur-
ing his idle hours, and has developed a certain amount
of original talent. He has never worked in the shop,
but has wanted to very much. His originality takes
a critical turn as well as a constructive one. He got
into the true inwardness of one of my mechanical
schemes, and I caught him expressing his opinions
of the machine in a way which filled me with pride
and mortification. Some of his remarks were not very
complimentary to the skill and good judgment of the
elder Chordal. I had to find my consolation in the
critical ability displayed by the young man. Joe's fu-
ture is a mechanical one. I have never let my inves-
tigations into the boy's character take a suggestive
turn, and for this reason I can speak with some cer-
tainty of the real bent of his mind. What I am study-
ing on is how to arrange matters to the best advan-
tage ; how to start Joe in the best channel. This is
a subject which interests other people with other bril-
liant Joes on their hands, otherwise I would not broach
the subject.
When I say Joe's future is a mechanical one, wliat
do I mean ? Is he to be a master mechanic of rail-
roads, or is he to have M. E. on the end of his name,
and do the scheming and general talent business for
large concerns ? Is he to be interested solely in con-
struction and become a capable superintendent? Is he
to be a managing proprietor, or is he to become a
power to appeal to in matters mechanical, and be the
consultee of all who see fit to come ?
144 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
I don't know which of these specific niches Joe will
stand himself in, and more than that, I don't care. I
only know that whichever way his lines may fall, he
will be none the worse for having some direct and in-
tended preparation. By preparation I mean educa-
tion that substantial sub-structure on which all expe-
rience is more valuable for being founded. As Joe's
mind has taken a mechanical turn, so should the pre-
paratory education take a mechanical direction. I
have been nosing around among the credentials, to
wit, the out-put of our technical schools, and as a re-
sult have chosen one.
Joe is now in a condition to enter any of them, and
the question with me is whether to recommend him
to pack up and enter this college, or to lay in a stock
of overall stuff and go into the shop.
You will agree with me, that he must do both of these
things at some time. Which had best be done first ?
Suppose he puts on his good clothes and goes to
college. From the very start he will assume upon the
future great position he will take in the world. He
will assume that he went to college because he was a
superior sort of a Joe none of your common stuff.
He will develop the proper ambition and superiority,
and will receive the encouraging smiles of his instruct-
ors ; he will study hard, and, under the guidance of
capable and wise instructors, will gradually absorb
that very knowledge he went after.
Some fine day he will return and lay before me his
sheepskin, and an admirable and really original and
excellent thesis, and drawings most skillfully executed
by his own hands, aided by facilities in the way of
ruling machines which he may never hope to see again.
I will feel the warmest pride in this boy of mine, and
in answer to his inquiries I will probably say, "Go out
and try the world, Joe."
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS. 145
* * * In about three weeks a young man of the
name of Chordal will call on me and eloquently ex-
press himself on the unappreciativeness of a bigoted
world, that don't know what is good for it.
* * * Joe will tell me of his conference with Mr.
Simpson, who acknowledges that his business is falling
off, on account of a lack of engineering ability in su-
perintending the erection of their work. Oh, yes ;
Joe feels capable, and fearlessly goes off fifty miles to
superintend fifteen men putting bowels into a big
brewery. Men say to Joe : " What do you want done
first ? " Joe says he don't know. Men say : " This
big pulley came from the shop without being balanced,
the shaft runs thirty revolutions ; shall we let it go ?"
Joe says he don't know. Men want to know which of
the two kinds of babbitt this box is to be poured with.
Joe don't know. Leading man of the gang writes to
Simpson that young Chordal is a nice fellow and smart
as blazes, but don't know anything. Simpson recalls his
executive officer, and in a fatherly manner advises him
to go into a shop and learn the trade, and tells him he
will make his mark. Joe, the superior Joe, made of
superior stuff, born to lead in his chosen line, trimmed
to fit in the best technical schools, author of a thesis
on centrifugal governors having valves unalterably re-
lated to the centrifugal elements this Joe was not
born to learn a trade.
* * * I make no suggestions to Joe, and bid him
good bye, as he starts on another Quixotic expedition.
Two brief weeks, and again I take his hand. This
hand seems to have grown smaller and not quite so
self-important in its grip. I ask after his conquests.
He grimly and grittily smiles and proceeds. Says he
went down to Philadelphia, and went to William Sel-
lers & Co., whom he had been corresponding with ever
since he went to college. They build machine tools,
146 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
and at college their machine tools were held up to him
as exponents of perfection, as test channels for design.
He is nicely received and encouragingly talked to. He
is asked if he is willing to spend a few years in the
shop. He answers that he is not born for a machinist,
but for an engineer. If Wm. Sellers & Co. can put
him on a low round of the engineering ladder in some
place, he will be very much obliged ; then he will see
some other parties he wots of. They appreciate the
situation, and with real regard for the young man they
own to such a ladder being on the premises ; nay more,
they acknowledge that some of the lower rounds still
remain. Joe is invited to ascend, without any engage-
ment which might result in mortifying termination.
He reports next morning with a few classical books
and a kit of drawing instruments of the most marvel-
ous character. Each individual instrument and piece
of instrument fits in a velvet bed, and each time he
wants to use something he must take the pieces out
and erect the instrument, and when he wants to put
something back in the case he must dismember the
whole thing and screw in all adjusting screws. His
eight-inch compasses fit in the case when both trian-
gular points are in, a condition in which no man on
earth ever uses them.
He looks around among the draughtsmen and thinks
that his eight-inch compasses cost more than all their
instruments put together. He wonders how they can
do any refined engineering with such tools, and the
other draughtsmen-look at his kit and wonder if that
young man expects to do any quantity of practical
work with such tools in such a case, and they wonder
how long it will be before he will have them loose in
a cigar box.
He is given a figured pencil sketch of a device, and
is told to follow the figured sizes and form, but to de-
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS. 147
tail it for shop use. Do no scheming whatever, but
draw only. He does so. The draughtsmen admire
the skillful execution, and the powers that be do the
same. The lines are clean cut, nicely joined, and have
extra thickness on the shadow side. His drawing is
taken away for an hour and returned by his sponsor.
It has been down in the shop, and Joe expresses his
horror at the sacrilege. The sheet is dirty and greasy,
and only his fancy shadow lines can be seen. Joe
scorns to ask a question, and suggests that he make
the drawing over with heavier lines. He does so ; sees
a striking resemblance between it and the shop draw-
ings around him, which he saw little in to admire be-
fore. His sponsor calls again and asks if it will be
safe to send that drawing to Savannah for pattern
makers and machinists to work from. Joe asks who
is going to take it, and is told the mail. Joe says he
will write the proper explanations, and does so. Twen-
ty-two pages of legal cap to one sheet of detail draw-
ing. Sponsor asks what the legal cap is for. Joe says
it is to explain the drawing. Sponsor asks what the
drawing is for, and Joe says it is an aid to the legal
cap, and, in return, is told that drawings are sent
away daily without a word of explanation. It is the
duty of detail drawings to explain themselves fully.
Joe sees he has much to learn about drawings. He
has mastered the art and that is all. He is now in-
structed to make a drawing of a two-foot pulley, six-
inch face, proportions to be functionally correct. He
goes at it. Refers to Rankine and Weisbach and
Willis and Fairbairn, but never to Joe. He is too wise
for that. He gets his pulley drawn, and is told to go
down in the shop and compare it with a similarly
sized pulley. He does so and doubts his eyes. The
arms of the pulley are about eight times as heavy as
the arms of his drawing, and he used five as a factor
148 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL'S LETTERS.
of safety and the old pulley has two broken arms.
He goes back and figures the whole thing over. He
takes the data of strains to his sponsor and asks him
to run over them. Same results ; showing calculation
to be right. Sponsor asks him where he got his strain
data from. Joe says from the beltage. Sponsor asks
him what broke the old pulley. Joe goes in search of
knowledge and finds it broke in casting, and he makes
his first memorandum of experience, namely : " Belt
strains are not the heaviest strains a pulley arm may be
subjected to." His sponsor tells him if he would spend
a few years in the shop he would learn several things
of value.
* * * * i see j oe a g am> He tells me confiden-
tially that he is astonished at the number of things he
don't know, which he must know before anybody will
pay him ten dollars a year for his services. He has
spent a year coming to a conclusion, and tells me he
will go into the shop. Asks me if he can go into my
shop. I tell him no ; most decidedly not. He must
go a hundred miles from me or any one else he can
lean on. He can't get any self-reliance out of my
place.
* * * * Joe apprentices himself in a shop, and
wisely chooses a bad shop. No reamers, no fancy
boring bars, no twist drills, no tools big enough for
the work, no surface plates, no scraped angle plates,
no system, no nothing. When Joe graduates from this
place he will be full of experience indeed, and it is
hardly likely that he will be the less appreciative of
real facilities when he does get at them. His constant
letters will bear constant evidence that he knows the
necessity of the step, but feels it a let-down. He can't
get into full sympathy with his necessities. He feels
out of place, and knows he is in place. It is mortify-
ing, disagreeable, hard, up-hill work. He holds a col-
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS. 149
lege degree, but his soft hands have got hard and cal-
lous, and big cracks have opened in them, and brass
dust, and iron dust, and oil and dirt have got into the
cracks, and he always has a rag on some finger. Joe
will feel as though he had started wrong in some way.
* * * At a late educational gathering, Prof. Hen-
kle, of Salem, Ohio, wisely stated that " education is
power rather than readiness." Joe will appreciate this,
and will wish the readiness had come first.
Joe's post-collegiate shop life will be a hard one.
Now, suppose I don't say college to him, suppose I let
him go into some miserable shop which he will be glad
to leave for higher fields ; will not the seeds carefully
sown by college professors fall in ground thirsty for
it ground which the old and poor and half-satisfying
crops of the shop experience only stirred up into stur-
dy, ambitious receptiveness ? Only he who has been
athirst upon the barren plains can appreciatively ab-
sorb knowledge pf certain water-getting processes.
Will it not be better to clean up the dirty hands than
to dirty up the clean ones ?
* Do you know of any young man who
went from shop to college, and wishes he had reversed
the order of things ? Do you know of any young
man who went from college to shop, and wishes he
had reversed the order of things ?
* * * * \Vhat books should machinists read ?
This question is asked of some one supposed to know
about a thousand times a year. Mechanics, as a
general thing, are pretty well advanced in years when
they want these books. They can't comprehend any-
thing fine or deep, or analytical, and cannot spend
time to attain the necessary elementary book knowl-
edge. They despise a book which treats them as
children. Walker is a carpenter, and is patronizingly
urged to go to the library and read up on his trade,
150 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
and rise in the world. He knows nothing of books,
and takes the first one with carpentry on the back
of it ; say, " Constructive Carpentry Practically Con-
sidered." He could not define the title to save his
neck, but proceeds to look into it. He finds many
demonstrations and geometrical diagrams, but he
can't get into sympathy with the thing ; says the
author's a fool who couldn't shove a saw, and he puts
the book away. He takes another, the "Complete
Carpenter." On the first page he sees a villainous
cut of a saw, and he reads, " This is a hand-saw,
used by carpenters to cut off boards. It has teeth
upon one edge. These teeth are about one-eighth
of an inch apart, and are bent alternately, slightly
to the right and left. This bending is termed ' set,' '
etc., etc. He puts this book away in disgust, and
says the author thinks he is a fool who can't file
a saw.
Walker won't read one book and can't read the
other. The book for him must be tailor-made, and
must fit him exactly, or he can't get any good out of
it.
The thing is a problem, but there is one good thing
about it. If a man has to ask what to read, it don't
make much difference what he does read. A thirst for
knowledge will find its own means of satisfaction, and
this thirst will never come upon a man in middle life.
There is no boy so circumstanced in this whole land,
that a thirst for technical knowledge will not, in a
way, develop and gratify itself before he is twenty.
If there is anything in him, he will have formed an
acquaintanceship with books in general, and need ask
no questions relating to general direction of study. If
such an acquaintanceship has not been formed, friends
need hardly regret being unable to suggest a proper
path of study. Of course, such reading is mostly done
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS. 151
and mostly appreciated by the young chappies who
are priming for the future. If owners of shops will
keep one eye open for such tendencies they will find
it an excellent index to character, and a pointer
towards an excellent plan of encouragement which
will repay ten fold.
* * * * I was i n the office of a certain engineer,
the other day, and a mutton-headed boy, about nine-
teen came in. He was a machinist. His father owned
a shop, and he had served his time in it. He wanted
to learn to "draft," he said. Said his father wanted
him to learn ; he wanted to learn himself, and his
father would pay all reasonable bills. Torsion, the
engineer, began to catechize him. What have you
ever drawn ? Nothing. What have you ever made
rude sketches of? Nothing. What have you ever
wanted to draw ? Don't know as I ever wanted to
draw anything, and could not make a " draft" if I
wanted to, because I never learned how. That's all
right, said Torsion. You will never draft anything,
and will never be wanted to. I'll see your father this
week. Torsion turned to me and said he had a dozen
such fellows to deal with every month, and treated
them all the same. But, said he, when some greasy
boy slips in here, and pulls out some horribly original
drawing, and asks me why the ink lines run when he
puts color on, or how a fellow's to judge good India
ink, or how this thing is to be drawn so another can
understand it, then I quit work, and stay by that
fellow, and place my time and library and office at his
disposal.
* * * * The Nicholson File Co., of Providence,
sent me a copy of their treatise on files lately. Now
this splendid little book would find more appreciation
in the shop than would a new translation of the Iliad
among the blues. Why, under heaven, didn't these
152
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
folks get up this book when I was ruining files for a
living ! If I could take this book with me, and go
back over the ground of my shop life and become
owner of what I could save, or make, by the instruc-
tion imparted by it, I would feel able to and justified
in putting a copy of this book into the hands of ten
thousand file-users who never buy files.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS. 153
CHAPTER XIX.
THE TRAVELED MACHINIST. FAIR PLAY FOR APPREN-
TICES. BRIGHT AND BLACK FINISH.
* * * * A. machinist who has traveled and
worked in a variety of shops, is always a more valu-
able and desirable man than one who has not done so.
If a man comes to you for a job, and you find he has
worked in twenty different shops, you feel satisfied
that one, at least, of these shops was something like
your own, and that, consequently, the man may fit.
How long does it take a new man to get the swing of
a new shop ? If he is a little shy, he must pass the
ordeal of fellow criticism. When he grabs a chipping
hammer, he knows a dozen men are looking to see
if he knows where to grab the handle. He don't
know whom to trust, or to talk to, or to ask questions
of. He don't know how your work is done, or whether
you look to time or quality, or whether you sympa-
thize with or blame one who errs. He don't know
where to find things, he don't know what things there
are to find, and it takes things a long time to get
smoothed up. When they do smooth up, this man's
value begins to count. If you and he had had years
of shop association, would he not be worth more to
you than he would to any other shop ? If he is good
for anything, you would know what he is good for.
If he is good for nothing, what did you associate
with him so many years for ?
* * * * jf Tubal owns a machine shop, and
graduates an apprentice at the end of four years, and
then offers that apprentice, say, a dollar and a quarter
a day, and that apprentice goes to the very next town,
and gets, say, a dollar and seventy-five, what would
you think ? Would you say the policy was short-
154 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
sighted on the part of Tubal ? Would you say Tubal
wanted the world to know, as if by a brand, that a
workman of Tubal's manufacture was not worth
much ; or would you believe that Tubal was sordid
enough to try to take an advantage of the semi-
parental position he had occupied ?
There are many shops in which it seems
impossible for an apprentice to get justice after his
time is out. The justice I refer to I gauge by the
measurement of outside shops. I throw up my Rat
every time a young chap, who has served a faithful
term of aprenticeship, skips from under a shop which
wants to own him too cheaply.
I am glad, because it gets the boys whatever pay
the world will give them, and it makes them travel,
and travel makes them wiser.
* * * * Some machinists judge of a workman's
skill by the general elegance and nice appearance of
the work done. I never could look at machine work
this way. Skill is an element of the process, not of
the result. Many a. rough thing may be skillfully
done, and many a fine thing unskillfully done. The
workman in a watch factory may be perfect, but that
is no more reason that he is more skillful than the
perfect man in a reaper shop.
There are many kinds of nice work. You turn a
sewing machine upside down and find many qualities
of work all equally well done. A neatly-shaped, well-
surfaced, untouched drop-forging, strikes your eye
and stands criticism. Flat parts have a flat finish
a hard, high polish, and pure surface generally, and
you pronounce them well done. Small parts generally
have a certainty and decisiveness about their shape
and surface, and meet your approval.
Screws, without regard to their proportion of size
or adaptation to purposes, if they have that instant
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS. 155
appearance of an intention well carried out, we call
tip-top.
But look at another machine, with the screws and
other parts of such a shape as to indicate at once that
such was not the exact intention ; with polished sur-
faces, having a soft, wavy, or washed appearance ;
forgings, so far from the proper thing as to show tool
work on corrected parts ; castings with clearances
filed in them ; and certain surfaces which seem to
have changed their intention when half done ; these
things, you say, are unskillfully done.
There is no doubt about one of these things being
skillfully done, and the other not, but the very same
workmen may have done them. The management
was unskillful, at any rate, in one case.
A thing don't have to be elegant to be well done.
The bad machine was undoubtedly intended to be
well done without being nice. As such it was an
abortion, and it will generally be found more difficult
to do good work without refinement than to do it
finely.
****If y OU want good work, you tell a
skilled man, provided with proper facilities, to do his
best, and he does it, and you get your work. But tell
him to make it as well as can be made, but to pay no
attention to niceness, and your skillful man is mixed.
He fails entirely to comprehend the situation, and
thinking you mean general cheapness of work, he
slouches everything, and probably loses his old skill
in course of time.
* Some of the work done on mowing ma-
chines to-day is as good as was ever done on locomo-
tives, or machine tools, or sewing machines, or watches.
The men are as skillful, and the intentions are as well
executed. The men could not change places. The
skillful man does bad work when he puts his work in
156 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAb's LETTERS.
the wrong place, as he does when he puts it on one
piece of a reaper when the whole work should have
been put on six reapers. Try to get good reaper work
out of a bad machinist, or a machine tool man, or a
sewing machine man. You soon find he don't know
how. Try the reaper man on link work, or a lathe
carriage, or a needle bar. You soon find he don't
know how. The work in both cases will show unmis-
takable evidence of having been badly and unskillf ully
done, and still the men are known to be skillful. To
put skilled labor at the right work is the duty of
skilled management. Lead lapping a reaper journal
would be an unskillful process. It is the fault of the
manager, not of the man. Finishing an engine crank-
pin with a file would be an unskillful process, the
fault of the manager, not of the man.
* A lack of uniformity in one piece is
what often gives a workman away. He planes a flat
piece, and half way across the job, the character
changes. It attracts and repels you, for you see at
once that whatever the intention was about the sur-
face, that intention was not carried out. You can't say
that the surface is any the worse for the variety, but
there is a lingering suspicion that the workman is
liable to give down on almost anything. You think
the same, when you see a piece of shafting which
changes color three or four times in its length. A
clean, pure, continuous roughing cut always looks
finer than a finishing cut that seems doubtful about
how to look, and presents a variety of surfaces in a
short stretch.
* * * * If a good, fine job don't look fine
enough, you can go ahead and make it look fine
enough. You simply stopped too soon, but if you
want a good job with the hifalutin' left off, and you
find it begins to look " ratty," you can only remedy
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS. 157
the matter by going back on the original intention
and doing it finely.
* * * * One of the most difficult things known
is to get a tip-top job done with the finish omitted.
There are certain engine builders who build two
kinds of engines, which they denominate " bright "
and "black." "Both exactly the same, as far as real
merit is concerned," you know. The bright kind has
a miscellaneous lot of finish on the details, the shaft
and wheel-rim and bed-top are finished, a polished
governor is ordered, nuts and bolt heads polished,
brass work of the nicest kind, blued set screws, &c.
Now it's all fine enough to stuff a customer with the
idea that one engine is as good as the other, but it is
false all the same. You get an order for a bright en-
gine. You cast the cylinder. There's a blow in the
flange. Do you use it ? No. Do you break it up ?
No. You put it in the casting shed. What for?
Why to use on some engine not "bright," you know.
Another is cast and bored and a scab or two develops.
You put it in the casting shed with the other. It will
come into play all right. Some lunk-head drills a
cylinder head wrong. You lay it away. It can be
plugged and used on another engine. The pillow
block gets poured with " that good babbitt." A stuff-
ing stud gets a thread or two torn out, or it fits the
nut too loose. " Make another, Harry, but save that
one." Two or three cylinder studs are fitted too loose
in the flange. Are they crowded in hard on the
shoulder so as to pass muster ? No. But they will
be crowded into another engine in a month or so, but
not a " bright " engine. The connecting-rod brasses
don't seem to work just right under a tool. Save
them. " Do you want iron set screws in here, sir ?"
" No, siree, young man. Put in good, nicely fitted,
tempered steel screws." The nuts on hand won't do
158 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
for this engine. They are not good enough. Tom is
told to spread himself on the piston packing. The fly
wheel and eccentric keys are driven out to see if they
were fitted well. The valve receives extra care. The
crank-pin, for a wonder, is made round, and so are the
main journals. Stub ends are made perfect. Hexnuts
are hexagon and uniform. No lumps are allowed on
the main shaft. The guides are straight and flat, and
the cross-head is brought fair all round, no matter how
much work it makes. The eccentric don't " cam " side-
ways, and the strap fits it when the job is done ; and
maybe a cut will be taken over the bottom of the bed,
and the question as to whether the old foundation
washer pattern was just the thing comes up ; the fin-
ish on the connecting rod shows it to be good iron.
If necessary, the president's desk will be wrecked to
get well seasoned walnut to jacket the cylinder with,
the spade handle on the valve-stem joint is the second
one made for the job, spanners are made \.o fit stuffers,
solid wrenches ditto, oil cups are selected with a view
to lubrication, the cylinder oiler is studied on before
selection, the cylinder cocks have drain pipes attached,
and so on through everything.
Now, when you took this order for a bright engine,
it was a hurried order, and you were busy on good
paying work. You had a new " black " engine unsold
upon the floor, made from the same patterns you pro-
posed to make the bright ones from just exactly the
same, you know, " except in looks and price." Now,
why in the world didn't you take that black engine
apart, put a red-hot finish on the parts, put the extra
finish on extra parts, order a bright governor, deliver
the engine, get your money, and call the transaction
complete? Why didn't you do this simple thing?
Simply because you knew very well that the black .en-
gine was not good enough to make a bright engine of.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS. 159
* * * * The idea that by omitting useless finish,
and keeping the essential parts the same, the work will
be cheapened, has led more than one fine mechanic
into years of trouble. One of these superior mechanics
says to himself : " I intend building machinists' tools ;
I see that those in the market are excellent and highly
finished. This finish costs money ; I will leave it off
and save that much cost, and by doing the real work
in a perfect manner, I will, in course of years, win for
myself a name as a manufacturer of tools of superior
excellence at low prices ; I will thus be doing real
good." Our enthusiast will go at it, and his first fruits
will look rough to himself and his customers, and he
will be astounded at the cost. He improves the char-
acter of the essential workmanship and strives to reach
perfection. The work gets better, but the cost in-
creases largely. To cut down the cost, he fills the air
with system, and brings into play the keenest of manu-
facturing wit. This will run on for years, and he will
finally be compelled to say to himself that it is impos-
sible for him to compete with builders who do lots of
unnecessary work on their product. There is no earth-
ly hope of ever being able to get unfinished work as
cheap as finished work. The cheaper design costs the
most money. The amount of functional service, and
the character of contacts, and the nature of material,
is not a whit better, but still the cheapest machine
costs the most money. The machine designer, who
leaves that little thing called human nature out of
the design, who thinks his own broad ideas will meet
with a response in the minds of his workmen, makes a
grand mistake. He must make a virtue of his demerit,
and must invent arguments to prove that finish is a
damage and that merit associates with paint only.
l6o EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAl/S LETTERS.
CHAPTER XX
SACKETT'S THEORIES OF WAGES AND FINANCE. SYSTEM
OF GAUGES. NEWTON'S CASTING ROOM. WHO SHALL
CLEAN CASTINGS ? COUNTRY MOULDERS.
* * * * "While I was in Sackett's office the other
day, McMiller came in and asked for money between
pay days. Sackett heard him and rated him soundly
for being in need of money, and so careless of the
future as to have to draw pay for the present necessi-
ties. Found he had not been sick, nor had any of his
folks, nor had he taken a trip to the sea shore, nor
bought bonds or real estate bought nothing. Worked
hard every day at good pay and wanted ten dollars
advanced ! Sackett began to look sick and disgusted.
Went and fished old pay-rolls, and showed McMiller
that he had received and spent more money in the last
twelve years than any small store-keeper in the whole
town could possibly have made. Mack couldn't say
anything, but it made him feel rich to see what money
had gone through his fingers, and awfully poor to see
how little had stuck to them. Sackett got mad as he
thought of the thing, and finally told Mack he could
not draw any pay, but he would lend him ten dollars
for a week ; "but mind you," added he, " I am going
to make an example of you. There is some excuse for
a lazy drunkard with a slouchy wife, or for a smart
young chap who dresses and lives proudly, but there
is none for you. I never saw you with nice clothes on,
and never saw you and your family out enjoying an
evening at a theatre, or any other place, and I will bet
a quarter you buy heavy sugar at higher price than
sawed block, and pay more for coal oil than I do, and
pay more for your clothes. You get good pay a
blamed sight better than I do, and I am bound some
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL/S LETTERS. 163
one around this place shall make some money. If you
and your wife, after studying common sense for the
next year, can't show me a certificate of deposit for
three hundred dollars, you shall earn your butterless
bread in somebody else's shop." Mack said nothing,
and went into the shop again, but Sackett didn't stop.
"Half of them are idiots," said he, "just like Mack.
He will go and buy a miserable coat of the Jews for
eight dollars. The coat don't fit him, and would take
the pride out of any man who ever lived, and I will
wager he has bought six of them since I paid twenty-
five dollars for the one I have on. I expect the same
judicious plan is followed in all the family expenses.
I can see why a drunkard don't save money, but why
McMiller and his wife can't save money on three dol-
lars per day, I don't understand. If I should raise his
pay to six dollars, he would not live any better or save
any more money. Chordal, I tell you some of the
men in the shops make me sick. I hammered three
thousand dollars out of the trade as a jour before I set
up shop myself, and I never got three dollars a day in
my life ; but I didn't save my money by wearing Jew
coats or washing myself with soft soap ; and I went
fishing once in a while without fear of starving Mary
and the girls. The working-men's millennium will
come when some man will drop among them and
teach them common sense about money matters." As
soon as this benediction or malediction, or whatever
you may call it, was over, I left Sackett's place without
disposition to argue against known facts.
* I see that the telegraphic engineers are
discussing the subject of a new wire gauge, but just
what the grievances are, or what the proposed reme-
dies are, I have been unable to gather.
My own personal objection to the wire gauge is its
existence. The object of gauging anything is to
164 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS.
ascertain some dimension. The dimension wanted is
invariably expressible instantly in standard units of
dimension, but the awkwardness of trade has buried
the sweet simplicity of gauging under a cloud of tech-
nical " numbers" which don't express anything at all.
To say that a piece of wire is number seven, don't
give any direct idea of size, which is the only thing we
want to know. The only information such an expres-
sion gives us is that the wire fits in some notch some-
where, and that said notch is yclept No. 7. To find
out how big the wire is, you have simply to measure
the notch. If the notch is hard to measure, or there is
doubt about the notch fitting just right, the approxi-
mate size of the notch may be arrived at by measuring
the wire all very simple.
The whole plan of giving numbers to
things, whose dimensions might as well be given right
out in meeting, is a humbug. A number seven wire
isn't the same size as a number seven boot, and there
is no way of finding the size sought for, without being
able to figure on what the notch, the wire, or the
boot is said to fit. Why not say a number six barrel,
or a number four dose of medicine, or a number nine
mule, or a number fourteen locomotive, or a number
thirteen and a half greenback, meaning thereby ten
dollars, or a number twelve diamond, or a number
eight journey, or a number seven postage stamp, or a
number three cheese, or number ten pile of coal !
Imagine a brakesman yelling out at Cairo, " Number
eleven, for refreshments !" All of this system of num-
bering could be easily carried out, and be a great deal
handier than the present system of wire gauges.
The practical difficulties in the way of such systems
would make them a nuisance, just as the wire gauge
is now. When you write to a man to know how big a
certain wire is, it is presumed that you want to know
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL*S LETTERS. 165
just what you ask ; that is, how big the wire is. In
reply you are generally told that it will fit tolerably
nice, or " scant," or "full," in a certain hole marked
No. 14.
If you don't care much, this may satisfy you. If
you care a little about the matter, you had better send
for the identical hole referred to. If you care very
much you will send for a sample of the wire.
* * * * From the looks of things, one would
suppose that in the year one, some man made the first
piece of wire, and filed a notch to fit it. After being
some time in business, he had made several sizes of
wire, and had filed several notches. Then these
notches were numbered and became the happy stand-
ard of an intelligent people. Nobody knew the
dimension of these wires or these notches, and prob-
ably there was then no particular reason for caring-
After a while, somebody wanted wire which wouldn't
fit any of these notches. Here was trouble in the
camp. What business had any man to want anything
which would not fit any of the old holes ? The wire
drawer forgot, the day before he numbered the
notches, the day when there were but three notches,
maybe. In obedience to the law of progress, the
wire gauge was overhauled, and new notches, to fit
new wire which had been made, were added, and all
were re-numbered. The new gauge, we will suppose,
was "adopted." Now, it is very much easier to uni-
versally adopt a new thing, than to universally throw
away an old thing, and, as a consequence, there were
two wire gauges in use very early in the game. Then
troublesome customers got more odd sizes, and new
gauges were adopted, and even to-day there are in use
in wire and sheet mills gauges bearing the following
distinctive names, viz: Birmingham, Stubs', Wash burn
& Moen, American, Brown and Sharpe, Trenton Iron
1 66 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS.
Co., Standard, Music Wire, Steel Wire, G. W. Prentiss
and English. Some of these gauges are just alike, and
simply have two names, but it's well for a man to know
what he's doing when he orders by numbers. Why
not abolish all those long names and give the different
gauges, designating numbers ? It would be so handy,
you know.
* * * Somebody took a notion to measure
wire gauges one day, and then we came into posses-
sion of memorandums of the sizes. But these sizes
were all in fractions, and not in units. They could
not be pronounced hardly, and didn't sound like a size
at all. For instance, No. 32 brass English gauge is
.01125 of an inch thick, if you know how thick that is,
and No. 16, instead of being half as thick as No. 32, is
.065 of an inch, or no relation at all.
Brown and Sharpe, in devising their
system, found that in existing gauges the sizes jumped
irregularly. There was a big difference between two
neighboring small sizes, and a trifling difference be-
tween two neighboring large sizes sometimes there
was and sometimes there wasn't ; it was all haphazard.
If our coinage was on the same plan, we would have a
five-cent piece, then a seven-cent piece, then a twenty-
cent piece, then a sixty-cent piece, then a dollar piece,
then a two-dollar piece, then a two-dollar and fifteen-
cent piece, then a two-dollar and eighteen-cent piece,
and so on, skipping around at random ; so we would
have to use big money to make small change.
* * * * The f au it with every plan of fine meas-
urement is that it gives us results in awkward frac-
tions. The inch being the unit, everything small must
be some unpronounceable fraction of an inch. What
we want is a unit -so fine that the minute measure-
ments of modern practise may deal in whole numbers.
* * * * The much - abused metrical system,
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS. 167
whether we ever fall in with it or not, possesses one
great virtue. Its divisions become units. While the
name of millimeter implies a division or fraction of a
meter, it nevertheless is a unit and stands on its own
bottom, which a vulgar or decimal fraction can't do.
If a millimeter was small enough we could give mi-
nute sizes in them, without division. But it is not fine
enough for the coarsest work of to-day. It is about
four one-hundredths of an inch, when we want our fine
unit to be at most a quarter of a thousandth. If we
carry the metrical division two steps further, we have
some kind of a meter which will be about the third of
a thousandth, or about the difference between the two
finest numbers on the American wire gauge. This
extraction has a name, but I don't know what it is.
The metrical system has been carried upward and
downward from the meter, and the results have been
named, I presume, but the every-day books don't give
anything finer than millimeters. Somebody who knows
more about French than I do, can probably tell you
what the name of this fine unit really is, or what it
might properly be.
* * * * This nameless little meter could be read
on a pocket vernier gauge, and would give a simple
expression to any fine, practical dimension dealt with
in the work of the artisan. With such a tool, it might
be possible that some day a paper maker would know
something about the thickness of paper. I never saw
a paper maker yet who had any earthly conception of
the difference in thickness between two pieces of paper.
One is heavy, the other is light. If these paper men
were bright they would devise some system of num-
bers for the thickness of paper.
* * * * Newton has had a splendid shop running
for about six years. He built it after deliberate plan-
ning, and he seems to have almost every modern con-
168 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS.
venicnce. But with all his conveniences finely schemed
and finely executed, Newton finds he has been guilty
of a grand oversight, and he sometimes expresses a
wish that the whole shop would tumble down so he
could build it over again.
* * * * It is really a fact that Newton has no
place to keep castings. His foundry can make them,
and his shop can work them up, but in the interim be-
tween operations there is not a place where these cast-
ings may rightfully lay their heads. There is no place
for them in the foundry, the cleaning room is fully
occupied by castings being cleaned, and there is no
yard-room which is not legitimately and fully occupied.
Every manager knows that, while there is no necessity
for harboring old, useless, out-of-fashion, or cracked
castings, many tons of standard work must be kept on
hand untouched for many weeks.
Poor Newton now finds that there is only one place
to put these castings in, and that is in the machine shop.
As a consequence, he now sees piles and piles of cast-
ings wherever, he may look. Alongside lathes and
planers and drills and slotters and boring mills, and
under and on top of lathes, planers, drills, slotters, and
boring mills, are these things piled. They hurt the
eyeballs of the manager, they annoy the men, they
prevent cleaning up the shop, they demoralize things
generally.
The place originally planned for a setting-up floor,
is now a trifling space, bounded on all sides by a
craggy shore of untouched castings. In the disorder
of these castings, there is no keeping track of them,
and it is almost always easier to get new castings from
the foundry than to unearth old ones from these piles.
Newton swears he won't put up with it any longer,
and is now planning a general confiscation of the pat-
tern store room as a casting store. He will put another
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS. 169
story on the pattern shop to give him a pattern room.
He purposes to divide his new casting room, nee pattern
warehouse, by low fences into small spaces devoted to
each separate product he builds, so that castings may
be found instanter, and the whole stock kept free and
in subjection.
* * * * This reminds me that in some little
country shops there is forever and eternally a wrangle
over the question of whose business it is to clean up
castings. Sometimes the foundry will clean up cast-
ings nicely, more to see what the castings look like,
than to perform a duty, and sometimes they won't.
Sometimes the foundry wants core rods, or anchors,
or spiders, or some big core to saw up into little ones,
in which case they may clean the casting before they
get done with it. Sometimes the cupola tender has
time to clean castings, and sometimes he doesn't.
Sometimes there will be a gawk of a man employed
for the purpose, and the foundry will want this gawk
for a shoveler as soon as the castings are shaken out.
* * * * Some lathesman has had orders for a
week, to snatch a certain gear as soon as it is cast and
" bore her out two and seven-sixteenths full." This
morning he is told that the boys managed to get a
good one cast last night, so he goes into the foundry
and, among a lot of other stuff, he sees a lump of sand,
which he recognizes as being pregnant with the thing
sought for. He kicks the thing around a little, curses
it a good deal, jabs some of the sand loose with an old
core rod, and puts some finishing touches on it with
an old file stub, and then trundles it into the shop,
leaving a track of burnt sand wherever he goes.
When he gets to his lathe he concludes to take a little
more loose sand off. He rattles it off with a ham-
mer. Then he chucks the job, and in knocking it into
trueness he gets some more sand off. The lathe
1 70 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
catches all the sand removed by this process. Then
he bores her out two and seven-sixteenths full, and
throws it on the floor. Some viseman cuts a key seat
in it, and it is ready for shipping. Not a grain of
sand has been purposely removed, which did not in
some way interfere with the handling or working of
the job. No one has pretended to clean this casting.
If this machinist had gone to the foundry-men and
said anything about cleaning, he would have been told
that nobody had time just now. If he had gone to the
head boss of the shop, he would have been sent to the
foundry-men. If he had stood around that pile of
castings till somebody did have time to clean his job,
the aforesaid head boss would have happened in and
told him to " clean her up and get her done." Our
machinist knows all about this, so he don't say boo to
anybody. He takes as little sand off as possible, and
gets the job off his hands.
* * * * The worst moulders in this wide world
are the moulders who work in these little country
shops. Unlike the country machinists, they don't
know how to do good work with poor facilities; and,
unlike city moulders, they don't know what facilities
to ask for. Not one in five of them knows anything
about moulding. Not one in a dozen can cast a ten
pound sash weight without a two pound shrink in it.
Not one in a dozen can cast a straight-armed pulley
at all.
The foreman of such foundries is generally the
loudest mouthed braggart that ever rammed sand.
He will brag of the fine shops he has had charge of ;
he will brag of the difficult castings he has made, when
others have failed ; he will brag of his superior knowl-
edge of irons, and of sand, and of facings. And still
he will turn out castings, day after day, which are not
near so good looking as the pig iron he melts up.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS. 171
They will be warped, and strained, and crooked, and
hard beyond all belief ; he will use parting sand for
facing, and will complacently deliver castings with
the sand fused into the outer surface ; he can make
cores which hot iron will melt, and the hub hole in one
of his pulleys will be a vitreous cavity, which no ma-
chinist, city born, might ever hope to bore out ; he
will leave cores out where needed, and put cores in
original places ; he will put anchors just where they
ought not to be, and he will fix core rods and spiders
so that they will get welded to the casting ; he don't
seem to care if a casting runs a pound or ten pounds
short, and if it is so bad a case that he can't get it off
his hands, he will splice it with hot iron the next heat,
instead of making a new one ; he will lose one piece
out of twenty, and when he gets his ugly castings
done, he won't clean them up.
* * * * When I was in Cincinnati, I was told of
an old shop, and a big one, in that city, which followed
the plan, when they made a new pattern, of making
one casting, just to see if the pattern was right. And
a Cincinnati pattern maker told me that an inventor
came to him once and wanted a pattern made. He
asked fora drawing ; the inventor said he didn't have
any. He asked him to make one, and the inventor
said he didn't have the least idea how to make a draw-
ing ; he asked him to explain what kind of a pattern
he wanted, but the inventor didn't know how to ex-
plain anything ; he told him to make a model, but the
inventor was no mechanic, and couldn't. Then he
told him he could do nothing for him, and the invent-
or went away and came back next day with a piece of
an apple whittled into the shape he wanted his pattern
made.
172 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS.
CHAPTER XXI.
JOURNALS AND BEARINGS. THE YOUNGER SACKETT IN
WYCOFF'S SHOP.
* * * * j almost come to the conclusion, some-
times, that a good journal running in a good bearing,
both of ample area, good material, and proper condi-
tion, will run forever without wearing out. And some-
times I come to the conclusion that it will wear out.
Any conclusions which I may happen to come to will
have no effect on the general durability of journals,
but when I consider that almost everything a machinist
makes turns around, I think that it don't do any harm
to talk about journals. If a truth is told, it's all right,
and if an untruth is told, it's all right, too, if the un-
truth is big enough, because thought will be directed,
and a truth will develop after all.
* * * * What is an ample area for a journal ?
What rule should govern the sizes ? Probably half
my readers would answer : " The smaller the better."
"The smaller the bearing, the less the friction," etc.
A person posted in the general laws of friction will
simply tell these men that their belief is false, and
will often propound the simple laws of friction, and
say that any experience leading to any conclusion
adverse to these laws is a false experience, based on
false observation. This is about all the average
practical man can ever get out of the average theoret-
ical man.
Such things as this lead the practical man to have
little faith in the theoretical man. He knows very
well, that if he prick punches the centers in the end of
a shaft, he can turn it very easily with his fingers
when the shaft is put in the lathe. If he prick punches
deeper, the shaft turns harder. If he drills'and coun-
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS. 173
tersinks- deeply, the shaft turns very hard. If he rests
it in full-sized bearings, maybe he can't turn it at all.
He knows that an eccentric may turn very easily on a
shaft before it is keyed, but that the strap moves hard
on the eccentric.
He often spins a twelve-inch pulley around on an
inch-and-a-half shaft, but when he gets a twelve-inch
pulley, fitting no tighter, on a six-inch engine shaft, it
won't spin worth a cent. These things stick in the
practical man's craw, and the assertion that a large
journal has no more friction than a smaller one, won't
go down with him. He is certainly right, and so is
the theorist who denies it without meaning to.
* * * * The "contaction" of a bearing acts pre-
cisely like, and is, in fact, a friction brake applied to
the surface of the journal.
The radius of the journal becomes the lever on which
a resistance acts. The greater the diameter, the greater
the leverage. If power be applied at a lever, the long-
er the lever the greater will be the resistance which
can be overcome, and if friction be applied at a lever,
the longer this lever the greater the power required to
overcome the friction. The resistance of a journal is
in direct proportion to the diameter of the journal.
A six-inch journal will resist motion just twice as much
as a three-inch journal. Journals should be no larger
in diameter than strength demands, if low frictional
resistance is sought for. The strains on a shaft, and
the strength of the material, with proper allowance for
safety, give us the least diameter of a journal.
* * When the theorist, whom the practical
man don't seem to like, says that the size of a bearing
don't increase the friction, he is talking in a general
way of the extent of plain surfaces, and is correct, but
he will generally mislead the practical man, and there-
by lose his respect. Friction does not increase with
174 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
the extent of surface, but an alteration of leverage is
another thing.
The practical man thinks he is entirely right when
he is not. He thinks a long journal offers more resist-
ance than a short one, when it does not. He thinks a
board will slide easier on its edge than on its flat side,
when it will not. Some one has illustrated this by a
brick. It takes the same amount of power to slide a
brick on the floor, whether you lay the brick on its
side, or its edge, or on its end. It is simply a question
of weight and power required per pound of weight.
Lay a second brick on top of the first and the friction
is doubled, because the weight is doubled. The fric-
tion would be precisely the same if both bricks were
laid side by side on the floor and moved at once, not-
withstanding the fact that in the latter case the extent
of surface is doubled. The extent of surface or the
length of journal has no effect on friction. If there
are ten bearings on a line shaft there is a certain fric-
tion. Put ten more bearings on the same shaft and
the friction is not increased. There will be just half
as much on each journal as there was before, and just
as much taken altogether. Increasing the number of
bearings reduces the friction on each. If there is a
weight of a ton on a bearing a foot long, there will be
the same weight on the bearing, if lengthened to two
feet, but the pressure will be reduced in the long bear-
ing to half a ton per foot in length.
* * * * It won't do to have too much pressure
per square inch on a bearing.
Take the brick case again. I think a brick is four-
by-eight, or thirty-two inches area. For an even num-
ber, say that it weighs thirty-two ounces, or one ounce
per inch of area. This brick slides on the floor easily,
and don't wear out the floor or the brick much. But
pile fifteen bricks on top, and the pressure becomes
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS. 175
t>ne pound per inch. The thing works hard, and, fur-
thermore, it wears out the lower brick and the floor.
If we substitute a brick eight inches wide for the bot-
tom one, we double the wearing surface and reduce
the pressure to half a pound per inch. We can keep
enlarging the lower brick until we get the pressure
down to an ounce per inch, just where it was with the
light load, and we noticed that the apparatus didn't
seem to wear out any at that pressure. But it takes
sixteen times as much power to move the sixteen
bricks as it did one brick, because there is sixteen
times the weight.
Increasing the size of the lower brick is increasing
the area of our bearing. This will save wear, but it
won't save power. We must try another plan. We
put buckshot under the lower brick, and, lo and be-
hold, it don't take any more power to move the sixteen
bricks than it did to move the single brick before. We
have converted sliding friction into rolling friction.
We keep the thing going, and after awhile it begins
to work hard. We investigate, and find that the buck-
shot have become flattened somewhat. Our rolling
friction is gone. We put in new buckshot, and con-
tinue to do so as fast as they give out.
* * * * After this buckshot operation goes on
some time, we would find out something. We would
find that if we move the brick fast enough, the buck-
shot never flatten. They revolve with immense velo-
city, and centrifugal force keeps them round.
Then we would remember that liquids are composed
of minute globules, just like buckshot, and we would
find that some liquids were composed of fine, strong,
large, durable globules, while others were weak and
flimsy.
This would soon lead us into squirting liquid under
the brick instead of replacing buckshot, and we find
176 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
that our old buckshot was simply a lubricant after all.'
* * * * The liquid we use may be oil, and we
can learn much by watching it closely. We find that
it wears out just like the buckshot ; that it gets flat-
tened and useless, and that if we run it fast its globules
hold their shape well ; and if we stop, they flatten
right down, and let the brick touch the floor. We find
that if the brick touches the floor while in motion, heat
is developed, and when our globules get hot, they seem
to melt and run together and give down entirely, and
let the brick right down on the floor. Now, when we
first found out how very easily the load moved, with
the buckshot, we naturally piled on a ton of bricks and
took the full benefit of the lubrication, and now we
find that when this very heavy load comes down and
bears right on the floor, we can't move it at all.
It gouges into the floor, or the bearing gets to cutting.
We did find a way to prevent wearing, and we did
find a way to avoid friction, but we find that by some
unskillful proportioning of things we are apt to undo
all the good which is done.
We investigate and experiment, and finally deter-
mine on an oil which has a good firm solid globule,
which is least affected by heat, and least liable to wear
out or get smashed. Next we find a pressure per
square inch, which, if we look to a proper supply of
fresh oil, will not smash the oil or force it out from
under the brick. Next we try and find something bet-
ter than brick and wood to run together.
We find that two different materials will run nicer
than a single material, and, maybe, wind up by putting
a fancy brass arrangement under the bottom brick and
fixing a plain, hard steel plate for it to slide on. Then
we are careful not to run the thing so fast as to develop
so much heat that it affects the oil before it can pass
off into the atmosphere.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAl/S LETTERS. 177
Now we find that we have a nice cool bearing which
wastes but little power in friction. But some day we
will forget the oil, and the brass will touch the steel,
and great heat will result, and what little oil there is
will become useless, and the thing will work hard and
begin to cut, and finally stick and stop. Then we will
tear it down and find our fancy brass arrangement
ruined, and some brass stuff brazed to the steel plate.
As the brass concern is ruined, we make a new one.
* * * * After this thing happens two or three
times a bright idea will strike us. We will see that
we have made half a dozen fancy and expensive brass
devices, while the simple and cheaply made flat plate
has only been smoothed off once in a while.
We turn things around and make the fancy thing of
hard steel and make the simple plate of brass.
Then we say: Wear out if you want to, you ain't
much trouble to make new anyhow. We remember
this experience, however, and ever afterwards when we
scheme out journal work we are guided by this golden
rule : " Always make the cheaper surface of the softer
metal." We follow this rule in constructing crank
pins and their bearings, main axles and their bearings,
car axles and boxes, and every thing else.
We get the softer metal to wear as well as possible,
but are always careful that it shall not be so good a
stuff to wear as the other metal. We can jack up a
freight car and put a new brass in for very little money.
A brass made out of hard steel would last ten times as
long, but the wear would fall on the axle where we
don't want it
Before you get through with this letter, you, like
myself, will conclude that there are many things Chor-
dal don't know.
I know for certain that all journals should be as
small in diameter as proper strength will permit ; that
178 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
the diameter of a journal has no earthly connection
with its length; that plenty of bearing area will insure
durability ; that a certain pressure per square inch of
bearing area will allow durability ; that a certain
greater pressure will insure immediate destruction ;
and that somewhere between these certain wide limits
there is a pressure which is practically reasonable.
But I don't know what that pressure is, and I can-
not approximate it.
I can give you some few every-day fig-
ures, and let you do your own averaging. A freight
car on the Pennsylvania railroad, running out of this
city, gives, when loaded, a pressure of two hundred
pounds per square inch on the effective bearing of the
axles.
A pillow-block on a stationary engine up town gives
one hundred and twenty-five pounds.
The driving axles of a certain Mogul locomotive
bear two hundred pounds per square inch, and the
crank pin and cross-head pin of this same engine
bear twelve hundred pounds per square inch.
My neighbors next door build a little eight-horse
threshing engine, having a crank-pin push of sixteen
hundred pounds per square inch of bearing surface.
There's precious little satisfaction in such figures as
these.
* * * * If the crank-pin area of a locomotive
was increased till the pressure got down to two hun-
dred pounds per inch of bearing, an increase in the
width of the right of way would have to be secured to
let them pass, and the telegraph poles would have to
be moved ; and if the pressure on the driving axles
was increased to sixteen hundred pounds, I don't be-
lieve the engine would run a week.
Now, what's the reason a driving axle or car axle
won't stand the pressure that a crank pin will ? They
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS. 179
are both lubricated with the same stuff to-wit: mis-
cellaneous oils mixed with grit sucked up from the
road bed.
* * * * Let us return to our experimental brick
pile for further information. Assume our sliding sur-
face at the bottom of the pile to be so small as to give
some trouble. We can work it right along, but it
needs care. Heavy, continuous work causes it to heat,
bind, and stick. If our sliding motion, instead of be-
ing steady and continuous, is a bouncing, jerky one,
we can get along better. We investigate and find that
though we dose the thing with lots of oil, only a tri-
fling quantity stays to do business. This quantity is
just sufficient to form a film of globules between the
surfaces, just like a single layer of our buckshot.
If the pressure is continuous, the surplus oil, forced
out, can't get in again, and when the little that was in
gets smashed up and useless, the whole thing gets dry
and heated and cuts.
There's plenty of the surplus oil lying around anx-
ious to do some good, but the pressure don't let up
long enough for this oil to get in between the surfaces.
If our whole load is lifted every second or two, fresh
oil is sucked in between the surfaces, and every thing
works better. There's a sort of a slap to a crank-pin
bearing, and this very thing is to the benefit of the
bearing. The crank pin of a passenger engine is
practically worn on one side only. But this same
side is constantly shifting from one side of the brass
to the other ; not with a rubbing motion only, but with
a total let up and shifting of the pressure on the
brasses. A car axle won't do this. It's just a solid
demnition grind, on a shifting surface, it is true, but
with no let up on the pressure.
* * * * There is still more in the brick pile.
We can see how theory, as some folks call it, and prac-
l8o EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
tice should go together. Let us suppose that you were
the party who did the experimenting with the bearing
under the pile of bricks ; that you spent six months'
time, five hundred dollars in money, and used up lots
of good judgment and patience ; that all this happened
one hundred years ago ; and that you wrote down in
your little book: "A hard steel plate, sliding on a
hard brass plate, lubricated with good lard oil, works
well under a load of brick giving a pressure of five
hundred pounds per square inch of bearing area, if
the surfaces are in good shape." Let your name be
Morin, and assume that in course of years your little
book gets printed and accepted as an authority on
such subjects.
Now then, please to imagine Mr. Wycoff getting
up a machine having a horizontal sliding surface
operating under great weight. Young Tom Sackett,
who calls himself an engineer, watches Wycoff on
this job. Wycoff's heavy load is, by a coincidence, a
pile of bricks, and his good judgment tells him that a
brick surface won't wear worth a cent, so he proposes
to put brass and iron surfaces where the wear comes.
He makes the surfaces the size of something else at
the bottom of the pile. He don't " theorize " over the
matter, for he is a practical man, you know.
Tom asks Wycoff how big these surfaces are, and
W. says: " They look all right." Tom says if he was
building that thing, he would figure on it a while and
try and get it right the first time. Wycoff says: " I
don't believe any in your theories. It is simply stuff
out of books. I have been thirty years at this busi-
ness, and I guess I ought to know how big a bear-
ing to put under a pile of bricks." This thirty-year
business is the old millwright's gag and Tom hears it
often. He retorts by saying: "I know men who
have been at the business sixty years, and they don't
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS. l8l
know half as much as you do, Mr. Wycoff. I may
have learned something yesterday that you never
dreamed of. Your thirty years' experience printed
in a book and proven by others might save many a
man a peck of trouble and anxiety some fine day."
This whole discussion goes on pleasantly, and Tom
has touched Wycoff in a tender spot the thirty-
year place. He begins to wonder if, after all, this
thing he has misnamed "theory " is simply a knowl-
edge of the successful experience of other men.
Tom follows him up and says: " Now, Mr. Wycoff,
you may have those plates plenty big enough, but
it's all luck if you have. Other men have done
just such jobs, and they have worked with them till
they were right, and there are ways of getting at
the facts. You make your plates, and I will hunt
up the documents and figure on the thing."
* * * * Enter Tom on Wycoff's premises the
next day with a scrap of paper. He says to Wycoff :
" I find by consulting standard authorities, that a
hundred years ago a Frenchman named Morin, ex-
perimented with sliding piles of brick, at great cost
of time and money, and he gives the results of his la-
bors. I have figured on your pile of brick, and find
that, according to Morin, you will have to make your
plates twelve times as large as you intend, or you will
have lots of trouble and a total failure."
Wycoff winces some and finally gets around the
matter by telling Tom that a person so much inter-
ested in a thing had better undertake the superintend-
ence of the job. It's a bargain and Tom takes hold.
* * * * 'p^e pi atcs are d one under Tom's direc-
tions, and after the machine starts up he watches it.
It runs ten minutes, gets hot and stops. Tom wonders
and figures the thing all over, .and says to himself:
"If these big plates heat, what in the world would
182 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL*S LETTERS.
WycofFs little plates have done?" Wycoff says: "I
don't know anything about the Frenchman, Morin, and
I don't know what ' coefficient ' means, but I see what's
the matter. These plates are so big, and make so much
friction, that the thing can't work."
In sheer exasperation Tom ejaculates the whole of
Morin's laws of friction into Wycoff's ear and explains
them, and makes Wycoff understand. Then Wycoff
wants to know what is the matter.
They set a Johnny to taking the machine down, and
he soon comes around and says : " See 'ere, lad, there's
'igh spots hon this 'ere plate, shall hi take em down a
bit?"
Tom looks at the plates. All of the parts which
really touched and made bearing would not cover a
deuce of spades. He calls Wycoff and shows him; and
then triumphantly adds : " and Morin says the surfaces
must be in good shape." And then the practical
Wycoff turns on this young student and says with ma-
licious glee : "When you have worked thirty years at
the machine trade, may be you will know when two
sliding plates are in good shape. I left this thing to
you, and here are the plates.
They consider this matter a. " saw off," and deter-
mine that theory and practice, if kept from fighting,
will, when united, do anything within the power of
mortal man, and they make a strong associate point
by acknowledging their individual weakness.
* * * * j never expected to see the names of
Wycoff and Sackett associated so closely. Wycoff and
the elder Sackett have always been friends. They
were cubs and purs and tramps together, and now
that they are in some degree competitors, they are
neither cordial nor at loggerheads.
But young Tom Sackett considers himself a bright
and shining light, and, being a gentleman of elegant
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL'S LETTERS. 183
leisure who likes to work, he can generally be found
in the darkest and most benighted places. He natur-
ally gravitates towards the premises of Wycoff. Tom
has good sense and is of benefit to all concerned.
* * * * I ought, perhaps, to tell you that the
elder Sackett is not what Wycoff would call a " theor-
ist." He is simply a skilled mechanic with tip-top busi-
ness sense. There is no science in him, but he knows
the value of science. He bases his whole practice, so
far as originality is concerned, on the accuracy of
mathematics, and he don't know a logarithm from a
twinge of the lumbago. Sackett keeps men skilled
in these arts and he uses them. He never puts his
foot down without knowing before hand what hap-
pened to other men who have stepped on the same
spot. He is no genius and can't contrive anything,
but he keeps a genius and works him hard. If the
sliding-plate job had been done in Sackett's shop, its
dimensions would have been arranged with reference
to how big it ought to be. Sackett is too wise to guess
at a thing which can be determined with some degree
of certainty, and too wise to use figures he don't under-
stand. He calls himself the business manager of his
concern.
* * * * Again do we return to the sliding
plates. The plates were made large to increase the
rubbing surface, and the chap who planed the plates
sprung them so badly that they only touched in spots.
The big plates thus became little plates, so far as bear-
ing was concerned, and Tom Sackett, that bright
youth, supposed that a planed plate was a plane plate.
Tom will some day learn that if a bearing don't bear
well, it isn't much of a bearing. He will learn that a
round bearing six inches long, if some botchy lathes-
man turns it badly, is often only a two-inch bearing.
He will learn that a six inch belt may do a certain
184 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL*S LETTERS.
work, if it contacts nicely with a pulley, but that if
some botchy lathesman scrapes a pulley up with the
end of a file and leaves rings on it, his six inch belt
may become a three inch belt.
* * * * A round journal touches in its box, on
about one-third of its circumference, the balance being
free. One third of the circumference is pretty near the
diameter, and it is safe, when finding the rubbing area
of a journal, to multiply the diameter by the length,
which gives the practical bearing surface.
* * * * If a journal is not round, the first thing
it does is to commence the work of grinding itself
round. In course of time the journal will get round,
but it has also got smaller and looser, and the metal
ground off stays around to do mischief and do cutting.
A journal made perfectly round in the lathe don't have
to go through this grinding operation, therefore a
round journal will run nice from the start; it don't get
loose, and it don't lubricate itself with iron filings.
* * * * This applies to flat rubbing surfaces
also. If you don't take the lumps off, it will try to do
so itself, and, in doing so, will groove badly and sprinkle
itself with iron dust. The bearing will be in very bad
shape just' at the time it would be in very nice shape
if the work was well done.
* * * * A badly turned journal, while it is
rounding itself up, will cut rings in itself, the same as
sliding surfaces cut grooves while wearing the lumps
down. Badly turned journals and badly fitted flat
surfaces never doctor themselves.
* * * * If two plates which rub together are
found to be nice and flat, and bear practically all over,
they will not work well, if the file marks or any other
marks run in the direction of the motion. Such marks
are, in fact, little grooves which interfere with the side
flow of oil, and particles of cuttings get into these
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS. 185
grooves and act like "pins "in a file. They scratch.
Surfaces having finish marks in the direction of motion
are cut already when new. The same may be said of
journals when round. The finish should not leave any
kind of marks around a journal.
* * * * Never draw-file a piston rod or pump
plunger. Finish them in the lathe with well-defined
encircling finish, and three days wear will give a dead
polish which will stay. Never draw-file engine guides
or such things. Bring them to a true surface by any
process and then cross-file them lightly, even with em-
cry paper, so as to show that there are no marks run-
ning endwise. Such guides will come to a dead, true,
hard polish in a few days, and they will stay, if the
surfaces are of proper size. With wrought iron, steel,
or cold-rolled slides this is particularly important, as
there is a vicious end grain anyhow, and cross-finish
will neutralize it.
* * * * Scraped surfaces, aside from their being
presumably flat, \wear nicely as the endwise scratches
arc bound to be lacking.
* * * * A steam cylinder finished endwise would
make trouble from the word go. The tool marks
around a cylinder are beneficial, as indicating the
absence of marks the other way.
* * * * A. journal nicely rounded up, and fin-
ished by lead-lapping, has little or no marking around
it. A final lead lap finish given endwise insures the
absence of other scratches, and the journal will be
ready to commence its life work, not its death work.
* * * * jf b ac i workmanship fails to take the
lumps off bearings, a substitute may be sought in a
material which fills the hollows up to the level of the
lumps. Metalline and sundry plumbago lubricants do
this. The fine particles of this stuff flush up the sur-
faces and give perfect contact of self-lubricating sur-
i86
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
faces. A bearing so outrageously fitted, that no amount
of oil will keep it cool, will often behave itself, if fitted
with metalline, and no oil applied. Surfaces must be
large enough for the work, but metalline corrects, in
some degree, bad workmanship, and it carries its buck-
shot with it.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS. 187
CHAPTER XXII.
MR. HUBER'S NEW BUTTON SET. POOR DAN TAKES THE
FLOOR.
* * * * Mr. Huber is one of those lucky men
who own boiler shops. He works about twenty or
twenty-five boiler makers.
Mr. Huber got some button sets made, and one day
last week went into the said boiler shop to introduce
the aforesaid button sets. When Mr. Huber went into
the boiler shop to introduce the button sets, the boiler
makers all went out of the boiler shop on a strike
against the introduction of the button sets. I wish
these men would put their cause of action into writing.
It might be shown that the button set was a bad tool
calculated to injure the reputation of a boiler maker
who used it. In such case the boiler makers ought to
hear more about it. Probably the button set is a really
bad tool, and that a conscientious boiler maker would
scorn to use one for the same reason that he would
any other bad tool. If Mr. Huber should take a drift
pin into his boiler shop and say: " Here now, you boys,
when holes don't match by the width of a county, you
just drive this here pin in and make them match." I
suppose, of course, the men would get on a strike at
once only they wouldn't.
The fact is, that the introduction of a bad tool into
a boiler shop is not a certain method of starting a
strike. Maybe the button set is a good tool. I can
imagine some idiotic workman striking because some
new tool worked better than the tools he was used to.
In my own State, and in several other States, a certain
class of men are kicking against oleomargarine, or
artificial butter. They want the business stopped by
legislation ; they want the product destroyed and the
l88 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
producers sent to the penitentiary. Not because the
stuff isn't good, mind you. If it was bad, they wouldn't
say a word. It's entirely too good, and that's what's
the matter ; and that's why they want legislatures to
enact laws which will hang any man who attempts to
extract butter from the other end of the cow.
* * * * Maybe Mr. Huber's boiler makers think
the button set is too quick a tool, and will allow Mr.
Huber to reduce his price list ten per cent. This would
give Mr. Huber lots of business, and he would have to
enlarge his boiler shop and get more boiler makers.
This is dreadful to think about !
* * * * j know two chaps who tied up about
four dollars' worth of boiler tools in some old overalls,
and went out into a distant country and started a
boiler shop. They did repair work. They put on cold
patches, put on new sheets, put in new rivets, put in
new flues and tubes, put in new fire boxes, etc. They
did their bending over wooden logs, and kept three
boiler makers at work constantly. They got big prices
and saved some money.
* * * * After building two or three new boilers
in this crude way, they took it into their heads that
they would get some kind of a rig to punch holes for
rivets. They had been drilling by ratchet entirely.
The man who had been " running" the ratchet drill
saw trouble ahead, no work, a starving family, etc.
He was quieted, just on the eve of a " strike," by
assurances that his job was steady, and that he might
run the new punch when it came. Still, he felt uneasy,
for he foresaw that the punch would do a day's ratchet-
ing in half an hour. Where he was to get his other nine
and a half hours' work was a mystery. Things looked
still blacker when he remembered that there was not
work enough to even keep the ratchet drill going.
* * * * This artist of the ratchet knew lots of
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS. 189
things, but one thing he didn't know. He did't know
how hard the bosses had to work to get a job at the
prices they were compelled to ask, and he didn't know
how little margin of profit there was in it after the job
was gotten. He didn't know that his own low wages,
as operator of the ratchet drill, made the cost of boil-
ers so high that six contemplated saw mills were never
built just on that account. He got a dollar a day,
and saw suffering and idleness ahead. In the bitter-
ness of his woe he would have smashed all the punch-
ing machines in existence, if he could have done so.
* * * * The new punch came all the same, and
poor Dan was placed in charge. With saddened heart
he saw the vicious tool punch holes ten hours a tlay.
He wondered where the new demand for holes came
from, and he wondered how the bosses had been able
to raise his wages half a dollar a day, and how they
managed to find work for three more boilermakers
than they had before.
* * * * Three years' time saw poor Dan as boss
of three punching machines. He tried to wonder what
the fifty men were doing who might be ratcheting
these holes, and then he remembered that when the
ratchet was depended on, only one man was employed
in making holes while now there were four, and besides
that there were thirty boiler makers at work in the
shop. Instead of sheets being bent over a log, labor
saving rolls were used. There had been a kick against
these rolls. A steam riveter stood in the middle of
the shop and worked steadily; and a business-like tool
cut half a dozen tube holes at once, and orders for
boilers came in, and boilers went out, and saw mills
were built, and lumber got down to a price, and wages
got up to a figure where a boiler maker could live in a
house that was a house. Poor Dan!
* * * * One fine day one of the bosses brought
IQO EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS.
into the shop a gauging rig for one of the punches.
This thing was some sort of a self-feeding frame,
which spaced the holes and punched them on big cir-
cles so as to bring the rows straight when the sheet
was rolled up into a tapering ring.
* * * * This gauge made trouble; and Mr. Mul-
ligan, as spokesman of a meeting of boiler makers, ex-
plained that the devilish gauge was well calculated to
take the bread out of boiler makers' mouths. He
went on to explain in eloquent terms that all these
labor-saving traps were throwing men out of work and
leaving their families suffering; that the bosses were,
by their means, enabled to do the same work with less
men, and could put that much more money in their
own pockets; that he had nothing against the bosses,
but the working men must guard their interests or
prepare to suffer. Then he showed by figures, which
never lie, that this gauge would do the work of three
men laying out work and do it better; that the steam
riveter was doing work that six more men ought to be
hired to do; that the bending rolls were doing work
that three more men ought to do; and that the punch-
ing machines were doing work that ten men ought to
be doing. He said he liked the bosses, and didn't
favor destruction, but he really felt that if all these
things were back in the form of pig iron, there would
be a hundred men working in the shop instead of
twenty-five or thirty. He was in favor of express-
ing to the bosses the general good will of the men, but
of insisting on the new gauge being abandoned. They
would work hard and do their duty, but it was not
asking too much of the bosses to ask that the new
gauge and similar traps be kept out of the shop in the
future.
* * * * Then poor Dan took the floor, and, with
permission of the chairman, asked Mr. Mulligan a few
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS. 193
questions. Mr. Mulligan was a free and generous
soul, and went into the catechism class cheerfully.
First question by Dan. Mr. Mulligan, did you ever
work in a boiler shop when some great labor-saving
device was put into use and kept in use ? If so, state
the circumstances.
Answer by Mr. Mulligan I worked for McLean when
they got a flanging machine intended to revolutionize
the trade. The thing was a fraud, and was laid aside
in a month. It was an experiment and a failure.
Second question by Dan. That's not to the point. I
want cases where the devices staid and did just what
was intended. Do you know of any such ?
Answer. Well, when I was at Crofts' they got a big
punching machine, which punched six holes at once,
and did the work of about four common machines. It
worked well and is working yet, for all I know.
Third question by Dan. How many men were dis-
charged at Crofts' when the gang punch went to
work ?
Answer. Discharged ! Why, none.
Fourth question. Please name over such things as
you would consider labor-saving arrangements; things
which you have seen introduced into boiler shops
where you have worked. Give us a fair count.
Answer. Well, here goes. In the matter of hole
work, I would mention cold chisels, which will chip
three holes without breaking twice, ratchet drills which
drill more holes than a man can chip, a frame to hold
the ratchet drill up while you use it. This saves lots
of work. A crank drill. This saves. ' A power drill.
This saves lots of work. A punching machine. This
saves lots over a drill. A gang punch saves still more.
Getting better steel for punches saves lots of labor.
Clean marking saves labor. The use of French chalk
instead of white chalk saves labor. In cutting out
194 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
work, good chisels compared with bad chisels will let
one man do two men's work. A man with a health) 7
scientific muscle will do the work of two brute force
men or two weak men. Oiling a chisel makes it cut
faster. A power shear saves lots of work. In hand-
ling work, crowbars save men, and cranes save still
more. In riveting, one gang of two men will do much
more than two gangs of one man. This parceling of
parties reduces the amount of labor required to do a
certain amount of work. Steam and hydraulic riveting
will save lots of work.
Fifth question by Dan. Mr. Mulligan, are you op-
posed to labor-saving tools in the boiler shop, and
if so, why ?
Answer. Yes, I am. It takes the bread out of a
man's mouth, and as the iron machine don't want the
money it earns, the boss takes it.
Sixth question by Dan. In what shops have you been
best paid ; in shops with every labor-saving device, or
in shops where muscle did everything ?
Answer. Well, I never got what I call good pay,
but I got the poorest pay in the poorest shops.
Seventh question by Dan. Did you ever know of a
boiler maker being discharged, because a new man
was hired who had a big muscle and could do a big
day's work ?
Answer. No; never heard of such a thing.
Eighth question by Dan. Mr. Mulligan, did you ever
see, or did you ever hear of a case where the introduc-
tion of a labor-saving rig of any kind whatever in a
boiler shop resulted in the discharge of a man because
the machine did his work ?
Answer. Well, I can't exactly say I ever did, but I
have been around some, and I ought to have seen
some such case.
Ninth question by Dan. Mr. Mulligan, what has be-
EXTRACTS FROM CHORD ALS LETTERS. 195
come of all the boiler makers who have been thrown
out of work by sharp chisels, by punching and shear-
ing machines, by bending rolls which will run a sheet
right through, by riveting machines, by muscle in the
arms of other men, &c., &c.?
Ansiver. Well . I don't know, I guess they
work at something.
Tenth question by Dan. Don't you guess they work at
the boiler maker's trade, and don't you guess there are
twenty times as many boiler makers working to-day as
there were before riveting machines were invented ?
Answer. I don't know anything about the figures,
but I do remember when boiler makers were few and
far between. When I was a cub, I believe a year's
work of all the boiler makers in the world would not
keep the boiler makers of to-day busy three hours. It
beats the deuce where all the boilers go. It seems as
though everybody wants boilers now, and they are so
cheap everybody gets them. Trade slackens once in
a while, but it used to slacken then ten times worse.
Dan. Thank you, Mr. Mulligan. You're a square
chap and a bully boiler maker. Now, Mr. Chairman,
all I've got to say is this, I worked in this shop years
ago, and I drilled with a ratchet drill every rivet hole,
made in the place, and three men worked in the shop
and there were not holes enough wanted to keep me
busy. The shop now has steady work and pays good
wages, and sells boilers so the people can afford to
buy. You take the labor-saving tools out of the shop,
and every mother's son of you will tramp, except two
men, and I will go back to the ratchet, and I bet I can
drill more holes than there will be to drill. Labor-
saving tools have been a friend to me, and have got
you your jobs, and I, for one, will welcome anything
of the kind I see coming along. I move that we tell
the bosses to get all the gauge rigs they can use.
196 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL*S LETTERS.
CHAPTER XXIII.
TURNING SHAFTING ON THE HOTCHKISS PLAN.
A SIMON PURE MACHINE SHOP.
* * * * I really believe that a machinist who
likes to see things, can find more solid enjoyment in
some of the rough-and-tumble jobbing shops located
in the woods, than he can in some high-toned manufac-
turing establishments, gotten up without regard to
cost. The workmen turned out by such concerns are
invariably of more value than those raised in nice
shops.
* * * * A new man comes along and says he
worked ten years in Hotchkiss' shop. Now, Hotchkiss
has the reputation of selling the nicest shafting known
to the market. You want a man to turn shafting,
and, of course, you ask this new comer if he worked
any on shafting in Hotchkiss' shop. He answers truly
that he never did much else. You consider yourself
lucky, and set the man to work. You soon find that
he turns the worst shafting in the world, and gets out
about twelve feet a day. You go for the gentleman,
and ask him why he can't do some decent work and
some reasonable quantity of it. He explains, in a very
condescending manner, that if you want good work
you must furnish good facilities. He explains that,
when at Hotchkiss', he used a special lathe with a won-
derful carriage arrangement, carrying numerous tools,
and with a centering and straightening attachment,
and a burring rest for finishing to size. With this rig
he turned a hundred and fifty feet of nice shafting in
ten hours, and says he can do it every day in the week
if you will bring him the apparatus. Now, you know
all about this kind of thing. You have been in Hotch-
kiss' shop, and you know this man speaks truly. But
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS. 197
you ain't in the shafting business, and don't propose
to go into the business. You have shafting jobs now
and then, and want to do the work fair in quality and
reasonable in price. You don't expect to do it as cheap
as Hotchkiss does, who makes a specialty of it. You
see at once that this man, who was all right in Hotch-
kiss' shop, don't know anything about turning shaft-
ing at all. You hunt up a boy in the other end of the
shop a long-legged, long-headed youth, who has spent
two years with you learning the machinist's trade. He
knows how to turn shafting, and you know it. You
put him on the long lathe, and he gives you forty feet
of shafting in ten hours, and it's forty times as good
as the machinist from Hotchkiss' shop could turn. If
your long-legged boy ever gets a job in Hotchkiss'
shop, Hotchkiss will have a rough diamond capable of
high polish.
* * * * you give the new man another lathe
and set him to boring pulleys. He bores about three
miserable holes in a day. He finds no pulley-boring
machine, no good chuck drills, no reamers, no nothing.
He ridicules the idea of doing work without tools. He
never looks at his own deficiencies, but looks at the
deficiencies of the shop. He is a nice fellow, but is
not smart enough to admire the men all around him,
who, every hour in the day, are doing things he can't
do at all.
You tell the new man he is a failure on a
lathe. You set him to key-seating some big pulleys.
They must be chipped and filed. Does he go and get
good, solid side chisels dressed, and does he lay a wide,
straight edge in the hole and draw one mark to chip
his key-seat to ; and does he sit down on a block and
send three heavy, nice, clean, straight, flat cuts through
the pulley ; and does he file five minutes and show you
a nice, clean key-seat, out of wind and free from chisel
198 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS.
marks, all done in forty minutes ? No ; he don't'. He
never cut a key-seat, and never saw one cut in this
way. He was brought up alongside a slotting ma-
chine, and he is now five hundred miles from the near-
est slotting machine. He knows he can't do this job,
and is smart enough to tell you so. This man is no
machinist at all. He served a five years' apprentice-
ship, and worked eight years in one of the best shops
in the United States, but he is actually of less value
than your youngest cub. You put the case to him
fairly ; tell him you need men and like his looks, and
that if he can point out any work in the shop which
he can do properly, you will be glad to keep him. He
feels badly ; and after looking around, decides that he
can't do what the poorest men in the shop are doing.
He will do one of two things : If he's a coward, with-
out any coarse grit in him, he will abandon the " ma-
chinist " trade and tramp back to Hotchkiss and beg
for a job on that shafting lathe. If he has the right
stuff in him, he will start in and learn the trade. He
has sense and experience and don't need to commence
just like a boy. He can start anywhere he chooses, at
such wages as his work shows he earns, and increase
his wages as he increases his value.
* * * * YOU go into one of these rough-and-
tumble shops and watch a man at a lathe. He whistles
and sings and skylarks and smokes, maybe, and does
a hundred other things which the high and mighty
think ought to send a man to the penitentiary. But
don't that chap do the work, though ! Don't he earn
and get good wages, and don't the proprietor make
more out of him every day than the high and mighty
do out of three men who were brought up to use every
modern facility, and who are stumped if one of the
aforesaid facilities happens to get broken. Watch this
outre machinist as he works. He runs an eighteen-
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS. 199
inch lathe, perhaps, and the work brought to him
might well be, and, in a better fixed shop would be,
distributed among big lathes, little lathes, Fox lathes,
planers, slotters, milling machines, cutting machines,
drilling machines, screw machines, bolt cutters, gear
cutters, etc. But this chap does everything which
is laid by his lathe. Some he does tip-top, some
he leaves slouchy, but all of it is done as well
as is required. He does this all the time. He lives
on it. Every job he does is something he, or any-
body else, never did before, but he does it all the
same. This man is no mere machine wound up and
set to running a shafting-turning machine. This shop
isn't a manufacturing concern with a system adapted
to a special product.
This is one of my Simon Pure machine shops, doing
job work, new and old, and this fellow we see is a
lordly lathesman, a real machinist. You may set him
down in any shop in the world where there's a lathe,
and a job to do, and he can do it. He will jump at
new and better ways, but is not helpless in the mean-
time. He's no baby. He's a machinist, and he is
worth money every day. Oh, ye puny chaps that
claim to be lathesmen ! You only know one way of
doing things, and that's the way you were taught to
do it. You only know how to do one job, and that's
the job you worked on while you were being taught,
and you can't do that job when you get in another
shop away from home. Aren't you ashamed to ridi-
cule a poor, one-horse machine shop when every man
in it is immeasurably your superior? Aren't you
ashamed to claim fellowship and equal wages with
these sharp fellows, full of mechanical wit, who do
work every day which you don't even dare to under-
take ? You say they can't do it well. You can't do it
at all. You don't know how to tackle it. * * * *
200 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
* * * * Look at the job this lathesman gets. He is
sitting on a casting and handling a connecting rod
strap. It's a rough forging for a strap to hold square
boxes. You can't see a bit of lathe-work about it any-
where, or a chance for any. Pretty soon he gets his
present job done. Now he puts a miserable looking
angle-plate against his face-plate, and sets this strap
in some shape. He fishes a dirty piece of paper out
of his tool box. This paper contains a memorandum
of sizes which he took down verbatim as the foreman
gave them. He goes to work, and in two hours, lays
two hours of planing on the floor. He has surfaced
that strap nicely and squarely all over the outside.
There's one job of " lathework " done. There is but
one planer in the shop, and that is too much crowded
to be doing anything that can be done in any other
machine. That same planer will stand still six months
in the year, so it would be folly to get another, and
thus be ready for a rush which never comes when you
are ready.
* * * * Here goes for the next job. Twelve
stubs about two feet long, one and three-quarters
diameter, to have thread cut eight inches on one end.
No turning, simply a thread to be cut. They belong
to a bridge bolt job, and the bolt cutter has no dies
for this size. Soon this job is done. It isn't nice
lathe work. Nothing to be proud of, but it is o. k. in
every way. What next ? He puts on a chuck and
proceeds to chase out twelve hot -pressed nuts for these
bridge bolts. Ough ! how your teeth grit to see a
lathesman having to do such a job. It's a nasty job,
but there's no tap that size, and soon it's done and off
this chap's mind.
* * * * Next comes some nice lathe work ; a
couple of valve stems and two or three small wrists.
They are finished to the sizes given and nicely polished.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAl/S LETTERS. 2OI
He gets them done, and feels proud of them. Bless
him, any lathesman can do such work.
* * * * Here's a brass casting for a two-inch
stop-cock, and by it lies the old one. It's a repair job.
The old one is bursted wide open. The plug is swelled,
but not broken. Does a foreman come around and
instruct this man how to do this job ? No, sir. His
orders were to " rig up that cock." He takes the cast-
ing, chucks it, and in half an hour has a two-inch pipe
thread chased in each end. Now he chucks crosswise,
and you suddenly notice that this cock must be bored
tapering. How is this fellow going to bore this hole ?
Will he go and get a nice taper reamer ? I guess not
in this shop. Will he fit up some kind of a reamer ?
Not he. He is fitting up an old water-cock, not mak-
ing new reamers. He'll set the head of the lathe over,
won't he? No, he won't. The head of the lathe can't be
swiveled. Will he set the Slate taper attachment over ?
Guess not, as he never heard of Slate ; and don't know
what a taper attachment is. Will he use the compound
rest ? He may some day, when such a thing gets into
the shop. Will he stick a wedge under the back wing
of the carriage ? No. He never heard of it, and is
not so deep an inventor as to think of it just when he
wants it. Will he wrap a cord around his cross-feed
screw-handle and tie it to his tail-stock, and thus get
the taper ? No, he has no time to invent this ingen-
ious plan. Will he find a fancy little sliding-head
boring-bar somewhere ? Not a bar. Has he a man-
drel which he can screw his chuck on, and thus do the
job in the steady rest ? No, sir. He won't do any of
these smart things, and he won't tell you that the shop
ought to have a Fox lathe for such work, and he won't
tell you how the Metropolitan Cock Company bore
them out, for he don't know, and, I am sorry to add,
he don't care. All he cares about is to lay that cock
2O2
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
down on the floor and call it done, and as well done as
is needed.
He whistles a very peculiar air in a very soft man-
ner and turns his cross crank slowly to keep time.
The result is a hole which is tapering, if it's nothing
else. It would have taken him just about as long to
bore it straight. He takes the job out. Puts on a
face-plate, and puts the old cock plug in the lathe.
He chalks it and hammers the swells out, or in, rather.
Then he sets his lathe over and takes a light cut over
it. Then he marks a close fit in the cock, but keeps the
plug large. Now he goes to a vise and files the hole. It
was tapering all right, but the sides were not straight.
He files carefully but boldly, watching the tool marks
in the hole, and trying the plug. Soon he is done with
the filing, and, returning to his lathe, completes the
fit of the plug. Now he grinds it in, and soon there
isn't a file mark or a tool mark in the hole or on the
plug. It is simply a first-class, water-tight taper job,
quickly done in a third-class manner. He screws the
thing together, and bounces the next job. Time on
old cock, three hours and a quarter. You or I could
not do it as well or as quick with all the cock-making
appliances in existence. This man never fitted up a
water-cock before. He is a machinist, and will hustle
out any job you will bring him, and will do it as well
as you want it done, and no better. * * *
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS. 203
CHAPTER XXIV.
GEOGRAPHY IN MACHINE BUILDING. GETTING READY
FOR BUSINESS. TWO CASES IN POINT.
* * * * Many manufacturers jump at the con-
clusion, if they have something to sell which it is to a
party's real interest to buy, that the party will buy if
he has the money. This won't do at all; economical
devices cannot be sold on their merits. Geography
enters largely into the question: people in one locality
are frugal, thrifty, and rich; they spend a dollar to
save two, and by that means gain their riches. In
another locality the people will positively decline to
spend a dollar to save ten. They are not frugal, they
are not prudent; they are thrifty and they are rich.
A Texas farmer would starve to death in Connecticut;
he would not work hard enough to get a living out of
the soil ; the soil is different, and he comes from a dif-
ferent class of people.
* * * * The steam engine is essentially an ele-
ment of modern economy; the steam engine is not the
same the world over by a great deal. In our Southern
States many long-stroke, slow-speed engines use their
steam at nearly full stroke. In the Middle States pro-
portions are changed ; the lap of the valve is increased,
a variable cut-off added, and, once in a great while, an
automatic cut-off is found. In the older New England
States we find the finest types of automatic cut-off
engines predominant, and, in many cases, a condenser
added. In the old countries of Europe every pool of
water is found steaming hot with the discharge of
numberless condensers.
* * * * If a hundred horse-power engine, using
steam full stroke, is kept in fuel for fifteen dollars a
day, it is doing well. If the valve of this engine be
204 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
altered and the throw increased, ten dollars will buy
the coal required each day. If it cost ten thousand
dollars to lengthen this valve, the investment would
be a capital one. Such a change costs, in fact, about
fifty dollars. If a good automatic valve gear be put
on the engine, six dollars and a half will pay for the
coal required. The three dollars and a half a day
thus saved would be good interest on ten thousand
dollars. The change can generally be made for five
hundred dollars. If water is handy, and a good con-
denser be added, five dollars a day will pay for the
coal required. The dollar and a half a day thus saved
will be good interest on ten thousand dollars. The
change can generally be made for a thousand dollars.
If a man has a hundred horse-power engine, using its
steam full stroke, and will, at one bold stroke, make it
properly automatic and condensing, he will save ten
dollars a day, or ten per cent, on thirty thousand dol-
lars.
* * * * You would think, if you were the proud
builder of a tip-top condensing engine with automatic
cut-off, if you held this hundred horse-power engine
for three thousand, or four thousand, or five thousand
dollars, if you offered it for sale in localities where
wasteful engines were used, that there would be such
an overwhelming rush of orders that you would go
crazy. But such would not be the case ; there would
be no rush of orders from such a locality, and if you
went daft it would be from disappointment. The place
to sell such engines is right where people use such
engines. I don't build such engines myself, and have
had no experience in the matter, but I leave it to any
high class engine builder in the country who has ever
tried to introduce his engines in localities where the
greatest economical changes could be wrought.
* * * * It is the miser who seeks new ways of
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS. 205
saving money. It is the prodigal who welcomes new
suggestions as to spending money. If we get along
with something mean, we don't care if it gets a little
meaner. If we appreciate that which is good, we will
seek for that which is better. Bad leads to worse, and
good leads to better.
* * * * Speaking of investment, leads me to
think that there is a great geographical difference in
our capitalists. I made a short stay in the Middle
States lately, and noticed that as a general thing there
was but little capital invested in what in the East would
be considered as well-equipped factories. I refer here
to metal industries exclusively. Eastern manufactur-
ers are cautious about picking up a thing, but when
they do it they have a good grip on it. It is no unu-
sual thing to find a new building in New England,
out of which, for two years, come an army of work-
men, all drawing good pay. This is to be a factory
some day. Thousands and thousands of dollars are
being spent in equipping the concern with the most
efficient machinery. Not a pound of goods going out
not a dollar coming in.
Every little expense which promises to return itself
a hundred fold when things start up, is borne with
patience. This thing would work in the West for
about three weeks, and then capitalists would begin to
ask when this paying-out process was going to stop.
There are exceptional cases, of course, but as a gen-
eral thing Western capitalists have been very slow
about investing in manufacturing business. It don't
seem enough like trade. In trade you pay money for
an article which you sell instantly at an advance. As
soon as you part with your money you have its equiv-
alent. But in the factory things are different. The
big money goes, perhaps, into special machinery, which
is not for sale or salable. The main money is invested
206 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
in a process. In New England the intention seems to
be to fix for making money, no matter what it costs.
You will see little of this kind of business done in
metal in the West.
The New England factory evidently purposes com-
mencing when it commences. In the West " business "
commences as soon as money commences to go out,
and Western men are not up to paying out long at a
time without looking around for a return.
The Westerners will take up with a good thing, get
it into crude shape ; manufacture in a sort of a way,
go into the market, and fail on account of the general
prematureness of the thing, and they will do it all
before the New Englander decides to put money into
it. But when the thing is pronounced all right, the
New Englander does take hold of it sure enough.
If the article is a new invention, whose raw principle
is full of certain promise, special skill is employed to
get it into a superior practical form. This is often
omitted in the West. After being reduced to a practi-
cal, useful form, special skill is employed to get it into
a shape adapted to systematic manufacture to ma-
chine construction to cheap excellence. This is almost
always omitted in the West. The sample being done,
special skill is employed to contrive and construct
special machinery for its production. This is almost
always omitted in the West. These things cost a fear-
ful sight of money, and the Western folks have not
learned to stand the strain.
In New England, after the crude principle is ap-
proved, after the most useful form is given at great
expense, after the form has been adapted to manufac-
ture, after a world of special machines have been con-
trived and built, after two or three years' time, and
say two hundred thousand dollars have been expended
then, and not till then, are the factory doors thrown
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL*S LETTERS. 207
open, and the world informed that this is a screw-
driver factory, or some such thing. Then the product
is offered, and then the public buy. The article they
buy is as good as money and skill can produce it, and
sales will continue till such an article is no longer
needed. All this may happen after the same article,
in a general way, has failed on the market, owing to
a premature delivery. You know I am no Yankee, so
I am not blowing. I may possibly have a better mo-
tive.
* * * * As an example of New England opera-
tions, let me cite one case : A steam engine of entire
new type was devised. It was taken to a celebrated
concern. It was approved, and taken in hand. An
engineer skilled in the science of steam and mechanics
re-designed it. An engineer skilled in manufacturing
joined hands and heads with the steam man, and the
result was a machine which looked all right to the
steam man, and which the factory man said he could
make well, and cheap, and profitably. Then a few
were made as any single article would be made.
In the West these few engines would have been sold
and some money brought in. But not so in this case.
These engines were put to work, surrounded by skilled
tests. They confirmed the judgment of the parties
who were " looking into it." Did they go to work and
sell them then ? No, sir. They then began the tests
for durability. Hour after hour and month after month
every hour that there was steam in the factory boil-
ers, did these engines whirl away at their heaviest
loads, under every possible change in work and hand-
ling, and under the closest of scrutiny. They are run-
ning yet, and will be running next Christmas. When
this test is over, will these factory people commence to
make this engine for sale? I doubt it. I do not think
they will ever " make " these engines. When the tests
208 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
are over, the system of manufacture, already in view,
will be elaborated, and then a fortune will be expended
in appliances ; and then, and not till then, will the
public be asked to buy. The engines will be manufac-
tured, not "made," and that "manufacture" means
a well studied and economical production which is to
the benefit of all concerned. All this, of course, in case
this engine proves " durable." It may be disappoint-
ing, in which case the whole thing will go into the
scrap pile ; and the cost will be charged to expense,
and will be a small loss to a concern which has ac-
cumulated millions of dollars by a continued demand
for articles treated in the same careful, cautious, pains-
taking manner.
These heavy investments, based on a hope of future
return, are not an inventor's worship of his idol. This
engine came from afar. These are capitalists looking
up investments.
I honestly think that, if this same engine had been
sprouted in the West, it would have been in the market
years ago, and more than likely it would have been
" dead, buried and resurrected, and its body strung on
wires."
* * * * Another case : A Western firm " made "
a certain machine. Cut prices began to bring the
blood. There was competition from New England.
Both parties made the machine quite well. The West-
ern firm resolved that something must be done to
cheapen the machine. It could not be made any light-
er, for it only had panic thickness anyhow. Wages
could not be cut, for there was no substance to cut at.
The question came down to a simple question of
reducing the amount of work on the thing. The com-
mon Western plan of cheapening a product is to leave
Something off. They did this thing : they reduced
everything, and cut and slashed as long as they thought
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS. 20Q
the machine would pass muster. Then they cut prices
twenty per cent. Now, the Yankee manufacturers of
this machine had never been well fixed, as they called
it, for manufacturing ; the last wind from the West
began to hurt ; something must be done with that
machine. Did they think of reducing the value and
cost of the thing by leaving some of the work off ?
They did nothing of the kind. The Yankee never
takes that view of matters. They let the product alone
and hopped upon the process and revolutionized it.
They invested thirty thousand dollars in special ma-
chinery and commenced on a new lot of machines.
The special machinery had been designed to do the
work as well as possible, and when the lot was com-
plete it was found that there was more profit in the
work at the last cut price than there had ever been at
any previous price.
They had kept about ten men on the work hereto-
fore. The Western concern had about the same num-
ber. The East now cut the price ten per cent, more,
intending at one swoop to kill their competitors, and
enhance the demand for the machine.
They did so with this result : The Western men
dropped the thing, saying they had done everything
that good mechanics could do in the matter, that the
Yankees were working at a loss against which no good
business house could compete, and that it was entirely
too sick a cat to get well. The new machines were so
much nicer than the old ones that they were hardly
recognized, and now over sixty men work on these
machines.
* * * * Here is a case where cut prices forced
the use of the much-abused labor-saving machinery,
and where the much-abused labor-saving machinery
led to the permanent employment of forty men in a
new industry. I could write you down ten thousand
instances of similar cases in this last particular.
210 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
CHAPTER XXV.
WORKING FOR NOTHING. HOW CHORDAL GOT UGLY.
SIXTEEN GLASSES OF BEER. MONEY SAVED ON MAN-
DRELS.
* * * * What do you think of a man who will
work for nothing ? Of a man who will get up in the
night and tramp off to a machine shop with a tin buck-
et on his arm ; who will put on overalls at seven
o'clock in the morning and keep them on till six
o'clock in the evening ; who will stand at somebody
else's lathe, or planer, or slotter, or vise, and hammer
on somebody else's pieces of iron all day long, and keep
it up day after day, and week after week, and month
after month, and year after year, from the time he goes
at the trade at fourteen years of age till he dies ; and
all for nothing ? I don't mean the kind of men who
find delight in seeing crude material develop and grow
into useful, finished products, but the kind of men who
have no earthly interest in development and growth,
and don't care a cent about useful, finished products.
Do you know any such men, working through their
whole lives, and bringing the sweat at every blow-
and doing it all for nothing ? I know them, lots of
them. There are a hundred thousand men working in
machine shops to-day who cannot show twenty-five
cents for the last twenty years' work. They have
worked every day and have drawn their pay. But
where is it ? They have had no grave calamities, no
bad debts, no heavy losses on indorsements, no for-
feited bond for a friend in office nothing which im-
poverishes men, but everything which makes men in-
dependent, to wit : income, sure and steady, and to
be depended on every time. Of these hundred thou-
sand men I speak of, over fifty thousand haven't got
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS. 211
ten -cents in their pockets at this minute, and won't
have till next pay-day. They will work day after day,
and draw pay after pay. But when they leave one job
and travel, do they take any of this good money with
them ? Not much. They borrow to pay for the trip.
These same hundred thousand will raise a row to get
ten cents a day more, which is right in principle; but
I want to know what becomes of this ten cents. They
used to get thirty and fifty cents more, but they can't
show that the old figure produced any tangible results.
* * * * It won't do to say broadly that men
spend their earnings in drink, etc. It won't do, for
two reasons : first and foremost, it isn't true, and sec-
ond and hindermost, that's a good way to spend money
if the sole object is to get rid of it as soon as possible,
and that in reality seems to be the main object with
the hundred thousand.
* * * * I tell you, and I can prove it by every
" dead-broke " machinist in the land, that the reason
the hundred thousand are always " strapped " is not
because they drink, or smoke, or gamble, or wear dia-
monds, or keep fast horses, or nice places in the coun-
try, but simply because they don't know what to do
with their pay. Let one of these fellows draw a month's
pay. He goes and pays bills he owes, invests some-
thing in the worst clothes he can find, and keeps the
rest in his pocket. It begins to fester right away. A
workingman, with a few extra dollars in his pocket,
often has really painful desires to find something to
spend a little something on. He can't think of any-
thing he wants, and feels the existence of a void. In
a few days the stuff is gone, and then some necessities
arise. Credit is drawn on. Small quantities of second-
class necessities, on credit at a high price, is what uses
up the cream of the next pay. I have known a well-
paid machinist to get eight pounds of heavy brown
212 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
sugar on pay-night, when he had thirty dollars iir his
pocket which he had no idea under heaven what he
was going to do with. The idea of getting fifty pounds
of good sugar never occurred to him. Before the next
pay-day he would be getting horrible sugar on credit,
by the half-dollar's worth, at outrageous prices.
* * * * These very men, who do no good with
their money, who can't show any little fund laid up;
who can't show a decent wardrobe ; who never gave a
friend a present costing ten dollars; who never spend
two dollars on pleasure travel ; who can't show five
dollars' worth of books ; who have no wife or chil-
dren made comfortable by wise expenditures ; who
have no balance in the office; who haven't got a har-
dened steel square in their tool-kit, because it costs a
day's pay ; who never buy good cigars, and who will
buy bad whisky when tip-top whisky is the same price
these very men are the men to kick the hardest for
higher pay. They will say : " I can't stay here long,
wages are too low." They play hob if they find some
other fellow getting five cents a day more than they
do themselves.
* * * * As you use discretion in selecting ex-
tracts from my letters, I don't mind standing for an
awful example. Years ago I worked for the Hall
Steam Engine Company. That is to say, I put in time
on their premises and got their money. I ran a planer.
The aforesaid company was composed of Tom and
Charlie Hall. They were not mechanics, but hailed
from the salt sea. Tom had been master, and Charlie
had been master's mate, on some sort of a sea craft at
some time, and the shop was their quarter-deck, and
is now, for aught I know. They were both good men,
and showed more than common sense in some of the
details of their business.
In the same town were located the immense railroad
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS. 213
shops of the Under Pavonia Railroad. These shops
worked sometimes fifteen hundred men, and it gener-
ally happened that the men in Hall's shop were simply
putting in time while waiting for some promised job
in the U. P. shop. To do business with such men, you
will readily see, required skill and management. Well,
as before said, I worked on a planer at Hall's, and I
wasn't waiting for a U. P. job, either. As near as I
remember, my wages were three and a half a day. I
worked on a while, and finally learned that a German
near me, by the name of Szcheinfule, or Swivel, or
some such name, was getting three seventy-five a day.
Now, you know, this wouldn't do. It didn't make any
difference in my finances how much money I got for
my work. I had worked for three dollars and for six
dollars, and it was all the same. At that time I didn't
have any wife and babies, and I didn't have anything
else, and no amount of wages would give me anything
else. I kept grinding over the matter of this fellow
getting more money than myself. I sat on that planer
table and brooded and talked to myself, and got ugly.
Now, whether you know it or not, machinists generally
have no sense on the question of wages or business.
They can't talk reasonably, and generally they put off
talking till they get mad, and then they blurt out like
fools. That was my case, anyhow. I kept getting
madder, and finally bolted into the office. The presi-
dent, Mr. Thomas Hall, who, by the way, was a mem-
ber of the Legislature was there; so was the master's
mate. I talked loud, and asked them what they took
me for, and if they supposed I was going to work
alongside of Swivel for a quarter less per day; told
them I knew my rights, and I wanted my pay raised
or Swivel's cut down. The seafaring men waited till
I exhausted my drivel, and then Tom Hall said :
" Chordal, when we had our hands full of work and
214 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS.
men were scarce, the U. P. shop came here and took
all our men, by offering them temporary jobs at four
and five dollars per day. Every man left us but Swi-
vel, and he didn't come in and bulldoze us for a raise,
either. He stayed. This thing happened, not only
once, but a dozen times. Swivel is not a first-class
man. If we would discharge him, to-morrow we could
hire him back for two dollars a day; but he has acted
square with us, and men like you may come and go as
much as they please, but this man Swivel will stay at
the same wages he gets now. We are paying this
man for what he has done for us. If you ever prove
yourself worthy of such a compliment, we would be
pleased to have you let us know it. We advise you to
go and sit on that planer another day, and to-morrow,
if you think it wise to be silly, you can do so."
* * * * My better judgment prevailed, and ever
since then I have always had a great deal of respect
for a machinist who, without any nonsensical self-
abasement, could assure himself of the respect of his
employers.
* * * * While I think of the Hall Steam Engine
Company, let me tell you of another case : A young
fellow came to their foreman, Rogers, and asked for a
job. Rogers said he was sorry, but he could not pos-
sibly scare up a job. The fellow said he had been to
the U. P. shop, and there wasn't the ghost of a show
there. He went off. The next night Rogers and my-
self were drinking beer at the Tivoli Garden, and who
should come with our beer but this same chap who had
asked for a job!
There he was with a white apron, and about sixteen
glasses of beer. Now, while a machinist is queer
about his pride, he always has lots of it, such as it is.
This thing touched the three of us. Rogers, on
inquiry, found that the fellow was "dead broke," and
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS. 217
that this was the only thing that had opened up. He
was getting a dollar a day of sixteen hours. Rogers
told him to take off that apron and square up with the
house ; told him to come to the shop in the morning
and he would find him a job as a laborer, and as soon
as there was a chance he could have a good job. The
fellow came, and was set to work unloading coal-car
lumber.
On pay night, this same fellow raised Cain, and quit
incontinently because he only got two dollars a day
when men in the shop were getting three and a half.
He knew his rights, you know.
* * * * It is true, that the balance on hand is a
real source of annoyance to the hundred thousand
machinists I have referred to. Some will read this,
and I defy any one of that number to deny it. A man
with a big family accumulates money and property at
a dollar and a half a day, and a man right alongside
of him, at three dollars and no care, never has a dollar
to his name, and never has a dollar's worth of goods
to show, -and he don't drink unreasonably and he don't
gamble. Between you and me, I think this is just as
important a question to many of your readers as the
question of how to make a fluted reamer which won't
chatter. What does a man need to care about the
chatters, if the reamer don't bring in any returns ?
The object of life is to make a reamer which won't
chatter, and to be able to show some of the comforts
and pleasures of life as the result of having made a
good reamer years ago.
* * * * If the owner of a genuine, simon-pure
machine shop, and by that I mean not a systematized
manufacturing establishment, wants his eyes opened,
let him take a note-book into the shop and keep an
account of the money spent in turning up mandrels for
one month. There are some nice machinists in the
2l8 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS.
country, who don't know what I am talking about when
I refer to turning up mandrels, and if they would go
into one of these common shops they would not recog-
nize a mandrel if they saw it. In ninety-nine shops
out of a hundred, each man fits his mandrels as he goes
along. He keeps them lying on the floor under the
foot of his lathe, always. All the mandrels in the shop
are, of course, common property.
If Walker wants to turn up a job, he takes the piece
with him and goes down among his lot of mandrels
and tries to find one which will fit the hole he has
bored. He don't find one big enough, so he goes to
Dix's lathe, and don't find one that isn't too large.
He makes the grand rounds, and then drops into the
blacksmith shop, and picks out of the scrap pile a piece
of two-inch round iron, maybe eight inches long, and
maybe eighteen. He goes back in the shop and cen-
ters it, and starts as though he thought of drilling the
centers, but he concludes he only wants to use the
thing half an hour, so there's no use in drilling. Then
he gets it in the lathe, and when he gets one end
squared up, he concludes that it is too much trouble to
turn the thing around and square the other end, so he
proceeds to make his fit. First a heavy cut, then a
light one, then two more light ones, then he files it,
and then he tries it, and then his chin goes up and his
eyebrows come down, for his mandrel fits like a mouse's
tail in a flour barrel, as he expresses it between oaths.
Now it luckily happens that he has only turned up
about three inches in length, so all he has to do is to
turn another three inches and get a good fit, you know.
He is bound to have it big enough this time. Soon it
is done, and he proceeds to drive it in. The thing he
drives through is always an old gear brought in from
the scrap pile years ago. The hole in the aforesaid
gear is so big that it would let his job right through,
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS. 219
so he hunts up something smaller to lay on it. He
finds it necessary to use two or three of these under-
lays, so as to reduce size properly. He has built up
a cob house about two feet high, and, ten chances to
one, one of the " cobs " is a nicely-bored piece of fin-
ished work. No matter; he puts his job on top of the
pile and sticks the mandrel in. Then he hunts up a
nut always. He don't find any loose one, unless he
takes the one he uses for a candlestick and keeps
stored on the inside of his lathe. He finally takes
one off one of his bolts, and carefully balances it
on the craggy, rough end of his mandrel. Then
he calls Dix to hold the mandrel. Dix does so, and
Walker goes for the sledge and comes down on the
thing three times. Too tight. He lets Dix go, and,
turning the thing end for end, sets the nut on the
mandrel, and comes down heavy to drive the mandrel
out. Mind you, he is getting mad all this time, for he
is having bad luck. He strikes a crooked lick and
knocks the whole cob house down, and the hot-pressed
nut splits, one half just missing Lambert's ear on its
way to the foundry, the other half goes out the front
door into the street. He erects the structure again,
and fishes out his candlestick. After knocking the
greasy nut off two or three times, he gets his mandrel
out and files it smaller. He is getting a little bit mad-
der. Now he takes it out, takes the dog off, goes and
hunts up the nut under a vise bench, and starts the
mandrel. It drops in clear up to the shoulder. He
was too mad when he filed it last. He is entirely too
much out of patience now to turn up a new place, so
he goes to a vise, and, screwing his mandrel in it, he
proceeds to raise a burr all over it with a prick-punch.
Everything is lovely now. He cools down and fin-
ishes his job, but in the meantime his job slips once or
twice, and he is compelled to prick-punch some more.
220 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAl/S LETTERS.
When he gets done he throws the mandrel under his
lathe. The next time he uses that mandrel he will
want it a quarter of an inch smaller, and will make it
so, and he may or may not have luck in making his fit.
But still the necessity of drilling the centers, or of
squaring that other end, does not force itself upon
him. In a month or so this mandrel has been made
to do for some size by every lathesman in the shop.
It is one and seven-eighths at one end, and three-
quarters at the other, for it has been used for every-
thing it could be made to answer for. In course of
time Walker is looking for a mandrel about an inch
and a half. He has his job with him and is search-
ing under Moore's lathe, and finds this identical man-
drel, and, as good luck will have it, there is a place on
it which exactly fits his job. He is smart enough to
put it in the lathe to see how much the small and
limber end of it has got bent during late drivings.
He finds that no part is true, and that no two parts
are true with each other, which shows that it got a
new bend each time it was used. The part he wants
is almost true. He can see it wink but thinks it will
do. He uses it. Here are five botches at once : first,
a mandrel which is not true ; second, an inch and a
half mandrel which must use a two-inch dog, and
which is made very limber by having part of its length
three-quarters of an inch in diameter; third, a man-
drel without drilled centers, etc. ; fourth, a mandrel
with such a rough surface-fit that it must be driven
with a sledge; fifth, a machinist who will play unneces-
sary parts in the business; and, sixth, a shop owner
so reckless of money as to pay each year for mandrel
turning, an amount which would three times over buy
a good set of hardened and ground steel arbors. Take
your note-book into the shops. If you have a good set
of mandrels they will save big money, and will make
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
221
your sizes uniform, because the boys will get into the
habit of making a two-inch hole two inches. Such
mandrels are ground after hardening, and the surface
fit is such that a lead or copper hand hammer will
drive a three-inch mandrel for twenty-four inch work.
When Walker wants a mandrel he would know just
what to get, and when he would go after a dog he
would get the right one, instead of lugging his job all
round the shop to find a mandrel, and then lugging
the mandrel around to find a dog to fit the big end.
Don't dream of making nice mandrels. Go and buy
them the same as you would buy wood screws, from
some one fixed for making them. * * * *
MANDREL FACTORY
222 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL'S LETTERS.
CHAPTER XXVI.
FINDING ONE'S VOCATION. HOW BOB DID IT. PATTERN
MAKING IN COUNTRY SHOPS. DEVICES BORN TOO SOON.
* * * * Men, and especially mechanics, are al-
ways wiser and better after making -some big mistake.
They are in some degree insured against the mistake
in the future. The best machinists it has ever been my
good luck to fall in with, have been men who have
gone at the trade after a long experience at something
else. A man don't find out what is in him till he has
wrestled with circumstances for a short lifetime.
* One of the cant expressions of a narrow-
headed mechanic is, " Every man to his trade." Such
men are very jealous of the success of any one who
slips into their craft edgewise.
A short-sighted father grabs his fourteen-year-old
boy, who has never shown any loud preferences for
the vocation, and shoves him by force into some trade.
The boy goes at it passively, and without becoming in
any degree a smart mechanic. He learns the use of
tools and regular methods of procedure in regular
cases. In irregular cases he is a mere cipher, and
don't count. After a term of three or four years, he
asumes the dignities of a journeyman. He knows what
he has learned, and nothing else. He gets the lowest
pay which a boss dares pay to a full-fledged workman,
and that is, maybe, a trifle more than he is worth. He
works on for years, but is nothing but a skilled ma-
chine which must be adjusted for every new condition.
This man grumbles at the poor pay a good mechanic
has to work for. Some one suggests that perhaps he
is not a good mechanic, and points to real mechanics
around him who, by some hocus pocus, get a great
deal better pay than he does. Then this stock me-
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS. 223
chanic looks around, and indignantly protests against
Smith, who has only worked half as long at the trade
as he has, getting more pay than himself; and he
points derisively to Jones as a man who never did serve
a time at the trade; and to Robinson, who was an ap-
prentice a month ago.
These three men get better pay than he does, and
these three men are infinitely better mechanics than he
will ever be. The probabilities are that he has struck
the wrong trade, and will never be one of the best, or
even ordinary, elements of it. Such men are to be
pitied.
* * * * The only hope for them is, that they will dis-
cover some vocation which they can excel in, and will
go at it. A man of middle age, who has had a long,
even if unpleasant, experience in hard work in certain
branches, can go at a new trade and be excellent in a
month, perhaps. The manipulation of tools, the knowl-
edge of materials, and the general routine of mechanics'
work, is similar in many respects.
A good marble cutter will make a better vise hand
in a machine shop in one month than a printer will in
two years. No mechanic ought to blush to use his
own judgment in such matters, and, even after years
of hard tugging, cut loose from a bondage inflicted by
a short-sighted guardian, and go at something which
the mature judgment of manhood tells will be success-
ful. This mutual switching around of good men who
have got into the wrong holes, will finally get each
man into the right place. Whenever one mechanic,
good or bad, sees a man coming into his trade from
some other trade, he can feel justified in giving him a
welcome, instead of muttering " Every man to his
trade."
* * Once in a while you hear some despond-
ent workman say, " There's the trade I ought to have
224 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
gone at," and once in a while I say to such a man,
"Go at the trade now." Forty years is none too old
to go at the thing a man feels he is cut out for. Every
man is entitled to a little ordinary every-day success
before he dies.
* * * * Because a man, after fifteen years' hard
work, has failed to make a tip-top blacksmith of him-
self, it don't follow that he won't make a good surgeon,
or dentist, or executive officer, in almost any business;
and there's many a good blacksmith, if he only knew
it, who is trying to accomplish something as a preacher,
or lawyer, or what not. I say that " Every man to his
trade" is a good motive, and I say that it is every
man's privilege at any time in life to find out what his
trade is.
* * * * This whole thing is brought to my mind
by acquaintance with pattern makers, and I expect
every one who has had anything to do with pattern-
makers has had my experience. There is not a shop
in the country employing half a dozen pattern-makers
which don't get into a pinch once in a while, and have
to put a carpenter, or a cabinet-maker on pattern work
to tide over a rush. After a while one of these wood
butchers will come around and say he would like a
steady job under instructions. He wants to quit his
present trade and go at one he believes he will excel in.
He's my man every time. If you want a good pat-
tern-maker, this is the kind of stuff they are made of,
and it is generally a hundred per cent, better than ten-
year-old stock that don't know what it was made for,
and won't know for thirty years more.
* * * * There's always a foolish kick in the
pattern-shop when this man goes to work. The pat-
tern makers want to know why this man don't stay at
his trade. The answer is simple : It's because he don't
want to.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAl/S LETTERS. 225
This man comes with years of experience in working
wood with wood tools, and with a mature mechanical
judgment in the perception of things. That he has
good sense is proven by his choosing his vocation be-
fore he dies.
* * * * j know these pattern makers like a
book. There's Bob, for instance, is an old pattern-
maker, and the best one I ever had anything to do
with. You take your drawings to Bob and he makes
the patterns. And the patterns are right, too. You
don't have to measure to see if there's shrinkage here,
and rappage there. You don't have to find out if this
core will cut through where you don't want it to, or if
that core is in such form that it can't be set. You
need have no anxiety about sizes, or about bosses com-
ing in the right place, or about sharp work where you
want fillets. You need not bother yourself about the
matter at all.
If your drawing was right the patterns will be right,
and you can order them into the foundry without any
anxiety, or fussing, or wondering. It's Bob's business
to make patterns which will make castings like the
drawings, and he understands his business, and attends
to it. He don't stand around with sharp tools and
wait for instructions how to make this, how to part
that, how to dowel this, where to glue that, and when
to put these rapping plates on, and where to put cores,
and where to draw in green sand, and all such. That's
his business. Bob's a pattern-maker, and a good one,
and I defy any pattern-maker to prove Bob off in any
points of his trade. Did Bob's father kick him into
the pattern-makers' trade? Not a bit of it. Bob was
a steamboat carpenter, and went to pattern-making
when past forty, I guess, because he saw he was the
man for the trade.
* * * * Bob is one of these men who don't like
226 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL*S LETTERS.
to see any man come to work in a pattern shop, who is
not a " regular pattern-maker."
* * * * j never w in } e t up on my admiration
for the rare pattern-maker who can make good, nice,
everlasting patterns when required to, but who also
knows how to nail a thing together in ten minutes, if
you only want one casting off the pattern.
In the small jobbing shops in scattered western
towns, the proprietor is generally a machinist, and the
pattern-maker is a man with responsibilities. If the
pattern-maker is a good man, the concern may suc-
ceed, but if he is a poor stick the institution is bound
to fail.
There are no draughtsmen around these shops, no
lordly engineers with square roots, and cube roots, and
logarithms, and torsion equations, and density tables,
and all such.
The pattern-maker is generally the man called on
to furnish the high art for the establishment.
The foundries connected with these shops take off a
heat of about eighteen hundred pounds once or twice
a week, and about nine-tenths of the work is cast from
patterns made for that heat, so you will see that this
pattern-maker he almost always works alone has
his hands full. Thursday is the casting day, and five
o'clock is the hour set for the fan to be put on. Tues-
day night the pattern-maker will say he is ready, and
you will find him working on some pulley pattern he
has been trying to add to the set for a year.
Wednesday morning the proprietor begins to think
of things which must be made this heat, and repair
jobs will come in a rush, and by noon on Wednesday
our pattern-maker will have laid that everlasting pul-
ley pattern away, and will have mapped out a lot of
patterns for the heat to-morrow, which would keep a
common, high toned shop, full of pattern-makers, busy
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS. 227
for a week. It don't seem to make any difference
what comes, or how much of it, bevel gears, spur
gears, odd boxes, thimble skeins, sash weights, a face-
plate, a cross head, a stop valve, a lamp post, a stove
grate, a dumb bell, reaper cranks, concaves, step-
plates, couplings, and what not. He don't get any
dinner or supper, maybe, and the fan belt don't get
on till six o'clock; but Friday morning he will get
down that eternal pulley pattern again. He has prob-
ably put in six weeks' solid time on that pulley pattern
and it isn't done yet, but he has done some " odd job-
bing " in the meantime.
* * * * \\r e are no t very conservative in this
country, but still there is such a thing as a device
being born too soon. The people won't have it, and a
wise manufacturer sometimes lets it alone. The bril-
liant and radical inventor will sometimes find his off-
spring entirely too perfect for the time. Its very per-
fection of adaptation implies, probably, a radical
departure from well-understood plans, and, too often,
as a consequence, the very perfection of adaptation to
function involves a perfect inadaptation to common
surroundings.
* * * * If there was ever a short cut made all
of a sudden, it was when the direct-acting steam pump
was invented. As far as my knowledge goes, Mr.
Worthington is the real inventor of this radical con-
trivance.
He found steam moving a piston in a straight line;
he found pistons moving water in a straight line. The
cause was as he found it; the result was as he desired
it. But what a world of complicated, intermediate
machinery he found between these simple terminal
elements! He straightened the matter out, discarded
the entire intervention, and produced a machine which
consisted of a single transmitting piece of metal, mov-
228
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
ing in the simple and identical lines of inevitable force
and required work.
* * * * All this was many years ago in 1840.
During the intervening years the steam pump has,
without any real material change in structure, found
its true place in the busy world and in the appreciation
of users, but every day since its birth has been an up-
hill struggle for recognition, owing to the simple fact
that the new pump was not enough like the old
pumps.
* * * * The present value of the steam pump
as distinguished from ancient donkey pumps is too
great to calculate, but it required fourteen new gen-
erations of steam users to provide it with any reason-
able welcome. Mr. Worthington might have saved
himself a world of trouble and mental anguish by not
inventing a direct-acting steam pump at all.
In later years, after the struggling infant has forced
its way into popular use, hundreds of. wise men see a
good business in steam pumps.
I will venture the opinion that if Mr. Worthington
had it all to do over again, he would commence at the
other end.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS. 229
CHAPTER XXVII.
COARSE-GRAINED FOREMEN. THE CHRONIC MISTAKER.
THE BLUNDERER. THE ANXIOUS MAN. THE MAN
WHO KNOWS. THE MULLET-HEAD. CLIQUES IN THE
SHOP. BENCHES FOR THE NORTH SHOP.
* * * * I really think it a good plan for work-
men to make shops too hot to hold coarse-grained
foremen. No proprietor in the land ever changed
from a pirate to a gentleman without finding his costs
reduced.
Tubal had a foreman who could not possibly disap-
prove without insulting. He ought to have known
better, because every man should know that friends
are desirable, and enemies not. Still, this fellow could
not help it. There was not a man in the shop in sym-
pathy with him. Every man looked upon him as a
man to be shunned and thwarted. He knew nothing
of what was going on, and could do no real execution.
The men muttered and drew their pay and worked as
little as possible. Tubal found himself almost driven
from the market by the high cost of his work, so he
kept dinging at the foreman, who told him the men
were bad. Tubal let him go, and got Jimmy in his
place. Jimmy went into the shop, and, without dis-
charging a man, cut down the costs twenty per cent.,
by simply increasing the good feeling of the men.
It certainly does not pay to work men
who have to be eternally and forever cursed into their
work, and it is certainly as true, that it don't pay to
follow such a course with men who don't need it. The
dollar-and-cent view will take the big, big D, out of the
shop.
* If a good man does a bad job or breaks
something, he is ashamed of himself and will remem-
230 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
her. A foreman should be smart enough to appreciate
this side of human nature and act accordingly. Let
him assume that the man don't care, and begin to blast
him, and the man will never care again as long as he
works for that foreman.
* * * * There is a certain species of machinist
who makes mistakes always and continuously. His
ten feet four inches and a quarter is an eighth short or
long. His inch and a half is in the neighborhood only
of an inch and a half. He forgets the washer on this
job, and don't cut the thread up far enough on that
one. He drills this hole too far from the edge of a
flange, and drills that tap hole the size of the outside
of the tap, and he never gets a hole the right size for
a tap, and he never chucks a job true enough, and he
sets a lathe over, so as to turn a crowning pulley very
much more tapering on one side than on the other ;
he won't make a key bear on the sides, and no wrench
will fit all round on the bolt head he files up ; he taps
holes crooked and runs pipe taps in too deep ; he cuts
shoulders up a sixteenth too far, and makes the driv-
ing fit on the wrong part of the job. He is a good
workman, for all these things are nicely done. He
simply forgets or neglects, or something or other, and
is a nuisance, for you never can depend on him. When
he lays a job down, you never can have the assurance
that it is right until you measure every thing about it.
The work that such a man does costs lots of mone)',
because you must provide a special supervision over
every thing he does. Such a man will turn a foreman's
hair gray if he lets him keep on. He never will get
any better as long as he works in the same position.
To cure this man, reduce his pay and put him at the
very foot of the ladder, telling him to raise his own
pay by learning to be "sure." No men continually
liable to small mistakes around me, if you please.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS. 231
* * * * Another species works decisively and
surely. When he goes for a size, he gets it as close
as the case calls for. He don't slouch dimensions.
You never think of running over his sizes. You know
they are what you ordered, but once in six months
this man will make some grand blunder. He will turn
something to eleven and a half inches which should
be twelve and a half inches, but that eleven and a half
inches will be a good and accurate size. He will get
an engine four inches out of line, but he will never get
it a sixteenth out of line. He will try to raise a
smokestack under one of his guy ropes, but his rope
will not be a foot too short. He will get things right
wrong, and fit up his steam pipe out of one-inch pipe,
and make his feed pipe out of four-inch pipe. He will
cut a wide rubber belt four feet too short, but never
four inches.
He will get on his two-thread gears to cut fourteen
to the inch, but he will never get the fifteen-thread
gears on. He will bore the taper hole in a piston
wrong end to, but it will be a good hole and the right
size. He will leave a monkey wrench inside of a
steam cylinder when he puts the head on, but he
won't leave any small stuff in there. He will do one
of these outrageous things two or three times a year,
and one of these blunders never teaches him to guard
against the next. Between blunders, the blunderer is
invariably all right. You can depend upon him. His
blunders are so obvious that they will not pass into
misfits. The blunderer never makes little mistakes,
and the chronic " mistaker " never reaches the dignity
of the blunderer. Give me the blunderer every time.
* * * * Another man is awfully cautious, care-
ful and sure. It is painful to watch him. He calipers a
fit, turns his work nearly to size, hesitates, doubts, and
goes through the whole calipering process again.
232 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL*S LETTERS.
When done, he will ache for a chance to try his work
to see how it will fit. He measures everything twice
and then isn't sure about it. These anxious men are
never sure of anything. The more pains they take to
assure- themselves, the less sure they are. They have
no confidence in themselves. No decision, no boldness.
The thing grows on them, and they grope their way
through life. When this man locks up his tool box at
night he must always go back and put the key in the
lock to see whether he locked it or not.
* * * * Another kind of a chip is the man who
never becomes so preoccupied with a thing that he
doubts details. He is a man of bold and decided
action. He has self confidence enhanced by self con-
fidence. Watch him caliper a job. He knocks his inside
calipers with a motion that means something. They
move an inch blow. The last hard blow is lighter, but
decisive. Then come the gentle strokes, soft and deli-
cate, but effective. Finally, he gets the fit, and when
he does he leaves instanter. He has got all he came
after. He goes to his lathe and sets his inside calipers,
and when he gets them right he stops trying to see if
they are right; he knows they are. Then he tries the
job in the lathe. Good deal to come off. He gives
the crank a pronounced turn and takes a big cut over
the job. Does he hold his calipers in his hand, and
think about the fit in the mean time? Not a bit of it.
He starts his new cut, tries his calipers, and sees that
he has the right size; lays the calipers down, and let's
her go. His mind is now free. He don't wonder if
his job is the size of his outsides; he don't wonder if
his outsides are the size of the insides; he don't wonder
if the insides are the size of the hole; he don't wonder
if the " feel " in the hole was just about right; he don't
wonder about anything. He knows what he has done.
He will follow up his job with his calipers, and keep
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS. 233
the thing turning straight, and, when done, he will lay
the job aside, and don't care a cent who the first man
is to try his work together. He don't know what relief
is, because he don't know what anxiety is. There is no
luck, or ill-luck, in the universe for him. A man who
makes caliper fits with confidence holds the universe
in his hands, and shapes his future with effective
strokes. When he raises a sledge hammer, he hits
where he intends to. He don't wonder where that
hammer is coming down.
* * * * Another machinist is the mullet head.
You call him a machinist, and he calls himself one,
because he has worked at the trade about fifteen years.
He has no skill, no pride, no taste, no knowledge, no
judgment, no nothing.
He is too obtuse to reason with. He will do what
you want done, if you can hammer it into his head
what you want. If you can't do that, you had better
give him some other job. He has no pride to shame,
so there is no use talkingto him. Inert matter becomes
sentient and independent in this man's hands. You
may pick out a three-quarter drill for him, but, sure as
fate, it will drill a thirteen-sixteenths hole. He is
stupid and ignorant, and that is all there is of it. If you
set him to turning a grindstone, you must fix a ratchet
on it, or it will be as apt to turn one way as the other.
This is the fellow who makes a swearing man of your
Sunday-school superintendent. Swearing at such a
man is a waste of talent. It ruins the swearer, and has
no effect on the swearee. The man is out of place, and
has chosen the wrong trade. Find a job more suitable
for his abilities, such as tightening up fish bolts on a
railroad. You can do nothing with such labor round a
shop. If you pay him money enough to just support
him in his mean, unambitious way, he still cannot give
you value received.
234 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
* * * * Qf a n t h e b ac i things in the shop, the
worst is the " clique." Workmen, foremen, superin-
tendents, managers and proprietors, feel its baleful
influence. There is but one way to circumvent a
" clique," and that is to stamp out every man compos-
ing it. If you are superintendent, you owe it to your
employer to see that no lack of unity exists, so far as
your position is concerned. Use your authority justly
and firmly. Give shelter to no vipers, and don't han-
dle thistles with a tender hand. If there is an influ-
ence or an atmosphere which fails to co-operate with
you in your duty, which clogs every movement you
make, or which submits sullenly to fate, purify the
thing at once. You fail in your duty to your superiors,
if you permit the thing for any reason whatsoever.
Put the question fairly, and discharge every man who
hangs a lip. If one of the members of the "clique " is
your superior, state your case to him and draw your
pay. Be king; be a good king, deserve loyalty, and
remove all disloyal influences.
* * * * j am studying about what kind of
benches to put into the new North shop. I am sick of
the usual things; they are too convenient to throw
things under, for one thing, and I have about made up
my mind to have them wainscotted, or sealed up, let-
ting the bottom of the " sealing" drop back, say eight
inches. The benches gotten up by Brown & Sharpe
are the neatest I have ever seen, and look as though
they had been studied over. I am prejudiced against
drawers in benches. Our men will pile files in them,
and do the files more damage than their regular use.
Then they will throw in chipping chisels and hammers
and wrenches and squares and soap and scrap iron
and scrap brass and odd pipe fittings and sausages and
sheet rubber, and I don't know what all. I am studying
on a wall cupboard to take the place of the drawers, and
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
235
if I succeed in getting up anything to suit my ideas
of the proper thing, you shall hear of it. While I was
visiting the shop of Brown & Sharpe, I mentioned my
objections to drawers, and Mr. Viall, the superintend-
ent, got the keys from the men and we made the grand
rounds. Yale locks to start on think of that, you
who use padlocks ! and drawers that you could ac-
tually draw right open without any hammering or
fussing. And when those drawers were opened, they
looked as nice and clean inside as any apprentice's
tool box. Here a neat clean sliding tray for scales and
calipers and small tools generally; here a division for
chisels, and here another one for files. These drawers
didn't remind me of anything I had ever seen in a
machine shop before, nor the men at work in the shop
didn't either.
If they would let Wycoff have those drawers about
a week, they would not recognize them, and would
not want them back again. Oh, if I were only an
artist, wouldn't I like to send you an interior view of
one of Wycoff's bench drawers, just to show some of
the boys the difference between machinists and
machinists! * * * *
236 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
PROCRASTINATION IN SHOPS. INGRAHAM's OPENING DAY.
MAKING REPAIRS. SYSTEM AND ORGANIZATION.
SICK LATHES, AND HOW TO CURE THEM. SHORT-
WINDED PLANERS. A POINT IN SACKETT's SYSTEM.
* * * * How often, as we are engaged in our
daily work, we find things wrong and make up our
minds to make this thing or that thing right the first
idle day, or when times get dull. And how often do
we correct things when an idle day does come ? Not
once ! I never was one to believe in the moral utility
of rules or texts in a machine shop, but I believe a
shop would not be a bad place to hang up a worsted
motto bearing the golden words, " Now is the accepted
time."
* * * * The owner or manager of a shop daily
finds some detail out of gear, some big thing or some
little thing. He thinks it ought to be fixed, but not
now some other time ; and, as a consequence, it never
does get fixed unless it happens to be one of those
things which comes to a stoppage some day and has
to be fixed. Then, of course, it is in a hurry, and gets
cobbled instead of being fixed sure enough. Every
man around a shop, ordinate and subordinate, expe-
riences the same thing. Johnny, a two years' boy at a
lathe, thinks it about time to tear the apron of his
lathe to pieces and oil it up ; but not now, wait till
his job is done, then he will do it before he gets an-
other job. Not much, Johnny. You will never fix
that apron till it sticks and can't be worked, and then
you will have to do it just when you don't want to,
and when your judgment tells you the time can least
be spared.
The foreman thinks the drill sockets are getting in
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS. 237
bad shape. They ought to be overhauled, but not
now. When ? When work becomes extra rushed and
these same sockets get on a strike all at once ; then is
the time you will do it, and then is the time you will
be too much rushed to half do it.
The superintendent thinks he will put a new fore-
man in the foundry, for he has found that a slight
rush of work throws his present man off his balance,
and reduces his capacity just when it should be en-
hanced. He is a nice man, and a good foreman within
his small and inelastic field, but we are liable to emer-
gencies, and this man must go. Not now, of course,
but when ? When the emergency comes, and the
foundry is driven, and the old man won't do, then the
new man must come and enter upon new duties under
the most unfavorable circumstances.
The stockholders say, " We must absorb the Toggle
Works ; they want to sell and we must soon find some-
thing to take the place of Harding's orders which are
to leave us." But not now. Oh, no ! We must wait
till Harding has been gone a month and things look
thin, and the Toggle Works, with eyes as good as
ours, know how essential it is that we buy their busi-
ness at their price.
* * * * It has been my fortune to be a hand on
the opening day in several little shops, and right here
my mind goes back to Ingraham's, and I must tell a
story. Ingraham started a little shop away off out of
the world. The inhabitants had never seen melted
iron, or much of anything else, and he had things
arranged to make his first heat an occasion of import-
ance in the town. Grand announcement flourish of
trumpets circulars of invitation to the best folks in
town lemonade brass band ice cream raised seats
for the ladies, and all such. The day came, so did
the people. The fire had been lighted and the cupola
238 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL/S LETTERS.
charged. Ingraham superintended, and explained, and
smiled acknowledgments of many congratulations.
But the iron wouldn't come down, and never did
come down till the bottom was knocked out. Ingra-
ham was a bachelor and could be confused sometimes,
which may account for the iron being under the fuel.
* * * * But, aside from music and ice cream, I
remember that shops within my experience were al-
ways started with the intention of fixing things better
after the thing got moving, and I never saw anything
fixed till a radical change became imperative. A lathe
is speeded too fast. The proper pulley had not come,
and the main shaft was ready to go up, so a larger
pulley was put on to drive the lathe. Was the right
pulley put on when it did come ? Not much. It went
into stock, and in two years some lathesman insisted
on having that pulley changed, if he was to run the
lathe and do lots of work.
Thick stuff gives out, and two-and-a-half inch stuff
is used for a couple of vise benches temporarily, of
course, but they danced tools and work off for years,
till Dennis himself happened to use one of the vises,
and found out what the boys had to put up with.
There must be a foundation under that planer, of
course ; anybody would know that, but we can start it
up, you know, and fix the foundations when the ma-
sons are here again. Yes, I know. Masons come and
masons go, but that planer goes on for ever.
* * * * The only time to do things is when the
consciousness that they are necessary arrives. When
we have nothing else to do, we don't want to do things.
That's human nature set to music in the Arkansas
Traveler, and brought to mind each day in the shop.
An excellent rule is, to do things right, and stop when
they are done right, and the rule is justified by the
simple fact that it is almost always cheaper.
Ill I I < Mill; I , Jim ^ZT^
1
I
I
I
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL*S LETTERS. 241
* * * * I have set up many engines, cutting and
fitting every pipe, and I, at one time, was the worst
slouch that ever did such work. My ambition seemed
to be to get lines of pipe in position and get things
started. If I had doubts of a pipe joint I would say to
myself, "I guess that will do; if it won't, I will fix it."
Soon every joint was made on the same plan. Of
course, the doubt was only settled when steam was
let on, and then the thing got " started " under a cloud
of steam which would even prevent inspection. Then
the whole thing had to be gone over. Common sense
overtook me one day, and I changed my tactics, and
settled all doubts about pipe joints when I made the
joints. I saved time, money and good nature by the
conversion.
* * * * If repairs are to be made, I think it
cheaper to make them at once, even in a rush of busi-
ness, than to await an idle day which we hope will
never come. If a shop starts with loose joints, prema-
ture or temporary arrangements, or lack of system, it
will run so till a new shop is built.
Few men have the foresight or money to provide for
everything, but the omissions referred to are seldom
dictated by economy or ignorance.
* * * * It is a notorious fact that a millwright
will stay on one job as long as there are any induce-
ments social, political, financial, geographical, relig-
ious or otherwise to do so. He only quits to go on
a better job. This is a long and expensive way to
reach good results, but we seldom find in a mill any
temporary or shiftless executions of the original
plan.
* * Tell a hap-hazard manager of system
and organization, and you make him sick. He thinks
you lay out more work for him than is involved in the
regular business which your system is simply an ad-
242 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
junct of. The fact is, you tell him too many novel
things at once, and he thinks all hands must quit real
work and devote themselves to keeping your red tape
chalk line straight.
Not so. System is not work, but is simply a law of
action for reducing work. It does not require special
executors, but permits few to accomplish much. It
loads no man with labor, but lightens the labor of each
by rigidly defining it. Hard work begins when system
relaxes. System never, under any circumstances, in-
terferes with variations in human action, but includes
them. Elasticity is not a quality of system. Compre-
hensiveness is. System is the result of two rigid laws :
a place for everything and everything in its place, and
specific lines of duty for every man. The laws being
written, understood and executed, lighten the respon-
sibility of every man. In many shops half the things
are everybody's business and never done ; the others
are nobody's business and half done.
Law without execution is no law, and in the shop
we find empty law adds to illegal work.
Many shops let their system drop during the hard
times, and when things are picking up they wonder
why their capacity is so limited. I know one excellent
shop which had a tip-top pattern system, in which
there was a fixed responsibility for everything, and no
dependence placed on the memory of any man. A
stranger could enter the place and receive five min-
utes' instruction which would enable him to find any
pattern of any piece of three hundred machines.
Those instructions would be : " Each machine has a
short symbol as shown on its drawings, and every
piece has a number also shown. Each pattern or piece
or scrap is stamped with the symbol and number.
The pattern storeroom contains all patterns not in use
or being repaired, and shelves are symbolized to cor-
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS. 243
respond with their symbols. The pattern storeroom
has a sign on the door."
With such instructions, a stranger could be given
any drawing and asked for a piece shown thereon.
He could bring it in ten minutes, even if totally unac-
quainted with the premises, providing the piece was at
home. If he didn't find the pattern, he would find a
slate telling him to call at foundry, or pattern shop, or
at some malleable foundry a hundred miles away. A
simple arrangement this, and it did not cost ten cents
a year, and saved many dollars.
As simple and satisfactory plans pervaded foundry,
machine shop, blacksmith shop, wood shop, boiler
shop, storeroom, wareroom and office, and more work
was done by less men with less hard work than one
often sees.
* * * * But the man who organized this thing
was wanted elsewhere, and went. He had been gone
five years, and has organized another concern which
has, within the last few weeks, had to buy a railroad
to use up its earnings.
A few days ago I visited the first concern, and found
that the organizer had carried away the statute books,
and the system had gone to the bow-wows. There
were patterns in the pattern room, in place and out of
place, with marks and without marks. There were
patterns stored in the pattern shop, in the drawing
room, in the drawing vault, in the storeroom, and I
don't know but elsewhere, and there were castings
stored in the foundry, and casting room, and machine
shop, and wareroom. There is no one man about the
place who could find a piece of pattern or casting with-
out a scientific search over the whole place, or an
inquiry as to its whereabouts. The short cut, of course,
would be to ask some one supposed to know, who
would tell you, or send you to some one else who
244 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
might know where the particular piece was. If some
subordinate would get sick, the shop would kill him
with business messages.
* * * * p ew men can organize, and they do
wrong if they fail to leave the law behind them. In
the above case, the owners could say to a new execu-
tive officer, "Take this and maintain it." As it was,
" this " had gone with its maker. I never heard of
anything great being accomplished in productive,
legal, military, naval or social art without organiza-
tion, and I never knew organization to fail to result in
economy. Of the detail of the law, and of examples
of organization in shops in this country, I may write
you hereafter.
* * * * Printed rules stuck up in a shop are
objectionable and hurtful, because, instead of defining
a man's duties, they dictate his conduct.
Monarchies exist on the ability of the educated few
to dictate and enforce good conduct among the igno-
rant masses. Republics look to the self-dictated good
conduct of the masses. Specific rules imply license
beyond, and, as a consequence, monarchies don't dare
to run a bell-rope through a railway train, or leave
rules of conduct out of the shop.
If you want to elevate the morals of your shop and
of republican citizens, cut the conduct clauses from
your duty regulations, and kick every man out who
has not sense enough to " conduct " himself. * * * *
If an unfortunate mortal finds his shop full of con-
sumptive lathes, he immediately sets about remedying
the matter, that is, if he has any competition in his
business. Intelligent labor will double the product of
a lathe, but such skill can work the same changes in a
lathe having proper power, so something must be done
with the machine itself. If the lathe is stiff enough to
stand the racket, its power may be increased with very
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS. 245
little trouble and with no expense. Inquiry will show
that the fault is in the beltage of the cone. The pro-
portion between belt velocity and cutting velocity is
wrong. If the lathe is run slowly enough, there will
appear to be power enough for the cut. This results
from the increased velocity of the belt, but behold
the cut is too slow ! It is known that the cutting tool
will bear a velocity of twenty feet per minute, and
here we have but, say, twelve, which means that forty
per cent, of the lathesman's wages is wasted, and would
be well invested in a better lathe. If, in this case, the
speed of the countershaft be increased sixty per cent.,
the lathe will be found to have sufficient power at the
proper speed, but it will also be found that the lathe
will not do business at all satisfactorily upon its full
swing or upon large diameters. This is bad, but is the
best that can be done with such a lathe, for, owing to
wrong design in the back gearing, the belt is incapable,
under any circumstances, of doing the proper amount
of work upon large diameters. The change in
speed of countershaft costs only a change in line shaft
pulleys, and makes what power the belt may have
available for work, and within the new limits of swing,
the lathe will yield an increase of product in a year,
which will buy a new lathe and allow the old one to be
strained through the cupola. As such cases are apt to
occur in every shop, it might be well to give a math-
ematical rule here for changing the speed of the counter
shaft, but experience tells me that formulas are terri-
fying in most shops that is, the rank and file of the
shops in the country. A trial based on a hint is better
in many cases. It might be well to say, however, that
the point of least power in all lathes, of whatever make,
is when the belt is on the largest step of the lower cone.
Lathes doing general shop work should be capable of
work at the point of the tool, amounting to not less'
246 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAl/S LETTERS.
than thirty-five thousand foot pounds, and when the
belt is on the large step below, it should be capable of
transmitting somewhere near that amount of power.
The strain of a lathe belt will average forty-five
pounds for each inch in width. The width of the belt
in inches, multiplied by forty-five, gives its strain, and
35,000 divided by this strain gives the least velocity
in feet per minute at which the belt should run, and
also the surface velocity at which the small step of the
upper cone should run. Its proper speed can then be
found without trouble.
* * * * After the belt, the weak point in ill-con-
structed lathes is in the teeth upon the cone pinion, if
this pinion is of cast iron, as is the case on cheap
lathes, and in the teeth of the back gear wheel. The
final or front gearing of lathes is rarely found too
weak for their usual work. Once in a while a lathe
can be found with a "lump " in its speeds, that is, it
runs faster with the back gear in, than it did with the
back gear out and the belt on the large step below.
Many a man will run such a lathe a month before find-
ing this fault, and will gravely change his belt to suit
changes in size of work without noticing the effect.
It's much like the man who wound his clock every
night for fourteen years, before he found out that it
was an eight day clock. In lathes of the triple-geared
persuasion one may frequently find two of the afore-
said lumps in the speeds. Errors like these cost the
shop owner money continually, and it is well for him
that they are getting rare. Well-intending and well-
established tool builders are not guilty of sending out
such machines, the errors generally lying with those
builders who copy other makers' tools and recklessly
add some inspiration of their own, without re-calcu-
lating the whole thing ; such, for instance, as adding a
step to a properly designed cone, or changing the
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS. 247
proportion in one pair of the back wheels. The speeds
of a good lathe will increase in a geometrical ratio,
giving the smallest variations for the largest work, and
the power will be sufficient to tax a turning tool to its
utmost.
* * * * Short windedness in a planer is as
common as it is in small lathes. One seldom finds a
large planer refusing its duty, but five out of ten small
ones will positively refuse to carry a key seat tool three-
eighths wide, with a thirty-second depth of cut. This
chronic disability in planers is really more annoying
than in the case of lathes, for there are generally fewer
planers in the shop to appeal to in cases of emergency.
If a small lathe will not hold a cut, we may put the
job in a larger lathe, but in many shops there are no
larger planers.
* * * * Talking about system, Sackett, one day,
explained to me that he put work into a man's hands
and got it done. His foreman never need concern
himself about the matter. He himself, of course, had
nothing to do with the man; the foreman was his boss;
but the man had a duty which it was expected he
would do without either prompting or officiousness.
* * * * When I commenced this letter I intended
to tell you something of Sackett's plan, but I have
wandered off. Some other day will do, and then I
may tell you that when there is something to receive
in Sackett's shop, there is a person to receive it, and
when there is something to ship, it is somebody's easy
duty to ship it, and when there is something to order,
there is somebody to order it. A thing is not delayed
on account of some factotum being harassed with a
thousand duties, undefined but still accepted, and there
is no vast army of loafers with a single duty.
Sackett's place is run with less men than any similar
shop I ever saw, and each man has work enough to
248
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
keep him employed without harassing him. No man
complains of excessive burdens. One can work for
Sackett in the daytime and sleep o' nights. If any man
lays off to fish, or lies down to die, another man knows
his work and no interruption ensues. I have known of
patterns being made in a shop the second time, because
some man who carried the whole shop in his head had
gone into the army.
\c
FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS. 249
CHAPTER XXIX.
PAINT ON MACHINERY. FUNCTIONAL MACHINES. SHAFT-
ING AND HANGERS. A NEW WRINKLE IN SHAFTING.
A NEW TOOL WANTED.
* * * * lam studying up on the subject of paint,
as it relates to machinery. We can all remember when
all machinery had to be painted a grass green, and
decorated, maybe, with stripes of more or less contrast-
ing hues. The age of green paint was also the agd of
ornate curves and general elaborate design. Certain
prominent machine builders commenced designing
their machines on what I call the functional plan, that
is : each element was treated as regarded its duty only;
the form was such as was dictated by its functions only ;
lines of strength were placed in the lines of strain ;
and under no circumstances was a pleasing shape
sought after, save such as resulted from an apparent
adaptation of parts to their work, or what might be
termed the harmony of utility. Utilitarianism in
machine design ran so far, that simple machinery
began to look complicated. Instead of soft blending
lines, rigid protuberances became the order of the day,
a thickness of metal having been determined upon,
this thickness was maintained, and the exterior of a
casting presented every little projection and compli-
cated sinuosity which characterized the interior.
Bosses were sharply developed, flanges stood out
severely, and reinforcements were placed in plain view.
The Whitworth machines are a fair sample of this class.
American builders have followed, as far as they dared,
but none would carry the idea out entirely. Philadel-
phia builders would design an engine lathe with every
important part shaped to meet the essential require-
ments of function ; they would abuse the privilege they
250 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
had of making a thing ugly, but when they came to
the legs of the lathe, they attempted to gather in the
very sunlight of lighthearted beauty in design. A
cultivated pedal taste is not to be violated even by a
Philadelphian follower of Whitworth. Such designers
left off all attempts at exterior neatness, because it was
not essential to utility, and they left the striping off the
green paint for the same reason.
Then came that happy thought, steel-colored paint,
so called, because it had the color of raw steel. This
cok>r, on account of its light shade, developed shadows
in all details, and brought every line into plain view.
It unearthed errors in the surface of castings, and
developed a higher grade of foundry skill, and, coin-
cidently, brought to our notice the value of " filler."
* * * * Machines designed upon the functional
plan meet the approval of all cultivated mechanicSj
men who have a discriminating judgment, and are
capable of appreciating the rare beauties of purely
functional adaptation. The machine builder who seeks
his customers among such men will find peculiar satis-
faction in his commercial success, and will receive the
gratifying applause of his peers!
* * * * The thoughtless have been led to think
that this severe and rigid construction is essentially
cheap, because it looks cheap. The fact is that machin-
ery designed on this plan is essentially expensive, and
can never, under any conditions, compete in price with
machines equally well constructed, but designed on the
old composite plan.
The thoughtless adopt the functional plan, and design
their machines accordingly; they leave off the painted
stripes ; they leave off the features they have been
using solely for looks ; they leave off the green paint,
and attempt to get steel color, but find it has degen-
erated into a hideous, colorless blue; they send these
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS. 251
machines among an uncultivated class of patrons and
lose their trade.
* * * * The average machine purchaser of the
day is not a discriminating mechanic. He simply has
need of a certain machine. He applies to Brown by
letter, and places his order for a steam pump, perhaps.
Brown used to finish his work nicely and well, and used
to paint neatly and tastily. But he has got the fever,
and gone into the function business without thinking
who his customers are. He leaves off his nice finish,
because he says it does not add to the utility of his
steam pump. He leaves off his tasty painting, because
it does not add to the utility of his steam pump. He
leaves off the modulating lines, which, in having the
same strength, involved a little more metal, because
they did not add to the utility of his steam pump. I
don't understand why he don't leave off the fraudulent,
steel-colored paint, and let it go unpainted, for paint
does not add a particle to the utility of his steam
pump. The surfaces will rust and look bad, but the
surfaces are not moving surfaces, and good looks will
not add to the utility, etc. But one thing he soon finds
out. Good looks add to the utility of the steam-pump
business. Machine buyers are not foolish enough to
"think the less of a jewel, because the casket which
contains it is a beautiful one;" in fact, by the direction
of their purchases, they show that they are foolish
enough to prefer the beauty of appearance, even at
some sacrifice of utility. Now Brown, as a builder of
steam pumps, knows that it is a ticklish business. He
knows that each steam-pump builder retains his cus-
tomers by a very delicate tenure, and that they are
prone to run after strange gods. He sends his ugly,
functional steam pump to Smith, the purchaser. Smith
is no cultivated mechanic, and knows nothing of
pumps, steam or otherwise, but he knows a nice
252 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS.
machine when he sees it, as every body does, you know;
and when this pump reaches him he don't see one.
He is not favorably impressed. The pump may do.
That is the highest compliment he can pay it. Virtue
in machinery, to be apparent to Smith, must be upon
the outer surface. If this steam pump wins its way to
Smith's favor it must be a good one, indeed, for it
works against prejudice. If Smith had received an
elegant machine, something made to please as we'll as
to do, he would on its arrival unhesitatingly have taken
the thing to his bosom, and have said to friends: This
is a good machine. In that case, the pump must be a
poor one, indeed, to fail, for it has a friend by its side,
one who has committed himself in its favor, and who
will not eat his words, if he can make them come true.
* * * * As a user> i would prefer machines
designed on the functional plan. As a spectator, I
would prefer to see them; as a builder, I would prefer
to build them; as a seller, I would prefer to sell them.
But as a builder of machines for others' use, I
would prefer beauty enough to guard against neglect;
as a seller whose business must leave out sentiment, I
would have to sell machines, which would help to place
themselves in the good graces of the average unculti-
vated buyer. Questions: Does a beauty of appearance,
produced by what the world knows as paint, necessarily
destroy or detract from the functional utility of a
machine ? Does the first impression which a purchaser
forms of a machine add to or detract from the future
opinion of the machine? Is the average machine
buyer a cultivated mechanic, who can see merit, even
through steel-colored paint, or is he a man who has
the terms "nice" and "good" mixed in his mind?
Because I paint my work with a view to please the
average buyer, does it follow that the workmanship or
the design of forms is less correct ? If I turn out
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS. 253
machines known by myself to be correct, how many
long years of missionary labor must be expended in
bringing my customers to that view of things ? Won't
a little exterior ornamentation help to place my really
meritorious machines ? Is not the paint cheaper than
the missionary labor ? If the real merit of design and
workmanship goes with the paint, am I not doing as
correct a thing as if I left the paint off ? If I leave
the paint off, and act as missionary, don't those who
do paint, with or without merit under the paint, out-
sell me ? And when my missionary labors are com-
pleted, don't my rivals step in and enjoy the fruits
without the labor ? Don't proper painting tend to
cause the eye to wander all over a machine, and don't
dead painting, steel color for instance, cause the eye
to take in details separately ? For that reason, don't
I need to put a higher finish on details? . Does this
higher finish on details add any more to the utility than
paint on the general surface ? Isn't this extra finish of
details more expensive than the extra painting of the
whole ? What is the special virtue of steel-colored
paint ? Is steel-colored paint any longer steel-colored ?
Because one man has a well-established trade among
cultivated mechanics, is it any reason why I, who sell
to the aborigines, should build steel-colored, functional
machines ? My machinery being properly designed
and constructed, and made for an uncultivated market
should I paint such machinery with a view to a pleasing
effect in such market ?
* Some years ago a good many, happily
if a man happened to have a line shaft, and found
that his steam gauge must show twenty pounds be-
fore he could revolve the shaft, he thought little of it.
When he put up the building, he put up the clumsy
shaft with its common boxes bolted squarely up against
posts. The shaft was put up in line, and if it staid
254 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
so, well and good, and if it didn't stay so, well
and good. But in course of time, people began to
reduce the diameters of shafts and to increase their
velocities, and in course of time it got so a man could
revolve a long line shaft by hand, and finally the art
improved to that state which requires a shaft in such
nice shape that the merest trifle of force will turn it.
Such a result is attained by making the shaft round,
and straight, and small ; by making pulleys light and
in balance; and by making bearings in good style and
in perfect line. It is immaterial what the form of the
bearing is, so long as its wearing surface is in proper
shape, and its bore in line with its neighbors. Expe-
rience with shafting developed the fact that it was easy
to make a good box, but very difficult to get it into
line, if of ordinary bolted box form, and that settling
floors, etc., would soon disarrange all the fine adjust-
ments. The first step towards a nice device was to
arrange the boxes in a holder, so that the proper ad-
justment could be made by set screws. This rendered
erection an easy matter, and allowed the boxes te be
brought into general line, but it failed to provide for
bringing every part of every box into collimation.
That is, a true line might cut the axis of every box at
some point of the box's length, but there was nothing
to prevent the axis of each box assuming independent
angles. The adjustment provided consisted of vertical
and horizontal movements by screws, and the fault
above referred to was obviated by designing the box
in gimbal form, so that each box was universally self-
adjusting, so far as its individual axis was concerned.
Such boxes or hangers could be put up in a position
of approximate accuracy, and then brought into line
by means of the vertical and horizontal adjusting
screws, great care being taken to deal with the axis of
the box at the center of its length, or point of gimbal-
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS. 255
ling action. That being done, the balance of the box's
length would attend to itself.
Such hangers have never been improved upon, and
probably never will be. They contain erective and
corrective adjustments and self-adjusting features, as
far as attainable. But, along with the universal hanger,
has come the idea that they are self-adjusting and may
be put up recklessly. This is a grand mistake, for,
while the universal movement will generally prevent
corner or " cant " wear, it does not in the least reduce
the general ill effects of general bad alignment, and
there is no justification for putting such hangers up in
bad shape, and no justification for omitting any of the
facilities for adjustment. Some makers have adopted
the ball-and-socket hanger on account of its peculiarly
solid form, simplicity of structure and low cost, and it
is often copied under the impression that it possesses
all the virtues of the old gimbal hanger. When the
ball-and-socket hanger is up and in line, it is the real
equivalent of the gimbal hanger, but it lacks an im-
portant feature of convenience in erection and re-ad-
justment. The horizontal adjusting movement is omit-
ted altogether, and a substitute found in sledge-ham-
mer manipulations.
* * * * Speaking of line shafts, the Colt's Fire
Arms Co., of Hartford, have something peculiar in the
way of line shafts. There are many lines of many
hundred feet, and all the shafts are twelve inches in
diameter. The idea is to use no pulleys, but to run
the belts directly upon the shaft. The speed of driven
devices is arranged by using proper-sized receiving-
pulleys. The shaft is of cast iron, very light, and is
reduced to four inches at the bearings, which are about
twelve feet apart. The shaft, or drum, is made in
sections, each having an internal flange at each end.
Each journal is in spool form that is, it has a flange
256 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS.
at each end, and these journal flanges are bolted to
the drum flanges. There are no elastic features intro-
duced, the whole being as rigid as possible. Where
motion is transmitted from one line to another, pulleys
are used, the hubs being bored to fit the drum, the
same as if it was of the usual size. A pair of vertical
engines drive the initial shaft, and the line shaft is
caused to act as the crank shaft of the engines. Crank
discs are placed on the ends of the line shaft, and re-
ceive motion directly from the engines. A line shaft,
large enough to act as a driving pulley, will be a new
idea to many, and will be apt at once to suggest criti-
cism. It is evident that excellent intentions will some-
times fail, and that time will see many odd-sized pul-
leys strung upon this drum. Such pulleys might be
called lagging. We, who are used to putting a belt on
a dead pulley and then on the live one, will wonder
how they get along without the privilege.
* * * * I wish to ask if an invention is not called
for in the way of a good substantial, adjustable chuck-
drill, if such qualities may possibly be combined.
Chuck drills are generally made of flat steel or old
files, and thus far nothing has been gotten up which
will equal them in their peculiar capabilities.
Among agricultural implement makers it is the
main tool. Their expert boring hands put these ugly
looking drills through one-sided, rough-cored holes
dead true, a hand reamer finishing the job.
* * * I have noticed one queer thing about
chuck drilling. In the agricultural shops, where the
work is all rough, a green boy will be set to work at a
chucking lathe, instructed a short time in this work,
learns nothing else, and soon bores good, true holes
without any appeal to luck. He never even finds out
that his drills have a tendency to travel and run out.
On the other hand, the fine lathesman, working on nice
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
257
work, often uses these drills to follow cored holes or to
cut from the solid, but he never, even by chance, suc-
ceeds in getting one to go through straight. He never
seems to get the "swing" of the process. He never
acknowledges this, however, and attempts to console
himself by saying he only wanted to take the sand out
and didn't care whether it ran true or not. It will
always be found that such men set such a drill at
work with good resolutions to have it go through truly,
but the affair ends in good resolutions, and the drill
soon goes on its winding way as usual.
258 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL*S LETTERS.
CHAPTER XXX.
ELASTICITY OF WORKMEN. HOW CHORDAL GOT BOUNCED.
A GLORIOUS MECHANICAL TRAMP. RESURRECTING
SHOPS.
* * * * j)i(j y OU ever f^d that a lack O f elas-
ticity on the part of your workmen thwarted you in
your good intentions ? Have you not found out that
even American workmen get into a certain habit and
kick vigorously against any change ? This kick always
takes the form of contempt for the man suggesting the
change. If you have ever received such kicks you
have also given them. This stubborn grooviness, this
lack of the exercise of reason, this conservatism of
craft, is one thing present in some degree in all men,
and its degree of absence represents the real degree
of progress. A new foreman goes into a shop. He
finds roughing cuts taken at a proper rate of feed, but
he finds that the quick-finishing cut is unknown. No
knowledge of tool surfacing by sliding cuts seems to
exist. The wiry, rough tapering and changing surface
of the fine feed is the standard for rough work, and
these defects corrected by the file are the standard for
nicer work. A smart foreman bounces this thing in-
stanter, and he will have a hot time of it. He takes
off his coat, grinds up broad-nosed tools and shoves
clean, true cuts over work, but there is no smile of
approval. No workman meets him half way. The
results are new, and therefore unacceptable. This
isn't always true, but I am speaking of the many cases
where it is true. There are several reasons why the
men don't rebound to the new suggestion. For one
reason, they see a man claiming to show them some-
thing about their business. That hurts. For another
reason, they are called on to see and acknowledge that
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS. 259
another man's process produces better results than
their own. That hurts. For another reason, it looks
quicker. That hurts.
* * * * Q ur new foreman, having full power,
may, if he chooses, override the prejudices of his con-
servative workmen, and force them to a good plan by
the simple exercise of authority. But if our new fore-
man is smart, he will not do it that way, for he will be
loosening the ground under him at the very start.
He finds the men are good men, and he is a poor gen-
eral indeed if he starts out by putting indignities upon
them. He would humble their pride instead of en-
hancing it. If he takes the wrong tack, he can very
easily increase the cost of the work, when the very
opposite is his intention. If he gets one new man, an
experienced broad-tool man, he can make these chap-
pies ashamed of themselves, and effect the very object
sought.
* * * Such things come up every time a new
foreman starts in. I have been on both sides of this
business myself. I very well remember turning up a
lot of circular saw arbors out of three-inch cold-rolled
iron. They were about six feet long. Now^, like every
other country machinist, I had got it into my head
that a saw arbor was a particularly nice job, and I also
got it into my head that I could turn up a better one
than the oldest man in America could.
To have a shaft so true that a sixty-inch saw, clamped
between five inch collars, should run dead true, seemed
to be an essential quality in saw arbors, just as though
it was not as easy and proper to make a hundred other
things just as true. Of course it would not do to turn
this job end for end after trueing one journal. The
thought that this would apply equally as well to all
journaled jobs never occurred to me. These arbors
had a five-eighth key seat cut between the journals. I
260 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL'S LETTERS.
had turned up lots of these arbors. It was my special
prerogative. I guess I got them all right and nice and
true. They were not turned in the body at all. The
collar work was fitted up and the journals skimmed,
that was all. No filing, all water cut. Four inches
projection beyond the outer journal allowed this whole
thing to be finished at one dogging. From my lathe
these arbors went to a planer* and had the key seats
cut. Now anybody who knows much about cold-rolled
iron can imagine what became of my fine true journals
and collar faces. But I never imagined anything about
it, and the foreman never did.
* * * * g ut one jay a new foreman came. Eddy
was his name. I don't know whether he ever saw a
saw arbor before or not, but he was a thorough me-
chanic and knew more about saw arbors in a minute
than I did in a week. I didn't look at it that way
however just then. He brought around some of these
arbor jobs, looked at them a minute or two, bit his lip
a little, and then sent the jobs to the planer to have
key seats cut in them before they went into the lathe.
I was in arms in a minute. This wasn't the way I
had been doing the job. I claimed to have sense and
reason and regard for people, but instead of co-operat-
ing with this man just when he needed it, and just
when the co-operation of every man in the shop would
be of real value to him, I grew morose, sullen, stub-
born, defiant, and rebellious. I might state right here
that Mr. Eddy showed a keen appreciation of these
new and valuable qualities, and he proved it by giving
the mutinous Chordal the grand and instantaneous
" bounce." Eddy was a good mechanic, a good sort of
a man, and all that, but he was a miserable general.
He did not go and get one of my brag saw arbors in
which the key seat had been planed after the lathe
work was done. If he had, he might have shown me
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS. 261
my elegant arbor sprung about a thirty-second. No
lecture would have been needed ; I think I could have
seen the joke without a diagram. Eddy's good sense
told him that saw arbors should be straight, that turn-
ing the job nicely would straighten it, that keyseating
would spring it, and that it would be a wise plan to do
the crooking part of the business before the straight-
ening part was done. He comes and orders me to plane
the keyseated piece as straight as possible, and then do
the lathe work. He did'nt take the trouble to ease
away my prejudices, so that I might be wiser and his
path more smooth. He kicks one blockhead out and
puts another blockhead in his place. It took me over
two years to find out why Eddy changed the manner
of making saw arbors, and during that two years I
lived in ignorance, and he had my contempt. He
failed in his obligations to his men when he omitted
to educate me, in some roundabout and unsuspicious
manner, up to the new standard. A foreman should
be a general, but a machinist is not a soldier. He is,
or ought to be, a skillful man. It should be: " know
how to do," instead of "do this way." Eddy had no
right to throw the burden of educating me in this
special thing upon some other foreman. He had no
right to let me pass through his fingers without my
being wiser for having worked for him. He had no
right to allow a mistaken contempt to rest in my mind.
A workman has a claim on a foreman in the matter of
the reason for certain operations of skill.
* * * * The cynic only knows no heroes. The
dullest routine practice finds unknown somebodies
who by bold originality have entitled themselves to
that highest expression of praise, " better than I."
This constitutes fame. We who live in shops have
our heroes too. Men who have done what we would
die without having done. Men whom we can respect
262 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
without envy. These are the men whose garments touch
us daily. They are the heroes and examples of the shop.
One of the greatest of these, to me, was a certain
quiet, dignified gentleman, called DeLow, whom I once
mentioned to you. He was not the hero of an art, but
was the hero of an artisan. He was simply a machine
shop foreman, and was for twenty years before he
died. His rarity entitles his name to mention, for few
foremen so well understood the requirements or capa-
bilities for good of their position. He was, in the
" mechanical " sense of the term, a tramp. His life
was not interwoven with any one shop. One day he
said to me : '"I know of no more pitiable subject than
a foreman out of position after long years of narrow
service in one shop. Gold in the shop he staid by so
long, but the most inelastic lead in a new position.
Nobody wants him. His usefulness is over, and if
middle aged he calls his life a failure."
DeLow's usefulness was of the cosmopolitan order
and instantly available.
He always worked for just eighteen hundred dollars
a year, and would often refuse higher pay for po-
sitions as superintendent, manager, etc. He said : "I
am a foreman machinist. My province is the machine
shop, which I must control. I am responsible for the
quality and cost of the work. Chapman with his little
shop paid me $1800 when his own income as proprietor
was less then $1200, but he showed his sense by employ-
ing me, odd as it may seem, for he never made five
cents out of that shop before I went there. He offered
me a half interest in the concern freely, but I declined,
for proprietorship is not my profession."
* * * * j once became acquainted with the
owners of a shop. They had a splendid field, a good
plant, but wretched shop management. They were not
mechanics and depended on some leading workman,
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL'S LETTERS. 263
having no executive ability whatever, for the running
of the shop. They opened their hearts to me, and I
suggested DeLow to them. They studied the thing
over, multiplied his 1800 by all the digits, and finally sent
for him. He came and conquered. Quietly but
certainly revolutionized .that concern, gave their work
a reputation, increased their capacity two-fold without
expense, made the thing/oy.
But he only staid a year. He went to them and said
he must be king in the shop. His position and prerog-
atives must be respected by both men and owners.
They understood his motives and peculiarities, and
concurred, but, on several occasions, had walked
around " the dignity of his great office," so with the
best of feeling all around he went elsewhere. He
went to Wycoff's and staid a month; he went to Hunt-
er's and didn't stay at all. He wanted more dignity
than Hunter had to spare.
The peculiar fitness DeLow possessed for his pro-
fession, as he called it, would be hard to describe. All
who employed him admired and respected him, and
revere his memory to-day, for he was one of those men
who, though our employes, make us feel that the world
is better for their having lived in it. I have met
machinists in twenty states who have worked for him,
and all hold his memory in high regard, which is a rare
thing to be said of a foreman who does his duty by his
employers.
Many of these men say they are better workmen and
manlier men after having worked for DeLow. I know
that any man who worked a year for him is a more
valuable and better paid machinist than before.
In the shop DeLow was firm and just, handled his
men's self respect with the greatest and tenderest
caution, if they had any. Building upon that quality
he increased a man's usefulness. If the man lacked
264 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL*S LETTERS.
the quality of self-respect, he discharged him incon-
tinently.
He gave man and apprentice the best work he could
do, and paid him accordingly. If incompetent, he
reduced the grade of work and pay. He kept a man
in his proper place, leaving the choice of place to the
man's capability.
He had wealth of resources for emergencies, but I
never heard of his putting finger to work, never saw
him touch a file or a hammer, and never saw him idle.
He was the quiet and dignified physician of the mach-
ine shop's ills.
I knew him to resurrect two concerns, dead even to
mortification.
* * * * Speaking of foremen; I hold my
foreman responsible for every thing which passes
him. I refer to moral responsibility of course.
If a job is too poorly done or too well done
both are faults equally I blame him. He can-
not lay it to the workmen, for it is his business to
see that his work is properly done by his men. He
should work by inspection, not by faith.
Some men don't think work can be too well done.
There is as much work done too well as too poorly.
There is work upon which refinement is wasted. I put
up about two hundred sorghum mills one season. The
requirements were well understood by my customers,
by my foreman and myself,in spite of which, one lot was
fitted up with the nicety of a Corliss valve gear. It
made the mills cost more and made them not a whit
better. My foreman laid it to the men, said they would
work on a job long after it was done. I told him he
could not shift the responsibility to the men. I order-
ed a certain thing of him, and, it being in his power to
furnish it, he should do it. If he would work fine men
on such work, he must stand the blame.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL'S LETTERS. 265
CHAPTER XXXI.
SUCCESSFUL THINGS THAT WON'T DO. SCREWING-ON
VERSUS CASTING-ON. THE TEN-YEAR-OLD METHOD OF
POLISHING. MIGRATING WESTWARD.
* * * * When the lover of music allows his tastes
to degenerate into a knowledge of art, he may bid fare-
well to the real pleasures of music. When he loses
sight of music's high and only office, that of pleasing
a natural sense, and sees in it only demonstrations of
achievement, he leaves music and approaches art. He
cares no longer for what is done. He asks how it is
done and who did it. He looks for the signature of
the producer, and has no ear for the sweetness of the
product.
The painter and the critic bury their love of the
beautiful under the distorting glass of a most terrible
art. A souvenir of a master takes more value than a
masterpiece without credentials. Authenticity in the
signature becomes of more moment than merit in the
work.
* * * * The blighting rigors of art and artists
sometimes get into the shop. The name-plate on a
machine will sometimes secure a respected tolerance
and defence for the most pronounced failures, and
often the meritorious offspring of some interloping
nobody will quietly do the proper deed unhonored.
* * * * When we talk of educated mechanics,
we mean men who know lots of things outside of their
own experience. If they come from schools and col-
leges, they are well posted as to purity of design and
propriety of movements. They know how things ought
to be done, and they know how things ought not to be
done. They know of applicable principles, and they
know of things which won't do.
266 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
* * * * Sometimes these poor men, in their
walks in the world, discover that the most successful
things are those things which won't do, and they often
find the proper thing a total failure. Such things
make a man sick.
* The most reprehensible bigotry is the
bigotry of art, and next comes the bigotry of com-
merce. That good thing isn't good because we didn't
make it, and this bad thing is good because we did
make it.
* If an artistic machine designer is of the
bigoted kind, and the proprietors have a good share
of commercial bigotry, their draughting-room is a nice
place for a student.
* * * * A student under such circumstances,
surrounded by smart but narrow men, will grow more
ignorant every day. He absorbs home examples as
types of the only correct form, and a departure from
these home forms is the basis of his future criti-
cisms.
The susceptible youth spends his young days in an
atmosphere of self praise. His world is composed of
"we," and the outside "they" are never studied.
When this young man goes out into the world he don't
meet " we " so often as he expected, and he finds the
contemptible "they" all around him. He comes to
the conclusion that the world is ignorant.
* I was once wandering through a machine
exhibition and had struck up an acquaintance with a
party from Fitchburg. We stopped to examine a lathe
made by the Niles Works. The exhibitor told us the
tube was cast upon the tail stock, while all New Eng-
land manufacturers screw them on. When together,
the appearance is exactly the same, and there can be
no difference in the value of the completed article. I
have never been able to account for the Fitchburg
EXTRACTS FROM CKORDAL'S LETTERS. 267
man's wonder, and his expression, " I don't see why
they don't screw them on."
* * * * \v e were admiring a Sellers' planer,
and watching an Englishman who had evidently never
seen one before. His mind evidently went back to the
old screw planers, and traced the thing down to the
present, for he finally said, "I see, now; they used to
make them all screw; now they make them all nut."
* * * * The more cultured a mechanic becomes,
and the more he travels, the more he sees of the sick-
ening successes of bad things.
* * * * If we pick up a mechanical work of ref-
erence, we find complete detailed descriptions of ma-
chines which have a general air of correctness about
them. They are placed in such books as types of ad-
vanced .practice, and the experienced practical man
will discover in many of these orthodox arrangements
types of the most pronounced practical failures. u
* * * * Maybe you don't know it, but I claim
to be one of these critical mechanics myself. I know
good work when I see it, and have tolerably fair ideas
of forms. I like to see surfaces of good character and
of proper proportion brought into good contact. I
like to see things so shaped as to look right and proper,
and I like to see good finish where finish is put. I don't
like to see things look wrong all over, in design, work-
manship, choice of material, and adaptation; and when
I am forced to see them, whether I like it or not, I don't
like to see them doing their intended work with a
nicety and perfection which command the applause
of every ignorant beholder. I see just such things
every day.
* * * * Years ago there was gotten up, some-
where in this State, a portable engine for threshing
purposes. It was simply known as the New York
engine. From an intimate knowledge of this engine,
268 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
I feel justified in saying that from one end of the
machine to the other there was not a detail which the
cultured machinist would not criticise. The boiler
wasn't calculated anyway at all; its bracing isn't what's
called right; it seems to have none of the proportions
the books tell of. The cylinder seems wrong for the
boiler, and the ports seem wrong for the cylinder, and
the valve seems wrong for the ports, and the eccentric
seems wrong for the valve. The piston-rod is held in
the cross head, and has been held in there for years by
a plan which won't hold it, you know. The connect-
ing rod is one of these things which won't do at all.
The main brasses are bored castings dropped rough
into the iron pedestals. This won't do, of course ; no
formula will fit the fly-wheel, so, of course, the fly-
wheel is wrong, and all the formulas you can find
will twist the main shaft off as soon as the engine
starts.
I have seen much of portable engines, and I give it
as my opinion that this same engine is the most
excellent and successful engine in the market an
opinion which I feel corroborated by the hard solid
fact, that the most successful portable engine-builders in
the country to-day are those ten or fifteen men who have
copied this engine outright, or with some slight varia-
tions in keeping with the general make-up of the
engine. Among the sensible copyists, I know two or
three who have no respect whatever for the engine they
build, but whose success they are bound to respect.
* * * * Many a machine builder of high degree,
finds that the real hard work of his life is to battle
against the successful things which won't do.
* * * * The machine designer, when he gets
cornered, always has a number of plans on hand which
are not acceptable. He will say, I can do it this way,
but this is no way to do it. I can do it that way, but
'
I once saw a ten-year-old Nigger boy finishing flat-irons on an emery
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS. 271
that's wrong. I can do it this way, but it would be
absurd. I can do it that way, but I don't want to.
Such cases produce dyspepsia and baldness.
* * * ' Sometimes the same man is disposed to
make use of some simple contrivance, which, by some
reckless springing of parts or imperfection of move-
ment, will do the very thing he wants. The Yankees,
I believe, call this manslaughter, and understand its
value in a pinch.
* * * * There are devices which will not stand
critical analysis at all, but experience shows them to
be of the utmost utility. Of this character is the link
motion of a locomotive. We can never hope to find
such another perfect success of such an imperfect
principle.
Another case is found in the running-gear of a buggy
or other vehicle. Not a torsion joint about the perfect
thing, and flexibility is essential.
* * * * Returning again to the trammels of art,
did you ever notice what queer notions some machinists
have about finish ? They don't seem to care so much
about the thing when it's done, as they do about the
plan of doing it. In railroad shops some one man is
always harping on file finish. I have worked in more
than one of these shops, and I have never yet seen one
of these men who could put a finish on a job with a
file. The most he can do is to file a job in good shape
to be finished.
This thing of getting the scratches tolerably shallow
and very parallel, and then calling the surface a
finished one, won't do in these days when we see good
finish every day.
A finished job is a polished job. If it's a polish
without proper surface under it, it don't look well;
and if it has good surface without proper polish on it,
it don't look well. A highly finished surface always
272 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
has a high polish, and machinists condemn it because
they can't do it. I like to see a well finished and highly
polished surface, and it's nothing to me whether it was
done with a rasp, or a file, or a grindstone, or a belt, or
grit wheel, or what not.
I have never seen any good polishing which was not
done by a wheel or some such rig. I have heard lots
of blowing about hand finishing, but I never saw any
of the finish worth blowing about.
I once saw a ten year old nigger boy finishing flat
irons on an emery wheel, and he was doing work a
thousand per cent, nicer and better than anything I
ever saw done at a vise.
* * * * For the benefit of Eastern workmen-
who may seek work in the West, I will give a point
or two which I have picked up since I have been out
here. If you come with a pocket-full of testimonials
and recommendations, you can't get a job. If you
set yourself up for a genius, you can't get a job. If you
sneer at the Western style, you can't hold a job. If
you go to bragging, you can't stay in a shop. Bosses
don't want to hear what you did in Jericho, but want
you to dry up and show what you can do in Rome.
Simply coming from the East won't make you a
lieutenant general in the West. The most useless
machinists that have ever got into some of these West-
ern shops are crack men from the East. If they were
good men, they too often get disgusted, then dispirited,
and finally sink to the level of the worst around them.
If they were bad, they get worse. Good hard-headed
manliness, combined with good horse sense and tip-top
skill, will win every time among these shops. Don't
brag what you can do, but show what you can do.
Don't assume that you are a better man than another,
but try and prove it to yourself '. Don't let on that you
miss the facilities you were brought up on, but grad-
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL'S LETTERS.
273
ually learn the new way, without ever forgetting the
old way. You may be the happy means of improving
the shop you work in, but you can't do it by bluster.
You must do it by nice management. If you arc a
skilled man, you ought to learn how to manage your
skill before going into strange countries. If you don't,
you will bring discredit on your native place. Bear in
mind, that in going West, you go among the smartest
and crudest workmen in the world. The minute you
set foot in their land, you will find them doing a
thousand things you don't know how to do, and would
be ashamed to do if you did know how ; but you have
got to do it, nevertheless, and the men who employ you
will be glad when you improve your surroundings. If
you could not do well East, you will starve West,
and if you did well East, you can do better West;
above all things, let your superiority assert itself with-
out the aid of " blowing^" from you.
274 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAl/S LETTERS.
CHAPTER XXXII.
SETTLING MECHANICAL DISPUTES. ADVANTAGES OF
HAVING NO FOUNDRY. MECHANICAL QUIXOTISM.
FORGES AND SHELVES FOR THE NORTH SHOP. THE
STEAM ENGINE INDICATOR.
* * * * Q ur cra ft must often prove a law unto
itself, for every few days some little thing turns up in
business which would puzzle the highest kind of a joint
commission. Machinists are, of course, governed by
law, just like common folks, but a man who tries to do
business with the statutes as his sole guide would soon
find he had no business to do. Business men can't
afford to quarrel, leastwise among themselves.
The metropolitan boards of trade settle more real
differences than the metropolitan courts do, and it has
often occurred to me that such a board would be a
handy thing around machine shops.
* * * * I am not what the world calls a "kicker,"
but it seems to me I am called on too often to pay
unjust bills. I have no foundry, and get my castings
from foundries best prepared to do the work. I thus
avoid the necessity of getting blast furnace and such
heavy work out of a brass foundry, or its equivalent,
as I should do if I tried to combine the whole art of
founding under my own shop-roof. This plan of
having no foundry is immensely satisfactory in many
ways. I can get. common castings on short notice any
day of the week. I can get heavy castings and light
castings, hard castings, or soft ones, gray iron, or cold
blast, or brass from shops better fixed for each parti-
cular kind of work than I would be the day before I
was ready to die.
* * * * if I had my own foundry, I could charge
to ill luck, or bad management, many of the little and
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS. 275
big things which now come up between my contractors
and myself.
* * * * p or instance, some time ago I was
building a lot of nail machines. You never saw better
patterns than were made for this job. The patterns
were black, as usual, and every core-print, or stopping-
piece was yellow, to show that a part required attention
in some way. Every pattern was numbered, and every
core-box was numbered to correspond.
One piece of these nail machines weighs about eighty
pounds, and has a large, square slot cored through it.
Twenty of these machines were under way, and these
pieces had progressed but little, when it was discovered
that the slot-core had been left out, and the prints cast
on. I sent the castings back to Brown's foundry, charged
him with these castings which he had been credited
with, and also sent him a bill for the work I had put
on the castings before I discovered the blunder. Brown
came over with the bill, hopping mad. First, he said
the castings were all right; then he said the patterns,
were wrong, and it was my fault; then he said it was
his mistake, and that he would make new castings, and
pay for the cigars besides, and charge the cigars against
the moulder's wages; but he would be eternally every
thing under heavened, if he would pay my bill for
work done on the castings. He said that I had accepted
the castings, and that he was entirely too liberal in
taking them back at all; that I was a smart machinist
to allow my men to weigh up castings, and then do
forty dollars worth of work on them before seeing that
they wouldn't do ; said he would pay for his mistake,
but not for mine. I toned him down somewhat by
saying, that all castings coming from him were weighed
up to his credit, on his reputation. They might send
castings of the core-boxes for all I knew or cared, or
they might send somebody else's castings.
276 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS.
Then Brown took the ground that if I had a foundry
myself, these mistakes would occur just the same, and
I would have to stand the expense of new castings, and
now I wanted to shove the thing off on him. I sug-
gested that I didn't keep a foundry for that very
reason. His was the foundry, and his the gain by
good luck, and his the loss by bad luck. Then we both
decided that this was getting off the track. The
question was not one of replacing bad castings, but of
paying for work misplaced through what I had to
acknowledge was my own oversight, if not my real fault.
I don't know what will become of my bill.
* * * * Another case : I wanted three big shells
cast ; they were made by Walker, swept up in loam, he
furnishing sweeps and working to dimensions given
in the order. The order read " three shells, eight feet
long, forty-nine inches outside diameter, and as thin
as can be cast. Thickness not to exceed three-quarters
of an inch." My estimate had been based on a thick-
ness of three quarters, and Walker's price was five
cents per pound. When the shells came, the weight
ran away above my estimate, and inspection showed
them to be an inch thick at the thinnest part. One of
the shells proved unsound, and another was ordered
and came five-eighths thick. I figured up and docked
Walker's bill fifty-five dollars. I suppose there will be
a row over this matter, too. I don't think Walker
would have been justified in sending me castings two
inches thick. Why ? Because I wanted thin castings,
and ordered thin castings, and his sending me one shell
five-eighths thick, showed that my order could be
filled.
* * * * The cause for growling is as often on the
side of the foundryman. I know a case in point and
a very plain one, too.
Bennett was building a hydrostatic press for compres-
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS. 277
ing coal slack. The pressure applied was six thousand
pounds per square inch. He used a pump cast from
ordinary iron in his own foundry. The pump burst as
soon as the ram felt full pressure. Then Bennett
strengthened the pattern where the pump broke, and
cast another from common iron. Burst instanter on
reaching full pressure. Then one was cast from cold
blast iron. Burst instanter. Then he boxed up the
pattern and sent it to Luke & Matthews' brass foundry.
Back came a nice brass casting weighing about forty
pounds. It was fitted up and put on, and it burst as
the others had done. They sent the casting back, and
then overhauled the whole construction of the pump,
and found a defect in design. Bennett cast a new
pump of common iron, and everything was lovely. It
would stand ten thousand pounds per square inch,
probably, without bursting. Pretty soon, Luke &
Matthews sent bill for the brass casting, twelve dollars
and sixty cents, less the value of the metal in this
identical casting when it was returned. Did Bennett
pay this bill ? Not any to speak of. He indorsed it
" casting good for nothing," and sent it back. Then
Luke went over, and very justly got on his ear. He had
furnished exactly what was ordered, to wit, a perfect
casting from the pattern furnished. The faulty design
of the thing was no fault of his. Bennett said the
pump wasn't good for anything, and he would't pay
for it, not even for the metal turned off it. Luke
said he wasn't talking about any pump ; he wanted
pay for a good brass casting furnished as per order.
I don't think Luke & Matthews ever got their money.
Any jury would of course have allowed the bill, but it
don't pay business men to appeal to juries. In business,
mutual good will is often worth more than legal rights,
and principle almost always has to give way to
policy.
278 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS.
* * * * How far the machine shop proprietor is
to use discretion is another vexed question.
If a man orders a certain thing of me, which thing
my own sense tells me won't do what he expects to do,
am I to tell him so, and suggest more economical
equivalents, or am I to deny all relationship with my
brothers and execute his order, knowing that in the
end it will have to be done over again, whereby I make
more money and my workmen get more work ? If you
have a friend who appears thirsty for reputation, and
don't seem to care what turn the reputation takes, just
tell him to go into any business, and be square, honest
and open with customers. His reputation as a fool will
surely come. If he by a miracle succeeds in business,
he will be held up as an example to young men.
* * * * There are in this world a class of
machine men possessing high views, noble ambitions,
and an unbounded pride in their art. Their mechan-
ical ambition takes form in construction, executed on
honor. They take no sordid view of craft; a balance
sheet is simply a vulgar, incidental necessity. Every-
thing they do represents progress. They set the copy
for the world. They dive deep into research and green-
backs and bring up data, which add to the perfection
of their product, and to their reputation as leaders in
their trade. This data, or knowledge, or whatever else
you may call it, is their contribution to an admiring
public. The admiring public buy their product, only
so long as they will compete in price with others using
the same data, free of cost of getting, and no longer.
Give such a shop an order for a job based on certain
requirements. They estimate the price on a plan of exe-
cution which their ready invention has already contrived.
The contract is closed and the work commenced. A new
plan opens up and is executed at double the proposed
cost. You pay the same as contracted for. The thing
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL*S LETTERS. 279
delivered has, say, ten times the capacity of the thing
proposed. The constructors, in their noble pride,
have far exceeded themselves, and have had no thought
of the contemptible contract price.
::*** This thing can only go on a certain
number of years before the fact develops itself, that
the candle burns away at one end and don't grow at
the other.
The remedy is to put a partition across the shop ;
do high and mighty and lofty and admirable execution
on one side, the wick side of the partition ; and do
ordinary machine work on the other side. Leave sor-
didness behind when you go on one side, and leave
pride and high aims behind when you go on the other
side. The candle won't grow any shorter, and it won't
grow any longer, either.
* * * * To increase the length of the candle,
extinguish the lighted end, and live and die in dark-
ness.
* * * * The chief end of some lives is to accu-
mulate gross tallow, to accomplish which they will
begrudge the little grease imperatively required to
lubricate the wheels of life. There are other lives
absorbed in watching, and bettering the process of
dry distillation which illumines the paths along which
the whole world moves in safety and pleasure.
* * * * I never go into heroics. You and I
have hundreds of friends engaged in changing dull
and heavy material into moving mechanism, a process
akin to the creation of life, in which it differs vastly
from ordinary trade and commerce. The two tenden-
cies I speak of are obtrusively present, or ought to be,
in the experience of every shop owner in the world.
In many cases the tending forces counter each other,
and the results are nil. This is the worst that can
possibly happen.
280 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS.
*
* * * * am fig ur ing on the forges for the north
shop, and am debating whether to put in good iron
forges with hoods and stacks, leaving a clear floor, or
to build up with brick, as usual. My experience is,
that it takes more iron work to tie a brick forge to-
gether properly, than it does to build a good iron forge
entire.
* * * * Question : Is it possible for a black-
smith to do good blacksmithing, if the inevitable little
brick shelves, caused by the narrowing of the chimney
walls, are absent ?
Where on earth would he lay his chalk, and his
matches, and dressed and undressed tools, and his
miserable little lead-pencil, and his better-looking
slate-pencil, and his rule, and his soap, and the numer-
ous odd little scraps of steel he saves for some un-
known and unknowable purpose, and the hardy which
he knows can't be mended, but which he hates to
throw away ?
* * * * I have some very unorthodox views of
the steam-engine indicator. It has two functions : one
in the hands of the engine tender to allow him to keep
his valve motion at its best practical point, spite of
adjustment and wear ; and the second in the hands of
the expert to allow him to study on the action of
steam. Its first function it performs in a perfectly satis-
factory manner, and in the second also, perhaps,
though that question is now being pretty well over-
hauled. Experts decry the use of the indicator in the
hands of engine men think the art will become de-
graded, etc. Not a bit of danger. An engineer, with
skill enough to give a fifty-horse engine proper atten-
tion, can use indicators for the purpose specified as
well as any expert living, after he has learned the
simple trade (for it's nothing but a trade) of taking
diagrams, and these diagrams will tell him just what
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS. 281
he wants to know. But there he stops. The scale, the
logarithms, the hyperbolic lines, and isothermal lines,
and adiabatic lines, and doubtful tables of density
these belong exclusively to the expert, who, if he doubts
the accuracy of the cards taken by the engine man,
may make others for himself with more delicate instru-
ments. If the engine man happens to be an expert
himself, so much the better. I believe indicators should
be permanently attached to every engine of consider-
able size, and that the tender should be skilled in their
use. This might be bad for experts, but would exalt
their calling, which seems to be what they want.
I saw a couple of cards taken from a high class
engine in New York or Boston, I forget which, by Mr.
Bacon. The first was fearful, and must have suggested
to Mr. Bacon danger of a coal famine. The second
was after the valves had been set where they belonged,
and was a beauty. I don't know how much figuring
was done on these cards, but a good engine tender would
have looked upon them simply as an indication that
his valve motion was off. The makers of first-class
engines adjust them by indicator to the best practical
conditions, and the engineer could, with a model card
in his hat, keep it so forever, if he had indicators.
The common plan is to let bankruptcy approach,
and then send for a scientific expert to do purely
mechanical labor on the engine labor which should
have been done a week after the engine started, instead
of two years after. * * * *
282 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
OLD CASTINGS IN THE SHOP. HOW NEW TOOLS ARE
SUGGESTED. HOW THEY OUGHT TO BE. COMBINATION
MACHINES.
****! great care is not constantly exercised,
castings will accumulate around a shop. There are
odd castings cast too often, castings acting as monu-
ments of error, or of folly, and stock castings made
from "old style" patterns, and therefore useless. Invent-
ory after inventory sees these castings weighed up at
standard price when, in fact, they are only worth
the market price of scrap. They will get the best of
any shop, if not systematically kept down to zero.
Not weeded, mind you, but destroyed root and
branch.
It looks hard, and will cause pangs, but I unhesitat-
ingly declare it to be the most economical plan to melt
up every pound of casting not standard to-day. If
the design of a machine is changed to-day, melt up
those castings which ceased to-day to be standard.
Odd castings always block the entry port against
economical and labor-saving system. If a customer
wants a casting, he will pay for pattern and casting, but
if you succeed in finding something approximate, he
will pay you for the casting, but never a cent for the
valuable time consumed in hunting it up.
* * * * The practice of littering the shop
up with useless scrap is not confined to rough-and-
tumble shops in the country. The finest tool and
locomotive shops sometimes take the disease, and if it
is not checked it will invariably prove fatal. Parts of
machines which are found defective will always be use-
less, and are not worth a day's shop-room. Tons of
such stuff can be found in many fine shops. Damaged
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAl/S LETTERS. 283
tools are steel scrap and nothing else. They have no
proper place as items in an account of stock.
* * * * Another tip-top thing to melt up is an
old lathe, or planer, or drill press. It is not a good
plan to save such tools in remembrance of the good
they have done.
Many a shop starts up with good, fresh tools adapted
to do the work of the age. Time runs on; lots of good
work is done; lots of money is made; and the tools
are wearing out.
New and enterprising builders succeed in changing
the character of popular demand, and the old shops
often find that, in spite of a splendid past record, their
products won't suit the buyers of to-day. They con-
demn this new generation of buyers, and finally, in
self-defence, are compelled to change the style of their
products to suit the unreasonable demand, and then
they find that their ancient tools, while well adapted to
the ancient product, are totally inadequate to the new
requirements.
* * * * I say they find such to be the case, but
I doubt the general correctness of the statement.
They only find that the trade seems to have absorbed
new tricks which they fail to get hold of. They are
proud of their old skill, and look upon a lathe as a
lathe, and a planer as a planer, and having lots of
them they don't see through things. The compet-
itive price list bothers them, and they gradually fall
into the belief that the new race of machine men
conduct business on a reckless and unjustifiable
basis.
* * * A lathe is a standard staple machine,
always designed for the same general range of work,
but at the same time the ancient lathe is a much differ-
ent tool from a modern one. A modern lathe too
much played out cannot do the work of a lathe in good
284 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAl/S LETTERS.
shape. Old tools tend to make old workmen out of
new men, not in skill but in habit.
* * * * \Vhen a boy starts at the trade, he buys
a four-inch scale or rule and carries it in his pocket.
In five years' time he gets much good out of this nice
little tool, but gradually and surely it is playing out.
The corners get rounded off, it gets red rust on it and
he wipes it off; it gets black rust on it and he polishes
it off. This trick soon gets away with the lines and
figures. He still sticks to this old scale, and his other
little tools will be treated in the same manner. If a
scale be used up, it is not as good as a good one. If
the end of a scale be squared off on a grindstone to
bring the corners up square, it is not as good as a good
one. If a scale be used for blocking in the tool post,
or under planer jobs, it will not long stay as good as a
good one.
* * * * Now the honest fact is, and few work-
men seem to find it out, that a four-inch scale and all
such tools are articles of consumption. They should
be replaced with new ones as soon as their decay
becomes well set in. A four-inch scale should not be
kept out of use to make it last longer, and it should
not be kept in use after its time is out. Such a tool
should be thrown away every six months and a new
one got in its place. The expense of such renewals is
the merest trifle, and it is well justified by the fact that
it lets one use good tools and use them plentifully.
* * * * This principle holds good with lathes as
well as with scales. Other things being equal, the
new shop with new tools will generally scoop the old
shop with old tools; and other things being equal, the
old shop which is prompt in getting new tools, will
generally scoop the old shop which thinks it can get
along with tools whose good record belongs to past
ages.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS. 285
There is time to invest good dollars in good machine
tools, and there is a proper time to throw these same
tools into the scrap pile and make good castings of
them. It don't pay to belt them up in some corner
and use them for special work. It don't pay to make
bolt cutters, or horizontal drilling machines, or polish-
ing machines, out of them. They should be got out
of the shop entirely. Their very existence on the
premises exerts a bad influence, which is simply one
element in a concomitant system.
* * * * At one time in my life, I formed the
habit of sorting things out of the pile of scrap iron,
laying aside such as I thought would work in some job
some day. The " sorted " pile became the largest, and
when some job would come along, which seemed to call
for some of my pet cullings, I would tell Gus to wait
a minute till I went out and got just the thing we
wanted. Then commenced a search. ''Am sure it's
there. Saw it not over a year ago. Here, Bill and
Mike, tear open that scrap pile." Soon I find it. "Told
you so; it don't look as big as I thought, but I guess
we can make it do." I figure on the thing, and finally
take it to Gus with his orders. When the job is done
it is a patched job, and weighs six pounds. Castings
at five cents make thirty cents as the value of the
piece finished from the scrap pile. Let's see what it
cost. Gus loafed an hour, and the men worked an
hour on the pile, and Gus worked two extra hours
trying to adapt the unlucky " find," and I staid by the
job two hours extra. That makes a dollar and seventy
cents as the cost of that chunk, for which I can only
charge forty cents in the rough, for our shop is a
jobbing shop, and the bill is made for the rough cast-
ing and for Gus' time only. Chunks of iron culled
from the scrap pile generally require an amount of
superintendence, which raises their cost to quadruple
286 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
the cost of new castings from the foundry. Experience
has converted me often, and now I refuse to abide on
the premises while a "select" scrap exists.
* * * * Is there a machinist living who cannot
picture to himself the foreman hunting for a casting
the occupied shamble over the interfering pile, the
peculiar expression of conscious memory, combined
with a half-despairing look of puzzled disappointment,
and, above all, the inevitable, loose-jointed, dirty two
foot rule ? * * * *
* * * * Every once in a while we see something
made of wood, which has a shape entirely different
from anything we have ever seen before. It won't be
long after this peculiar shape reaches public view,
before some manufacturer of wood-working machinery
is offering a machine to produce that new shape in wood.
This manufacturer does not build the machine to
order, nor does he design it at the earnest solicitation
of half a dozen men who have noticed the pressing
need. He gets no orders, no inquiries, no hints, till
the machine is in the market. If machine manufac-
turers waited till there was a demand for a new form
of machine, they would do little in the way of advance.
* * * * As a general thing, the machine buyer
is a man who don't know what he wants. He goes
into the market to find out what he needs, or he acts
on the suggestion of some seller, who looks into his
place and guesses his wants. The country grocer may
go to town to buy a heavy butcher knife to cut plug
tobacco with, and may come back with a regular
tobacco-cutting machine, made for the purpose, though
he may never have dreamed there was such a machine-
If his demand for it had determined when it should
be put in the market, he would never have seen it.
* * * * Of course, almost any observant machine
builder can see something every day, which he knows
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS. 287
he can build a machine to produce, but judgment steps
in and tells him it won't pay to build the machine.
Men get picked up on too hasty action in just such
things as these. The idea of a machine strikes them,
and forthwith they scheme the plan, and build the
machine, and put it in the market; and then they often
find the market don't want the machine. It is a ques-
tion of good judgment entirely, for there is no guide
whatever. There is no such thing as an ante-production
test. Many machines gotten up in a routine sort of a
manner have proved happy and profitable hits, and
many other machines, deliberately planned to fill an
obvious vacancy have fallen flat. One of the fine
points, in machine-making management, is to know
when to get up a new machine and when not to.
* * * * Woodworking machine builders are a
hundred times more progressive than builders of ma-
chine tools. With all possible respect for our many
advanced tool builders, whose names I might mention,
I feel justified in saying that it is very seldom that one
of them brings out a new tool. There are two causes
which lead to the new tool being brought out: one is,
that they need just such a thing in their own shop,
and the other is that some customer ordered them to
get it up. When it comes to looking around to see
what is needed, the machine-tool builder does precious
little of it.
* * * * I don't believe that the idea of getting
up a lathe on purpose to turn car axles ever originated
in the brain of a machine-tool builder. Some railroad
men were probably looking around for a tip-top lathe
for the work, and that suggested the whole thing. I
can't imagine a machine-tool builder watching a com-
mon lathe turn axles, and then drawing the conclusion
that a properly devised axle lathe would be a good
thing to put in the market.
288 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS.
The average machine-tool builder will travel all over
the country and watch every kind of metal industry,
and never take a single hint. He will watch the agri-
cultural implement industry. He sees work done in
the most impossible manner, and hears a continuous
prayer for better methods. He watches the portable
engine business, and sees cylinders bored in a lathe,
and sees connecting-rod bodies and straps worked on
planers and shapers, and sees cylinders drilled as usual
and tapped by hand. Then in the steam-pump shops
he sees cylinders bored in lathes, and sees the same
old drilling and tapping. He sees that this work is
extensively carried on, that it is regular manufactur-
ing on a large scale, but he never draws a conclusion.
He would be most happy indeed to build anything
these folks are kind enough to come and order; but
building and offering some new machine, which they
can't afford to do without, never seems to occur to him.
* * * * Steam-pump men and portable-engine
men would break their necks reaching for a good
machine to drill and tap their cylinders. If they want
such a thing they must invent it, design it, and go to a
machine-tool shop and have the thing criticised as a
machine not properly gotten up.
The machine-tool shops don't do any cylinder tap-
ping, and, as a consequence, will never originate a
machine for the work. A machine-tool builder don't
have much taper keyseating to do if he understands
his business, and, as a consequence, he will never bring
out the little machine needed for that work in nearly
every shop in the country.
* * * * One of the modern frauds in machine
construction is the combination machine a machine
combining within itself the capacity for doing the work
of two classes of machines. Such combinations are apt
to involve opposing features of sufficient and insuffi-
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL*S LETTERS. 289
cient strength. Some years ago, some party put a
combined lathe and milling machine on the market.
It was a common lathe with a milling machine built on
the left hand end. The combination consisted in using
the lathe arbor for the milling-machine spindle, and
vice versa. When you did lathe work the milling
machine was idle; and when you did milling, the lathe
was idle. When you used one machine, you were
working on an investment nearly large enough to get
two full-blooded machines instead of one mongrel.
Such a combination is bound to make a very poor
average of speeds, strengths and movements, and you
have to get a combined sort of workman to run it.
* * * * Some combined or universal machines
are made comprehensive enough to turn clothes pins
in the winter, and do brick work in the summer.
The changes in capacity and nature are often made
by adding separate fixtures, which are laid away when
not in use. Aside from the main fault, this involves
several bad things. The machine is not ready for
business just when it is wanted. On miscellaneous
work this is a grave fault. You only want a certain
operation carried on for a few minutes, maybe, and if
you can't get it when you want it, you don't want it at
all. How often we see some man take some trifling
job to a machine, and, finding the belt broken, or
things gummed up generally, finally finish it by hand,
or by some other foreign process !
* * * * In some universal machines, the time
required to rig up some converting part of it is more
than would be required to do the job without the ma-
chine.
It is in the nature of a workman to hate to fuss with
something extra, when he would rather be doing
something on the job in hand. How often we see a
lathesman working on a job bolted to a face plate in
290 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
an insecure and shaky manner. If he takes a big cut,
the whole thing will tumble down, and he knows it.
He could stop and rechuck his job, and go into it for
all it is worth, but he don't want to. He prefers to
take tender, nibbling cuts on the uncertain thing, be-
cause he is cutting iron all the time.
* * * * Odd fixtures and attachments lying
around the shop are never in condition to use. They
get dirty, and jammed, and broken, and in many cases
they are remodeled to use for something else. Every
machinist knows what sort of a thing an odd com-
pound lathe rest is, and he knows what becomes of
the two-jaw chuck, which is only wanted once a year.
When the year comes around, and you take a look at
the chuck, you conclude that you don't want it at all.
The common steady rest is a fair sample of neglect
from inconstant use. Planer centers in the country
shop furnish another sample.
A combined slotter and drilling machine makes a
happy family. If both are efficient tools, the combi-
nation is too expensive for a tool which can only do
the day work of one machine. The most likely thing
in such a combination is, that the slotter will become
weak and the drill clumsy.
* * * * Some inventor filed an application in
the patent office for a patent on a combined washing
machine and churn. The thing made the rounds of
the rooms, and each examiner indorsed his opinion
on the document. One examiner wrote as follows :
"You may clean out and scald this churn if you will,
but the smell of the linen will hang round it still."
* * * * The greatest and main objection to
universal machines is the idle investment and great
cost of short jobs on them. In a machine with, say,
twelve capacities, you invest the price of about six
machines, and really get the ten hour use of but one.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
291
In household implements, not running at a continual
expense, and in which you change the function by
grabbing the other end, a universal combination
seems proper. It saves search after many separate
utensils, saves room, and saves expense; but as soon
as an implement gets into continuous motion, under
the charge of a paid attendant, the combination feat-
ure seems to be a mistaken virtue.
292 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
ARRANGING MACHINE SHOP FLOORS. METHODS OF FINISH-
ING WORK. OUR ARTIST SKETCHES A COMMON BOILER
FRONT.
What do you know about machine shop floors ? When
the good manager builds his shop, he shows on a plan
the proposed position of every machine. Maybe he
don't intend to get these machines right away, but he
makes his calculations for them, and when they do
come, he can put them in a place reserved for them.
But one thing he cannot do, and that is to put in all
his foundations before his floors are laid. No man
living can predicate a foundation for a lathe, or a planer,
or any other machine tool. Some tool makers even
cannot furnish a foundation plan till they have the
machine built.
Then again the good manager never gets the tools
he first intended to get. His experience in the shop
causes him to alter his mind, or he sees some machine,
in the meantime, which takes his eye, or he finds out
that the machine he had in his mind is not just what
he thought it was.
* * * * When a new lathe, or planer, or drill,
or slotter comes into the shop, there is always a worry
about where to put it. Sometimes the thing is settled
by putting it in the best-looking vacant spot in the
shop; say in the middle of the setting-up floor. Again
it will be put in among a lot of machines of an entirely
different character. This often leads to small machines
for light work being set in among heavy tools, whose
big work can be got to them by cranes, tracks, &c.
Sometimes the whole question is settled by the conven-
ience of locating a countershaft.
The new tool calls for a certain amount of floor
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS. 293
room, and a certain amount of ceiling room, properly
located with reference to the floor room. When the
spots have been found, and the machines set up, it is
often found that the question of daylight has been left
out of consideration; that the daylight conies in the
wrong direction, or that it don't come at all.
* * * * Some men, when a tool is added to the
shop, are smart enough to look into all the require-
ments. This often leads to a total reorganization of the
shop; a general twisting around of things; the moving
of this lathe and that one, and that planer, and this
shaper, and both those slotters, and maybe half a dozen
more.
* * * * When the shop is run by such a man,
the said shop is liable to get turned upside down every
time a new tool is bought. He is probably reorganiz-
ing six months out of the year, and when a lathesman
goes home at night, he don't know what part of the
premises he will find his lathe in when he comes to
work in the morning.
* * * * The shop under such management is
almost always a nice appearing and convenient shop,
if you can spy into it some day when it isn't being
reorganized. * * * *
This kind of business don't pay very well, for it is
my experience in machine shops that you can't get
much work out while the line shaft is being moved, or
lengthened out, or raised or slid endwise, or while half
the countershafts are on the floor, or while the floor is
half ripped up.
* * * * Aside from other inconveniences attend-
ing the arrival of the new machine, the floor work is
enough to call for resolutions of reform.
If there is plenty of room for the new machine, both
on the floor and on the ceiling, and if there is plenty
of daylight coming from the right direction, and if the
294 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
aforesaid spaces are in exactly the right location, still
the job of putting the tool in place is a demoralizing
one.
There must be scientific sighting, and measuring,
and chalking on the floor, and the floor must be torn
up, and diggers must excavate and pile the dirt out in
the shop, and mules and drays find their way into the
shop, hauling out the dirt and hauling in the stone.
And then the masons work awhile, and then the floor
gets put down, and then the machine gets set, and
belted up, and started. Maybe there has been a slight
mistake somewhere, and the machine does not stand
on the foundation at all; but that makes no difference,
of course. It is so desirable to get this job over, that
a matter of a foot or so in the matching of things can-
not be considered.
* * * * Some men point with pride to a floor
which is foundation all over, so that they don't have
to tear up, and dig, and build, etc. This is all very
nice, but if it means a brick floor for a machine shop,
I, for one, can stand the digging.
If anybody can show up some kind of decent floor,
which rests directly on bottom, solid enough to carry
heavy tools properly, I wish he would unfold himself.
* * * * i ] iave seen floors built right in well-
packed earth, and no foundations were needed for
ordinary shop tools, but I have noticed that the floors
are always rotting out and smelling bad.
If such floors would last and be healthy, they would
be just the thing for ordinary shops.
The fact that once in a while some tools require a
pit, need not detract from the virtues of the floor.
Much better to dig two or three pits than forty or fifty.
* * * * i once worked with a genius who had
put a common floor in his shop an awfully common
one, in fact. It was on 12" joists, and was open enough
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL'S LETTERS. 295
in some places to let a small monkey-wrench through.
I don't suppose there was a square foot of that floor
which, at some time, some workman had not torn up in
order to recover a scale, or a pair of calipers, or a
chisel, or a job, or something.
Under each machine there were two or three loose
trap doors, and all the chips and other hard accumu-
lations of the shop were shoveled into these holes.
This would be pretty expensive in some localities,
but at that place this stuff had no value.
In course of time, there was a heavy stratum of hard
iron under the floor in the neighborhood of the ma-
chines, tare was taken to flush all parts up nicely,
and then the traps were nailed down. Then traps
were put in other parts of the shop, the intention
being to put solid iron under the entire floor. When
a section was well filled and set, a good floor was laid,
and it was able to stand up under any machine likely
to be set upon it.
This all looked very well, but I should hardly fancy
the job of excavating a pit in this floor for a long-
spindled boring mill.
* * * * There may be some kind of a floor
which will endure, and be neat and healthy, and which
will do to set machine tools on without any underpin-
ning or foundations. If there is, I should like to know
what sort of thing it is.
* * * * I am informed that English law makes
real estate out of anything attached to a building.
Thus, if you rent an empty factory, and fill it with
machinery which you bolt to the floor, the machinery
so bolted becomes a contribution and a part and par-
cel of the premises, and is not to be removed by you
when your lease is up. This condition of law has led
to the contriving of a plan to get around it. Instead
of bolting your machines to the floor, you bolt them
296 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
to shoes previously bolted to the floor. When you buy
a new machine, it comes with these shoes on its feet.
You fix the shoes to the floor, and then fix the machine
to the shoes. When you clear out, you take- your
machines, but leave the shoes as a souvenir of your
respect for the law.
* * * * j n European shops paved floors are
common; so are steam engines and drilling machines
attached to the walls of the building; and so is " lay-
ing off " on Saturday, and sobering up on Monday.
The absence of all washing conveniences, too, is uni-
versal in English shops.
Europe has plenty of machine-shop ideas which we
would do well to filch, but it is to be hoped that we
will never import the above-mentioned features.
* * * * When I was out at the Millers' Exposi-
tion, I heard machinists talking about the nickel-plated
work on the Wheelock and Brown engines. I did the
same thing myself at the American Institute in 1876.
The finish was so far beyond my own understanding
of things, that I supposed, of course, it was plated. I
afterwards satisfied myself, that what I saw was iron
with a good finish on it.
Almost every lathesman understands that finish is
simply a nice arrangement of scratches. He knows
that he can file big scratches out of a job, if he is lucky
enough not to file a few bigger ones in; and that he
can use a finer file and get the scratches still finer;
and that he can take emery clamps and grind the
scratches still finer. Here he generally ends, and his
finish is nothing to compare with the fine work stuck
right under his nose every day. He sees work in which
the scratches are so fine that he can't see them at all.
He wants to know how the fellow who did this job
managed to get big scratches out and to get such little
scratches in. Such finish as this is real polish. It
I wish, for my special amusement ', you would send an artist out into the
world with instructions to bring back a good sketch of a common boiler
front. Page 299.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS. 299
isn't a temporary polish put on top of a wretched
finish.
* * * * Proprietors are interested in this question of
finish. They want their work finished, but they have an
idea that it costs too much money. The fact is, that it
don't cost much, not as much, hardly, as common finish.
It is a notorious fact, that high-finish shops can get
away with other shops on prices. There are, of course,
other reasons for this; but it shows that finish does
not conflict directly with cheapness.
The real truth is, that in certain shops the men
know how to put a finish on work and the expense is
nothing. In other shops, doing tip-top work, the men
don't seem to know anything about it, and any attempt
that way may involve discouraging expense.
* * * * I wish, for my special amusement, you
would send an artist out into the world with instruc-
tions to bring back a good sketch of a common boiler
front. By common, I mean the kind one is most apt
to see. I want to see a picture of an ordinary boiler
front alongside one that you lately gave a view of.
I know a lot of high-toned mechanics or engineers, or
what not, who would take a fit if they should see that
front.
* * * * These men have got it into their heads
that every line and every pound of metal about any-
thing made of iron, should serve some useful purpose.
These are the men who make the outside of a machine
the same shape as the inside of the core boxes ; the
same men who speak of polish as a thing of utility
only; the same men who paint things lead colored and
call it steel color; men who never find out how to do
work economically, and find themselves compelled to
leave all the nice things off in order to get the expens-
ive product into the market.
* * * * The very appearance of this fancy boiler
300 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
front shows that care, thought, skill, knowledge and
time have been expended in its design. A design thus
treated is bound to be based on good, practical prin-
ciples. If there is some peculiarly good point at which
the grates should be set, I should look for a demon-
stration of the fact in a boiler front which looks as
though it had been studied over. If there is a bad,
warpy disposition in boiler fionts, this matured affair
is apt to have been designed to avoid the defect.
* * * * R ea iiy n i ce things are seldom badly
designed. It is in the coarser and more serviceable
materials, purely " functional apparel," that we are apt
to see misfits. Good looks tend to better every thing
around. There is no nobler use for iron than that of
ornamentation, and, like all good things, ornamenta-
tion costs money. Beautifying a boiler front is just as
reasonable and proper and elevating as beautifying a
pier glass, or a book case, or a cornice. I have known
of an artist being called on to design a paper collar
for a chimney stack, which, when done, was a thing of
beauty, and real, honest, human utility, and, at the
same time, the base of that beautiful stack stood near
a boiler front so infernally ugly, that the furnace walls
bulged out and staid bulged out. I can't imagine such
a thing happening with a nice front.
* * * * The separation of beauty from utility
in design has led to the entire separation of the arts,
and now-a-days the designer is simply either an artist
or, what is worse, .an engineer. As a consequence,
certain ugly things of real utility come from the engi-
neer, and certain pretty things of no utility come from
the artist.
* * * * i once negotiated at a good jewelry
house for a pair of sleeve buttons. They were elegant,
but a little investigation showed that the stems were
not long enough to admit two thicknesses of cuff;
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS. 301
they were not worth five cents for the purpose in-
tended. All the lines of these things had probably
been fixed by some light-headed artist, who knew
nothing of utility, and didn't want to mix it up in his
occupation. He is as bad as the engineer or designer
who leaves beauty out of his work.
* * * * Once upon a time I went into partner-
ship with an artist. We had invented a draw handle
or pull, which possessed functions not necessary to
explain. It was a question of design and patterns.
There is no art about me, and I simply measured my
own paw, and thus determined the proper length of
the handle. This dimension, embodied in a sketch of
the mere essentials of the device, constituted my con-
tribution to the design. I turned it over to my artistic
partner to put it into good form. He said at once that
the thing was too big to look well, and wanted to con-
tract it for beauty's sake, and he stuck to it, too. We
argued and fussed and quarreled over that miserable
little drawer handle for a week, and then quit. The
thing was never made.
* * * * I was attracted by that boiler front,
because I have been brought up on ugly fronts of my
own design. When I see pictures of old machinery,
I am glad I was born after the Corinthian order of
architecture was abandoned in design, and, when I
look at my own work, I am sorry I was born before
dead work and lead-colored paint were abandoned.
302 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS.
CHAPTER XXXV.
SACKETT'S EXPERIENCE WITH A TITLED ENGINEER. PER-
SONAL IDENTITY OF BENNETT, SACKETT AND WYCOFF.
SHOP DRAWINGS AND SYMBOLISM. TRAMPING JOURS.
STARTING NEW SHOPS. CHORDAL AS A PILGRIM.
* * * * Sackett lately employed a new man ; a
man with testimonials ; a man who had taken two or
three degrees ; a man who had a college's authority
for writing C. E. after his name ; a man who was no
civil engineer after all. He was not smart ; he was
simply learned. He had no knowledge ; he had sim-
ply education. Judgment cannot be based on educa-
tion ; it must be based on knowledge. This C. E. had
no knowledge and no judgment. He was a nice man,
and a learned one, and a C. E., but Sackett bid him
good bye after three weeks' knowledge of him. I
don't know who wants such men. Sackett says he
don't, and I know for a certainty that Wycoff don't.
* * * * When Sackett told me of his experience
with this man (he was no youth just out of college,
mind you, but an old hand, if he was a weak one) our
conversation naturally turned on titles. I mentioned
that I had read, in several places, that C. E., &c., could
be rightfully affixed to a name only atter permission
had been conferred by some educational or similar
body ; and that others assuming such titles did it for
the purpose of leading to the inference that they had
such formal right to it ; and that merit alone would
seldom tempt a fair-minded man to appropriate such
a title.
" Bosh ! " said Sackett, " the writers of such stuff
don't know exactly what they are talking about. An
engineer is a man who has had the title conferred on
him, whether he is an engineer or not ; or he is a man
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS. 303
who is an engineer, whether he has had the title con-
ferred upon him or not. Both these men have a right
to the title, and either should blush to take it if not
properly endowed. Even if conferred by a college,
the conferree should hesitate before he accepts such a
vocative title as engineer. M. D. at the end of a man's
name indicates that he is a doctor of medicine. Doc-
tor is a word with a meaning not at all analogous to
surgeon, or physician, even. No college, or course,
can make a man a surgical man, even though they
endow him with the title of surgeon.
" F. R. S. is not a vocative title. It can only be
properly conferred by the Royal Society, and after
they confer it, the man is a fellow of that society. Ph.
D. means that a man has received the title, and not
that he is in reality a doctor of philosophy. Engineer
or C. E. at the end of a man's name, indicates that the
man has an engineer's title, or an engineer's vocation.
" It is not a sure indication, because the man may be a
fraud. He may not be an engineer at all, and he may
never have taken a degree. I have got," continued
Sackett, "two captains and one major working out in
my foundry. They have no right to the title, because
they never had it conferred by any proper authority,
and they never fulfilled the functions the title would
indicate. If they saw fit to write moulder, or sand
rammer after their names, they would be right, even
if there was such a courtesy title, because the word is
vocative. I have a designer upstairs who has a right
to put M. E. after his name, because he is a mechani-
cal engineer and a good one, though he has no diplo-
ma ; and he has a right to put M. D. after his name,
because he has studied medicine, and has a diploma.
He is a good engineer and no physician."
* * * * I tried to find out from Sackett what
had been the trouble with his late C. E., but I failed
304 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
to get anything but indefinite grumbling. I gravely
suspect that the aforesaid C. E. had been trying to
rush some "correct mechanical principle" into Sack-
ett's work, without regard to the expense or propriety
of it ; and that some of this " principle " had failed to
operate, and has consequently got Sackett into trouble.
* * * * i g t a letter yesterday from one of the
best machine shop managers in the United States, ask-
ing who Sackett is, and stating that he would like to
form his acquaintance. I could not give the party
Mr. Sackett's post-office address, but gave him the ad-
dress of one of his shops instead. Another gentleman
wrote me, asking where Bennett's shop is. Few men
enquire about Wycoff. I wish to take this occasion to
answer all such inquiries.
If you want to see Bennett's shop, you will have to
travel in several different directions, for his shop is
scattered. His foundry is in one state, his machine
shop in another, his line shaft in another, his pattern
shop in another, and his excellent intention of doing
something to keep castings from littering up the ma-
chine shop is in several states, principally in a state of
uncertainty. When the elements of Bennett's shop
are combined in one geographical section, I want to
be on hand at the opening.
Sackett and Wycoff are men who are ubiquitous in
different proportions. I would describe Wycoff as a
good-looking gentleman of almost any age, a good
and lively citizen, a man tolerably well fixed in the
world, a pleasant man to meet, no specially bad social
qualities, and a very numerous and short-sighted ma-
chine shop manager. I would describe Sackett as a
good-looking gentleman of almost any age, a good and
lively citizen, a man tolerably well fixed in the world,
a pleasant man to meet, no specially bad social quali-
ties, and a very long-sighted machine shop manager.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS. 305
If I should show you their portraits, they would look
much more alike than two pieces of some of the inter-
changeable machine work we often hear about. Out-
side the shop you can only distinguish them by the
relative increase in their wealth, and that of their em-
ployes. Inside the shop they are readily distinguished.
The front of the shop tells whose shop it is. If you
see any old, rusty, odd bevel gears half buried in the
earth before the shop, or behind it, either, it is Wycoff's
shop every time.
They come from different lines of ancestry, but have
traveled the world together. Their ancestors dis-
covered the new world as they sailed together. One
furnished the reckless daring, the willing muscle, and
the devil-may-care readiness to go I don't know where;
while the other brought the cool head, the definite
intention, the best attainable chart, the compass, the
glass, and a brave, prudent energy.
* * * * I know little or nothing of drawing, but I
have given much attention to the subject of drawings.
This may look like a narrow point of difference, but it
is as broad as the difference between product and pro-
cess. My attention has been given to machine shop
drawings ; not to the art of making them, but to the
desirable points in them after they are made and be-
fore they are made.
* * * * The machine shop drawing is simply a
memorandum, showing what is to be produced. It is
essentially an illustrated memorandum, or it would be
no drawing. To be perfect, it should answer all ques-
tions which a workman can reasonably ask in regard
to the piece of work ; it should be durable enough to
form a record for future use ; it should be small
enough to be easily preserved in a safe place, and it
should be as low in cost as possible.
* * * * A drawing should be complete, for a
306 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS.
drawing which requires explanation from a draughts-
man is no drawing at all. Instead of being the work-
man's memorandum, such a drawing is simply a
draughtsman's memorandum, and if he is not present,
the drawing fails in its mission.
Drawings for use in the shop, right at the draughts-
man's elbow, should be so complete and self-explain-
ing that they could be sent a thousand miles away
without a word of explanation, and enable properly-
skilled men to execute the work as well as the man
who can confer with the man that made the drawing.
It requires no more artistic skill to make a self-ex-
plaining drawing than it does to make a drawing
of which the draughtsman is an essential part.
* * * * The mechanics of the shop, such as
have to do with the drawings, are pattern-makers,
blacksmiths, boiler-makers, wood-workers, painters
and packers. The drawing is the record of results to
be accomplished by all these men, and properly-made
drawings should tell all these men what the ultimate
result is to be, and should not contain any blank
hints that will lead you to ask questions till you find
out what is wanted.
* * * * Drawings are destroyed by being torn,
broken, defaced, faded, or lost. Durability is secured
by making them so they can't be torn, broken, defaced,
faded, and so forming them that they are not liable to
get lost.
A paper drawing, as a record for continued future
use, has no place in a machine shop. It gets defaced
in a short time, gets torn in a short time, and, frag-
ment by fragment, it gets lost. They do not last long
enough to fade. They should never be used in ma-
chine shops, except on such work as permit the draw-
ing to be destroyed as soon as the job is finished.
Tracing cloth is but little better than paper. It gets
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS. 307
soiled and broken, and requires a clumsy process of
unfolding or unrolling before it can be consulted, and
even then, it will not lie flat. These tracings are ex-
pensive because they imply a total unnecessary dupli-
cation of the draughtsman's work. They cannot be
distinguished or designated when rolled, and time is
lost in going through a cord of them to find the right
one. If rolled, they will not store away in some ac-
cessible and compact shape, and if folded, they are
constantly liable to be mislaid or lost.
The machine-shop drawing should always be flat,
and it should be made a penitentiary offense to
roll or fold it.
* * * * If a paper drawing is glued on a board,
it ceases, as we are speaking of it, to be a paper draw-
ing. It then.becomes a wooden drawing, and it has
many superior virtues. You can't roll it ; you can't
fold it ; it lies flat ; it is always open : and some des-
ignating character, conspicuously placed upon it, will
tell if it is the one wanted, and it is not liable to get
lost. Numerous coats of hard varnish will secure du-
rability of surface.
The objections to the wooden drawing are : It is
thick, and a number of them composing a set will not
pack closely ; if of any size, battens must be put on
the back to prevent splitting, which makes them still
bulkier, and prevents their being moved over each
other in a search ; they are very heavy ; and are alto-
gether so large and clumsy that no safe preservation
can be given very many of them. They also cost too
much money. The lumber, the building of the
boards, the drawing paper, and the artistic gluing of
the paper all count up.
* * * * As to size, little need be said. A
draughtsman can't make a good drawing so small
that a workman can't follow it. The scale of a draw-
308 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
ing is immaterial. No one is called upon to measure a
good shop drawing ; and a scale of five inches, or two
and a quarter inches, or seven-eighths of an inch, or
three-sixteenths of an inch, to the foot, is far better than
full size, because the men will then keep their rules off.
Wooden drawings are generally about twenty by
thirty inches. This size is entirely too large for con-
venience, and is not called for by any class of work.
Such big boards cannot be handled in sets ; they take
up too much room ; it takes too much time to make
such big drawings ; the boards are too large to use
around the lathes, the vises, or anywhere ; they get
used for tool boards and dinner tables, and trays, and
tend to destroy each other by bulky contact. Boards
half as big, say ten by twelve inches, are much more
convenient, and are large enough for bridge work, lo-
comotive work, steamship work, boiler work, and
every other kind of work.
* * * * Sackett uses drawings which seem to
combine all the virtues. They are made on cards
about an eighth of an inch thick. The cards are good
tarboard, with a peculiar quality of drawing paper
pasted on one side. The edges of the paper are
brought over the edges of the tarboard and pasted to
the back. They are very light and strong ; in fact,
they seem indestructible. They cost $80 a thousand,
or eight cents each, and are made by William Mann,
stationer, Philadelphia. The size is 10 x 13^ inches.
These cards are nice. A set of detail drawings for a
common slide valve engine (the size of the engine
makes no difference in the drawings), requires about
twenty-five of these cards. The whole set can be car-
ried in one hand. They slide over each other like a
eucre deck ; they are light ; they are of convenient
size to handle around the shop ; they store nicely in a
safe, and they are cheap.
(
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL*S LETTERS. 309
* * * * Sackett uses these card drawings, and his
whole drawing system has many tip-top points in it.
A panel drawing board is used with these cards.
The card drops into the panel, so that its surface is
flush with the stiles. In the edges of the panel, wood
screws, with their heads half cut away, are fixed. A
half turn of the screws brings the sharp heads around
into the edge of the card. Nothing projects above the
surface of the card, and a card may be returned to the
board and nicely trued up.
* * * * When Sackett gets up a new machine,
he has temporary detail drawings made on brown de-
tail paper. The machine is given some short symbol
like G 6, which is used as the name of the machine.
Patterns and drawings are marked with this symbol,
and the time and cost books deal with this symbol.
Of symbolism, more hereafter. After the first machine
is made, corrections made, and the details all approved,
the permanent drawings are made on these cards, and
the temporary drawings are immediately destroyed.
The drawings are made in detail, no two pieces being
shown in contact; and the fewest possible number of
lines are used in making the drawings. No dotted
lines are used where not essential, and there is no
hatch shading, shapes being brought out by pencil
shading. Every confusing element is omitted, and
everything is shown, past all misunderstanding. Then,
before a figure is written on the drawing, it receives one
coat of white shellac varnish. This is sand-papered,
and on the hard surface thus presented all the figuring
is done. A printed general instruction sheet is then
pasted on the back of the card, together with a big
symbol, so th'e drawing can be easily identified Three
coats of white shellac varnish are then applied to the
card, back and front. If errors should at any time be
discovered in the figuring, it is only necessary to erase
310 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
through the external varnish, correct the figure, and
re-varnish. Were the figures put on the paper surface,
some ugly digging would have to be done in correcting
an error. If subsequent changes are made, it is a tri-
fling matter to make one of these little cards new.
BENNETT'S DRAWING RACK.
* t * * This reminds me that Bennett uses
these card drawings, and that he has got up a music-
stand sort of rig, as a lathe attachment to hold the
drawings. The rack attaches to the carriage of a
lathe, to a planer rail, or to any such thing, and is
really a good institution. Above is a sketch of it.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS. 311
As previously stated, Bennett uses xox [3^ inch
drawings exclusively.
This rack is simply a light casting, socketed loosely
on a rod, which is arranged to fasten into the lathe
carriage. On the same rod, just under the rack socket,
a square cast iron arm is fitted. The upright rod is
shouldered to receive the arm hub and the rack socket.
On the arm slides a light cast-iron cup, which will
hold about a quart of water. The mortises, to fit the
arm, are cast in the cup; in fact, the work is all gotten
up cheaply, though it acts and looks well. A piece of
one-eighth inch piping is screwed tightly into a base
cast near the bottom of the cup. This pipe reaches
out about four inches, and then bends downward with
an easy curve. The bent end of this pipe is carefully
faced, and provided with a long thread of very fine
pitch. On this thread is loosely screwed a brass snoot,
having a milled collar at its upper end. By a simple
but peculiar arrangement of the inside of this snoot,
the end of the pipe is adapted to seat against a shoul-
der and thus form a stop valve. Turning the snoot
by the collar, regulates the flow of water. It is simply
a cheap and substantial form of cock. Bennett puts
these complete things on lathes, planers, shapers and
slotters, and he uses a similar rig, minus the water
works, for drill presses, vises, boring mills, gear cut-
ters, pattern lathes, and all other machines. It is no
slouch of an arrangement, and, being made in a lot,
they are very much cheaper than the hap-hazard thing
we usually see. Come to think of it, I don't remember
ever having seen any other shop provided with any
kind of water cans, except such as each lathesman
seems to have conjured up himself.
* * * * I take Sackett's shop drawings as mod-
els, because he seems to have got things reduced to a
smooth working system. I have noticed the system of
312 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
drawings used in many of our finest shops, but in al-
most every case it looks as though little attention had
been paid to any regular plan. This, of course, has
no reference to the character of the work shown on the
drawings, or to the character of the draughtsman's
work. I am speaking of the drawings themselves, as
drawings, and with reference to their functions in the
shop.
* * * * I w ill first briefly refer to Sackett's sym-
bolism. Nearly all good shops symbolize their work,
but some do not, and ever so many bad shops do noth-
ing which will save work. Symbolism saves in the
drawing room, in the pattern shop, in the pattern store
room, in the foundry, in the machine shop, and in the
office. I do not believe it possible to keep stored pat-
terns in come-atable shape, without some symbolical
system of marking them.
* * * * Symbols are only of real value in shops
which build something regularly. Take the case of a
shop building threshing machines, fanning mills and
sugar mills. It is almost impossible to stamp such a
word as " Thresher " on little patterns, and they must
be marked for identification to avoid a mix. Under a
system of symbols, a single letter will be chosen to ty-
pify a class of machines, as A, for threshers ; B, for fan-
ning mills, and C for sugar mills. In this way, any pat-
tern, piece of a pattern, core box, drawing, or casting,
marked B, is at once known as belonging to a fanning
mill. The shop may make two kinds or sizes of fan-
ning mills. It thus becomes necessary to mark work in
such a way that we may know just what style of fan-
ning mill the thing belongs to.
This is effected by combining with the machine
symbol, a style symbol. Thus fanning-mill patterns
may be marked B i for one style, and B 2 for another
style, and so on. The figure 2 in the last case doesn't
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS. 313
show that B 2 is a larger machine than B i, or that it
is a smaller machine, or that it is a later style. It
simply shows that it is a different fanning mill from B i.
If, in course of time, B i is radically altered, it takes
a new symbol like B 3, for instance, indicating that it
is not B r. B 3 is a machine made in conformity with
B 3 drawings, cast from B 3 patterns, and run on the
cost books as B 3. Under this system, the men in the
shop will cease to speak of the little fanning mill or
the big fanning mill, and will only talk of B i, or B
2, etc.
A stranger don't know what the men are talking
about in a symbol shop, and hetlon't need to care. A
new workman drops into the thing very quickly.
* * Every piece of drawing or pattern re-
ferring to B 3 will be marked 63. 63 patterns will
be kept in a space devoted to B 3, and if they get mis-
laid, their place is easily found. The men keep time on
B 3, instead of on some kind of a fanning mill, and
the time-keeper's book deals with B 3.
* * * * The machine not only has a symbol,
but each piece has a designating number. The draughts-
man puts the number on the drawing of the piece ; the
pattern maker stamps it on the pattern of that piece,
and on all loose pieces of that pattern, and on all core
boxes for that piece. Time is kept on that piece, and
castings are ordered by the number as well as symbol.
The draughtsman marks a certain gear No. i, and
another gear No. 2, and so on. If castings are wanted,
it is not necessary to show the pattern, or to describe
the shape of it. The order is simply made for B 3, No.
2, and this will be found stamped on the proper pat-
tern. Time is kept by number as well as symbol. A
lathesman's slate may read : " Boring 40 pcs. B 3,
No. 28, 9 hours." This would cover a slate, if written
in full, and would wear out a time-keeper.
314 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
* * * * Many shops use the piece numbers in
such a way as to indicate the material the piece is to
be made of.
Thus, a drawing marked No. 3, No. 22, No. 16, would
mean that the pieces were to be of cast-iron. If marked
No. 03, No. 022, No. 016, it means wrought-iron or
steel, it don't make any difference which, as the black-
smith's drawings tell him which it is. Machinists
know that any piece marked 02 is to be made of a
forging. No. 003, No. 0022, etc., mean brass. No.
0003, No. 00022, mean wood. No. 00003, malleable
iron, and so on, as may be adopted. It is customary
to use the last kind of numbering for all rare mate-
rials, such as malleable iron, if rarely used, leather,
rubber, and special metals, thus indicating that the
piece is not made of common material, and the draw-
ing will define what it is to be made of.
* * * * j (jo not intend to say much about
Sackett's instruction to his draughtsmen, regarding
the execution of the drawings, but, as part of the sys-
tem, I should explain that no one but the pattern
maker is ever to measure a drawing. He never has
to do so but once, and he can measure closely to
any scale. But if machinists ever measure drawings,
there is no telling what will happen. No two men
measure alike, and, as a consequence, the drawing
would be subjected to a dozen different translations.
For this reason, a drawing should show figured di-
mensions wherever it is to be brought to a size. Parts
which are not to be touched by machinists, have no
dimensions given. Sometimes a place is to be turned
or finished, and at the same time it may make no dif-
ference about its distance or dimension. If a dimen-
sion is marked on such a place, a man will use up as
much time bringing the piece to figured size, as if it
was very important. Figures are not put on such
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAl/S LETTERS. 315
H, e.
<> x 10 Inch Portable Engine. March, 1880.
TO PATTERN MAKERS.
A plain number, as No. 7, means cast-Iron. If preceded by a cipher, as No.
07, it means wrought work. If preceded by two ciphers, as No. (J07, it means
brags. If preceded by three ciphers, it means wood-work. Patterns a re want-
ed for cast-iron and brass pieces.
Measure a id make your own allowanse for shrinkaga and dratt .
Holes with no sizes given are to be cored to size.
Do not measure where figures are given.
Always add for fiuish, when figures are given. Add for finish when you find
the word " polish," or '' face."
Where two views are shown, the size is generally marked in but one place;
the same with holes of the same character. Look ont for this.
Don't forget the fillets and rounds on all rough work.
Mark all patterns, core-boies and pieces, with the symbol and number.
If ono pattern makes two pieces with additions, put both numbers on the
piece used for the two.
TO BLACKSMITHS.
If there are forging sheets, work to the figures and to the shapes shown by
the red outlines. If there is no rad outline, the piece is not to be finished and
calls for a smoother forging. If there are no forging sheets, make forcings
from working drawings to order only, and leave finish where figures are given.
TO MACHINISTS.
Do not finish where there are no figures, unless you find the word " finish,"
or "polish," or have special instructions.
Where nuts and boltheads come down on rough cislinsrs, you will counter-
bore the surface, so as to allow them to come down square.
Counter-sink the first thread out of all tapped holes, not with a drill, but a
hand counter sink.
Touch all bolt holes lightly, with the same tool.
Chamfer the first thread off all screws before trying them in a hole.
Leave no ragged corners. Where a corner is formed by a rough surface and
a finished one, round the corner nicely and boldly.
A hole marked ' tap " is to have a thread in it, either tapped or chased .
All screws are standard thread and right hand V, unless otherwise men-
tioned .
All key saata are to be in depth one-half their width, and straight, unless
otherwise stated.
Don't polish any work not marked polish, except on special Instructions.
Don't touch a tool to any part not figured unless you find the word "polish"
or "face." If the word "polish" is placed after the number of the piece, it
means polish all over the outside.
Where a hole to be drilled i* shown and no distances are given, ii. is either
to be scribed from some other piece, or is to be in the center of a bors.
Make all fita by varying th.- aizo of the internal piece. Let all holes bo
taadard.
SHERMAN G. SACKETT, ... Proprietor.
OHIO VALLEY IRON WORKS,
CINCIXSATl, O.
(See page 316.)
316 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
places. The simple word " plane," or " face," or "pol-
ish," and the absence of figures, will show the dimen-
sions or distance is immaterial. All this business looks
like work, but there is no point where " save work "
comes in to better advantage than in the arrange-
ment of shop drawings ; and a decided system of draw-
ings will pay many times over for its cost.
* * * * As 5 e f ore stated, Sackett pastes a back
on each drawing card. These backs are of such size
as to meet and lap over the margin. On the preced-
ing page I show the back work of one of Sackett's
drawings. The upper section is printed separately, and
if a machine requires but five or six drawing cards, the
draughtsman makes this section himself. If ten or more
are needed, printing is the nicest and cheapest. The
symbol is brought out very boldly, as shown, so that
drawings may be easily identified. The balance of
this thing is printed in one piece, and all is pasted on
before the drawing is varnished. * * * *
* * * * NO machinist in this country has done
himself justice until he has worked somewhat in rail-
road shops, but the lad so unfortunate as to learn his
trade in one is to be pitied. No matter how good a
workman he is on railroad work, which is almost al-
ways old repair work, he finds himself decidedly "off"
when he gets out in the other shops. He finds he
must stick to railroad shops, or else grit his teeth and
learn his trade over again.
* * * * I may be accused of intimating that a
machinist ought to tramp over the country and work
around. That's just exactly what I mean. I hold that
there is a time to commence sticking to one shop, and
that too much sticking before that time tends to dam-
age a man's future.
* * * * It is a knowledge of the experience
and emotions of men that makes me firm in the
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL*S LETTERS. 317
belief that a workman does well to begin tramping
early, after finishing his time, and to quit tramping
soon after beginning. The idea is to get posted in
the general ways of the trade something which can-
not possibly be done in any one shop and, at the
same time, the variety is not so great that its salient
points cannot be absorbed in a short time spent in judi-
ciously moving around.
* * * * My advice to a young chap, after serv-
ing out his time, is to start out, no matter what pay
can be had by staying. Call your starting point your
home, and never call it abandoned. Go so far from
home that you can't get back, and don't go near any
friends or men you have ever seen before. This will
put you to the rack of self-reliance, but the thing Tnust
come before the boy changes to the man. You will
march out into the world, confident that you know all
about machine shops. You will get work where old
stagers fail, and you will make friends where the old
stager don't look for them. Every new shop will be
a grand revelation.
Pick out different kinds of shops. Railroad, car,
steam engine, locomotive, machine tools, woodworking
machinery, mining machinery, agricultural implements,
printing machinery, steam pumps, mill machinery, etc.
Take in the whole variety in small doses, and then go
home and settle down, or move your home to the place
you like best.
* * * * This country is awfully big, and, with
all respect for the thousands and thousands of lathes
which this very minute are revolving while some chap
leans over them with outside calipers ; for the thou-
sands of planers, which are at this instant knocking
their dogs against their tumblers ; for the thousands
of drill presses, which this instant would show their
spindles gradually descending ; for the thousands of
318 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
vises, which this instant have a death grip on some
piece of metal ; for the shower of chips flying before
the thousands of chipping chisels now creeping slowly
forward before thousands of ball-pein hammers with
all respect for these many evidences of the existence of
machine shops in this land, I venture the opinion that
the machine shops haven't got started yet. There are
lots of them yet to come. Not monster establishments
with full lines of regular articles to make, with a rou-
tine business and printed catalogues, with stocks of
patterns in regular use, with story after story full of
fine tools and fine workmen; not such shops as these,
but little shops which will some day, under the man-
agement of boys now sweeping the shop, grow up and
find their place. These little shops wil have a certainty
of nothing, and will do every thing.
* * * * Men with nothing have finally got shops
of their own, and it will continue to happen that way.
A man some day learns that if he can't ride, he can
walk. If he is not born to move, he can stand still.
There are riding shops, and there are walking shops;
I know something about these walking shops ; in fact
I was raised in a shop that was too weak and puny to
creep well, and I saw it in a full gallop before my
term of apprenticeship was up.
I actually believe that the most successful own-
ers are those who come from these good shops. The
slouch from the rough little shop can start one of
his own and feel at home, but if the business should
grow in spite of him, it would probably get away with
him, while the lordly chip from the big shop, if he can
narrow his gauge to start on, is always ready for a
healthful growth.
There are two ways of starting small
shops. One is to depend on your superior skill and
wit and mechanical reputation, and start right under
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS. 319
the nose of the big shop you came out of. If you
have luck, you may absorb the big shop in course of
years. If you don't have luck, they will absorb you.
Such shops generally start with the intention of mak-
ing a certain thing, and depending on luck and man-
agement to bring other things into line.
The other way is to hunt around and find a place
miles and miles and miles away from any other shop.
The place must be located in the market center
of some saw-mill country, or agricultural country,
or sugar-mill country, or some machine-using sec-
tion.
The intention is to get the repairs of the surrounding
section, do such odd new work as can be picked up,
and finally get into the manufacture of the very ma-
chines you repair. In proper hands this plan is the
sure road to fortune. But it is hard, up-hill work, and
takes lots of pluck and good judgment. Repair work
in such a shop brings fabulous prices. There is no
competition, and skill must be used to keep competi-
tion away. West of the Mississippi is the place for
such shops to hunt for locations.
Such shops require more money than the little city
shops, because you can't get supplies inside of three
weeks, and you need them every instant. It might be
thought that a railroad would be a convenience, but a
railroad would spoil the whole game. It would bring
your supplies quicker, but it would also bring them
to your customer quicker, and would allow him to go
to headquarters.
After a while you will get up a saw-mill or engine,
no better than anybody else's, but a little different,
so you can call it your own, and sell it for five prices.
Your real estate is given to you with a cash bonus to
encourage the enterprise, and you become a curiosity
and a power in the neighborhood.
320 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
* * * * Can you imagine the enthusiastic artist
admiring the rare creations of the masters, always alive
to their points of excellence, and ever striving to give
his own atmosphere the color of their bold superiority ?
And can you imagine the rare delight this artist would
find in that reversal of time, which would allow him to
touch these masters and see them at their work? If
you can, you know something of my experience as I
made my first pilgrimage, and set foot in the sacred
premises, and found myself in contact with the men
whose names have been always by me through my
shop life.
I did do it, sure enough, and I hope to do it again.
I put on my summer hat, stopped the mill, and made
the grand rounds. I never saw these shops before, and
for that reason am glad I didn't die last summer. If
I should commence to make what I saw and was in-
terested in the subject of these letters, I wouldn't have
time to write them, and these pages wouldn't be big
enough to hold them, so I won't do it. * * *
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS 32!
CHAPTER XXXVI.
THE MEN WHO DESIGN MILLS AND SHOPS. CHARACTER-
ISTICS OF PROFESSIONAL AND NON-PROFESSIONAL MEN.
ARCHITECTS WHO FAIL IN DESIGNING INDUSTRIAL WORKS.
INCONVENIENCES IN MACHINE SHOPS. THE USUAL
EXPERIENCE IN BUILDING AND EXTENDING THEM.
* * * * I am on the hunt for an architect who has
made a study of industrial works. I know of lots of them
who pretend to make a specialty of such business, and who
can point with pride to many magnificent shops, mills, fac-
tories, etc., in which the exterior seems to indicate a special
fitness within. But when we come to investigate these
establishments, we find them full of architectural blunders.
The utility of a thing seems to be entirely outside of the
architect's range of comprehension. A canvas awning, or
a business sign, put on a building, disarranges all the archi-
tect's calculations ; in fact, I never heard of one of them
showing a sign on an elevation. I suppose they would pro-
test if asked to dot one in, just to see how it looked. It
might spoil the looks of the drawing. The New York Post-
office is a fair sample of functional architecture. It was,
or was supposed to be, designed for the manipulation of
mail matter and the transaction of postal business ; but no
proper calculation was made for light, and no means were
provided for getting mail into the building, or for getting
mail out. A wooden addition, with some common sense in
it, had to be resorted to, before the place was at all fitted
for the very work it was intended for.
* * * * Modern mill architecture has apparently
fallen into the hands of mill operators, who, as a class, know
as much about mill designing as a woman does about design-
ing a kitchen. The modern mill is designed by a mill-
wright, or an operative, and the modern machine-shop de-
sign springs from the brain of a machinist.
322 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
* * * * The mechanical engineer lives, and works
and deals with machinery and machine work. He is a de-
signing mechanic, with observation and executive faculties.
He also works with drawing paper and T-squares and
compasses and bow pens and dotted lines, and talks freely
of elevation, section, plan, and detail.
It would look as though such a man was an engineer and
architect combined in one machine; and that if he wanted
to design a building for industrial purposes, in his line, all
he had to do was simply to do it.
* I have always divided men into two classes,
professional and non-professional, to the disparagement of
neither. Among non-professional men, I class those who
carefully treasure every scrap of past experience, and who
are guided by their accumulations of experience.
Among the professional men, I class those, who, without
any special attempt to gain experience themselves, are con-
stantly and forever absorbing the experience of others. If
the non-professional never did a certain thing, he knows
nothing about it. After he has done it, he gets one man's
experience. The professional man, without ever intending
to do a certain thing, may have thorough knowledge of the
world's experience in that thing. To him the books bring
the lifetime experience of ten thousand lives. Knowledge
of others' failures will divert his thoughts and acts into
original channels. The non-professional leaves on record
the experience of one small life, and the professional man
gathers in thousands of these. The non-professional man
may grope alone a lifetime after one small fact, stored in
a business-like way in the head of the professional man.
The professional man's mind is a valuable text book in the
school of experience, which the book itself may never
attend.
It has taken all this philosophy to bring me to the con-
clusion that an architect ought to be able to tell me
something useful about houses, especially as my sole ex-
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS. 325
perience consists in a dissatisfaction with the last one I
lived in.
* * * When the machine man builds a shop, he
botches it.
I don't know just why this should be so, but I have
often noticed that new establishments, contrived with a
definite purpose in view, have almost always proved the
most awkward, and ill-fitted for their use.
Railroad shops, designed by some master mechanic
with every possible point in view, are generally an abom-
ination ; and I only know of one way to get them built
worse, and that is to set an industrial architect at the job.
If some of our technical colleges will establish a chair
of shopitecture, in which a knowledge of the ancient past
forms a bar to approach, I believe the world would be a
trifle advanced.
* * * * f ne f ac t is, Mr. Editor, that I want to
build a shop. I am a mechanic myself. I know " how to
set a slide valve," and how to cut a thread on chilled iron,
and how to wash old waste, and how to unscrew a rusty
nut, and lots of things ; and I know how to " draft," and
how to figure up the weight of cast iron, and all such ; but
I have seen lots of shopmen far better and wiser than I,
get up miserable shops. I don't want any such side issue
to enter in on my life, and for that reason I seek far and
wide for the man who can measure me for a shop as a
shoemaker would for a boot.
* * * * \vith a full knowledge that I may have to
be my own shoemaker, I am now looking at crack shops,
and if you could set instantaneous pictures in type, I could
send you a volume on modern shop architecture.
* * * * The b est arrangements I have seen for
handling heavy work have been in shops that never have
made, and never intended to make, anything weighing a ton.
I find heavy tools and heavy work done on sky floors, and
tinkering work done in one-story shops. I find well-
326 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
arranged cranes fixed where small tools run, and see the
heavy lifting, around big planers and lathes, done by pure
back muscle. I find raw stock in warehouses, and finished
stock out-doors. I find monster elevators well arranged
in shops whose delicate little work could be blown through
a pneumatic tube ; and in some shops doing heavy work, I
notice that an open hatchway and a dollar's worth of rope,
are the sole dependence.
* * * * A storeroom for castings is seldom met
with, and when found, it is invariably so arranged that it
is simply a casting pile under roof.
A casting storeroom systematically arranged and adapt-
ed to contain all the standard and wild castings of a con-
cern ; a place where the foundry's delivery ends ; a place
where the machine-shop's receipt of cast stock begins ; a
place where every stock casting belongs, and can be act-
ually found, is a rare sight.
It is so useful a thing, so economical of valuable time,
so convenient, and so absolutely void of expense that it is
hardly to be looked upon as a refinement or a luxury.
* * * * The power of extension is the great archi-
tectural feature in a shop. The presiding genius may delib-
erate and dream over the new shop ; may lay down on
drawing paper every machine and area which the fairest and
most prophetic anticipation can suggest, and when done he
makes his estimates and finds that the cost of the brick
exceeds the sum of all present intentions. All the delibe-
rations and dreams are to be rubbed out, and the plan
redrawn on a smaller scale. This thing figures up all
right, and the new shop is built accordingly, and when
done everything is satisfactory and the memory even of
the big drawing fades away.
Two short years and prophecy asserts it-
self. Something is to be added, and a review of the old
drawing shows that the very item was borne in mind but
discarded on the final decision. The shop is built, how-
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS. 327
ever, and the new item must be added. A long planer, or
a big lathe, or a crane, or another cupola, or room for
more patterns, or a paint shop, or a sand shed, or a flask
yard, or a wood shop, or a forge, or something must be
wedged into a space already calculated with economy.
A few years show added buildings shutting out light
from the original ones ; floors with jumping-off places at
the most unexpected points ; little machines peppered in
among big ones ; cranes which either lap or fail to con-
nect ; line shafts at angles driven by belts turned over
mule pulleys ; crowded areas originally intended for set-
ting up floors ; castings piled wherever luck has left room
for them ; patterns piled where luck has left no room for
them ; vises at windows far from the setting-up spaces ;
shaving shops to leeward of foundry and blacksmith shops ;
and so many other things awry and disordered that the
presiding genius, his own architect, wishes he was back in
the old shop, so that he could build the new one to suit
the present demands.
* * * * j honestly believe that the question of
shop architecture will some day receive the attention of
some of your readers who are willing to give their experi-
ences ; and that some one will suggest that elastic shop
which can be built with present funds to suit present needs,
and at the same time be capable of systematic extension in
pursuance to a contrived plan. Making a new drawing on
a smaller scale is wrong in principle. The scale of length
only should be altered.
328 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL*S LETTERS.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
THE ACQUISITION OF KNOWLEDGE. EXPERIENCE OF THE
COUNTRY BANKER'S SON IN A MACHINE SHOP.
* * * * We are told that a little learning is a dan-
gerous thing, and also to drink deep or touch not the
Pierian spring. This may be all right when applied to
mental and moral philosophy, astronomy, or the square
root of 2 ; but it is glaring fallacy when applied to the
mechanic arts. As the scales of ignorance drop 'from the
inquiring mechanic's eyes, he sees behind him paths of
pleasant conjecture, and before him a somewhat negatively
forbidding glare of certainty.
I take it to be the experience of every advanced mechanic,
who is anything of an enthusiast, that his pleasures in his
art have lessened as his special knowledge increased.
Agathos says : " Not in knowledge is happiness, but in the
acquisition of knowledge. In forever learning we are for-
ever blessed ; but to know all were the curse of a fiend."
All mechanics are not enthusiasts ; all do not advance
in knowledge ; all do not conjecture, and all are not so
situated as to have the spirit of conjecture aroused.
* * * * A country banker's son, in his school holi-
days, finds himself at the open door of a machine shop.
It is the only shop for a hundred miles around. Like all
such shops so situated, it is called the " foundry." The
boy is, perhaps, fourteen : he has never seen a railroad nor
a steamboat. He has seen two steam engines, perhaps, in
dusty flour mills. Horse powers, and reapers, and treadle
grindstones, and whirligig egg beaters have always possessed
a charm for him. He has had an investigative eye for clock
movements, and knows that they have a cog wheel and a
fluttering arrangement inside. He has read papers and
books, and has lots of pictures, and his mind is stored
with mechanical matter for ten thousand questions, if he
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS. 3 2 9
could find any one as intelligent as himself to put them to.
He looks in at the "foundry " door, and becomes instantly
aware that there is something inside which he never saw,
nor read of, nor heard tell of, nor dreamed of. From the
door sill he looks up and sees a revolving shaft, with pulleys
and belts. His wondering eye follows these belts. He sees
that they lead to counter shafts, which in their turn have
pulleys and belts. His eye follows these belts down to
various kinds of machines, and to a man standing by each
machine. This is a vision to him. He dares go no further;
he goes back to school with his mind full of the whirling
glimpse. He asks himself, What were those things, and
what were those men doing, and what were they doing it
for ? The next Saturday he finds the foundry door again ;
he ventures inside, and finds himself close to one of these
men running one of these machines ; he knows the man
from the machine, but he doesn't know the machine from
the work which it is doing.
It is a lathe, but he never heard the word. What is it
for, and what is the man for ? The machine doesn't seem
to be grinding anything, and the man doesn't seem to be
feeding anything to it. Parts of the machine seem to be
simply turning around, and the man seems to be simply
watching them turn around. His eye wanders around the
shop wildly and wonderingly, but he sees* only mysteries
repeated. But the boy is a boy, if he is a puzzled one.
His looks of wonder and inquiry touch the heart of the
lathesman, as such looks always do touch the hearts of
lathesmen. The latter beckons the boy to him, and bows
him over the lathe, and shows him a revolving bar, mostly
black and rough, and brightened part of the way. The
boy can see that the bright part is a trifle smaller than the
black part, and that a something or other is close up to it
where the black part begins, and that dirt or something is
continually falling from it. Still he does not comprehend,
and the man has to explain. " That is a bar of iron, and
330 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS.
I am turning it off to make it smaller and round and nice.
The lathe turns the bar around, and this tool does the
cutting."
The boy sees it all and begins to explain it to the man :
" Oh ! now I see it ! This little thing is the thing you're
turning, and this big thing is the thing that turns it ; and
this is the stuff it turns off, and you stand here to watch it.
My ! ain't that funny ! I didn't know they could turn
iron. What do they use such a big machine for ? It's
bigger than the piece of iron ; but, say, what makes the
thing keep cutting ? I don't see the bar move up any."
Then the whole thing is explained, and he puts his finger
on the carriage and feels it move. The man draws the tool
out and lets him feel the point, and explains that iron is
not hard, and he moves the carriage by hand and shows
him the screw, and shows him the knob he turns to stop
and start the feed, and he stops and starts the lathe, and
throws the belt to show what the cone pulley is for.
The boy's active mind grasps the whole general idea, and
he grows many years older in a few moments. Then he
walks around the shop and sees other lathes on other kinds
of work, and he sees a planer and a drilling machine, and
a man chipping iron with a hammer and chisel, and then
he goes out into the moulding room, and sees ugly men
and pretty holes in the sand, but he doesn't know what
they are for.
He goes home and tells wonderful tales, and dreams
wonderful dreams.
Other holidays come, and he makes other visits and
gains more knowledge of the shop and men.
Vacation comes, and the foundry takes
possession of him, and he takes possession of the foundry.
He is always there ; the first to come in the morning, the
last to go at noon or night ; finds out everything, noses
around everywhere, seeks the dignity of standing by ma-
chines when no one else is by them, coats his clothes all
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL*S LETTERS. 33 l
over with grease, and is an over-willing, insistent, incorrigi-
ble, and, withal, a very happy, tolerable nuisance.
* * * * Vacation ends, and there is a row at home
between the country banker and the country banker's
son. In the battle both win. The boy goes back to school
for one term, and then can go to the " foundry" as an ap-
prentice.
* * * * This S h p seems a p OOr> miserable institu-
tion to us. A couple of shackly lathes, one splendid new
lathe, a little old chain planer, a wooden-frame bolt-cut-
ter, a drill press, weighing 300 pounds, a six-by-ten steam
engine, twenty feet of line shaft, three vises, ten flat drills,
two die plates, about one set of taper taps, three or four
home-made plug taps, a blacksmith's fire, a few files, a noisy
old blower, a cupola, some sand, some patterns, some pat-
tern lumber, a wood lathe, six pattern maker's clamps,
handsome scrap iron these make the sum and substance
of the inventory.
* * * * The men in the shop consist of the owner,
who has spent all his life in shops, but who never was, and
never will be, a mechanic ; one hired man, who used to be
a machinist, but who has been twenty years farming ; three
younger men taken as learners, their muscle being their
principal recommendation ; an old, gray-headed chap, who
may some day have been a moulder, and a lively carpen-
ter, who may some day become a pattern maker. The old
machinist gets $3 a day ; the young ones, $8 a week ; the
old moulder and the young pattern maker $2.50 a day
each. The owner is the hardest worker in the shop, and
is making money, as his work is all repair work, and there
is no competition.
* * * * Is it reasonable to hope that the banker's
boy can go into this miserable shop and become a
mechanic ?
Anyhow, he goes in at $5 a week for three years. He
has more natural sense than all the others in the institution
33 2 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
combined, the young pattern maker being the only man
with a mind beyond the crudeness of this little shop. The
routine of the boy's life is known by all except those poor
unfortunates whose first view of mechanical life was a view
of the thing in its full completeness.
He chipped castings, wrestled with the old bolt cutter,
cut bolts with the hand dies, run the drill press, and made
himself generally useful. His hands got rough and bruised
up, and cut, and dirt got into the cuts. He had really
entered upon the sea of life and in a ship hardly sea-
worthy.
* * * * The boss runs the little lathe himself, and
being called away frequently by other duties, gets into the
habit of leaving the banker's bey John to watch it till he
comes back. As a matter of fact the banker's boy John
knows more about the lathe than the boss ever dreamed of,
but the boss is no fool and soon finds it out, and the bank-
er's boy John becomes the lathe hand Johnnie. He does
his work well and leads a life of ambition and inquiry. He
reads everything he can lay his hands on, and every day he
tells the old machinist something about machine work or
asks the old lathesman some reasonable question which he
cannot answer. 'He reads of twist drills, but it is years
before he sees one ; he finds a picture of one and shows it
to the old man. The old man doesn't know. The boy
wants to know.
Nuts are tapped in the shop by running a blacksmith's
taper tap into both sides. The boy reads of a nut tap and
makes one for use in the bolt cutter on his own hook.
Merit and conceit are so mixed in the act that it leaves his
reputation as it was.
* * * * These blacksmith's taps are used to start
plug taps ; the boy reads up on the tap question, and on his
own hook constructs starting taps with the outside only
tapering ; he organizes a set of tap wrenches. He also
organizes a set of tap drills, and has many a row over them.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL*S LETTERS. 333
He does not use these drills himself, and he is not the
owner nor boss of the shop ; but he forges these drills
himself at idle times, and sticks them in the board by the
drill press, and insists on full benefits being derived from
them. This brings on a fuss every time his watchful eye
catches a man reducing or spreading one of these drills.
His next piece of impertinence is to find fault with the
square hole in the spindle of the drill press. He puts the
spindle in the lathe, cuts a thread on it and screws on a
nice socket with taper hole and slot, and he makes the
shank of every drill in the shop to fit it. There is not
work for him every day, so he finds time enough for this
nonsense, about which there is no complaint ; only indiffer-
ence.
* * * * There are several things on this boy's
mind ; he wants to know what a big lathe looks like, and
whether a man uses a step ladder when running one. He
wants to know what a boring mill is. He wants to know
how the holes in the planer rail are counterbored from the
inside, as it seems a physical impossibility. He wants to
334 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS.
understand the working of a steam engine. He wants to see
a planer that will feed downward and a lathe that will feed
across. He wants to know how a lathe carriage can be fed
along by a round rod with a key way in it. He wants to
know what a cutter is, and what is meant by milling, and
how gear teeth are cut, and what sort of a thing a chuck
is, and what an open die bolt cutter is, and what is meant
by scraping, and Low they plane under the inside edge of
a lathe bed, and how they turn the solid pin in a cross-
head, and what a reamer is like, and a rosebit, and, above
all, he just wants to try a twist drill once. He gets all the
books he can and becomes well posted on the steam en-
gine, and becomes anxious to see one larger than 12", or
some of the peculiar forms he sees in the books.
* * * * The boy has, so far, never seen a machin-
ist except those mentioned, and they are ignorant and in-
experienced and have never given him an idea which he
was incapable of originating. For a wonder, the idea of a
large and extensive shop has never entered his head ; he
has never seen one, nor read of one, nor heard of one ; and
has never thought of the thing.
* * * * He becomes an expert workman on the
little lathe and on such fitting as turns up. Owing to the
poverty of tools, every day calls for some impossibility, and
every day he manages to see some impossible job fin-
ished.
* * * * A new day dawns on the boy in his sec-
ond year. The boss has made money and the business
increases ; the shop is enlarged, a new 20-inch lathe is pur-
chased, and a new man is coming from a distant world
where there are lots of machinists. The boy can't sleep o'
nights ; he wants to see the new man. What will he be
like?
The lathe comes, and Johnnie starts it up, and goes all
through it and takes it all in. There is a disappointment
now that he has acquired new knowledge : one of the future
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAl/S LETTERS. 335
pleasures of life has past. He has seen a lathe with a rod
feed and cross feed and chuck.
He hears the man has come and will go to work to-
morrow. In the evening he slips around and sees the man
through a window. Another pleasure over. The man
looks just like other men.
* The new machinist is an intelligent young
fellow whose entire experience has been in the Great
Northern Railroad shops. He is disgusted with the little
shop, but he has sense, and goes to work with a will. The
little shop can afford to pay big wages. He takes at once
to Johnnie, in a patronizing way, as the only tolerable ele-
ment about the place. Johnnie takes to him, and pumps
him for month after month till George has nothing to tell
which Johnnie does not know.
* * * * Revelation has come to Johnnie. The
Great Northern shops are big sixteen lathes, several drill
presses, several planers, etc., etc. He hears of locomotives
and of compound planers, and hears machinists called fin-
ishers, and an engine a " stationary ;" and this man has
used twist drills, and can explain scraping on a valve seat.
* * * * But George never saw a boring mill, nor a
gear cutter, nor any kind of an engine except stationary
and locomotives, and cannot tell how the inside counter-
boring was done in the planer rail. And Johnnie instructs
George in the principles of the steam engine and in the
scientific theories of the link motion, and in the general
structure of beam engines, trunk engines, side-lever engines,
Corliss engines and condensing engines things which the
boy has never seen except in his well-thumbed books.
* * * When Johnnie's three years are up, his
wages are put at $3 per day. Three months more and an-
5ther lathe is got and three new men are sent for, for
fohnnie to pump. They are drunken ignoramuses with
lothing in them, but they excite in Johnnie an irresistible
iesire to see the land where machinists grow.
336 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL*S LETTERS.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
SHAPES AND STYLES OF CHIMNEYS. MISTAKES IN BUILD-
ING CHIMNEYS. HOW THE LADIES SET OUT TO IMPROVE
A DIRTY CITY. MR. SINTON's PRIDE IN HIS SMOKE CON-
SUMER.
* * * * You have published many useful drawings
in the American Machinist, but I very much question
whether you have ever shown anything more needed than
Mr. Towne's chimney, illustrated in a late issue. A chim-
ney is of course nothing but an expensive hole for smoke
to go through. The books are full of formulas for ascer-
taining the proper area and length of the hole, but are
generally silent as to the methods of production.
* * * * j n constructing the hole, safety and cost
are the elements to be considered. A sheet-iron chimney,
put together on the ground, lifted and guyed by rods, is,
of course, a perfect chimney. It can be raised on any
kind of soil ; it costs a mere trifle compared to a brick
chimney ; it can be lengthened if found too short ; it can
be moved in two days if wanted in a new position ; and it
is salable and available elsewhere if needed no longer.
It is thus seen to possess some merits not found in brick
chimneys. There are probably three hundred sheet-iron
chimneys to one brick one in this country. I refer to fur-
nace chimneys or smoke stacks, of course.
* * * * The mam demerits of the sheet-iron chim-
neys are short life and the necessity of using guys. The
necessity of frequent painting is no demerit, as the paint
money goes for interest in brick chimneys. The short life
of sheet-iron chimneys is due to the quick inside corrosion
through the thin metal, and the strength of the metal is
not sufficient to permit a base hold to take the place of
guys. The sheet-iron chimney is almpst universally made
round and straight. The only decorative features ever
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL*S LETTERS. 337
seen are in the way of top beads and paper collars. Some
of this top work is so infernally " sheety " and ugly that it
should send the designer to the penitentiary.
The brick chimney needs no guys, the
immobility of a heavy mass being the dependence for sta-
bility. When a designer, who is governed by perfunctori-
ness, goes at a brick chimney, he reasons after this manner :
I want area of hole with the least surrounding material,
and of course a circle is the thing. I want the least aggre-
gate vertical section of entire chimney, whereby the effect
of wind pressure is reduced. Of course the circle is the
thing. Thus a round chimney is determined upon. By a
perfectly proper analysis of the strains, our designer is led
to construct the walls with a thickness decreasing towards
the top ; and, by a careful consideration of the relation
of the volumes of gases to their temperatures, he arrives
at the fact that the hole may be tapering towards the top.
* * * * This designer, holding to the rigid pro-
prieties of things, will not entertain the idea of a shape
more beautiful than the circular one, not even if the more
beautiful one costs less.
But after all he will ornament the top of this ugly but
perfectly proper chimney. The ornamentation may be a
simple ring formed of projecting halves of bricks, or it may
be a gorgeous capital taken from the ancients, but it will
be something ornamental. Our chimney designer is much
like a certain class of machine tool designers, who shape
everything about the lathe with a view to its proper uses,
strains, etc., and then concentrate their aestheticism in the
legs of the lathe. I honor all these men for their inability
to make a thing ugly all over.
* * * * The square chimney comes from a desire
to cheapen a round hole by constructing it of common
square bricks with common labor. The polygonal chim-
ney with from six to a hundred flats is an approach to the
circular form in the matter of economy of material ; it ap-
33 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS.
preaches the square one in the simplicity of form of
brick required, and in the grade of labor. They possess
inherent qualities of beauty which do the heart good and
don't interfere with the draft.
* * * * The fluted brick chimney, having sundry
ribs and buttresses, is designed in view of the fact that a
tube is stronger, against flexion, if it is crimped or corru-
gated. Such chimneys have a capacity for beauty not found
in the round or square shapes, but the top ornamentation
must be carefully attended to or the eye becomes offended.
The Pennsylvania Railroad, which has, by
the way, furnished many good models of things and
precious few poor ones, builds a standard chimney of brick.
They have an elegant taper, a fluted or buttressed section,
and a flaring top of the most dignified beauty. They have
lots of these chimneys, and all are alike.
* * * * A few miles from Philadelphia, near Ger-
mantown Junction, I think, some man has built a chimney
patterned after the Pennsylvania Railroad chimney, but may
the Lord have mercy on him for the errors committed ! Few
men could ever see the top of this chimney and forget it.
I believe the courts have decided that the owner of real
estate has title from the earth's center to the uttermost
limits of space. This being true, he can build such a cel-
lar as he likes ; he can build such a chimney as he likes ;
and he can put such a top on the chimney as he likes.
But I question his right to abuse the privilege by erect-
ing in high heaven such a chimney top as the one spoken
of. If it leaned towards Sawyer's the law would declare it
unsafe and command its destruction or correction.
It does seem that the law could have some effect on a
chimney leaning so far towards ugliness as to endanger the
artistic morals of a neighborhood.
Tall chimneys require much care and
judgment in the construction of their foundations. On
more than one occasion such structures have been built on
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS. 339
the solid rock, and after years have shown that the rock,
while solid, was not big enough to keep them from tipping.
* * * * Chimney straightening is a simple art, re-
quiring simply a cool judgment. The operation consists in
taking a course of brick out of the long side of the chim-
ney and substituting a thinner course, or in wedging up the
short side and putting in a thicker course. The work at
the Washington monument is one of the finest examples of
chimney straightening on record.
* * * * A brick chimney one hundred and seventy-
five feet high will swing from two to six feet at the top.
The elasticity of the structure should be properly propor-
tioned from bottom to top, else bottom strains may be im-
posed through too rigid a lever.
The man who builds a tall slim chimney
alongside a big tall building, and takes occasion to guy the
top of his chimney to the building, generally makes a mis-
take. The building and chimney, not being tuned to the
same pitch, or having different swings, will cause trouble.
The chimney will become subject to short flexions below
the guy. Much better to let the chimney swing as it wants
to and distribute the swing from bottom to top.
* * * * There is another kind of chimney, better
and more costly than a sheet-iron one, and as good and
cheaper than a brick one, and it is handsome, or may be.
I refer to a chimney made of plate iron, and stiff enough
to hang by its bottom hold. These chimneys are made of
plate iron varying in bottom thickness from a quarter to a
half an inch, and the top iron is best about an eighth. A
bottom plate with a nose on it is well belted to the founda-
tion, and the first course of iron starts from the nose.
These chimneys are heavy to start on, and are lined with
brick, so that they possess certain of the stable features of
brick chimneys due to their weight. As a mobile mass
which will whip around in the wind, it must have the elastic
strength to whip itself back. Its base hold must be rigid.
34 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
* * * * i have written to an experienced builder
of these chimneys, for drawings of one lately erected on
the shore of a lake where the winds blow, and I can prob-
ably soon send you sketches showing all details.
* * * * There are two ways of erecting these plate-
iron chimneys. One is to start at the bottom course and
rivet in place each successive course, using an inside scaf-
fold only. The other plan is to start with the top course,
jack it up, and rivet the next course under it, and so on till
finally the bottom course is put in place and riveted at
top and bottom. Guys are used during the operation.
This is the common method of erecting electric light
towers or masts, which are simply poles built of plate-iron
rings.
* * * * Once upon a time a dirty city built in a
hollow got art upon its social and municipal brain. This
city was and is an important manufacturing place, and
burnt and still burns green coal. Industry and soft coal
and art, when mixed and allowed to settle, will generally
precipitate the art. In the said city elegant cornices, with
brackets, modillions, and dentils of light colored material,
danced in the delight of high light and shadow and
beauty. But the dance stopped the second week after
the cornices were up. Smoke blackened everything, and
bracket and modillion and soffit and spandrel and volute
and abacus all lost their projections and high lights, and
sank into the dead flat of sombreness.
* * * * The aesthetes protested and argued. The
smoke makers claimed that the smoke made the living of
the town and paid the decorative bills, and simply soiled
its own riches. Nothing could be done so long as argu-
ment lasted.
* * * * There is a sex which substitutes pleading
for argument. The ladies organized a society for the pre-
vention of smoke. . They set to work right womanfully, not
to prevent the smoke they made themselves, but to plead
'I.}-?
I
Mr. Sinton is very frond of his device, and has almost paralyzed
his forefinger. Page 344.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS. 343
with other smoke makers. They captured the town. They
talked art and chemistry, chiaroscuro and carbonic oxide,
Neapolitan sunsets and the smokeless chimneys of Liver-
pool. They worshiped at the shrine of the smoke-con-
suming god.
* * * * Mr. Sinton was one of the most wealthy,
cultured, and foremost men of the town. He went over to
the ladies' side, and pledged his wealth and numberless
beautiful buildings and his business abilities to the cause
of the prevention of smoke. He did more than talk about
smoke prevention he set to work to prevent the smoke
from his own buildings. In short, he invented a smoke
consumer, and spared no trouble or expense in applying
them, and in getting good firemen to operate them.
* * * * At last the municipal government itself
became inspired with an indefinable yearning after a some-
thing clean and smokeless.
The chimneys had become a bore, and the city powers
decided to muzzle the entire smoke nuisance with an ordi-
nance. Charged with this duty they vented their artistic
feelings in an ordinance which made it a breach of the
peace for any big chimney to smoke. Dire penalties at-
tached to a violation of the law. A smoke inspector was
appointed. All the inventors of smoke-consuming devices
on earth, or in the waters under the earth, moved their
headquarters to this Utopian city. The ordinance did not
say that all smoke should be consumed, but it said that all
good citizens would have to put some sort of a machine at
their furnaces looking toward that end.
* * * * The music has just commenced. More
than one of the brass knobs has already seen the inside of
the police courts, and the smoke inspector has not yet got
warmed up to his business. The line of action mapped
out by this city is a novel one in this country, and will re-
sult in many good things if such results are possible, and
when the battle gets a little warmer I will try and get you
344 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
some valuable information on means and methods of burn-
ing soft coal without smoke.
* * * * Mr. Sinton is very proud of his device, and
has almost paralyzed his forefinger pointing, with pride, to
the top of one of his chimneys.
He got hold of one of the smoke makers, and gave him
a sidewalk view of the chimney tip, and the two steadied
their eyes and concentrated their gaze on the chimney.
But the smoke could hardly be perceived. They went be-
low decks to see how it worked, but there had been no fire
built that day, so the investigation had to be deferred.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORD AL*S LETTERS. 34 5
CHAPTER XXXIX.
MR. BAKER BUILDS A MILL WITH DOORS AND A LEAN-TO.
A REFORMED CONSUMPTIVE PERSUADES HIM TO IN-
VEST IN A HYPHEN. HOW THINGS TURNED OUT.
* * * * A certain Mr. Baker, within the range of
my acquaintance, has a mill, and grinds up wheat for a
living.
Mr. Baker is a progressive man in his section of the
world, but elsewhere he might be looked upon as a fogy.
We look upon all men as fogies, who fail to act upon the
suggestions of well-established, economical principles and
practices. May it not be true that many of these fogies
are really men of progress, who for some " reasonable "
reason cannot accept many of these same principles and
practices as " established " ? May there not be something
in the atmosphere surrounding some men, which perverts
the ordinary established laws of economy ?
* * * * j fcno^y Mr. Baker to be a man who thinks
for himself and for others, and a man alive to the general
advance of human affairs. But when you see his mill, you
see an old-fashioned mill, with a roof having just enough
of mansard qualities to be ugly without and awkward with-
in robbing the universe of space, without giving it to the
mill. Such a roof was put on Mr. Baker's mill, because
Mr. Baker had seen profitable mills with such roofs on
them. The front door is a double-barreled affair, so fixed
that the top section can be opened and the bottom left
shut, or the bottom can be opened and the top left shut,
or both be opened, or both be left shut. This door is cer-
tainly a very ingenious and wonderfully contrived thing,
and I have no doubt that it is a very useful thing to have
about a mill, but not being a miller, I am not able to ex-
plain its special utility with reference to mills. I only know,
that when the two several doors are properly adjusted with
346 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS.
reference to each other, and to the mill, and to the miller,
the contrivance is very handy for the miller to lean over
when he looks out upon the world from within the mill.
I furthermore know, that many paying mills have front
doors constructed and arranged to operate substantially as
set forth.
Mr. Baker knew this also, and probably saw no reason
for putting in any other kind of a door. Mr. Baker is keen
to act on established certainty, but is slow in matters of
risk.
* * * * When Mr. Baker built his mill h"e built a
lean-to behind it. This was for an engine and boiler room.
I regret being unable to set forth the advantages of the
lean-to in industrial architecture. It may be that a lean-to
is suggestive of growth. I think it must be. Certainly a
mill or any other sort of factory building which is self-con-
tained, may be said to be in an experimental stage. The
thing may succeed and grow, and it may not. But when
the lean-to begins to develop, we may safely judge that the
business has grown beyond original anticipations. If this
is a reasonable theory, is it not also reasonable for a miller
to build the lean-to when he builds the mill ? Docs it not,
in a way, show confidence in the expectation that the mill
business will exceed present anticipations ? Millers are
supposed to have good reasons for what they do, and Mr.
Baker built a lean-to when he built his mill. Mr. Baker
was not a miller then, but he intended to be, or he would
not have built the mill.
* * * * within Mr. Baker's lean-to was a steam
engine of a popular form, designed on well-established
principles of construction that is to say, many of the en-
gines had been used with satisfaction in paying mills.
The engine was a plain, long-stroke, slide-valve, rock-
shaft affair, and there were few peculiarities about it.
In those few disparities from common practice, the de-
signer seemed very careful not to tread on delicate ground.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL*S LETTERS. 347
The exhaust passage all round and all over the cylinder,
to form a jacket to prevent loss of heat, while not common
on such engines, was an arrangement whose expediency
was obvious, of course. So also was the small cross-head
friction surface. Anybody could appreciate the impor-
tance of so proportioning wearing surface, that the engine
would not eat all its power up in its own friction. The
little cross-head brasses were of brass, as all brasses should
be ; and there were set screws to set these brasses up with.
Anybody could see that this set-screw arrangement had
established merit. If the cross-head got out of line it could
be got back by means of these set screws, and when the
brasses wore away, the set screws were always ready to set
them up.
Another merit of having an adjustment on the cross-head
was this : If the engineer set the brasses so tight as to heat
and cut, he could loosen up by these features of adjust-
ment. Can anything be plainer ?
If there were no means of adjustment, how in the world
could he loosen up things that would in some manner get
too tight ? There being take-ups all over the engine, it is
only to be expected that sometimes something would be
left so loose as to pound. In such cases an adjustable
cross-head is of incalculable value, because the engineer
can tighten up the cross-head, and thus see if that is where
the knocking comes from. An important function is thus
seen to be added to a common cross-head, for it may be-
come the seat of a knock, and, having features of adjust-
ment, the knock can be stopped ; while, if the cross-head
was not adjustable, the knocks would probably be concen-
trated in those parts of the engine which were adjustable.
What engine could stand this for any length of time ?
Imagine an engine adjustable only at the crank brasses.
Would not all the knocking occur at this point, and would
not these brasses soon knock themselves to pieces, and
would not the engineer have to devote himself and his
348 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS.
wrench solely to those brasses ? How much better, then,
to put set screws in the cross-head, and in the eccentric
strap, and in the outer pillow block, and in the piston pack-
ing ? By this simple means it is possible for a knock to
be stopped without really touching the cross-head, for the
knock may be elsewhere.
* * * * Mr. Baker's engine had a long stroke and
a slow motion, and it had them bad. But the engine was
simply an element in the mill, and its duty, in its small
way, was to produce rotary motion of certain mill machin-
ery by methods whose utility had been established.
This engine not only had a long stroke, but it had also
a short valve, by means of which the steam could be util-
ized during the entire stroke. What would be the use of
having a good long-stroke engine, and then only using the
steam port (where all the power must come from) a part of
the time ? No, sir ! No cutting off in this engine not
this stroke, anyhow. Maybe, when the engine was built,
it was intended to cut off a little ; but it had deferred do-
ing so from one stroke to another till the desire had
passed away.
* * * * Mr. Baker's smoke-stack pointed to perpet-
ually sunny skies. The invigorating influence of contrast-
ing seasons was lacking in Mr. Baker's latitude. Mr.
Baker's mind was always progressive, as hereinbefore
stated, but I have noticed that Mr. Baker's progressive ac-
tions of body partook of the nature of impulsive spurts
after certain visits to lands of snow.
* * * * The consumption of coal per horse power
per hour does not depend so much upon the geological
conditions of a locality, as upon the geographical location.
A high price for coal does not insure that means for econ-
omy in its use will be applied. Statistics of energy, ap-
plied to observations for latitude, will furnish data for get-
ting at the geographical efficiency of the steam engine.
* * * * In Mr. Baker's lean-to there was a door,
* EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS. 349
through which the fireman carried his coal. . It was a very
ordinary door, such as becomes the lean-to of a mill. In
the front of the mill there was, as stated, a proper and be-
coming form of double door, out of which went the bar-
rels of flour. Here we have another example of the in-
scrutable ways of the mill : a double door to let flour out,
and only a single door to let coal in and a full-stroke
slow-motion engine at that !
* * * * Many years ago, while lots of coal was be-
ing crowded through the little door in Mr. Baker's lean-to,
and while a little, flour was finding exit without wire-
drawing through Mr. Baker's big double door, and while
Mr. Baker was making money on the operation of these
doors, a young man walked out of the front door of a
Northern technical college with a thesis, a sheepskin, and a
title. He was an M. E. , and knew about logarithms, den-
sities, and things. He settled by a lakeside, took a sneez-
ing fit, tore something inside of him, commenced to spit
blood, and was told to " drop all hard work," and journey
to a sunny land to save his life. He took his indicators and
density tables, and in a week became an invalid loafer in
the office of Mr. Baker's Southern mill. His name was
McCann.
* * * * McCann had never seen the inside of a
mill before, and had only seen about a dozen engines, but
he gathered in books the. experience of men who had seen
lots of engines and mills. He was good company for Mr.
Baker, and he employed himself by applying mathematical
constants to the things in the mill. He counted the speed
of a big pulley, and then figured how fast the little one
was driven by it. Then he counted the little one, and
found that things didn't agree*. He kept on figuring, and
maybe he is figuring yet.
* * * He figured out something awful in Mr.
Baker's engine room, and with blanched face he told Mr.
Baker that he was using a hundred and fifty pounds of
35 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL*S LETTERS.
coal to the barrel of flour. Mr. Baker said he didn't care
if it took a ton he was making money.
McCann tried to contract for Mr. Baker's power, and
offered to go to the expense of a lean-to and a good en-
gine, in consideration of a yearly sum equal to the present
coal bills. Mr. Baker would listen to nothing of this kind ;
he told of many such mill outfits doing well financially,
and pointed to his own case, which was entirely satisfac-
tory ; the trick of successful milling being to buy wheat low
and sell flour high.
* * * * In course of time, argument upon produc-
tive economy and a showing of facts prevailed, and Mr.
Baker built a new lean-to and ordered a Hyphen-Corliss
engine. The machine was set up, and McCann, to keep
himself from dying of inactivity, assumed charge as engi-
neer, a position of pride in his case, for he refused pay. He
was in good circumstances ; and if he should accept pay
he might be charged with doing the hard work forbidden
by the doctors.
* * * * After a week's run, McCann informed
Baker that he was running on forty pounds of coal to the
barrel of flour. Mr. Baker didn't seem to care if he was,
but was proud of the engine because it was nice. McCann
said he would get things into shape to do better still.
Baker didn't care. He might be glad if McCann succeeded,
but would not waste any unnecessary effort in getting
sorry if he failed.
* * * * McCann stood by his engine like a man,
kept his indicators on all the time, and got results out of
the thing which would startle Hyphen himself. The for-
bidden work restored his health, and he went again to the
lake side. Mr. Baker was sorry to see him go, for he had
thoroughly appreciated the companionship of the young
man. As to the changes wrought in the mill he cared
nothing.
* * * * The ^d engineer took the new engine and
EXTRACTS FROM CHORD AL*S LETTERS. 353
liked it. As defects developed in the engine he remedied
them the best he could, without much work or much knowl-
edge. A claw block wore out in course of time, and he
put a new one in. This one wore out quickly, and, to
avoid the labor of replacing them, he invented a slight
change in the claw device which prevented the let-go, and
thus saved the blocks from all wear. From this brilliant
step he was naturally led to an investigation into the gov-
ernor, which seemed to be useless and in the wrong place.
The miller was complaining, in a languid sort of a way,
about the irregular speed. Finally, the governor of the
old engine was put on the new engine, and then the speed
began to behave itself.
* * * * A gentleman wrote to Mr. Baker asking
for information regarding his experience with this engine.
He replied that it was a very good engine, and, with some
trifling changes made by the engineer, was giving perfect
satisfaction. Said he did not see why it was not every bit
as good as the old engine, and he knew it to be very much
better looking. Said he was making money in the busi-
ness.
354 EXTRACTS FROM CHORD AI/S LETTERS.
CHAPTER XL.
MR. MARLING THE MOULDER. HIS INDUSTRIAL AND SOCIAL HAB-
ITS. HIS EFFORTS TO MAKE HIS CO-WORKERS MISERABLE.
HOW THEY APPRECIATED HIS EFFORTS.
* * * * ]yj r William Marling is a moulder. He is
a very common moulder, and does only the commonest
kind of work. It cannot be charged that he has a soul
above his business. Somebody might raise the question
whether it could be proven that he has a soul at all, or that
he has any idea that he has a business. I think he confines
himself to the idea that he is a moulder.
Mr. Marling is not the kind of a man to make anything
but a moulder out of anything but the very commonest
kind of a moulder, I mean. It was a happy thought which
suggested to Mr. Marling the choice of a vocation, suppos-
ing, of course, that he thought some before choosing. With
a full knowledge of Mr. Marling's intellectual, moral, and
social qualities, in case I had been appealed to to select
his vocation, I should have set him to work in the mould-
ing shop, provided I could see plenty of very common
moulding to do, so that his energy would not outrun his
supply of work, and providing I cared nothing for the
other moulders, who would thus be favored with Mr. Mar-
ling's company.
With such a grade of moulding as would call for special
skill, or special anything, in view, or with a care for the
moulders already at work, I hardly think I would have
recommended the foundry to Mr. Marling, or Mr. Marling
to the foundry, rather.
Mr. Marling is not only the commonest
kind of a moulder, but is also a painfully common kind of
a man.
As a moulder there is but little in Mr. Marling which draws
him toward, or appeals to, the warm and sympathetic feel-
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS. 355
ings of other moulders. When Mr. Marling gets burnt in
the foundry the other moulders seem to feel just about as
they would if Mr. Marling had not been burnt. When
Mr. Marling mashed his nose by stumbling over a shank
ladle, no one seemed called upon to think of arnica till the
owner of the shop came in and saw the nose ; no moulder
thought of going after arnica till the owner went himself,
and when the owner and arnica came back, no moulder
thought of rubbing the arnica on the nose till they saw the
owner doing it. They thought Mr. Marling would rub the
arnica on his nose himself ; that is if they thought any-
thing about Mr. Marling at all.
The owner of the shop was a moulder, and might have
many reasons for ministering to Mr. Marling's mashed
nose, but I think he had no reasons which the other mould-
ers didn't have. Maybe the owner was a little warmer, or a
little quicker, or a little smarter, or a little broader in the
mind than the other moulders. Maybe that would also
account for his, instead of the other moulders, owning the
shop. Who knows ? It don't make any difference any-
how. Somebody had to own the shop, or else there
wouldn't be any shop : and if there were no moulding
shops what would the moulders do, and what particular
trade would Mr. Marling have been forced to choose ?
* * * * Mr. Marling is about forty years old. He
has been working, or occupied rather, at his trade of com-
mon moulding for about twenty-five years. During that
long twenty-five years he has never brought into the mould-
ing shop a single idea which would tend to advance the
moulder's trade, or an idea which would tend to advance
the joys and pleasures of a moulder's life, or an idea which
would in any degree add to the happiness of a moulder's
wife or a moulder's children. I know moulders who go to
work in a moulding shop, and give a new tone to the sandy
atmosphere around them. Moulders change in life and
character when these men come into contact with them.
35 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL*S LETTERS.
When they go there is real hand shaking with something in
the touch of it, and there are thoughts remaining. Mr.
Marling is not that kind of a moulder.
* * * * If an association with Mr. Marling has
any effect at all on his fellow moulders, it is to make them
less happy. If a moulder has hopes in life ; if he finds a
certain pleasure in labor ; if he goes home nightly to a
home of his own, and has his fun with his wife and babies ;
if he sees the comfort and pleasures of these gradually in-
creasing as the accumulation of his labor increases ; if the
little wrinkles in his face are all wrinkles of general good
will to all who live ; these things are not bettered one whit
after contact with Mr. Marling.
If he has hopes, Mr. Marling tells him to give them up.
If he can be pleasant while he works, Mr. Marling tells
him never to be gay at a funeral. If he steps lightly to-
ward his front gate, Mr. Marling sours him by pointing to
somebody else's gate, which is a bigger gate. Mr. Marling
changes the wrinkles in moulders' faces.
* * * * Notwithstanding nobody cares for Mr.
Marling, Mr. Marling has an effect wherever he goes.
Mr. Marling carries his sole possessions in a very poor
sort of a satchel.
Mr. Marling has worked twenty-five years, but he has no
nice moulding tools. He has no nice clothes. He has no
nice home. He has no family. He has no books, no
watch, no fiddle, no nothing. He has no parents, or
brothers, or sisters, or close warm friends. He has never
been troubled with sickness.
It seems sad to work in a dirty moulding shop for twen-
ty-five years, and then only own a trowel, two slicks, and
two ratty suits of clothes. It seems sad not to have any
ties or hopes in the world. But this is the case with Mr.
Marling. Mr. Marling's efforts to make himself a misera-
able man, a serf, a slave, a specimen of all that is unpleas-
ant, seem successful in themselves, but Mr. Marling has
Mr, Marling takes an inventory a trowel, two slicks, and two ratty
suits of clothes. Page 356.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS. 359
a mission which extends beyond himself. Mr. Mailing's
effort to produce certain conditions seems to take in all
the moulders. Mr. Marling is generous with his misery.
He has had experience in turning human life to nothing,
and he proposes to have all other moulders understand the
art. In this transfusion of ideas Mr. Marling is more suc-
cessful than he is in common moulding. He seems to
have devoted more of his mind to the former work. True,
he gets paid for his common moulding, and gets no thanks
even for his earnest efforts in making moulders sick of life.
His is a labor of love.
Love of what ? It's hard to tell. If Mr. Marling sees
a moulder with a home and pleasures and worldly goods
and hopes, Mr. Marling tells him that he should have
everything in an ugly satchel so he could growl at fate.
Mr. Marling thinks his own condition the normal condi-
tion of a true moulder, and when he sees a moulder who
seems to have been born into the world to live, he proceeds
at once to treat his abnormal case.
* * * * When Mr. Marling goes to work in a mould-
ing shop he at once assumes charge of the miseries of all
the moulders. If he finds a foolish moulder with no miser-
ies, he lends him a stake and shows him how to increase it.
He lays out all the work for the men. Before he has been
in a shop three days he has told every man just how much
work he should put up per day. The men don't care for
Marling, but there is something about him which stays by
them and goes home with them and mixes into their home
life.
They can wash facing dust off their bodies, but at home
they find a marling kind of a something about their persons
which won't rub off. It is unpleasant to wife and children,
but it stays. Besides portioning out the work for the men,
Mr. Marling sometimes undertakes the adjustment of wages.
Long as I have known Mr. Marling, I have never known
him to increase a moulder's pay. He devotes himself to
3O EXTRACTS FROM CHORDALs LETTERS.
reductions. If a moulder earns a little too much money,
Mr. Marling will commence on the matter at once. The
generous Mr. Marling wants all moulders to partake of his
own miseries and to work for his own pay.
* * * * The idea of Mr. Marling making an indivi-
dual effort to increase his own pay would seem queer to any
one who knows him. An underpaid moulder is Mr. Mar-
ling's delight. A well paid man is his abomination.
Point out to Mr. Marling a moulder earning good wages,
and you will see pain pictured on the face of misery. Soon,
however, the pain will give way to pleasure, for he has labor
before him a labor of love. Love for what ?
* * * * On several occasions Mr. Marling has made
efforts to raise the pay of moulders, but when he found out
that certain moulders took advantage of such increase of
pay to surround themselves and their homes with more of
the good things and good feelings of life, he saw that he
was working in the wrong direction. Mr. Marling talks
" live and let live," but a moulder must be very careful
how he lives in Mr. Marling's view. Once Mr. Marling
struck a shop where every moulder in it owned a house and
lot, and had it all paid for. Then Mr. Marling was in real
pain, but he set to work manfully. He pointed to these
moulders pictures of the most finished misery and discon-
tentment. He commenced to regulate the amount of work
each should do. He found one man getting a nickel a day
too much, and he tried to fix it.
He pointed to his own example, and invited them to fol-
low it by heeding his words.
But it was all no good. These foolish prosperous
moulders not only would not be taught by the experienced
Mr. Marling, but they incontinently kicked him out of the
shop and out of the town, and hustled his satchel and his
trowel and his two slicks after him.
Mr. Marling thinks there are some queer moulders in
this world.
EXTRACTS FtfOM CHORDAl/S LETTERS. 361
CHAPTER XLI.
LOOKING FOR A COAL VASE WITH TRUNNIONS. THE CON-
FUSION AMONG CATALOGUES. A HARDWARE CLERK'S
SYSTEM. BENNETT'S SYSTEM OF KEEPING CATALOGUES.
CHORDAL'S OWN SYSTEM.
* * * * A short time ago I wanted a fancy coal
vase to set alongside a fireplace. I went to a hardware
store and was shown some. They didn't suit me. I said
I wanted one hung on trunnions, so it would tip down.
Hardware man said he never heard of such a thing. I told
him to bring out his catalogues, find the thing and order
one for me. He led me back to the office, and pulled out
a drawer which contained about half a bushel of mixed-up
trade catalogues, some in fair shape, some " busted " and
separated into fragments, some sheet pieces crumpled up,
and alt in a state of chaos. The subject of catalogues drove
the coal vase out of my mind, and I watched the search.
* * * * -phe fi rst catalogue picked out was a gor-
geous volume on plated ware. Dealer fumbled over it
aimlessly, and then laid it aside decisively. Of course, he
knew that firm didn't make things for coal.
The next was an illustrated dissertation on chandeliers
and lamp hangings. This received the same fumbling be-
fore being laid aside. The next was a stove catalogue, and
called for a careful inspection from preface to finis. The
next was a barn-door sized sheet of artificial wood orna-
ments. It was opened, scanned, and laid aside. Next, a
small folder listing numerous night latches ; then a note
sheet in solid text, which was read entire to see if it said
anything about coal vases hung on trunnions ; next, a cata-
logue of stamped tinware. This was getting hot, and I saw
the librarian scanning closely each cut of a bread box, or
a cake pan, or match safe. Next came a piece of a cata-
logue commencing and ending with coal scuttles. Thinks
362 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL*S LETTERS.
I, if this man has the luck to find one of the other pieces
to that scrap, he may find what we want.
Then came a general hardware catalogue, whose index
failed to show the proper thing. Then came more silver-
ware, and more locks, and more hardware, and more stoves
and moulds, and chandeliers, and screws, and .tinware, and
stamped and japanned ware, and wire work, and folders
and price sheets without number, and then came the bot-
tom of the drawer, and then bang went the litter back into
the drawer, and then the hardware man said, " I can't
find it."
* He didn't find it, and he could not have
found it if it had been in that drawer, as no doubt it was.
He didn't seem to know how to find anything except by a
random search among everything.
* * * * I did not care much about the coal vase,
but I had got interested in the catalogue business. I went
to another hardware store, and was met by a youth about
eighteen years old.
Told him I wanted a coal vase. He showed me some.
I said I wanted one on trunnions so it would tip down.
Youth bit his lip and said he never had heard of such a
thing, but if I would step back in the office he would in-
vestigate. We went, and before I could count ten this
young man laid four catalogues on the desk; before I could
count ten more he looked through certain pages in each of
the four, and said to me, " I find no such thing, and can
only get further information by writing to the parties."
* * * This chap was " business " when it came
to a question of catalogues, and I proposed to see more of
him. The following conversation took place :
Chordal. How do you know'that coal vase isn't in some
of your catalogues ?
Clerk. Because we only have four catalogues from
houses handling that class of goods. Here they are, and
I see nothing of it.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS. 363
Chordal. How do you know that you have not had half
a dozen extra sheets or slips from Winchell since you got
that catalogue of him ?
Clerk. I don't know it. I know I have, and I know
the contents of every such sheet is noted here in the cata-
logue. See here. See this spittoon scratched out. That
shows that its manufacture is discontinued. We got no-
tice to that effect. See this cash box with its pencil note.
" No tray in this size." We got notice to that effect.
See this note, " See circular in back ; " that was too long
to write in. Here is an illustrated sheet pasted in the
book, and forms part of the catalogue, and here in the
front is pasted the last discount sheet. Some houses get
up their catalogues and extra sheets so as to be added to
catalogue in nice style, and I wish they would all do it.
Sometimes we get a notice of change of price or style,
which don't mean anything till we trace it back through
half a dozen previous amendments. This forces us to keep
all the circulars, though their effect is obsolete.
Chordal. There's Sidney Shepard & Co.'s catalogue.
How do you know that is the last one, or that my swiv-
eling coal vase isn't in a previous one ?
Clerk. This is Sidney Shepard & Co.'s catalogue to
date and complete. We get the new ones as soon as issued.
If the new one is a supplement to the old one, I fasten it
to the old one, or write " See our supplement " on the title
of the old one. If the new one is a substitutive catalogue,
I burn the old one up. We have not a full line of cata-
logues by any means, but I can quickly get at anything in
what we have got.
Chordal. How do you keep them in shape for quick
reference ?
Clerk. Easily enough. I pencil a number on each one,
and pile them up in consecutive order. This list pasted
on the wall gives the number of any firm's catalogue, and
tells whether it is in the bottom of the pile or in the top.
3^4 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
That's about all there is of it, except that they are put back
in place each time they are used.
Chordal. How about little sheets, circulars, folders,
card notices, etc.? They are not stuck in that pile, are
they ?
Clerk. Yes, they are. See here: The list says, "Yale
locks, 26, and En. 17." That means that there is a Yale
catalogue, which is number 26, and also some Yale stuff in
one of those big envelopes marked number 17. Here it
is now. You see this little thing is a catalogue by itself,
and should not be pasted in the main catalogue. You see
it marked " En. 1 7," so we will know where to put it when
done with it.
* * * * i arranged about the future of the coal vase
on trunnions, so it would tip, and went off admiring the
evidence of system, small as it was, which this clerk in a
retail hardware store had seen fit to produce.
* * * * jf catalogues are much to the hardware
store, they are more to the machine shop. The item from
a catalogue stands on its own value and profit in a store,
but in the shop it may be a key note and turning point on
a heavy job.
* * * * Queer things happen in regard to printed
matter. I knew Walker to tumble over his printed matter for
three days to find the price of a three -inch tube expander.
He had the list, and should have been able to find it in three
minutes. Rockwell held a customer around all day while
he tried to find out if Judson's governor, fitted as a Saw-
yer's cut off, was in the market. He finally telegraphed,
and ten minutes later uncovered the identical circular
searched for. A two-dollar safety valve or check valve
will often call for a three-dollar search in drawers, pigeon
holes, boxes, barrels, and what not. Inch and three-quar-
ter gas pipe must be ordered at least once before it is
discovered that there is no such thing, when the papers in
the case are inevitably on hand /. e., somewhere, if we
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS. 365
only knew where to look for them. Pipe fittings, such as
crosses, odd tees and manifolds, are always a puzzle. Some
office men settle this thing at once and forever by pasting
a long-searched-for circular on the wall, and then they sink
into ignorance of all the things not so pasted.
* * * * i was m B enn ett's office, and had an eye
for his plan of dealing with printed matter. He has a
case containing fifty drawers, numbered plainly.
An index book hangs beside this case. I examined this
index under the letter H, and found entries like this :
Harrison Boiler Works, 1 2.
Hall, Thomas, 24.
Halteman, A. K., & Co., 6.
Hammers, Steam, 44.
Hangers, etc., 31.
Head Blocks, 16.
Heaters, 29.
Holly Manufacturing Co., 16.
Horse Powers, 46.
Hoisting Engines, 24.
Hoisting Machinery, 24.
Hydrants, 8.
I saw at once that firm names and general classes of
goods were entered, so that a thing could certainly be found
under some head. I also noticed that there was no at-
tempt to classify the different catalogues. They were all
simply put somewhere, and a record made so they could
be found. I liked this negative feature, because it showed
a disposition not to undertake so much as to deter the un-
dertaking altogether. One little defect rendered this whole
thing valueless. I wanted J. A. Fay & Co.'s catalogue,
and looking in the index under F, I found Fay, J. A. &
Co., 32. I looked all through -drawer number 32, but
couldn't find a sign of J. A. Fay & Co. I called on Ben-
nett for help. He repeated the process, and then com-
menced to go for the unknown party who had put that
366 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS.
thing in the wrong drawer. A general search among nu-
merous drawers developed the catalogue. There was no
number on it to show which drawer it belonged in, and
memory had failed the party last using the catalogue.
I mentioned the hardware youth's plan of numbering
each circular so as to show where each one belonged, and
Bennett at once set a boy at work to straighten every
drawer by the index, and to mark the drawer number on
every separate scrap therein. I have no doubt, should I
call on Mr. Bennett now, that before proceeding to
business he would first index me under my appropriate
number and shove me into a pigeon-hole marked C.
* * * * jr or mv own p ar t i na ve a sort of literary
pride in preserving catalogues, price lists, photographs, etc.,
and have gone to a trouble and expense in the matter
which I hardly think many will care to incur. As fast as
catalogues, etc., accumulate I sort them into uniform sizes
and have them bound in volumes. In each volume I put
an index, which refers to every individual article of subject
or person. At the end of fifteen volumes I have a general
index of the same careful construction. In looking over
one of these indexes, I find Slate's taper-turning arrange-
ment referred to under the heads : Slate Taper Turn-
ing Lathe Former, and Pratt & Whitney.
* * * * Such a plan as this is a marvelous conven-
ience, and I should feel helpless without it, as it enables
me to hunt up a thing belonging to no special class of
goods, and not known to be in any particular manufac-
turer's list. Thus I want to get on the track of a charcoal
filter for sugar works ; I find it referred to as being in the
catalogue of a concern popularly supposed to be builders
of woolen machinery exclusively. Nothing but such a
specific index as I refer to could ever unearth the thing
a search through a ton of catalogues being altogether out
of the question.
The indexing must be done thoroughly or it is not worth
Bennett's office indexing Chordal under his proper number, and
shoving him into a pigeon-hole marked C, Page 366.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS. 369
having. Reference must be made under every possible
name a thing may have. A man may want a " Monte Jus,"
without knowing there is such a thing as a Monte Jus. In
the index spoken of I find it referred to under Monte Jus
Pressure Pump Sugar Beet Sugar Distilling, etc.,
etc.
* * * * It seems to me that simply numbering the
article, let it be book or sheet or card, and putting it
into a numbered drawer, or filing case with one index, is
about as convenient and accessible a plan as need be fol-
lowed in most shops, and its expense is practically nothing.
It also permits of a periodical weeding out of obsolete
price lists, etc.
37 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
CHAPTER XLII.
ALTERING THE FORM OF A MECHANICAL PRODUCT TO SUIT CUSTOM-
ERS. SOME OPINIONS AND EXPERIENCES. HOW THE PUBLIC
SCHOOL PRINCIPALS LIKED THE INK. HOW MACHINE-SHOP
PRINCIPALS MAY TAKE A HINT.
* * * * j n one o f m y ver y earliest letters to you, I
referred to the question of altering the form of a product
to please the present customer. I gave the views of the
leaders of two classes, Mr. Sackett and Mr. Wyckoff. Mr.
Wyckoff said he would do anything a customer wanted
him to, and that he did not care whether the want was
right or wrong. Mr. Sackett said he would make no
changes, except such as would add permanently to the
value of things. He would lose a sale before he would
gratify the unwise whim of a customer.
* * * * Later experiences of my own have caused
me to often think of my interviews with Wyckoff and Sack-
ett. I have talked with and gathered the opinions of
others on this subject, and I feel that I am doing a service
in presenting to you the various views of various men.
* * * * Mr. G was many years ago a leading
manufacturer ; I need not say of what. He is now on the
dwindle. In a conversation with me lately, he expressed
himself about as follows : " When I was in good business
I seldom looked around for causes. I exerted myself ;
the people bought my product ; it satisfied them, and I
made money. Young competitors sprang up around me,
and my business began to fall off. Then I began to look
into the science of the thing. I compared the products
with a just judgment, and saw no merit in the competing
articles superior to my own. Still, the articles were driving
me from the market. I compared business processes, and
found that my own exertions, under the decline, were far
more energetic than those of my competitors, whose trade
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS. 37*
seemed almost to seek them. I then did what few men of
my age and experience would do. I sought the advice of
younger men. I got it in the opinion that my competitors
made what the people wanted. I decided to do likewise.
I investigated the form of competing products, and found
that with unchanged functions they had been given mere-
tricious shapes of novelty. I further found that the shapes,
etc., were originated without an express demand from the
market, and that the market welcomed the pleasing changes.
All I had to do was to anticipate the wants of the people,
and design my product accordingly. That was all. I soon
found, however, that I could not take the first step in that
direction. It required a genius of prophecy and perception
far less attainable to my mind than the spirit of useful in-
vention. I might add to the position, utility, or capacity,
or convenience of a thing ; but to deliberately entertain the
idea of an Eastlake wheelbarrow, or a hand-painted crow-
bar was beyond my ability. I cleaned out my old corps of
talent, and substituted men of the new school prophets,
artists, inventors, gods of taste and genius.
" They produced forms of seductive grace and wondrous
suitability. I found that qualities which I had considered
meretricious were qualities of real merit.
" What I had called a fancy, trifling, weak thing, proved
under my own tests to be the clumsy thing of old, properly
proportioned, and better suited for its strains. The wheel-
barrow was half as heavy and cost half as much as the old
one, but it ran twice as easily, held twice as much, was twice
as strong, and a thousand times as handsome. The crowbar
had what looked like artistic swells and tapers, but which
I found to be simply a scientific leaving off of metal where
not needed. The things had really been too pretty to
look useful to an old man like me.
" I now had my samples of things which my young ad-
visers told me would sell, but I could not make them. My
outfit, though very extensive and complete, was old style,
37 2 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL'S LETTERS.
and unsuited to the modern work. My chief men in the
shops were of my own unmodern stamp, and not adaptable
to the new way, and, above all, there was within me the
feeling of inability to properly direct a business so much
at variance with the past business of my life.
" Evidently my proper course was to abdicate in favor of
a salaried manager of the modern type, and give him power
to alter the plant and get new men. I am getting old now.
I am rich. Life has few rough corners for me, and but
few ambitions. Commercial ambition was the only promp-
ter of what I have done in the matter so far, and when I
see that before these promptings all the old men, who have
been my lieutenants for years and years, must enter a new
apprenticeship, and find themselves ignorant children or
sour old men, as the case may be, I think seriously of quit-
ting altogether, and throwing the onus of the change upon
some one else. Either this or let the thing run back in its
old channel. This will lead to a downward course, while
if I quit, and quit soon enough, I can say I was one of the
most useful and successful in my line."
* * * * So much for old Mr. G , who never sees
his customers. He sells to the trade. Mr. W builds
something larger, and sees most of his customers. Here is
what he says : " I always change when ordered and paid
for it, except where I see that the change would do damage
to my standing as a manufacturer. I didn't use to do it
at all ; and now I do it all the time with everything. It is
having a bad effect on me and my business. The form of
my product becomes uncertain and unrecognizable. If I
send out a certain thing in good form and am praised for
it, I immediately offset the matter by showing a defective
shape in the next shipment. I find that my ' standing of
product ' account is generally on a balance with an ever-
present tendency to run behind. I consider this such an
important asset that the matter worries me. I think it bet-
ter to sacrifice present profit to permanent future reputa-
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS. 373
tion for merit, than to sacrifice the immense future for the
present profit. Still, I don't do what I think best. The effect
of the erratic-production system on my own personality is
bothering me also. Some years ago I had my business in
my own hand. I was a king among my patrons. On my
judgment and knowledge of what the majority needed my
patrons depended ; and in this position I had my own
pride and reliance. As it is now, I yield to every wind
that brings a sale. Instead of a king, I am the creature of
my customer, who uses, not my judgment, but my ability to
execute his will. I have begun to look upon myself as a
mere moneyed workman. I no longer read up on things ;
I no longer contrive ; I no longer look into requirements ;
I idly wait for instructions."
Mr. Morgan is still another kind. He
builds big machines originated on his premises. Said he :
" There never was a step taken in my line which I did not
inaugurate myself. For years the trivial whims of cus-
tomers had no effect on me ; but finally, not from principle
or policy, but from pure laziness, I began to doctor my
machines at the suggestion of every buyer. I have never
looked into the philosophy or policy or result of the thing,
but I know it to be an infernal nuisance. Of two customers
for a machine for exactly the same purpose, one will want
something made larger so it will be better, and the other
man will want the same part made smaller so it will be
better. That's the way the thing goes. Of course I know
better than any one customer, or any half-dozen of them,
what is correct. It is my business to know. I sometimes,
on my own account, sacrifice a thing which I know to be
superior, for a thing which I know will give most universal
satisfaction to the crotchets of buyers. The changes some-
times ordered in my machines are annoying and ex-
asperating. That is what a man gets for being in the
machine business anyhow. If I was to choose a new
business I would make molasses, or something which
374
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
customers would not ask to have changed in form every
day."
* * * * j fi n( j on mv desk an advertising circular
from a certain manufacturer of ink in New York. The
circular will do Mr. Morgan a service, and will also illus-
trate a valuable and rare feature in advertising. The cir-
cular says :
" To 175 Public School Principals of New York we sent
circular inquiries regarding our ink, as follows :
Do you use it ? Do you like it ?
We summarize the answers as follows :
22 Use it ; like it exceedingly.
92 Use it ; like it.
1 8 Use it, and use no other.
12 Will order it.
4 Use it, but think it a little too thick.
1 Uses it, but thinks it a little too thin.
2 Use it ; best ever used.
4 Don't like it.
2 Say it is too black.
6 Say it is too pale.
3 Went back to Davids',
i Likes Davids' color.
3 Not satisfied ; will try it again."
Eastlake IVheeibjrroiv.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL*S LETTERS. 375
CHAPTER XLIII.
PERSONAL HISTORY OF A YOUNG MACHINIST.
* * * * A young machinist named John stepped
from a train in a large city. He went to a hotel, cleaned
the travel dust off, had a good breakfast, and started out
upon what he considered the most important expedition of
his life. He proposed to see the inside of some extensive
machine shops.
* * * * This man John was a quick-witted fellow,
son of a country banker, the graduate of a two-cent ma-
chine shop. This shop and his home were located far
from navigable water and rail. He had worked five years
at his trade ; and had stuffed himself with things from the
books, and with ambitions natural to an active mechanical
mind. Up to the time that we speak of he had never
seen but five machinists. He never saw but one planer,
three .or four lathes, one drill press, and he had never seen
a twist drill. Until he was well started on his long trip
he had never seen a locomotive. He had not yet seen a
steamboat, nor a broad river by daylight, nor any form of
steam engine, except simple horizontal ones, and the loco-
motive lately revealed to him.
This young fellow was bursting with inexperience. He
had good sense and was as sharp as tacks. He had been
palpitating for years with the thought of some day seeing
things. Now the day had come ; here was a large city
full of everything pertaining to industry, and all those
things on the most extensive scale. A circle of a day's
journey would encompass every ambitious view- A mighty
river rolled past the city and could show every type of in-
land steam craft. Only fifty miles to the ocean, with its
massive vessels of sail and steam. Only one hundred miles
to an immense locomotive-building establishment. There
was a large machine-tool-building-shop in the city. There
3?6 EXTRACTS FROM CHORD AL'S LETTERS.
was immense water-works machinery, and a rolling mill,
and nail works, and fabric mills, and shoe factories such
things, world without end !
This young man proposed to go and work at his trade,
if such an ignoramus as he could get work, but he pro-
posed to see something first. He knew not where to begin.
He began to doubt his pleasures, as they seemed within
reach. He had seen a locomotive, and had been disap-
pointed, because it did not astonish him ; it was exactly
what he had expected, and nothing more. What would
the other things be ?
* * * * He visits the water works, and sees one
of the most gigantic beam engines in the world. He is
not a bit surprised at the size of the engine, but his breath
is taken away at the size of the machine work. The books
which had familiarized him with monstrous engines had
never, for some reason, led him to think of the massive
jobs of which such engines are composed. Here were
connecting rods which would weigh as much as any lathe
he had ever seen. Here was a cylinder near ten-foot
bore, with cylinder heads, etc., to match. Up there was a
walking-beam, and John could not bring himself to believe
that all the cast iron which he had ever seen in his life, if
put together, would make this beam. Here was a shaft
eighteen inches in diameter, and John never dreamed that
bar iron was made over four inches. What an immense
thing a rolling mill must be ! And what immense lathes
and planers they must have to do such work !
Then he tried to imagine the lathe that had turned these
thirty-foot fly-wheels. In his mind, he sees the lathe bed
on legs, with a pile of chips under it ; with its head-stock
and tail-stock, and carriage, and tool post, and cone, and
back gears, and change gears, and brass plate on the head-
stock to tell what gears to use, and a belt shifter over the
lathe, and a board on the lathe with tools on it. And then
he thinks of the three feet from the floor to the top of the
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL'S LETTERS. 377
lathe bed, and of the fifteen feet from the top of the lathe
bed to the centers eighteen feet in all ; and then he
thinks of the little latheman only six feet long. How in
the world does he work it ? Does he use a ladder to look
at the tool ?
John examines the engine critically, but sees no work-
manship to puzzle him ; he sees nothing which he has not
done himself on a very small scale. He understands the
engine perfectly, for he knows the books by heart.
* John visits a big marine shop the very
shop, in fact, that built the big engine he saw at the water-
works. The first thing he notices is that this high-toned
shop is a very much worse shop than the one he was
brought up in, and that the only apparent difference is
that this one is about five thousand times as big. He rec-
ognizes the floor, with its multitudinous heaps of scrap,
finished work and litter.
He recognizes the dirty vise benches, the dirty walls,
the rickety trestles, the odd blocks, and the greasy, blue
workmen. He finds a big planer, and it is a huge one,
twelve feet between housings. " But what makes this big
planer look so small ? " He ponders and scrutinizes, and
finally discovers that it is the shortness of the planer which
so affects its dignity. He thinks of the little two-foot
planer at home, and expected to see here the same propor-
tions on a grander scale. It seems to him this big planer
is no longer than the little one. The big planer, in fact,
planes thirty feet long as long as six of his little planers ;
but this thirty feet, when compared with the twelve feet
between the housings, seems to be nothing at all. The
thing seems to be the longest the short way. He sees that
it is all right, but is fearfully disappointed. For years he
has been hoping to see a big planer, but he never hoped to
see it look like that. He finally comes to the big lathe at
work on a fly-wheel like the ones he saw at the water works.
" Great guns ! is this a lathe ? "
37^ EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
A hole in the ground, stone walls, a few odd reckless
pieces of casting, and a belt ! " How have the mighty
fallen ! " The man doesn't need a ladder, unless it is to get
down in a pit. He sees many kinds of machines, but noth-
ing to surprise him, nothing to please. He sees no twist
drills. Between the two shops he would rather have the
little one at home, which strikes him as being more com-
plete for its work. He looks among the men, but sees few
faces to make him proud of his trade.
He goes to another shop and walks in. He
hears the foreman talking "German," and it makes him sick
and he walks right out. He goes to another shop, and
here he finds a boring mill which he studies on for some
time. Then he sees a man using a twist drill, and his
spirits drop at the complete fulfillment of his hope. He
inspects the river craft and thinks the machinery more
slouchy than saw-mill work. He goes out to the loco-
motive town, but fails to discover anything new. He goes
to the ocean and sees the heaviest marine work. What
most surprises and pleases him is the consummate skill with
which the traps have been gotten into the cramped spaces.
* * * * As in years gone by, our young man, John,
again trembles before the door of a machine shop. He is
going to ask for employment. He has never done so be-
fore and doesn't know how. If he was an old stager he
would hunt up the foreman and say, " What's the chance
for a job to-day ? " But he is not an old stager and never
heard that expression in his life.
He goes to the office and asks for the owner of the shop.
The president of the company is pointed out to him, and
he quickly introduces himself to him by name. He gives
the president his history ; tells him of the little shop out
home ; of his experience ; of his vast ignorance ; and con-
cludes by asking him if he can go to work in the shop on
any sort of terms which will enable him to learn something.
The president picks his teeth and says in a decent sort of
He hears the foreman talking " German" and it makes him sick.
Page 378.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORD AL'S LETTERS. 381
a way, " I think we need some men out in the shop, but we
want good men, and I don't see what use you can be to us
just now, as we can get plenty of learners. You would be
the same to us as an apprentice, exactly ; but still I will
turn you over to the foreman and you can see what can be
done."
* * * * The foreman gave him less hope than the
president ; the shop was full of boys, and he wanted men.
John went and looked around the shop some and examined
the operation of things closely. A new idea struck him,
based on what he had seen of the shop. He went to the
foreman and wanted to hire out as a first-class man. He
took the old man's breath away, and the matter finally
ended in his being set to work. He was to receive the
best of pay if he did the best of work.
* * * * At the end of the week he found his wages
set at $2.25 per day. This disgusted him.
* * * * Monday he devoted to business, and learned
a great deal more of the machine business than he thought
there was in it. He called at the office of the president of
the company and was well received, and asked to state his
business. He opened as follows : " I would like to ask
why you don't pay better wages ? "
" Young man," said the president, " if you think we set
these wages you are mistaken. The machinist fixes his
own wages at such a figure that other machinists will not
out-bid him. Those wages we have to pay. When a man
asks us what we are paying, we simply give the figure which
our men are charging us. If you were in search of work,
and I should tell you that we were paying a certain man $4
per day, you would agree to take that man's place at $3
per day, if $3 seemed high enough to you ; is that true or
not ? "
" Of course it is," said John, " but what will keep the
next applicant from under-bidding me ; and so on, and so
on, till the wages were 10 cents a day ?"
382
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
"The result of such a course," said the president,
" would be, that the lower the wages got the less men
would care for the places, and as a consequence, few new
men would enter the uninviting trade. Men want the
places were the wages are desirable, and as a consequence
the under-bidding always ceases when undesirable figures
are reached. If I should allow men to set their own prices,
they would always set them a few cents below what other
men are getting, so as to get a place. Every man in search
of a place is auctioneering wages downward. If employers
would listen to these bids the trade would soon invite no
smart learners into it, arid soon we could get no good men
at all.
" The policy of the employers is to protect the trade
against destructive cutting by the workmen. It makes no
difference to me how high the wages in my shop are so
long as the other shops have to pay the same. That new
engine now being built I contracted to deliver for $2,000,
and there were over twenty shops bidding on the job. If
I had been paying my men $5 per day, some other shop
paying only $2 would have got the job, and so with every
job on which we would bid, until, finally, of course, I
would have to shut up the shop, and my men would have
to seek work in the $2 shops, and in order to get places
they would bid slightly under $2. In this way you will
see that high wages in one shop will finally reduce the
wages all over. If all the shops had been paying $5 this
could not happen, because all the bids on the engine
would be based on the same cost of machine work. It is
not high wages which does the harm in this way, but it is a
difference in wages which plays the deuce. Every shop
makes the most money during the time they can keep the
men at work at the highest wages ; this has never failed
to be true since the trade was started. You had better
cut that out and paste it in your hat."
"Then tell me," said John, "why in the world can't
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS. 3^3
some arrangement be made by which machinists all over
the country can get high wages and keep getting them with-
out any bother at all ? This would pay the machinists
better, and you say the shops would make more money."
" Well," said the president, " I wish that could be ; but
it cannot. You will see that low wages would chase learn-
ers out of the trade and bidders would become scarce, and
in a like manner, high wages would bring learners into the
trade, and the surplus number of bidders would auction
wages down and spoil the whole thing. Another thing is
this : That engine you worked on we now sell for $800,
and we have a good trade in them. I have sold over 500
of those engines at that price, and as you see we keep
about 30 men working on them all the time. Lots of men
can afford to buy these engines and so there is plenty to
do on them. Ten years ago we never dreamed of selling
one of these engines for less than $1,200, and at that figure
I never succeeded in selling more than a dozen of them
altogether. Few people can afford to buy such expensive
engines, and our 30 men would soon have had to go fish-
ing. Instead of going fishing and getting no wages they
work for less wages and cut the price of the engines way
down, and now, behold, every Tom, Dick and Harry
wants one of those engines, and I have no doubt but that
these 30 men will be building these engines ten years from
now. Let me double their wages, and thus double the
price of the engine, and very soon nobody could afford to
buy these engines, and we would all have to quit business.
I give you this merely as an example, but it will hold good
for everything made in machine shops. What would the
farmers do if the machinists who build their reapers should
charge $5 a day for building them ? "
" It is easy to tell," said John ; " they would have to cut
their grain by hand."
" Well," said the president, " do you know how many
hands are now employed on reapers ? "
34 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS.
" I should judge," said John, " from what I have read
of the reaper business that there must by five or six thou-
sand men at it." (This was many years ago.)
"Now," said the president, "do you know of any
shorter way for those five thousand men to kill their busi-
ness of reaper building than simply to raise their price ? "
" I don't see any other way," said John, " by which they
can kill it at all."
* * * * " Now," said the president, " I have given
you the views of a man who has worked 30 years in the
shop, and I ask you these questions : First, what will keep
wages up ?"
"Why," said John, "lots of men to buy machine work
and very few workmen to underbid on doing it."
" Second question," said the president, " what will keep
wages down ?"
" Why," said John, " very little to do and lots of men
wanting to do it. "
" Next question," said the president, "at what point do
wages stop going down ? "
" When they are down so low that they are not worth the
having if any lower," said John.
" Last question," said the president, " where is the de-
sirable point to have wages stick ? "
John studied awhile and finally answered, " at the high-
est point at which purchasers will buy all of the work that
all of the men will do."
* * * * It was fifteen years ago that I met John as
I happened to be working in this same shop. I lost sight
of him soon after, but I now have his full history up to
date. It is full of interest, and his name is well known.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS. 385
CHAPTER XLIV.
DIFFERENT KINDS OF FOREMEN.
* * * * I actually believe that all the immense
amount of rushing work now being done is done by fifty
per cent, of the men employed on the work. Certain
elastic workmen feel every change in times. When things
are dull and but few hands working, the special ones of
the few will do less in a given time than the balance.
When things boom and the shop fills up, these chaps get
enthusiastic and pitch in and do the work, and they keep
doing it. Their rise in spirits is the only thing tending to
keep up the average performance.
Priceless is the enthusiastic boss who can
keep his hands off things. The temptation to take a dull-
headed man's work out of his blundering hands is a strong
one, but it must be resisted, or the boss sinks into a mere
improver of a single blunderer's work, and as such is worth
per day just the increase effected in one man's work, and
no more.
* John Paul was a foreman in a machine shop,
and had charge of about a dozen men. Wherever you
would find this foreman, John Paul, you would find a ma-
chinist standing close by watching John Paul do the work.
John Paul was a splendid workman and a good worker,
but he did not know how to pick out good men, or how to
make good men out of indifferent ones.
An extra heavy job had to go into a lathe. John sends
Jim, a laborer, after a sixteen- foot ladder. In comes the
end of the ladder, ubiquitously hitting everything in the
shop, followed at half stroke by Jim, the clumsy, who
carries it. Why should not Jim be as able as any one to
engineer a ladder into and through a machine shop ? He
has been superintendent of that ladder for months, but has
never been able to improve its running time. John Paul,
386 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL/S LETTERS.
with an impatient mutter, with eye and mind on the spot
where he wants the top of the ladder to go, takes two
quick strides, snatches the ladder from Jim, and, with one
free, perfect, thoughtless movement, plants it exactly in
the right place. I question if he thought of the process
or of the ladder. He saw only the place up there. There
is an eyebolt, close up to the flooring, between two joists.
He tells Sam, the big lathesman, to go up the ladder with
the chain block. Sam fusses with the hook and strains
himself, works clumsily at arm's length, and runs his
tongue out of the corner of his mouth, blows the dust out
of his eyes, and wears himself out and gets shaky. John
Paul twitches impatiently, for the thing is tiring him as
much as Sam. He calls Sam down, takes the block up
the ladder, hooks it in place and comes down again. Why
could not Sam do a little thing like that as well as John
Paul ? Then there's a sling to rig up, and a chuck to take
off at the eleventh hour, and a dog to get, and a tail stock
to set, and a carriage to be run out of the way, and a tug
on the chain, and a steering of things, and an oil can to
get, and a center to oil, and a final and finishing screwing
up of the center when the job is in place. Who does
most of all this ? The six men standing around ? John
Paul does it.
* * * * Do the men sm - r k ? Not a bi t O f i t They
pester John Paul by their abortive willingness. Then why
does John Paul do this work ? Another question too hard
for me.
* * * John Paul's brother-in-law, Paul Johnson,
is a boss, loo, and works fifty men. No ladders, or blocks,
or chucks, or oil cans in his labor. He gives his orders,
and behold, the work is done as though he had an army
composed of John Pauls working for him.
John Paul can only push one thing at a time. Paul
Johnson waves his hand and a dozen ladders move to
place, a dozen chain blocks work themselves up, chucks
John Paul on the ladder, Page 386.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL's LETTERS. 389
unscrew themselves, tail stocks retreat, carriages get out
of the way, jobs rise into place, and oil cans squirt. What
share has Paul Johnson in these things going on all around
him ? What magic is there in that wave of his hand ?
What kind of clay is Paul Johnson made of, and where
was the error in mixing it when John Paul was made ? I
give it up.
* John Paul's soul was in a constant revolt
against awkwardness, clumsiness, ignorance and stupidity.
He appeased his revolted soul by doing the work himself
with active, intelligent dexterity. What will become of a
shop full of men while a too nervous foreman is appeasing
a revolted soul with a key drift, or a file, or a lathe, or a
hand reamer, or a pipe die, or a crowbar? John Paul
never seems to have struck on any successful plan for
transferring some of his excellent qualities to his men. He
can simply substitute his own excellent labor for theirs.
Considering the fact that John Paul will do about five
men's work without knowing it, his mode of operation is
not so very bad when he is working only eight or ten men.
The smart men do their own work, and John Paul does
the work of the dull ones. It takes just so much pay roll
to get so much work done.
* * * But with fifty men is John Paul long
enough to reach ? Won't there be more pay roll than
work ? With Paul Johnson it is different. Ten men,
forty men, a hundred men, all are the same to him, except
that he has trouble keeping engaged when he has but a
few men to attend to. Two more men means two more
days' work per day to Paul Johnson, and he doesn't do
this extra work himself either. I wish I knew how he
managed it.
* * * * Paul Johnson is no machinist himself. He
don't know how to file anything flat, but he knows how to
get flat filing done. If he undertook to file a piece of
brass he would not know what was the matter with the
390 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
slippery thing, and would call for new files indefinitely.
But he don't undertake to file brass. If he should screw
up a pipe joint it would leak. But he has other men screw
up pipe joints and there must be no leaks. If he tried
to waltz a ladder through a crowded shop the ladder would
get away with him. If he should attempt to reach up and
hook a chain block in place, he would break his neck.
But there is no danger. He is not a member of the hook
and ladder company. He is the chief.
* * * * Another thing Paul Johnson don't do
is to be eternally belittling the skill of his men by going
over their work. He may test the work, but you can't
catch him at it, and the shop turns out accurate work.
* * * * A man working for John Paul puts a line
through an engine ; along comes John Paul and tests the
line with calipers. The man puts a marked stick in the
crank pin ; John Paul measures the stick. The man rotates
the main shaft and squares it by the line ; he must rotate it
some more, so that John Paul can see if it is square.
A good blacksmith has just hardened a big tap ; John
Paul will sandpaper it and draw the temper properly. A
big shaft is to have shoulders turned at certain spots ; John
Paul measures and prick-punches, and when the shoulders
are turned he measures again to see that no mistake has
been made by the lathesman. A shrinking fit is to be made.
This is John Paul's sole prerogative of course. John Paul
puts on the big belts ; John Paul cuts and laces such belts ;
John Paul has the biggest crowbar when something is to
be pried, and he has the heaviest, strain when there is a
lift. John Paul's mind centers on the thing to be done
and neglects all else. A heavy job is to be shifted under
a radial drill ; John Paul is of course on hand as one of
the main shifters. With intent mind, and dexterous bar,
and horizontal back, he is doing the work of the entire
gang, to the total neglect of his minor end, which the re-
volving twist drill delights to seize.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS. 391
Whatever John Paul doesj he does properly. He does
it properly because he is honestly anxious to see it properly
done. What don't he do? What would be done if he
didn't do it ?
Paul Johnson does no such business as this, and the
work is all done, and properly. How does he manage it,
anyhow ?
* * * * A few weeks ago I stood in the top gallant
crosstrees of a big beam engine. The cylinder head was
to come off, and Hanlon, the chief engineer, had sent three
men up to do the work. Hanlon had half a dozen of
these engines under his charge, and plenty of men, but he
did nine-tenths of the work done around the engines. He
stood by me as his men unscrewed at the thousand- and-
one nuts which held the cylinder head on. The work pro-
ceeded very slowly, as things were hot, positions awkward,
and the men a trifle clumsy. I saw Hanlon was itching to
go at it himself, but by idle conversation I held him back
till about ten nuts had been removed by the three men. I
turned my head and when I turned it back again Hanlon
had possession of the field. He had cleared all the men
away except one to follow him up to remove the loose
nuts, and in a jiffy was done with the job. I asked him
why he couldn't keep his fingers off, and he said " It hurts
me to see things drag." Even so with John Paul.
* * * * One bad thing about John Paul and Han-
lon is, that by degrees their men become untrustworthy
and absolutely worthless in the absence of their chief.
Certain air valves of Hanlon's engines are articles of
consumption. They are bound to give out, and duplicates
are always held. Putting new ones in is a somewhat tedi-
ous, dirty and undesirable job, but Hanlon is the man who
always does the job.
I looked at this as a fault, and Hanlon said, " I have
had men put these valves in, but they never did it right.
There is too much at stake, and I will never trust a man
392 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL S LETTERS.
to put one in again as long as I have charge of these
engines."
* * * * I asked Hanlon what provision he had
made against his absence by sickness or otherwise. He
said he couldn't get sick. Had to stay and tend to those
valves, or fancied he did. He thought it might be a fancy,
but, if so, it was a very troublesome one. Is John Paul a
man of mere fancies ? If he is, there are many such.
Do not let me be understood as denying the potency of a
master's eye. There must be one head to everything, but
if that head, who should direct the general policy of the
business, fritters away his time on trivial details, the great
matters of the concern are liable to be overlooked ; the
manager is worn out, and the men, finding they are not
trusted, become indifferent and in time untrustworthy. I
know of a large establishment where the proprietor wished
to know about and check the smallest detail of his busi-
ness. He is always in a stew, and runs from one thing to
another and yet never accomplishes anything. You can't
be with him ten minutes but you feel nervous and irritated.
He had a good foreman, one capable of taking all this mat-
ter off his hands, but the foreman became discouraged, for
he could not give any instructions, not even "jaw an
apprentice," but the proprietor asked for an explanation.
The result was that another firm marked the foreman as a
rising man, and it took but little inducement to get him
away. Since he left, the business steadily declined ; the
proprietor still frets and worries ; he has grown through his
hair and now parts it in the middle with a nice coarse towel.
EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAL*S LETTERS. 395
CHAPTER XLV.
A SHOP WITH SERVANTS FOR THE WORKMEN.
* * * * The Niles Tool Works had, and still has,
one of those long shops running the whole length of a city
block, with a tool room located in the center. Probably
no better form of shop has ever been devised, but the form
has one demerit. The men and the foreman and the la-
borers have to walk long distances in the ordinary working
of things, and the long trips to the tool room are well calcu-
lated to wear the average machinist out in the leg part,
even before noon. An ordinary machinist doesn't object
to walking his legs off going to and from the machine shop,
where he makes his living working at the trade, but he is
justified in growling at a ten-mile tramp between meals.
The Niles Works have lately added three
new shops to their long establishment, and the result is that
the distances have increased, and the tool room is no longer
in the center. It is an easier matter to build machine shops
than it is to move a tool room to the spot where the center
of gyration will be supposed to exist. In the shop referred
to a plan has been inaugurated which, so far as I know, is
new and worthy of investigation. They have put in an
electric call system, with an annunciator at the tool room,
and have numbered push buttons at every vise and ma-
chine, and scattered around generally. Bell boys are
stationed at the tool-room bar. Tom, Dick or Harry wants
a drill, or a reamer, or some waste, or his oil can filled.
He touches his button and a boy dances up to him for in-
structions. These boys are to black their boots and keep
their faces clean, and sleeves rolled down. They are not
apprentices, nor cubs, nor laborers. They are the servants
of the workmen. This arrangement is not yet completed,
but will be in a week or two, and I will make inquiries and
post you as to its workings.
396 EXTRACTS FROM CHORDAI/S LETTERS.
* If I, in my days, had been lucky enough
to find myself working in a shop with a slave of the ring to
answer the bell, I should certainly have insisted on the
thing's being done up brown with a man at the grindstone
to do the heavy sharpening.
* * * * jt one ti me i dumped all the fancy tools
out of my tool box, and provided myself with a tip-top set
of lathe tools. This was to prevent borrowing. I always
hated a grindstone, and it finally occurred to me that, if I
had a double set of tools, I would be happier. I doubled
up and then had a pair of side tools, a pair of diamond
points, three or four cutting-off tools, a patent screw-cut-
ting tool with removable cutters, and two pairs of broad,
square-ended tools. These latter were always favorites
with me, as I could use them for almost anything, especially
for all chuck work. I never found anything so good for
boring out big work, like packing rings, etc., and they
could be used for all manner of big turning and facing.
But the double set of tools didn't help me any on the grind-
ing question. I got to putting off the operation of grind-
ing till everything got dull, and then I had to go and stay
by the grindstone till meal time. I always preferred a
lathe to a grindstone, and my objections to having my lathe
stand still an hour or two were not entirely disinterested on
my part.
No one ever offered to grind any tools for me, and no
boy ever came around to see if I didn't want something
done.
C. H. BROWN & CO.
F1TCHBURG, MASS.
SOLE MANUFACTURERS.
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WRITE FOR PRICES AND INFORMATION.
Thomson, Sterne & Co.,
ENGINEERS,
HAVING MOST EXTENSIVE
BRITISH AND CONTINENTAL CONNECTIONS
FOR THE PRODUCTS
OF THEIR WELL-KNOWN WORKS,
The Crown Iron Works
GLASGOW, SCOTLAND,
OFFER THE FACILITIES OF THEIR WORKS
AT GLASGOW,
AND THEIR LONDON AND PARIS OFFICES,
FOR THE INTRODUCTION OF AMERICAN
MECHANICAL AND ENGINEERING INVENTIONS
IN EUROPE.
HEAD OFFICE,
The Crown Iron Works,
GLASGOW, SCOTLAND.
LONDON OFFICE,
9 VICTORIA CHAMBERS, WESTMINSTER.
PARIS OFFICE,
10 RUE LAFITTE.
NICHOLSON FILE CO.
BOLE MANUFACTURERS OF
FILES AND RASPS
HAVING THE INCREMENT CUT.
ALSO,
I
"Nicholson File Co.'s" Files and Rasps,
"Double Ender" Sawfiles,
"Slim" Sawfiles,
"Racer" Horse Rasps,
Handled Rimers,
Machinists' Scrapers,
File Brushes, File Cards,
Surface File Holders,
Vise File Holders,
Stub Files and Holder,
Improved Butchers' Steels.
Manufactory ail Offices at Provite, E. I., U. S. A.
EXECUTIVE OFFICERS:
W. T. NICHOLSON, Pres't. GEO, NICHOLSON, Treas.
SAM'L M. NICHOLSON, Sec'y.
Incorporated 1864. Capital Stock, $400,000.
WORTHINGTON STEAM PUMPS,
For all Purposes and of all sizes. Special Patterns for
Hallway Water Stations, Oil Pipe Lines, Hydraulic
Elevators, Fire Protection, Etc.
Pnmps
will
Exterior
Pactei
Plungers,
HENRY R, WORTHINGTON,
For heavy
Pressures
and
line
239 BROADWAY,
NEW YORK.
70 KILBY ST.,
BOSTON.
709 MARKET ST.,
ST. LOUIS.
KEARNEY & FOOT
101 CHAMBERS ST., NEW YORK.
Warranted "Hand Cut" and "Full Weight,"
Refer by permission to the following consumers, who have used their Files
for a number of years :
Brooklyn, New York, May 24<A, 1877.
Messrs. Kearney & Foot,
Gentlemen : We have used your files, more or less, for several years, and we
take pleasure in saying that both the new and recut files have given ENTIRE satis-
faction. Tours truly, BLISS & WILLIAMS.
Above recommendation is only one of many consumers, among whom
are : The Winchester Repeating Arms Co., New Haven, Conn. ; Farrel Foun-
dry and Machine Co., Waterbury, Conn.; Whitin's Machine Works, Whitins-
ville, Mass.; HansReise, Contractor Singer Sewing Machine Co.; William A.
Inslee, Contractor Singer Sewing Machine Co.; Fletcher, Harrison & Co.,
New York ; Smith & Wesson, Springfield, Mass.
We make it our rale to use only the best workmen, the best tools and
steel, and the greatest care in tempering. The files before packing pass
through the hands of two persons, who thoroughly test them. As a result
of this care, in four years' time we have had but two complaints, and one
of those was unfounded. Respectfully, KEARNEY & FOOT.
LANE & BODLEV CO., CINCINNATI.
MANUFACTUBERS OF PORTABLE AND STATIONARY ENGINES, with
fixed cut-offs. STEAM BOILERS, CIRCULAR SAW MILLS, GANG EDGERS
AND SAW Min, MACHINERY GENERALLY ; FLOTTO MILL AND STAMP MILL MA
GINNERY, HOISTING ENGINES, STEAM AND HYDRAULIC ELEVATORS, POWEB
MORTISERS, SPOKE LATHES, &c. SHAFTING, HANGERS, PULLEYS AND GEARING
A SPECIALTY. PRICES AND INFOBMATION ON APPLICATION.
LANE & PODLEV CO. CINCINNATI, OHIO.
ESTABLfSHED 1848.
WILLIAM SELLERS & CO.
PHILADELPHIA, PA., U. S. A.
Machine Tools and Steam Hammers,
For Railways, Machine Shops, Rolling Mills &c.
Tweddell's Hydraulic Riveters,
Portable and Stationary, and other Hydraulic Machinery.
Iron Turn Tables,
For Locomotives, Swing Bridges, Railway, Street and Shop Cars.
Injector Boiler Feeders,
For Locomotives, and for Marine, Stationary, and Portable Boilers.
Shafting,
And all its Appurtenances.
Hoisting Machinery,
For Passengers and Warehouses.
BRANCH OFFICE, 79 LIBERTY ST.,
NEW YORK.
:B
PATENT STEAM PUMPS,
Water Works Engines,
Either Single, Duplex or Triplex, Simple or
Compound, Condensing or Non-Condensing.
Estimates Furnished on Application.
Also Pumps for Pumping all kinds of Liquids or Semi-Liquids in any quantities
and against any Pressure.
ADDRESS,
GEO. F. BLAKE MF'G CO.
LIBERTY STEEET,
New York.
44 WASHINGTON ST.
Boston, ITIas*.
SEND FOR ILLUSTRATED CATALOGUE.
THE PRJITT & WHITNEY COMPANY,
HARTFORD, COINTSr., U. S. A.
MANUFACTURERS OF
Lathes for Hani and Power Turning, Screw-cutting, Cutting-off,
CHUCKING AND GRINDING.
BOIRIOXTQ-
Planers, Shaping Machines, Single and Multispindlc Upright and Horizontal
Drilling Machines,
REVOLVING-HEAD SCREW MACHINES,
Screw-Slotting Machines^ Up -right and Horizontal Tapping Machine*,
Plain and Index Milling Machines^ Cam-Cutting, Profiling,
Rifling, Die-Sinking^ & Cartridge-Shell Varnithing Machines*
PUNCHING, TRIMMING AND BROACHING PRESSES,
Power Shears, Tilt ani Drop Banners, Retractile Jib Cranes,
WATER MOTORS,
SABD ASS POWI& XACBimr
For Threading Bolts and Tapping Nuts and Pipe Connections.
Cutters for Teeth of Gear Wheels formed entirely by Machinery.
Factories equipped with complete plants of Machines, Fixtures, Small Tools, and
Gauges for the manufacture of Guns, Sewing Machines, and similar
articles requiring interchangcabilily of parts.
C. E. BILLIKOS, Pres't.
L. H. HOLT, Treas.
E. H. STOCKEB, Sec'y.
THE BILLINGS & SPENCER Co.
TRADE
MAKK.
HARTFORD, CONN.
MANUFACTURERS OF
Scro \v Plates and Dies, Tap and Reamer Wrenches, Genu-
ine Packer Ratchet Drills, Clamp, Die and
Common Lathe Dogs, Billings' Pat.
Adjustable Pocket Wrenches,
Bariviok Pipe Wrenches, Combination Pliers, Beach's
Pat. Thread-cutting Tool, Spencer's Pat. Recapper
and Uncapper, for Shot-Onn Shells,
Billings' Pat. Drop Forged and Cold Pressed Sewing
Machine Shuttles,
AND ALL DESCRIPTIONS OF
STEEL AND IRON DROP FORGINGS,
FOR
Guns, Pistols, Sewing Machines, Machinists' Tools,
AND MACHINERY GENERALLY.
PATENT IMPROVED WOOD WORKING MACHINERY,
Planing, Matching and Beading
Machines.
Single and Double Surfacers.
Molding, Tenoning, Shaping,
Mortising and Boring Machines.
Band, Scroll, Rip &. Cross Cut Saws.
Band & Circular Re-Saws.
f} BAND LOG SAW MILLS,
Pat, Universal Woodworkers,
Variety Wood Workers, Ac.
ORIGINAL la DESIGX, Simple In
Construction, Perfect In Operation. Sa<e
Labor, Economize* Lumber, and Incrrut*
Vroducls of the Highest Standard f
Excellence.
J. A. FAY & CO.
^ CINCINNATI, O.
W. H. DOANE, Pres't.
D. L. LYON, Sec'y .
FOR EVERY POSSIBLE DUTY.
The peculiar excellence of the Deane Steam Pump consists :
First. In the unequalled simplicity of Its mechanism.
Its valve gear consists of FEWER PIECES than are found in any other Pump.
All the parts move on PARALLEL LINES, and central to the SAME VERTI-
CAL PLANE, so that all levers, connecting rods, rocker arms, springs,
adjustable screws, and other mechanical complications, are avoided.
Both the MAIN Valve and the SUPPLEMENTAL Valve are FLAT SLIDE
VALVES readily understood and easily reseated in case of wear.
The Supplemental Piston is in ONE PIECE, and it is a piston, NOT a valve.
Second. ! the certainty of Its Action.
The supplemental piston, which has a COMPENSATING STEAM JACKET,
is driven by the DIRECT PRESSURE of steam on alternate ends,
complemented when necessary by the WHOLE POWER of
the main engine, so that it runs equally well VEK
TICALLY or HORIZONTALLY, exhaust-
ing into OPEN AIR or into a
CONDENfi
The MECHANICAL CONNECTION renders it absolutely certain that the
valves shall ALWAYS LEAD the piston, so that there is no possibility of any
POUNDING on the cylinder heads, and the CLEARANCE in the cylinder is
reduced to the minimum.
The Machine, simple, yet lacking nothing essential to a perfect pump, is
always in position to start at any point in its stroke, on the admission of
water, air or steam, and to run at any speed desired, either the fastest or
the slowest. m
>f AXtrFACTUKXD BT
The Deane Steam Pump Company,
HOL YOKE, MASS., U. 8. A.
\v i^no-.'v. J NEW YORK. BOSTON,
I 92 A; 94 Liberty St. 54 Oliver St.
SEND FOR ILLUSTRATED CATALOGUE AND PRICE LIST.
POOLE & HUNT'S
Made of best materials and in best style
of workmanship. A large stock
constantly on hand.
'oldei Hill taarioj
f? T'
From 1 to 20 feet diameter, of any
desired face or pitch, molded
by our own special
machinery.
SHAFTING,
PULLEYS,
AND HANGERS,
Of the latest and most approved
designs.
STEAM ENGINES. BOILERS, SAW MILLS, MIXERS,
And general outfit
for Fertilizer
Works.
Facilities
THE BEST IN
ALL
DIRECTIONS.
Baltimore, Ml
N. B. Special at-
tention given to hea-
vy Gearing for Pulp
and Paper Mills.
Sole Manufacturers Simplest,
Ched2^^
JK AND
^ MostFerfecf
E. L. MAXWELL, President.
CHAS. A. MOORE, Vice-Pres.
H. S. MANNING, Treasurer.
MARTIN LUSCOMB
Secretary.
IN THE WORLD.
ALSO,
MANUFACTORB
Steam & Vacuum
Railroad.Steamship & Machinists'
SUPPLIES.
WAREROOJIS 111 Liberty St.,
NEW YOBK.
FACTORIES Boston A Lynn.
SAVE YOUR BOILERS FROM DANCER OF OVER PRESSURE.
CHARLES A. MOORE, MARTIN I UPCOMB, GEO. W. RICHARDSON,
Pres't & Gen'l Man'r. Scc'y & Trcrxs. Superintendent.
SOLE MANUFACTURERS OP THE
PATENT NICKEL-SEATED
"POP" SAFETY VALVE.
This Valve will not Corrode or Sticlc.
FOB STATIONARY, LOCOMOTIVE, MA BIJiE A5D
POBTABLE STEAM BOILEBS.
Our Patents cover all Safety-Valves utilizing the recoil
net ion of steam, nnd familiarly know n ;is "Pop" Safety-Valve
|y Purchasers, beware of infringements of our Patents.
CAFITAL, $100,000.
Tie Consolidated Safety-Yalye Company,
SALESROOMS, 111 LIBERTY ST,, NEW YORK.
Manufactory, 51 & 53 Sudbury St., Boston.
UNIVERSAL, INDEPENDENT AND ECCENTRIC,
Unexcelled for Accuracy, Strength, Durability and Sim-
plicity of Construction.
The following is taken from "Extracts from Ohoiual's Letters," in the
American Machinist, of January 31, 1880 :
* * * * I have just been investing in a new lathe chuck. The
shop has been full of common, independent chucks, scroll chucks, and Horton
chucks. The independent chucks are generally substantial, well made, and
indispensable. For ordinary boring, or I might say, for almost all lathe
work, the universal feature becomes desirable, and then a man wishes he
didn't have an independent chuck.
If he has a universal chuck, everything goes along swimmingly, till
something crooked, or square, or three cornered, or finished work, or some-
thing else, awkward and inevitable, comes along, and then the universal
chuck proves to be anything but universal, and the man wishes he didn't
have that. * * * My new chuck * * * is fixed to do
just what I always wanted a Horton chuck to do.
The circular rack, instead of lying against a solid back, bears against
three little seats, which can, by projections behind, be slid from behind the
rack. This lets the rack leave the pinions, and the chuck becomes independ-
ent. It don't take a full second to make the change. A setting mark on
the front allows the jaws to be set properly again. This simple plan of
doubling the value of a valuable chuck, at an expense of about ten cents, I
should say, is the invention of Mr. Sweetland, and when he gets ready to
trade new chucks for old ones, I want to know it. There are many good,
universally independent chucks in the market now, but this one takes my
eye for its simplicity.
Orders arc respectfully solicited. Prices will be given upon application.
SWEETLAND & COMPAQ l
Sole Manufacturers.
126 UNION STBBST, NEW HAVEN, CONN.
A LIVE, INDEPENDENT, SIXTEEN-PAGE WEEKLY, ILLUSTRATED
JOURNAL OF PSA CTICAL MECHANICS AND ENGINEERING.
ITS COLUMNS CONTAIN CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THK
Treading: Mechanical Writers of the Day. Also Correspondence
from a Large Number of Practical Men in the Shops.
SUBSCRIPTION PBICE, POSTAGE PREPAID,
U. S. and Canada $3.00 a Year.
Poreigm $4.00, or its equivalant in other Currency.
FOR SALE BY NEWSDEALERS EVERYWHERE.
American Machinist Publishing Co.,
96 FULTON STREET, NEW YORK.
NOW R EA D Y.
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