Page:Architectural Review and American Builders' Journal, Volume 1, 1869.djvu/35

 1868.] Editorial. 15 TO OUR PATRONS. From the many little but time-eating drawbacks attendant upon an entirely new enterprise, the essays of this num- ber collectively have more of a general style of treatment and local application than we design to be characteristic of the work. Hereafter, probably, the edi- tors will expatiate less and impart more. We congratulate our readers upon the acquisition of Messrs. Henkels, Gib- son and Leeds as contributors upon their respective specialties, the Na- ture of Woods, Stained Glass, and Venti- lation, as evidenced by their preliminary articles, which appear in this number ; and have the pleasure of stating that these eminently practical gentlemen will develop each his respective subject from month to month. THE PHILADELPHIA GAS TRUST. We have no terms of reprehension severe enough for the misconduct of the Trustees of the City Gas Works in depriving seven-eighths of the city last evening, of that prime necessity — that chief protection of enlightened society — gas-light. Had it been in New York, where the privilege of lighting is farmed out by the city to different com- panies, none of whose gas is quite equal to our own, a single district only would have suffered. Here only the portion supplied by the Northern Liberties Gas Works escaped. The absence of most of the Trustees is not an exoneration. Those who assume a responsibility must fulfil its duties, or expect to hear, in hardly measured terms, of their delin- quencies. If these gentlemen cannot find sufficient time for both duty and pleasure, and prefer the latter, resigna- tion is open to them and would be an honorable course. If they take neither horn of the dilemma, the community will look after them in good time. A great municipality has a right to expect regular and efficient service ; and cannot readily find a substitute for gas, after using it for a quarter of a century. The stores of dealers in lamps, oil and fluids, candles, and candlesticks were emptied almost immediately, last evening, yet there was no light. It is not the incon- venience of the loss of hours or days, however galling, that we here advert to, though this would be ample provocation for much more than we have said; but the impressive fact that in a crowded community of nearly a million, the ab- sence of accustomed light means the presence of theft, burglary, arson, as- sault, outrage, murder, and every thing- perilous and vile. Philadelphia, Saturday, Juhj ISth, 1868. Steel in Sweden. — An examination of the specimens of Bessemer steel from Sweden in the Exposition shows us that the metal there produced is of a far superior character to that made in Eng- land, and naturally leads to inquiry as to the cause of the difference, and whether we may hope to attain the same success in the United States. First we observe coils of wire of all sizes, down to the very finest, such as No. 41, or even smaller. This they have not been able regularly to produce in England. In the next place we notice a good display of fine cutlery, and this metal answers so well for this purpose that it is now used almost to the exclusion of any other. This statement is corroborated by the fact that in the miscellaneous classes of the Swedish department, where cutlery occurs not as an exhibition of steel, but merely as a display of work- manship by other parties in the same manner as other articles of merchandise, cases of razors are exhibited with the mark of the kind of steel of which they are made stamped or etched upon them as usual, and these are all " Bessemer," but from a variety of different works. The ore used in Sweden for producing iron for the Bessemer process is exclusively magnetic, and of a very pure quality.