Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/47

Rh "finishing groove." The blooming train has a heavy fly-wheel driven by an engine of great power. In the farther part of the building is seen a cloud of steam which marks the location of the "rail train" to which the finished bloom is conveyed by mechanical means. Fig. 68 is a very spirited view of that portion of the rail-mill beyond the rail train (which is seen in the distance on the left of the picture). In the left foreground is shown one of the saws which cut the rails into lengths, and near the center of the picture a man is seen dragging out one of the "crop ends." In all these views the small number of men employed in proportion to the work performed is very noticeable. By comparing one of these cuts with Fig. 47, the great difference between the practice of the present and that of thirty-six years ago in this respect is very evident. In 1855 a very large proportion of the work of a rolling-mill was performed by the strong right hands of a multitude of workmen; but in our day much more and heavier work is accomplished by powerful machinery—the crystallization of ideas emanating from the strong right head of some mechanical engineer, who had the ingenious courage to devise hands of iron, and muscles of steel, to do the required work of the present.



Fig. 69 is a view of a plate-mill at the Homestead Steel Works (Carnegie, Phipps & Co.) near Pittsburgh, Pa. This mill is what is known as a "three-high plate-mill." The train of rolls is driven at the rate of fifty revolutions a minute. On the delivery side of these rolls is a roller table five feet in width and 363 feet long, the rollers being driven by power. This mill can roll plates