Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/407

 Popular Science Monthly

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��the motors on a trailer. It then auto- matically starts up at full speed of nine hundred revolutions a minute. When the electricity is switched off, the speed is again automatically reduced. The driver has no control over the operation of the gasoline engine. He controls the elec- tric current alone. The value of this is that the power machinery is made more nearly "fool-proof." A less skilled man may be employed to run the machine, for the job consists simply in steering it, switching on and off the electricity and applying the brakes when necessary. The machines cannot be run above eisrht miles

��A crew of five men accompany these great trac- tors, and refuse is emptied into their ample bod- ies with great rapidity. The upper trays re- ceive barrels, boxes and pa- pers, and the lower sections the ashes and garbage

����Cn the piers the re- fuse is discharged in- to barges by locomo- tive cranes which take their power from a third-rail. The various sections of the trailer are lifted bodily and their con- tents dumped into the barge. The rapidity of operation and the fewer men employed actually reduce the cost of the work

��an hour on an ordinary level paved street. The refuse trailers, which have al- ready been placed in operation, consist of a massive steel- frame arranged to carry a series of eight deep rectangular steel cans, and, resting on top of these, two big trays for barrels and boxes. In the sides of these big trays are rectan- gular openings by which the ashes, street sweepings and garbage can be thrust into the cans underneath. These openings

��are closed l^y swinging steel doors horizontally hung so that the pressure of an ash can or a shovel will open them, and gravity will close them instantly when the pressure is removed.

On the piers where the refuse is discharged into the barges are four locomotive cranes taking their power from a third rail. The various sections of the collecting trailer are lifted bodily and their contents dumped on to the barge. Twelve of the tractors and refuse trail- ers are now in operation, and the crew of five men go through a block with a speed and resultant cleanliness marvel- ous to the eyes of New Yorkers accus- tomed to the antiquated methods in use elsewhere in the city.

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��NLY ten per cent, of the in- habitants of the Phillipines speak Spanish.

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