The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1885-11-21

bath, thereby raising CONTINUOUS Mss
ing which wraps the giants existence
in a mystic cloud of sibilation.
The feet of the visitors changed over
iron gratings at every step of their way
from the bullion court into the penetra-
liza of the Mint. Colonel Maurice eX-
planned, as he saw them looking down,
why the grating was there. The bits
of silver that fall through there, he
said, ito the cement floor on which the
grating rests amount, when swept up,
to the sum of S25, 900 a year. If the
grating wasn't there you'd carry quite
apprcciable amount of Government
property out on your boot heels.
The visitors passed down into the
cellar on the first elevator erected in
Philadelphia. Cellars must have come
high when the Mint was built, for there
was a remarkable economy in digging
it, 1t is not common, ordinary flat
cellar but a cOncave pit. When you
stand in the middle of it the floor runs
up hill so abruptly on both sides of you
that YOU can see no higher than the
knees of the man who is standing at the
door Down these the bags of coin are
piled like potatoes. The visitors, how
ever, did not come down to see these, but
merely to examine into the topping ma
chine, whose operations on the gold
side of the melting-roOm had excited
their curiosity. They only beheld an
SOO-pouud flywheel making only few
hundred revolutions a minute and send
ing a shaft at a still slower rate of
speed up into the flooring. Then they
reascended and reinvestigated the top
ping machine. 1t is the most sullen,
morOse. maevolent looking bit of
enginery ever looked at. Perhaps it is
its resemblance to the gujllotine which
makes it look so. 1t is a straight,
heavy steel shaft running up from the
flooring and constantly bobbing up
and down with a reluctant sort of mo-
ton. There is a square hole in the up
per end of it, and in the upper ST de OF
the hole is a knife This hobs sOlemnN
up and down past a stationary bench in
which is another knife. A workman put
the end of an ingot half an inch thick
into the space between them as the bob
bing knife went up. Down it came, bit
off the half-inch of precious metal as
knife cuts cheese, and spat it into the
iron basket underneath The move
ment is very slow. 1t does not strike
one as being very fOrcibe 1t is simply
awfully relentless, with a look of
grim relish for an eternity of morose
bobbing and biting, The workman fed
his sulky pet various tid-b,ts of
precious metal, and talked about its
achievements. 1t would bite off, he
said, all its Jaws could hold, that is to
need of purchase or momentum, but
simply by that irresistible dragging
force from the ilywheel. 1t chewed off
the top of another workman finger,
one time, he said, and before the artist
left he stuck the end of the pencil which
sketched the topping machine into its
Jaws, and had that chewed of, too
The nse of the machine is to cut the
ends of the ingots off straight when
they come wedge shaped from the
moulds.
The visitors followed an ingot into
the coiners' department. The ngot has
in its name, with its suggestions of
treasure galleons and buccaneers, about
all the romance there is in the nomen-
clature of money. 1t has in itself fifty
dollars worth of silver prepared by the
melter for the coiner's use, the shape
of bar twelve inches long, two inches
wide and half an inch thick. 1t has a
rapid, varied and rather trying expert
ence before it is on its wayi into dollar
shape. The first room in the coners'
department was full of artisans rolling,
drawing, cutting and milling the ingots.
Through sheer force is the first of the
cOincr's art exercised on the ingot.
That which the visitors had followed
was inserted between the Jaws of two
huge rollers and slowly went through q
process Of deglutitiOn down an ron
throat Twelve times it has to 90
through this ordeal, the pressure being
increased by the narrowing of the space
through which the ingot passes by
sixteenth of an inch each time 1t is
then twice its former length and so re-
duced in this press that when split in
the middle the two bars which are pro-
duced are just the thickness of a dollar.
The rolling process imparts a heat to
the metal which necesSitates the use of
handling it. and Il brittleuess to over
come which another trip to the furnace
is required.
Some coiner of imperial Rome was
doubtless a long time at hammering out
Judas thirty pieces of silver. The
machine which was working across the
room from the rollers. cut out in the
minute which the visitors looked at it
just eight times as many pieces as
Judas sold his Lord for-two hundred
and forty, all told-using up in the
process about ten bars of metal which
had been heated in a furnace and
Strengthened in a drawing machine
before they reached the cutter
its like a girl cutting out cookies. -
said Colonel Maurice as he watched the
big machine chanking silver like a
greedy boy. Each bar of cutting was
bent in three folds by workman as the
machine finished with it and slowed in
box for return to the METERS Then
the milling machine was set whirling.
1t is thick circular plate of steel, with
grooved edges revolving in a circular
hoop of steel with its inside edges also
grooved. A grist of the metal disks
from the cutter was dropped into a
tube, of which the bottom was the
space between the whirling and the