The Wisconsin tobacco reporter. (Edgerton, Wis.) 1877-1950, 1899-07-21
SEEN IN BDLOI1, WIS.
A Little City will, Some Ire.
mendous Industries.
MACHINE WEIGHING FIFTEEN TONS.


Railroad President, Formerly a Tele-
grapl, observation-disclosures Matt Carpenter
Practaced Law-The Puritan Impress on
BeIoit-A beautiful City.
Madison, Wis, July 1S.-When one
wanders upon the hillside where Be
lott college is pitched, he might i'm
agine himself in cultured Athens cent
uries ago, for all is peace and culture,
and men walk to and fro in earnest
converse and thought is king.
But when he stands at the close of
day on the Upper Bridge" that spans
the Rock and notes the hurrying
homeward of the 900 employees of the
Fairbanks-Morse concern he realizes
that it is city Of action as we'll
as of thought. Here they come, hum
dreds of men, in pairs and groups,
chatting and laughing, or perhaps
alone, more earnest, but all bent in a
hurry to supper and home. Nearly
all are young men. Their faces and
hands are 5egrimed with honest hand
ling OF strong metals. Bicycles fly
past-scOres of them; in all, hundreds.
Every bicycle seemed shining and
oiled; for to these hosts who make
gas and gasoline engines, and wind
mills, and heavens knows what not,
in this giant concern, whose plant
looms up like a castle city, the skill
full care of a bicycle is child's play.
Some of the Workmen drove home,
for Beloit has no pictures of industrial
serfdom; and tasteful, prettily cos
tuned wife or daughter, or the happy,
neat children, who come to drive
papa" home, was a lesson in Ameri-
can life that gladdened the heart.
a City of Busy Factories.
Beloit is thus a city Of contrasts. Fa-
nous as an educational center, it's in
dustries are remarkable in their eX-
tent, and must eventually eclipse it's
prestige as a college town" merely.
It has perhaps II 900 people only, and
it owes little to the beautiful Rock riv-
er as a source Of power. Why these
manufacturing interests should be
there and multiply no one knows, I'M
less it be in the interest, enterprise
and ingenuity of the people.
The big plants" are gfOwths. [.
Thompson was making plOWs by hand
over an anvil in the early days. But
now, with his sons, he employees 200
hands in the manufacture of agricul-
tural implements, gas engines, ETC.,
and he is reported one of the wealth.
lest men in town.
The Berlin machine works were
moved from that city dozen years
ago, and the city gave a subsidy Of
$4,000 to help the concern buy some
property. Municipal subsidies work
badly as rule. But this plant, then
employing ninety hands, now gives
work to 400, and Messrs. Yates and
Forbes, brothers-in-laW, the moving
spirits, have decorated Beliot with
homes side by side that cost some
$4,000 each. The concern makes heavy
woodworking machinery, some Of
them, for instance, eighteen feet long.
They make a 'Ftimber-sizer'' which
dresses a log four sides at once, 24x30
inches; and will do it fifty lineal feet
a moment Such a machine costs
about $4,000 and weighs fifteen tons.
There is no heavier WOOd-cutting ma
chinery made.
Young Glen Who Won Success.
The great BelOit Iron works is an
other story of pluck. Some fifteen
wears ago a manufacturing concern
failed and four or five young men
bought at an auction for a small price
what represented a fortune invested.
They could not have paid much, as
they did not have it. But r. J..
Burdge, a retired farmer, Well-knOWn
as assemblyman and senator, believed
in them and in BelOit's destiny, and
with his aid and others help they went
ahead.
They operated one winter with sew
en- men, One of them acted as super
intendent at So day to keep down ex-
penses They, too, have expanded.
They now employ 125. They make ma
chinery used in making paper. At the
worlds fair they had $25, 900 machine
turning out the white fabric. This
shop is a wonderful place. The
main shaft that one usually finds in
a machine shop is absent. Electric mo-
tors do the business. There are some
fifteen of them (made at the Northern
Electrical works in Madison, in which
ex-senator Villas is interested). Orig
1naIIy 0dCn COOl udQ us OWN IuOlO1
This was the plan of the Baldwin Lo-
connective works in Philadelphia. But
it meant waste of current. So the Be-
lott Iron works profted by the expe-
rience, and group their tools for a mo-
tors power.
One sees colossal cranes moving
enormous weights, each crane carry
ing it's own motor on it's journey about
the great room. No machine in the
world is so big as a paper machine.
They weigh from 250 to $50 tons.
When they ship one from sixteen to
eighteen cars are required. Yet the
crane picked up the parts and moved
them about as a carpenter lifts and
points and rests joist. We saw a
.'taper speeding cone," a huge steel
construction eleven feet long, with a
diameter of sixty inches. tapering down
to forty-eight. With this the desired
quality and weight of paper can be Sc
cured.
Shoes That Please Even Boston.
The west makes most everything.
But naturally manufacture begins with
the cheaper grades. But the John