The age-herald., 1899-11-05

in pipe over to the blast furnaces at the other side of the railroad track, and used in the heating stoves or under the boilers. The wall of the red-hot coke, pushed out from one of the ovens by steam ram, the operation requiring only three minutes, is watered and carried in an iron basket car by an inclined plane, and dumped into an iron hopper in the stock house of the blast furnaces, from which, as a lever Is pulled ds drops through the bottom door into the charging barrows that carry it Up to the top of the blast furnaces. This coal has never been touched by hand from the time it was loaded in No. 4 Slope until, in the shape of coke, it drops into the top of the blast furnace. At this point it meets the ore drawn from the furnace mines at Mus coda, six miles away, and switched around, at a cost of 121R cents per ton. This ore in the same way loaded in the drifts or slopes, is automatically dumped at the tip- pie of the ore mines, dumped again from the hopper cars into foppers or pockets In the stoekhouse, where the opening of a slide door controlled by lever drops the ore into the charging barrows for the fur mace. The blast furnace plant at this point was when constructed, the largest and most expensive blast furnace plant in the world, being one of four blast furnaces costing $1 1,600 900, and with very little expen- allure for renewals or repairs, it still ex- cites the admiration of every visitor, es- pecially one who travels down the center of the engine room between the twelve huge blowing engines, of uniform appear ance and construction. There is at this moment a fifth furnace being erected here, being removed from an outlying point In Tennessee, for the purpose of concentra- tion.
 "Time would fail the visitor to wander about amidst the boilers, pumping stations and various engine houses, so let us fol- low the iron, which, emerging molten at the bottom of the furnace, is received in ladle cars carrying twenty tons each and switched over to the casting plant at one end of the furnaces, where, as the ladies pour continuous stream, the successive molds apearing in their place carry it away in shallow blocks under spray of water to cool 1t down, so that at the end of the line machinery dumps the blocks, still steaming hot, into a car, which Is switched off to the companys steel works, half way back again ito the No. colliery from which we started. Here we enter the open hearth building GAS feet long, and our carload of hot blocks of iron, still at a dull red heat is dumped into the charging box of the Wellman charger, operated by electricity and picking up two tons of metal at a time, projecting the box into the open mouth of the steel furnace and turning its contents over and depositing same in the furnace, and then being withdrawn again, so that the attending sprite may lower the door completely over the entrance and con-
  terior from our gaze, although protected by blue spectaces while we look into this yer itaDle GeIhenna. A few hours elapse, dur ing which time the continuous contact of fresh supplies of natures great purifier oxygen, which will purify alike the effete blood in our lungs the sewage in the stream or the iron from it's metalloids, brings the material to its purified condition of carbide of iron, or, as we commonly call it, steel and hydraulic pressure applied at one side of this big fifty-ton furnace, semi- cylindrical in the bottom, tilts it over on its side and dazzling white cascade pours into the ladle until it is full. when it is immediately picked up by fifty-ton elec- tric crane travelling overhead and running the entire length of the building, which pours it into number of ingot molds, mak- ing ingots of three tons each these molds standing vertically on an iron ear. A short time elapses and soon as the metal has had time to set in the molds, the car is switched under the ingot 'stripper,' which lifts the fngot molds vertically and leaves the red-hot ingots standing on the car from which point it is switched to the heating furnace, so that the outside, which has chilled a little, may become of equal heat with the interior and then the ingot IS inches square, is run through the massive