The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1900-02-06
KANSAS NEWS.
The Giant Industry of Kansas
is Located at lola.
Several Hundred Men Pushing
the Cement Plant.
A SOLID ROCK BASE.
The Output viii Start OF at
$500 Barrels Daily.
To Be One of the Biggest FactO-
ry Buildings in America.

lola, eb.6.-Nearly 300 men are work
ing every day now in hurry the compile
ton of the lola Portland cement plant,
and visit to the works causes one to
think that the work is only begun.
The quarry is opened up SO as to
show the inexhaustible quantity of SOL
id limestone which is the chief ingredi-
ent of the product. A tramway carries
this rock to huge cruSherS which crack
1t up like nut coal Then the Griffin
mills pulverize these Jumps, and the
dust, mixed with clay, is run into the
big rotaries and cooked into hard clink-
ers. The clinkers are pu1Verized by an
other set of Griffin mills and then you
have cement
And yet several hundred men have
worked for months to lay the founda-
ton for the works. The machine shops
ana storage room are completed. one
huge $50 horse power Westinghouse gas
engine IS in operation, running rock
crusher. The crushed rock and carloads
of cement from the Michigan plant are
used in the foundations all over the
works. 1t forms into solid rock, harder
than granite. Recently two men pound
ed with a heavy sledge hammer on
chunk of dried cement and could not
even crack 1t. All the foundations of
the big steel buildings are of cement
and concrete and the top of the walls
are smoothed off into a continuous rock
with thin cement.
There will be six $50 horse power gas
engines, three $50 horse power engines,
21 rotaries, go feet long and six feet in
diameter, IA Griffin mills and two or
three rock crushers. The rotaries are
being put in place as they are more
easily handled in the open, and the
steel building will be built over them.
The steel is expected soon with a crew
of men from the factories to erect the
buildings. The rotaries are set up on
an incline so that the mud slides
through them as it cooks With the
rock cruSherS and the Griffin mills all
churning and grinding, the cement plant
will be the noisest place in Allen coun-
ty. They say nobody ever pretends to
try to speak inside the buildings.
Eight or nine engine rooms have been
built of brick at various places around
| the site of the main steel building and
they indicate the size of the big con-
| Germ.
Everything is built from the solid
| rock up. The foundations are excavated
| to solid rock The engines and rotaries
| and mills are all bolted to iron bars
sunk in eight feet of concrete and ce-
ment, as solid as if fastened to a solid
| rock ten feet in each dimension.
The water supply question is solved
| by the big cement tank on the mound.
| 1t is 20 feet deep and 40 across, faced
with three rows of brick and supported
| by thick wall of rock and cement
| fully six feet thick at the base The wa
| ter is drawn from the river and an cleo
| trio wire will start the pumping ma
| chinery and stop it. With plenty of gas,
| plenty of rock, plenty of clay and plenty
| of water, the plant has material to OPP
| crate a hundred years. The output will
| start off at $500 barrels a day and may
| be increased.
When finished there will be no smoke
but there will be a row of tall smoke
| stacks letting out the steam from the
| roasting mixture in the rotaries and
these and the noise will warn the pass
| erby who passes within several miles OF
| the plant that something is happening.
1t is the biggest factory building in
| the state of Kansas today and will be
one of the biggest in the United States
| when completed.