The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1900-02-04
MACHINERY VS.. MEN,
W hnt the Equipment of a Modern
hod-MilI AccOmplishes-Huma
Labor Displaced

Pittsburg Letter in New York Post.
Labor troubles have been instrumental
IN fostering labor-saving machinery more
than any other known agency 1t has
become such a mania that the inventor
who claims he can produce a machine to
displace a number of hands is given i'm
mediate attention. An instance of how
500 men were superseded by machinery be-
cause of a strike is evidenced in Pitts
bugh where Jones & Laughlins recently
installed two rod mills, which, with the
cid of fifty men, do the labor formerly
accomplished by 800.
In 1897 a strike occurred among the
''roughers" at Jones & Laughlins mills.
RougherS are employed to take rough
billet of steel and reduce it by rolling to'a
suitable size for the finishing mill The
rollers, heaters and other mill employees
did not care to join the strike, but it
caused considerable financial loss 10 the
firm, so the decision was arrived at that
as soon as practica BILE the latest labor
saving machinery would be introduced to
displace unreliable hand labor. The rod
mill for the manufacture of merchant-bar
Steel is the first result of the strike of
1897, as machinery of this class cannot be
designed and built in day.
The class of work done on the rOd-mill in
question was done years ago on a mer-
chant-bar mill, employing scores of men
at high salaries, turning out a product of
forty or fifty tons a day To appreciate
the revolution in Steel-making and to con-
trast it with the methods of to-day a
brief description of a bar-min is neces-
sary, leaving out the heating furnace.
The rolls of the bar-mills were divided into
SETS revolving in castiron frames, with
indentatons cut in the rolls to correspond
with the shapes desired. A billet of steel
four feet long and four inches square, at
white heat, was "telegraphed" from the
furnace to the first roughing-roll. 1t was
three rolls high, the lower and center
rolls revolving in the opposite direction,
the object being to pass the metal through
the lower rolls, reduce it in size as much
as possible, when it would be caught by
catcher with steel bar attached to
a chain overhead, who would use the
same as a lever to hoist the billet, assisted
by a Tougher" with pair of large tongs
to guide the piece to the top roll, TO be
showed back to the side it came from.
Backward and forward it would go until
properly reduced, when 1t was passed to
the next rolls, to go through the same
handling, until 1t passed to the finishing
MILL which rolled 1t clean. and passing
then to the straighteners, who slapped
the surpentine-shaped bars across a
straight floor several times, gave them a
third roll with their tongs, and laid them
aside to cool off, when they were carried
to the shears cut in lengths, weighed.
carried to the stock house, and stored,
to be carried out again at some future
day to be loaded on cars for shipment.
Thus it required about forty-six men a
turn TO handle the product of a merchant
bar mill Of fifty-ton capacity, making from
81 to q round bars on a ten-inch bar-mill
the turns being divided into reliefs OF
eight hours each, giving employment 10
13S men when the mill was running TWEEN
ty-four hours a day. The number of men
employed varied according to local condi-
tons. but the figures given serve the pur-
pose Of Illustrating the evolution of labor
saving machinery. To begin with the
"telegraphers" whose occupa ton is no
more earned from 50 to 50 per day. run
ming a long pair sf tongs fastened to over
head chains which in turn were attached
10 a wheel gliding along an overhead track
or eI1id between the rolls and the furnace.
Occasionally a door in the furnace was
opened and the tongs were poked in and
n sDecimen selected from the bunch of
blazing billets to be carried out TO be
squeezed down TO n handy size for the
blacksmith machinist, etc. Machinery
does the "telegra pliers work now. Six
men 10 each mill lost their Jobs with one
swoop The roughers and catchers on
each side of the rolls from the roughing
10 the finishing rolls about forty-eight in
number have been done away with. leav-
ing human nothing but three passers,
whose positions win be explained later.
The finishing rollers. or finishers. are no
more the six straigheners and six help
ers are done away with completely. and
none but the sherman remains to tell Of
the good old days" His nearest neigh
Dor is a boy perched in a crane twenty feet
above him. ever and anon TO carry ten or
twenty tons of bar-iron to some other part
of the building or TO load it on freight
car.
The accident and death list in one of
the old-fashioned mills was worse than on
many a battlefield. Stretcherws were kept
contantly on hand in the stOck-room. Piles
Of material would fall on laborers: some
poor fellow would be pierced by hot ro1;
Inc tongs would be jerked from their
hands, almost tearing tehir arms off. The
reason for this was that the men were US
ually clumsy. They wore thick-soledl
hob-nailed shoes. tapping leather aprons
and thick hand-leathers. This had to lie
done to protest them from burning. man