The Dupuyer acantha. [volume] (Dupuyer, Mont.) 1894-1904, 1901-07-11
BIRTHPLACE OF CASH.
HOMESTEAD. WHERE THE CAR
NEGIE FORTUNE ORIGINATED.
Great Hills of Broken Earth and Huge
Scraps of Iron Are Here Transmitted
Into Gold, Free Libraries and Art
Galleries.

No Arabian visionary ever fancied
SO remarkable a birthplace for mil
lions as the Carnegie works at Home
stead, writes Douglass Storey, the
English correspondent. Nesting into
the Monongahela, on the fiat ground
by the river, by day they are marked
by a cloud of smoke, at night by a
dozen pillars of fire. No man ap-
preaching the hamlet Of sheds al see
there only the crude outlines of a steel
factory. 1t is the laboratory of an al
chemist where great hills of broken
earth and huge heaps of scrap iron are
transmitted into gold and old-age pen
sions, into free libraries and art gall
leries. Everywhere there is the sense
of great, mysterious power laboring to
equip the most generous of modern
millionaires. Human agency seems
inadequate to effect the marvels of the
mills, to manipulate the bubbling ma
~terials, to interfere with the fierce fur
naces and fiery forces of the factories.
To touch an electric button that re-
leases a force of $4,000 tons is easier
and more miraculous in its results
than the rubbing of any Arabian
lamp. Yet everything here is con-
trolled by tiny levers and buttons a
woman or a child might manage. OPP
posite to a roaring furnace a little
train of iron trucks is standing. To it
comes noiselessly, mysteriously, a
great engine that reaches forth a
brawny iron arm, grips up n OF the
trucks, and thrusts 1t into the furnace.
Backward and forward over the glow
ing Goals the big iron carries the truck
until it finds the hottest corner. Then,
turning the truck, empties its load OF
pig iron, shavings, limestone or coke,
shakes it and carries it gently to the
waiting string Of wagons. There Is no
fuss of men, no anxious couplings and
uncOuplings. Then engine has done
all Its work unaided, save for a single
man, who sits within, lingering a little
sheaf of levers. Some time later one
returns to the furnace and, gazing
with blue spectacles through the peep
hole, sees the popping, sputtering
DEVILS porridge within. In time the
door will be opened and the boiling
metal be run off into great caldrons
hungrily waiting in the pit beneath.
In a single one of these open hearth
sheds are II furnaces, each with its
100 tons of metal. Under ones feet,
on moving platforms, pass slabs OF
fizzing, scorching steel. When the
melodramatist and the author of the
dime novel have penetrated the mys-
teries of Homestead they will find rare
opportunities for sensational villainy,
such as never yet has appeared be-
tween two yellow covers. One stands
on a bridge naked of fencing and un-
derneath rattles a block of red-hot
metal that would grill a man in a
twinkling. 1t is on it's way to the
rollers, and there is a pressure which
would grind him to powder. Every
where are furnaces and caldrons of in
GENERATING metal, awful hydraulic
presses and silent, remorseless engines
For the mar of melodramtic magma
ton Homestead is the place of horrible
possibility. l stood in one of the Ions
sheds while a charge was being drawn
The hot steel gushed out, a violen'
white at first, empowered in COLDER
sparks, immensely beautiful. AS the al.
got at it the outer edge grew orange
and on the surface the frothy cream
gathered and dubbed, a ruby red
When the vessel was full the claws 0
a great electric crane were fixed in it
sides and it was swung upward;
proper tankard for some bacchanaliai
demon to quaff! AS it dangled abov
our heads, so tons Of swelling steel,
marveled at the silent power of thi
birthplace Of wealth. If a stay shoulO
break, or a bolt snap? And 1 move
hastily away from the sinister vicinit,
of the swinging caldron. Seven thou
sand men labor daily in the Homestea,
works, but nowhere is their presenc
felt. And yet the work done by ON
machine would tax the muscles of tn
army that built the pyramids. TIL
making Of millions is no child's play
and simple pieces of mechanism wi
here perform before one feat
of strength that were impos
sible to a force of a hun
dred thousand men. In the armo
) plate department is an engine whic
will exert a pressure of Is 900 tons. I
another shed is a reversing engine {
10, 900 horse power. There are electri
cranes that will carry hitler an
thither weights of 100 tons as easil
, as one would raise a handkerchief.