The age-herald., 1901-04-07

 Wall street subtleties and Tammany ad- ministrations. Eastern romancers racked thair brains to devise fit forcing ground for the riches of their dreams, yet Alad- din pIucked his gems from cherry trees an insipld proceeding. born of the limita- lions of the Magi No Arabian visionary every fancied so remarkable a birthplace for millions as the Carnegie works at Homestead.
 Nesting into the Monogaheia, on the fiat ground by the river, by day they are marked by cloud of smoke. at night by . dozen pillars of fire. No man approach ing tho hamlet of sheds can see there on- ly the crude outlines of steel factory t Is the laboratory of an aichemist where great hills of broken earth and huge heaps of scrap iron are transmuked into gold and old age pensions, into free librarias and art galleries.
 Everywhere there is the sense of a great mysterious power iaboring to equip the most generous of modern mil lionaires. Human agency seems made ouate to effect the marvels of the mills, to manipulate the bubbling materials, 10 interfere with the fierce furnaces and fiery forces of the factories. To touch an electric button that releases the force of 1b 900 tons is easier and more miraculous in it's results than the rubbing of an Arabian lamp. Yet everything here is controlled by tiny levers and buttons a woman or child might manage
 Genii In Iron.
 Domestic to a roaring furnace little train of iron trucks is standing. To it comes noiselessly. mysteriousiy. great engine that reaches forth brawny Iron arm, grips up one of the trucks and fbrusts it into the furance Backward and forward over the glowing coal the big arm carries the truck until 1t finds the hottest corner Then. turning the truck. empties its, load of pig iron, shay fngs. limestone or coke, shakes 1t and carries it gently to the waiting string of wagons
 There is no fuss of men, no anxious couplings and uncouplings. The engine has done all its work unaided- save for single man, who sits within, nnserlhs little sheaf of levers.
 Some time later one returns to the TUT naee and, gazing with blue spectacles through the peephole, sees the poppiing' aputtering devils porridge within. Tn time the door will be opened and the boil ing metal run off into great caldrons hungarily waiting in the pit beneath.
 In single one of these open hearth sheds are twelve furnaces. each with ns hundreds of tons of metal.
 Occasionally there comes puffing from across the river a train freighted with yats of molten metal. It is run into the sheds alongside the furnaces. A single man appears and places gutter. the vat tits forward and pours it's boiling con tcnts Into the center. In this way IS ruei saved and the process of pig iron manu- facture dispensed with.
 In the filling of molds and the making of ingots the process is the same as after the use of the Bessemer converter. From the ceiling, like great hams in farmers s kitchen, glowing ingots swing to their ap- nointed places-tons of red-hot metal held easily by iron fingers.
 The Melodramatist's Paradise.
 Hinder ones feet, on moving platforms, pass slabs of fizzing, scorching steel. When the melodramatist and the author Npf the dime novel have penetrated the
 s steries of Homstead they will find rare Dopportunities for sensational villainy, s,,ch as never yet has appeared between two yellow covers.
 One stands on a bridge naked of fenc- ing and underneath rattles a block of red- hot metal that would kill a man in twinkling. It Is on it's way to the rollers and there is a pressure which would grind him to powder Everywhere are furnaces and caldrons of incinerating metal, awful hydraulic presses and silent. remorseless engines For the man of melodramatic imagination Homestead is a place of hor- rible possibilities
 stood in one of the long sheds while charge was being drawn. The hot steel gushed out, a violet white at first, em- powered in golden sparks. Immensely beautiful. As the air got at t the outer edge grew orange, and OF the surface the drothy cream gathered snd bubbled. ruby red. When the vessel was full the claws of great electric csane were fixed In it's side and 1t was swung upward-a proper tankard for some bacchanalian demon to quaff As it dangled above our heads, fifty tons of swelling steel, mar veled at the silent power cs This birth place of wealth. If a stay should break, or bolt snap? And I moved hastily away from the sinister vicinity of the swinging caldron.
 The Work of Thousands.
 Seven thousand men labor daily in the Homestead works, but nowhere is their presence felt. And yet the work done by one machine would tax the muscles of the army that built the pyramids. The mak- ing of millions is no childs play, and sim pie pieces of mechanism will here perform
 
 impossible to a force of a hundred thou sand men.
 In the armor plate department is an en- zine which will exert pressure of 15,00C tons In another shed Is a. reversing en- gine of 10000 horse power. There are electric craines that will carry hither and thither weights of 100 tons as easily as one would raise handkerchief. In the armor plate department are machines that bend like tinfoil plates the biggest gun of the civil war would have proved harmless to penetrate.
 In one shed there is a machine that re- ceives-a prodigious ingot. rolls 1t to and fro into shapely slab, cuts 1t into pieces as though 1t were cheese, then weighs each section and records the weight be- fore passing the regulation billets to the train awaiting them.
 The very sheds are Brobdingnagian. One is 1e0o feet in length, full of pulsing ma chinery. huge cranes and irresistible prasses,
 In one of the mills long pathway of rollers receives a slab of glowing metal passes 1t down to the cylinder presses carries it backward and forward till 1t Is twelve times it's original length and but a twelfth of its thickness. Onto this great plate a man throws a handful of salt. In an instant there is a crackle like the first volley of battle, feu de joie that si- fences every sound of the works and makes one heart stand still with appre- hension They are beating the oxidized crust, and what sounds like the rendinz of the worlds support is but an incident of manufacture
 .s MarveIs of Industry.
 When these plates have passed down another long alley of rollers they are ar