The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1902-07-26
WOMEN MECHANICS.

| liz Adld1 al AOOuAb Vi kdAlAS ava
from them nearly all the work that
women formerly did at home and
transferring it to shops and factories,
where it is done by machinery, is that
women follow the work into the shops
and factories. To assist in making
the machines and appurtenances en-
ployed in the shops is only one more
step, and that step some of the girls
have already taken.
In beautiful region of New York
State, place where the air and water
are as pure as they were at creation S
morn, where smoke and dust do not
as yet veil the sunshine so that mortal
eye never sees its true brightness,
there is a great milk condensing plant,
one of the largest of all. A few wo-
men are employed in it, and scores of
women come driving to it every day
in their clean wagons full of shining
cans to deliver milk to the factory.
Near the cannery itself stands an
other building, like everything else
about the establishment, immaculate
ly clean. In this building all the
cans used in the great condensery are
manufactured, and manufactured by
girls and women. Scarcely man is
to be seen anywhere except the train
ed machinist-superintendent, who di-
rects the work. Sheet tin is brought
in packages to the factory. Girls
manipulate the machines that cut it
into strips for the cans. Others shape
the strips round. Still others cut at
a stroke the circular pieces that form
the ends of the cans. On the pieces
move as by clockwork to the solder
ers, likewise nice, clear-eyed, clear
skinned girls and women. The found
er of the great milk condensing in
dustry in the United States had clean
illness for ruling hobby, and he en-
forced it SO rigidly that every soul in
his employ had to be spotlessly neat
as to skin and clothing or get out.
The-iron willed old gent1emen's
spirit seems to hover over that ma
chine shop and cannery to this day,
for both are really cleaner than many
city woman's parlor. The women
in the machine shop wear pretty,
light cotton wash dresses, for the
work does not greatly soil hands or
clothes. You could not find pleas
anter sight in a years journey than
these women at work. They earn
very good wages, too, for country
neighborhood, S. to 81 week.
In Philadelphia the new woman has
gone beyond making milk cans and is
actually employed today in an iron
and brass foundry. For her task
here considerable physical strength is
required. She does not do the actual
work of making castings, but she
makes the cores which are used in
the process. If wheel with a hole
in the center is to be cast, it must
have something in the center to keep
the molten iron from running all to-
gether solid. That something to
make the central opening is called
"core." 1t is required for all hollow
castings. Most castings are hollow
many cores are necessary.
A core must be of material that
redhot iron will not melt or burn.
Such material is sand, which must
be mixed with other noncombustible
substances to make its particles stick
together. The new woman takes the
mixture and rams it solidly into a
mold to give it shape. After she has
done this another new woman covers
the still soft core with lampblack
paint. 1t is now ready to be baked
like a piece of earthenware in an
oven. Now comes in the task of
third new woman. The first and sec
ond girls turn out the cores shaped
and painted as rapidly as possible
the third one gathers as many of them
as she can conveniently carry upon
tray and takes them carefully to the
oven, precisely as if they were biscuit
upon molding board. The oven is
very hot, and the core is kept in it
till the raw material is fused and
baked hard and brittle. The lamp
black paint comes out a hard, shining
polish, so smooth the molten metal
will not stick to it.
Of the cores that are small and east
1y made one set of three girls is able
under good conditions to turn out
5000 to 1900 day; of the larger,
more complicated ones, not so many.
The work is not so clean or so light
as making tin cans, but is as we'll
paid.
Women are employed in preference
to men for the making of the cores be-
cause their fingers are more nimble
and they can turn out more work in
a given time than boys could. The
girls are we'll treated and enjoy their
occupation.
A woman, too, has lately made
small hand loom which is an article
of perpetual use and entertainment
in the home and schoolroom. She is
Mrs. M. P. Todd, of the Minneapolis
public schools. Her invention grew
out of her endeavor to give her pupils
object lessons in the textile fabric in
dustry.-Ma,y Edith Day.
DUTY DONE.
President Alderman, of Tulane