The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-01-02

ANatss gO 1hEhk-St F FaS
 pea ts Issued for Heads of the Differ
 emt Branches of the Works-Good
 Exchange Work.
 A few years back the long valley of Wilnlerding, Pa, was little better than a wilderness. Here and there stood a farmhouse, and the passing trains sel- dom stopped to let down chance pas- sengers.
 To-day the products of the Wilmer- ding Valley cover the world. Every passenger train in England uses gear made in the works here or their branches; many of our electric rail- ways have been planned here; every in- dtrs tifiii5ftton rfaf exhibition shows it's goods. Fifteen thousand people to-day find employment here, and only the time ne- cessary for building delays the opening of fresh works.
 Wilmerding is the headquarters of the Westinghouse industries. It is no longer possible to talk of these Ameri- can conquerors of our trade, for now that they are opening factories outside Manchester to rival those in Pennsyl- vania they are international allies rath- CT than foreign competitors. Yet it is an alliance in which the American is the senior partner.
 How is it that one man, Mir. George Westinghouse, has built up in a gene ration a business like this? For two days I have paced his factories striving to learn the secret. It may be told in a, few words. Foresight, anticipation of the worlds future needs bold and cost ly experiments, trained technical skill, the abundant use of labor-saving ap- pliances, and an elaborate system of organized intelligence.
 It is long story how George West inghouse, when lad, with the run of his fathers machine shop in a New York country town, carefully thought out the air brake. At first, after it was completed, no one would give him a chance to demonstrate it. Old Commo- dore Vanderbilt roughly told him that he had no time to listen to fool who thought of stopping the trains with air At last friend of the lads, a clerk on a country line, induced the superinten- dent to allow one train to be equipped and run. The great day came, and be- fore the train had been running fifteen minutes a bad accident was avoided. A bucking team of horses suddenly ap- +bo {1- o1y o[1; +oI1 in front of the engine. With ordinary appliances it must have cut them and the wagon behind them down, but the new brake pulled it up sharp.
 From that day fortune smiled on the inventor. The brake made him a. rich man. He kept the manufacture of it in his own hands, and soon other inven- tions appeared. To-day he carries on inventions as a business. The best technical schools in America are tapped for their cleverest pupils. These MT. Westinghouse sets year after year to work out the details of problems he wants solved. On one subject alone, a fresh utilization of gas, he has spent twenty thousand pounds a year for cany years past without as yet finding what he wants.
 On another problem, connected, un- derstand. with the discovery of a fresh method of generating electricity, he is royalty squandering sum which in one year alone would amount to a mod crate fortune for another man. He looks forward to coming time when the enormous generating stations ne- cessary to-day shall be curiosities of a past age, and when all the power and light necessary for city shall be turned out in a small hall.
 MT. Westinghouse inventions are no happy hits. He thinks what the day after to-morrow will need, and sets out to provide for it. Some time ago, for instance, he saw that railway trucks must become bigger and bigger till the old spring buffer would be useless in keeping them together; for while springs might be made to take the inn pact of & loaded fifty-ton car, they would be torn asunder by the pull of the rebound. Here was a problem to solve. To-day, while tie f1fty-ton cars