The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-08-03
sMoKnLEss CITIES oF TO-DAY.

American cities of the. first class have been engaged in d campaign against the smoke nuisance for the past five Iyears with a result that is little short iof marvellous. They have achieved their point to a degree that makes the smokeless city of the near future an assured fact. Smoke is an unnecessary curse of national prosperity. Formerly 1t was considered a badge of great prosperity to have forests of tall chimneys belching forth clouds of sul- phurous smoke. The factory which did not thus proclaim it's activity was looked upon as losing investment. Orders were slack and business lag ging.
 A strange revolution has been si- llently worked through the activity of those engaged in suppressing the lsmoke nuisance. They have demon strated their earnestness in pushing the campaign, and science has come to their aid. The stean-engineer has re- lcognized the hopelessness of his case | and has proceeded to devise methods to suppress the smoke without limiting
 le capacity of the plants. The result is that smoke is now considered poor economy. It indicates imperfect corn- bustion and a waste of fuel which should be.avoided. The smokeless fac tory town is the most prosperous com munity.
 For decades our factories and man luffacturing plants have been pouring lup their chimneys in the form of smoke and unburnt coal dust about S5 lper cent. of their fuel. This extrava- gant consumption of coal told heavily on the cost of manufacturing The soft bituminous coals filled the air with clouds3o of sulphurous smoke which lruined clothes, furniture, and valua- I hle stock, and clogged the delicate lungs and nasal and throat passages of all who breathed it. Physicians in recent years are agreed that the weak ening effect of breathing an excess of lsoot has been very great in the past, land that the spread of pneumonia and tuberculosis has been partly due to lthis nuisance. In some cities the smoke lfog has been so dense that the average lhealth has been affected through the Iclouding of the heavens and the con- iesquent shutting out of the bright sun lshine. Many factories engaged in mak- ling delicate faces, curtains, linens, silks land other costly fabrics have beer forced to find isolated locations away from smoke-p producing plants The Idisagreeablenes of having smoke anG soot distributed in the living-room Q. the home is so great that in many cit. les windows had to be tightly closed Iduring the greater part of the day. Al together the smoke nuisance has cost millions of dollars and produced much lill health and irritable nerves.
 But great as this indirect loss tc lproperty is, the direct loss through the waste of fuel heat carried up the chim- lney with the belching smoke Is ever #Igreater Engineering economies to- day declare that the loss is useless. Il lis simply a problem of burning smoke properly. The efficiency of stean Iplants has been increased from ten tt twenty per cent. through the proper burning of coal. The number of devices Invented for preventing smoke loss i so great to-day that it is more pro lblem with manufacturers to make { choice out of many than to find any a all. These devices are chiefly found ii Improved mechanical stokers, whiol lgive automatic and uniform action, st that sudden changes In the draugh
 not send up great clouds of smoke lin improved furnaces with down
 draughts of air which carry the distill
 ed gases of the fuel down through tn
 coal when in an incandescent condition
 and not up through the chimney; il Improved air-tlues, bridge walls, ant Igrate- bars, new kinds of coking- -arche md dead-plates where the coal i
 warmed and partly coked before beinl
 spread over the grate surface.
 Smoke preventing devices are beinl
 used by the large plants voluntarily
 The campaign agianst the smoke nuis
 ance does not affect them. From al
 economical point of view they are do ing away with belching chimneys IThey know too well that great cloud
 of drifting smoke indicate poor econ somy of operation through imperfee combustion. The smokeles stack is a
 indication of careful firing and per
 feet combustion.-Geo Ethelber