Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1908-02-05
a Load On The
Safety Valve.

81
y ~ y.
From his dinner-pail bubbling in
side the fire-door, Ziba Weston, en-
gfneer of the felt-mill, poured a cup
Of Rio, black and steaming. He sip
ped it refiectively, rubbing his bald
forehead with smutty forefnger, as
he gazed into the simmer over the
Goals.
mot one man in a hundred" said
ne, knows the tremendous power
bottled up in an ordinary boiler. In
one way it's more dangerous than
powder; for that needs something to
set it off, while steam stands always
ready to take advantage of any weak
ness
''In the early fall of 1883 was en-
~gineer at a corn-cannery in small
central Maine town. My fireman was
Joe SOCIALISM,, a half-Indian, who
had come to the place to pitch on the
local nine, and had been stranded
there when the team went to pieces
Joe was green at firing, but strong
and quick; he soon learned to handle
a coal shovel as well as he did a
baseball bat.
1.-THE f1re-TOom was in one end of
the factory, and the boiler-shed ran
out behind it at right angles. The
stairs to the second story were out
side. To reach the top the workers
had to pass right over the fre-room.
II can see those rusty boilers now,
two twenty-foot locomotive shells, old
nineteen hundreds with safety
valves topping the steam-domes. Eigh-
teen years on the railroad and five in
the factory had left them in bad
shape.
The most popular man about the
shop was a red-faced sealer weighing
over two hundred pounds. His name
was Duchesney, but everybody called
him Uncle Duke I've never seen a
smarter man with a soldering-iron;
and all the time he was working, his
tongue went as fast as his hands. It
was a dull ten minutes that he didn't
raise a laugh at somebody else's ex-
pense. Uncle Duke soon discovered
that Joe knew more about in-shoots
than he did about boilers; also that
he had a great dread of explosions.
Here was a good chance for a practi-
cal joke. One morning he sealed up
an empty tin, and threw it into the
fire box when the Indian wasn't look
ing. Soon the hot air in the can blew
out one end. Joe was badly frighten-
ed He dropped his shovel and ran
out, shouting:
"'The boilers burst! The boilers
burst!'
cit took me some time to get him
near the fire again. Uncle Duke did
not let him forget it. Now and then,
as he passed the door, he'd stick his
head in and chuckle:
"'Boiler hasn't bust this morning,
has it?
"Joe's black eyes would snap. but
he'd keep on shoveling coal.
'The second Monday in September
] sprained my ankle, and had to turn
the plant over to my fireman for two
or three days. 1 worried some as
lay in my clearinghouse, but mat
tiers seemed to go on all right.
Thursday morning my ankle was
better, so I hobbled down to the shop
TO see how Joe was getting along.
Under the husking-sheds a lively
crowd, men, women and children.
were stripping the big piles of ears
stacked UP by the farmers wagons. In
side the building both floors were
running at full blast. 1t was the bust
est day of the season; there were
more than a hundred people about
the plant.
"Joe was hustling back and forth
between the boilers and the engine,
as if he was running bases. 1 peep
ed at the cages; the needles were
lettering between ninety and ninety
five. The old boilers were pretty near
their limit, for had the safety-valves
set to blow off at a hundred. We had
to run well up to that to get power
enough for the factory.
at stepped into the engine-room.
IN the bend of the pipe from the
bSHer was a 'bleeder' to carry off the
condensation. Out of this wavered
the blue. dry steam, kissing shrilly.
"On I passed into the factory, where
sly hig square steam cookers were
sizzling. Every minute | expected to
hear the boiler blow off with roar;
for with that fire the pressure must
soon reach 4 hundred. But listened