The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-11-25
MAKING STEEL FOR THE WAR By Frank C. Carpenter

move on ball bearings. A network oi ] railroad tracks runs in and out t,Fousi the works. and great pipes of steel, sorn' of them so large that a Pullman tran ] could pass through them without touch'
 ing the walls of the pipe. wind m ahe out it. carrying millions of feet of gas
 to the various parts Of the works. dc
 rot know the cost of the South ChicaSc plant, but it has run far up into the tens 1 of millions of dollars. The machinery ot the Gary plant alone has cost more than ! SIC 00O00O. and the United States Steel i corporation is now spending millions more in connection with it.
 l Today. owing to the demands of the times. new construction is going on at both plants Gary is building four new blast furnaces and a great establishment for making wheels of forged steel. She IS putting in IA boilers to utilize the waste heat of her open hearth furnaces ana is installing new engine shops, new boil CT shops and other works for increasing tLe byproducts. At the Illinois steel plant they are installing electric open
 hearth furnaces, extending their toun- dries. building great sas-dfiven blowing
 engines and adding to their establish
 ments for turning out Bessemer steel.
 despair of making you see the inn
 menSlLY Bl lI6S6 lBlSiilS NlSdtACltS ellh the wonderful equipment they furnish
 for fighting the war. Take the blast
 furnaces. The Illinois and Indiana steel
 companies have g, which are now blaz-
 ing away night and day. They work
 holidays and Sundays, year in and year out and since they have been built many of them have been smelting iron con tinuously for & per cent of their run
 ming time.
 Each of these furnaces is az big around as a haystack and as tall as an eight-story house. It has four great stoves, almost as big and 20 feet higher, which heat tEe air blast to tempera ture of from 1200 to 1900 degrees before it is forced into the furnace and it holds charge of about 170o tons of ore limestone and coke, which this heat turns to liquid. These furnaces have each cost in the neighborhood of s1,09O.- 001 to build, and they would cost two or three times that if constructed to- day. They are the best of their kind and those of the Illinois Steel company alone are now turning out more than :, 2,0Oo,9o0 tons of pig iron year
 I shall not describe the process of smeting. The story of pig iron has often been told. The object of the fur mace is to rob the ore of it's oxygen and other impurities and leave cnly the iron. This is done by dropping alter nate layers of coke limestone and iron into the mighty towers and admitting at the bottom hot blast, which melts the whole into one liquid mass. Of this mass of iron, account of it's weight drops to the bottom of the furnace and the impurities of the ore and the lime stone float like soapsuds on top. Then by making a hole in the furnace just above the surface of the iron, the inn r1t1r fiac pnr ha of slag, and later on from a lower hole the pure pig iron can go out the same way
 This process is old, but the machinery with which it is carried ont at Gary and South Chicago is new. Almost all the work is done by machinery. The ore limestone and coke are carried LID in skip buckets which take less than a minute to raise their contents from the ground into the furnace A single load is from 15j0C0 to 30,0g0 pounds, and the pulling of lever raises this to the height of 80 feet and drops it into the furnace. It requires two tons of ore for each charge. The limestone and coke go the same way, and the furnace is practically filled with the aid of one man. The handling of the iron and slag as they come from the furnace is largely done by machinery, and iron, steel and electricity do most of the work.
 Steel making is rapidly becoming an exact sclence and everything is tested by chemical and physical analysis The ore is anaiyzed when it comes from the mine, and it is analysed again at the fur naces. The limestone is analysed and so is the coke, and when the pig iron flows forth sample is taken from every 40-ton ladle and carried away to the laboratory to see that it is exactly right for the making of steel. There are more than 100 chemists at Gary alone, and there is practically an equal number at south Chicago. Their work goes on day and and night and they aid in the ex- perlnents made for saving the waste as well as to the bettering of the steel.
 Few people realize how closely the great industrial plants of today watch the pennies and how much they will spend to save fraction of cent in a process. Last year the Illinois Steel coni- pany spent $1,00O00O on its docks that it might save 45 minutes unloading each steamer. They will spend thousands of dollars to save cents, provided they think the saving will continue and, at South Cmcago and Gary they are now coinirg millions out of the stuff that only few years ago floated away on the air. The gas from these furnaces formerly went to waste. Today it is saved, and used for heating the stoves which furnish the blast and for running the machinery of a whole plant It goes to the boilers, Where it generates steam, and to gas er:- zines which are used for blowing ar and generating electric power In ore sta tion al the Illinois steel plants I saw 5000 horsepower created in this way, and went through large rooms where dyna- mos were running through the waste gas of the furnace.
 One of the latest things in gas saving