The labor journal. [volume] (Everett, Wash.) 1909-1976, 1922-12-15
By C.. M. Ripley

A generation ago, electric motors
were little more than toys.
Today they are the driving en-
gines of the civilized world. They
vary in capacity from 1920 part of
hores power up to ten thousand
horsepower. The smallest is the
size of a spool of thread and the
largest will reach from the ground
to second story window.
Many millions of motors are used
to turn the wheels of modern indus
try and to lessen the work of the
housewife. They serve you when
you ride in street car, or in an
elevator, when you step on your self
starter, when you clean your carpet
with vacuum sweeper. Even when
you want a drink of water it is a
motor that pumps it ready to your
hand. But as familiar as this faith
full servant is, few people realize
that the four quarters of the world
were searched for the materials nee
essary to produce it.
For in order to make even the
simplest kind of motor, over a
hundred different materials are re-
quired. No doubt among those who
Icttu lfllS IItIe are lllOuodIluS VI
workers of hand and brain who
themselves build electric motors; and
other thousands who help to provide
many of these materials. But fur
ther away still, in foreign lands,
there are other thousands of men,
working in score of different coun-
tries collecting still other ingredi-
ents for making electric motors.
Many of the workmen are dress
ed in strange garb, they speak
strange tongue, and many are burned
with the tropic sun. They dig in
the mines. They harvest, in fields,
they pick, gather and scrape to pro-
vide the materials for building
motor.
Then these Ill materials must be
carried 100000 miles, quarter of
a million miles on sea and on land,
on elephants and on camel's backs,
and on poems shoulders before they
arrive at the electric works in the
United States. No doubt hundreds
of you readers have assisted in APP
plying material used in an electric
plant, or you have designed, tested
or built electrical machines and de-
vices. You should have the satisfac-
ton of feeling that you have played
your part in making the electrical
industry what it is. You even help
ed to make possible radio-that mar
velous method of sending messages
speeding to you through the air.
In the next ten minutes let us
build an imaginary motor. AS you
some of the materials from the ami
NAL kingdom, and some from the
mineral kingdom. Let us go back to
original sources in mother nature.
First, consider the wires that carry
the electric current in the motor.
These wires were made from copper
ore mined and melted in Montana,
refined in New Jersey, and drawn
into wire in Rome, N. Y, or in the
Ansonio works, Waterbury, Conn.,, or
in Elizabeth, N. j. In the electric
works some of the wires are COW
cred with silk originally made by
yellow men who unwound the CO.
coons that worms spun on mulberry
trees in China After crossing the
Pacific ocean the thread was fin
ished in Connecticut. Other wires
are covered with rubber. 1t is really
a compound made of rubber that
brown men tapped from the trees
of Ceylon, mixed with zinc from Mis-
souri,, whiting from France, and vul-
canized with sulphur from Sicily or
Louisiana. Still other wires defy
the heat with a covering of ashes
tos, mined in Quebec and refined and
spun into yarn in New Jersey or
Pennsylvania.
These wires are wound into coils
and covered with cotton tape. The
cotton picked by the black men in
Texas, spun in North Carolina, WOW
en- in Pawtucket. r. l., and given a
finishing treatment in Utica, N Y.
The coils are then soaked in a
varnish compounded of copal nubs
from the Philippines or kauri chips
from Singapore. These are fosilized
gums exuded from trees long buried
under the earth in these far tropic
lands; to these ingredients are added
raw umber from Cyprus or Turkey,
linseed oil made from flaxseed grown
in Argentine Republic and refined in
New York. But still more is needed
to complete varnish. To these is
added China wood oil from China,