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structed especially for the purpose. This furnace is worth describing. It consisted of an iron casing bolted to a bottom plate of cast iron forty-eight inches in diameter. The casing was made in two cylindrical sections to facilitate repairs. To render the inductance as small as possible the lines of magnetic force in the iron case were prevented from closing by the replacement of a vertical strip of ten inches width of the casing by a copper plate. Carbon paste was rammed into the lower part of the furnace up to the bottom of the crucible. The lining consisted of common fire brick, which from the bottom of the crucible up for a distance of a little above the slag level was covered with carbon paste to a thickness of a few inches. The crucible, therefore, consisted entirely of carbon.

The electrodes, imported from Sweden, were prisms of square cross-section, sixteen by sixteen inches by six feet long. The contact with the cables carrying the electric current to the electrode consisted of a steel shoe riveted to four copper plates which ended in a support for a pulley. The electrode with its contact was supported by a chain passing under the pulley, one end of the chain being fastened to the wall, the other end passing over a winch operated by a worm and worm-wheel. This formed a convenient arrangement for regulating the electrode by hand. The electrical energy was furnished by one phase of a three phase, 2,400 volt, alternating current gen-. erator coupled to a 300 H. P., 500 volt, direct current motor. A current of 2,200 volts was delivered to transformer of 225 K. W, capacity, designed to furnish current to the furnace at fifty volts. The transformer was placed in a separate room in the furnace building, close to the furnace. From the transformer the current was led to the bottom plate contact of the furnace and to the electrode contact by conductors consisting each of thirty aluminum cables, five-eighths inch in diameter. To determine the exact amount of current needed for the electrodes used in smelting the plant was provided with voltmeters, an ammeter and a recording watt meter. The question of material for reducing the ores was important, as coking coal was not available. It was decided to use bri

quettes made of coke dust and fire clay, also charcoal as a substitute. The fluxing agents were limestone and quartz.

As less than half a ton of iron was made at a run, the furnace was kept almost continuously in operation until one hundred and fifty casts had been drawn off, giving fifty-five tons of metal. This was secured entirely from Canadian ores noted for the high percentages of sulphur and phosphorus they contained. They included varieties of magnetite, titaniferous ore and roasted pyrrhotite. Dr. Haanel states that such ores, high in sulphur and not used in the blast furnace, on account of the high percentage of this element, could be smelted electrically with perfect success, yielding at pig-iron equal in value to and lower in sulphur than the metal obtained in the blast furnaces from ores free from sulphur and costing three dollars and seventy-five cents per ton in Canada. The resulting metal was not only nearly free from phosphorus, but contained only a trace of sulphur, while the titaniferous iron contained only sufficient titanium to increase its quality.

The conclusions reached by the experts were that magnetite can be as economically smelted by the electric process as hematite. Ores of high sulphur content not containing manganese can be made into pig iron containing only a few thousandths of a per cent of sulphur. The silicon content can be varied as required for the class of pig to be produced. Charcoal which can be cheaply produced from mill refuse or wood which could not otherwise be utilized, can be substituted for coke as a reducing agent, without being briquetted with the ore. A ferro-nickel pig can be produced practically free from sulphur and of fine quality from roasted nickeliferous pyrrhotite. The experiment made with a titaniferous iron ore containing 17.82 per cent of titanic acid permits the conclusion that titaniferous iron ores up to perhaps five per cent titanic acid can be successfully treated by the electric process. In short the electric current makes available an enormous supply of ore which cannot be successfully reduced to iron by the ordinary blast furnace method.

The question of what it costs, however, is a most important one. In answering

this we must take into consideration the quality of the metal which comes from the electrical furnace. Less porous and more compact, it is far more durable and has such tensile strength yet hardness that it is especially suitable for car wheels, crushing rolls and other machinery where a very high quality of metal is essential. Those who examined the product of the Sault Ste. Marie furnace agree that it is fully twenty per cent better than the high grade pig usually sold in the great cities of the East, though made from ore considered little better than worthless in comparison with the favored hematite.

The cost of one electrical horse power per year at Sault Ste. Marie is calculated to be ten dollars, or two and three-quarters cents per day. In reducing one ton of ore, electrical energy equalling ninetythree and one-half horse power was used at a cost of two dollars and fifty-seven cents. The total expense of making a ton of iron, including ore at one dollar and fifty cents per ton, and all other items, was ten dollars and sixty-nine cents. The cost of making pig iron in the modern blast furnace varies considerably. While the figures are kept secret by most manufacturers, it is claimed that ore in Alabama is so cheap that a ton of

it can be smelted for about six dollars. The Northern furnaces using range ore from Superior cannot produce iron for probably less than seven dollars and fifty cents a ton. Consequently the cost of this electrically made metal was not much higher than the No. 1 blast furnace grade, remembering that it averages twenty per cent better in quality. But the expense of generating the electric current differs greatly. It is supplied in some parts of the country as low as seven dollars and fifty cents per horse power per year. The invention of more economical water wheels, generators and other apparatus is steadily decreasing the expense of producing the current. It is worth noting that near the great ore bodies in the Adirondacks are numerous water powers of such extent that they could undoubtedly be employed to create electrical energy at a low cost and in quantities sufficient to establish the smelting industry on a large scale. Eastern Tennessee and other parts of the South also have abundant water power near beds of ores which cannot be successfully treated by the ordinary blast furnace. Therefore the prediction that we may be on the verge of another industrial revolution with the aid of electricity, is by no means imaginary.

A Sunset Fantasy

The sun drops low behind the hill, Like some full tropic bloom Whose sensuous and baleful light Seems smitten with the sudden blight Of passion's rayless doom.

But now across the field of space,
Like one with sacred power,

Pure Evening, clad in hodden-gray,
Comes like a priest to shrive the Day
And bless his dying hour.
-WILLIAM H. HAYNE, in Munsey's Magazine

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THE RUINED FOREST IS AS DESOLATE A PLACE AS ONE WOULD CARE TO SEEK.

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NE of the greatest stories ever written, as those who have read it well know, is the tale which gives a true but terrible picture of the desolation wrought in Europe's greatest empire by fire and the sword. And this is the title of the book-a fitting title, because in every chapter, the work done by these weapons of war is thrillingly described.

Some time the American novelist will write a book which will be entitled "With Fire and Axe." It will also be a true title, for it will describe the havoc and desolation which are being wrought in the Northwest by the timbermen in fell

ing the greatest forests of the world. True, human beings are not the victims of the attacks with fire and the axe, but woodlands containing trees which are among the most valuable known to man and which may well be called monarchs of the forest, since they are actually equal in dimensions to any which spring from the earth, and for human use are more valuable than any others that grow in America.

We have heard so much about the "show trees" of California that the great firs, or Oregon pines as they are called in the state of Oregon, are but little known to people who live east of the Rocky Mountains. The enterprising advertising agents have flooded the country with pictures of the famous sequoias

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until every one is familiar with the tree which has a hole cut through its trunk so that a wagon can be driven through, while a company of cavalry have posed for their photographs on one of the fallen specimens, such is its length and thickness. But the Big Trees, as the California people call them, are so few in number compared with those in the vast fir and cedar forests in Washington and Oregon that their importance is insignificant compared with the latter, for it is a fact that the larger firs are as high as any of the trees in the Mariposa Grove, and when cut down for lumber will supply far more board feet to a tree than the others. Today, firs are being felled in the country adjacent to Puget Sound which measure over three hundred feet from the topmost branch merely to the edge of the cut, not counting the stumpage. The traveler who goes into the country a few miles north of the city of Seattle, one of the first places where the timbermen began their inroads into these forests, will see ruins of woods giants looming up twelve, fifteen and twenty feet from the ground, some of them so large around that two horsemen would find room on the top for themselves and their animals. Not far from the town of Sedro-Woolley, the farmers in a clearing sometimes have a dance on the stump of a tree which actually measures fifteen feet through at the base. The top of this stump is so large that four couples can move around upon it, and then leave room for the fiddler.

Mere figures do not give an idea of the immensity of this woodland of the Pacific Northwest, but it is necessary to include a few statistics in order to prove how this enormous source of wealth to America is being wasted. Fifty thousand square miles of Oregon and 45,000 square miles of Washington, or over half the area of these states, are yet covered with forests of the first growth of fir, cedar, and other species, the fir and cedar representing the greatest percentage. The four hundred and fifty saw mills in the state of Washington turn out over two thousand million feet yearly, while the output of the five hundred Oregon mills is fifteen hundred million feet. The number of mills is small contrasted with similar plants in Michigan and Wiscon

sin, for example, but they make up in capacity to a certain extent what they lack in numbers

Individual mills on Puget Sound, on the Columbia River and other inlets connecting with the Pacific Ocean are remarkable for their size. At Port Blakely, on one of the islands of Puget Sound, is the largest saw mill in capacity under one roof in the world. In a year it converts one hundred million feet of logs into square timber, planking, boards and smaller sizes, much of the output being loaded on shipboard at the mill for South and Central America, Mexico, and Europe. The largest group of sawing plants owned by one company is situated on Tacoma harbor, in Washington, and is owned by the St. Paul & Tacoma Lumber Company, while the largest shingle mill in the world is in the town of Ballard, a suburb of Seattle, producing solely cedar shingles.

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To supply the requirements of a saw mill industry of such dimensions it is evident that an enormous quantity of standing timber must be cut annually. Consequently logging, as conducted in the Pacific Northwest, is of very large. proportions, giving employment in the states named to fully 15,000 men. may be needless to say that it is entirely distinct from the milling industry proper, although the two are frequently confounded and the work of the logger is placed in the same category with that of the millman. But this is an error, for the service of the logman ceases when the logs are made up into the raft to be towed to the mill or are loaded upon railway cars and started for the same destination.

These figures show that although lumbering has only just begun in these states, the forests are being attacked by men aided by powerful machinery at such a rate that already a large area truly presents a scene of desolation. This is on account of the methods employed in getting out the timber. Any man in the lumber business is well aware that the fir is one of the most valuable woods that is to be found in the New World. It is not only very strong, but extremely light. You can leave a piece of it in water for months before it becomes water logged. Most of the mills have ponds adjacent to

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