HE people of Chicago have a rock-heap on their hands. It was bequeathed to them by the contractors who dug the big Chicago Drainage Canal. It is quite a large heap, too. If it were distributed among its owners, there would be about twelve cubic yards for every man, woman, and child within the city limits. If it were spread out carefully to an even depth of one yard, it would cover an area of almost eight square miles.

At present this rock-heap is neither distributed nor spread out. It is lying like a small mountain range along the banks of the Canal, from Chicago southwest to Lockport, a distance of twenty-eight miles. The traveler who goes along the Canal in a boat, or who parallels its course in a railroad train, is amazed at the gigantic proportions of the sloping mounds which stand to-day as monuments to the immensity of the engineering task accomplished by the people of Chicago.

All these mounds are the mere "spoil" or "waste" of the Canal. After a glance at them, it is easy to credit the fact that the Chicago Drainage Board, which is in charge of the Canal, has spent over $50,000,000 since its establishment in 1889.

When the Canal had been finished to Lockport, the problem of the rock-heap began to appear. There it lay, miles and miles of it, already quarried, out in the open air. What should be done to it?

There are, of course, clay and dirt, as well as rock, in that Drainage Canal mountain range. The figures given above are only for the rock. If the clay and dirt were added to the calculations, the total volume of the "spoil or "waste" of the Canal would be more than doubled. If all this "waste," including clay, dirt, rock, and everything, were taken out into Lake Michigan and dumped into fifty feet of water, it would fill up the fifty feet without the slightest difficulty, and would loom above the surface of the water in the form of an island a mile or so square.

But the clay and the dirt are not worth considering at present. It is the rock that is engaging the attention of the people of Chicago. For many years it has been allowed to lie idle. In some places the wild flowers have already begun to clothe it with color and with beauty. The change from rural attractiveness to commercial utility-from botany to business -came when Mr. Robert R. McCormick, of Chicago, was elected president of the Canal Board.

Mr. McCormick is known in official

ALPINE EXPLOITS NEAR CHICAGO.

documents as "Robert R." Outside of those documents, he used to be known as "Bertie." Of late years he has insisted upon "Bert" as a minimum, and "Mr. McCormick" as a maximum, de

ROBERT R. MCCORMICK. Chairman, Drainage Canal Board. He conceived the idea of making money out of the

waste-pile.

mand. This doesn't show that he is proud. He isn't. But "Bertie" doesn't seem to "fill the bill" for a man who serves the public as manager of one of the biggest engineering enterprises in the world. And even if that manager is not yet thirty years old, the dignity of his office entitles him to some consideration.

So we shall say that it was "Bert," and not "Bertie," McCormick who had the idea that the rock-heap of the people of Chicago ought to mean money to the people of Chicago. This idea will be appreciated, if not by botanists, at least by taxpayers.

The consequence of the idea will be seen next year. At present the scenery of the Drainage Canal consists of a deep cut, twenty-eight miles long, extending in a southwesterly direction from Chicago, partly through earth and partly through rock, with twenty-two feet of water flowing in it, and with high ridges of earth and of rock running intermittently along its banks and forming now and then a kind of small artificial canyon. A year from now, there will be some scenery. It will consist of steam shovels, tracks, cars, locomotives, stone-crushers, barges, and tugs, and of all the other machinery necessary for turning a 23,000,

new

000-cubic-yard rock-heap into good, efficient building material.

The man who will handle this big political job is a man who controls just one vote in the State of Illinois. It may be that his wife controls even that. But, at any rate, it is only one vote, and no more. It is a hopeful omen for the speedy disposal of the rock-heap, that Mr. John M. Ewen has been so busy with putting up the Monadnock Building, the Marquette Building, the Columbus Memorial Building, the New York Life Building, the Woman's Temple, and scores of other such structures, that he hasn't had time to grasp the full political possibilities of the contract by which he has undertaken to remove and to dispose of the rock and stone along the right-of-way of the Chicago Drainage Board.

The magnitude of the enterprise is indicated by the size and cost of the mere preliminary equipment. First of all, there will be enormous steam shovels which will reach down like big human hands and gather the stone together. Then there will be many miles of railroad track, and innumerable freight-cars. The steam shovels will dump the stone into the cars. The cars will be drawn by Mr. Ewen's locomotives to to Mr. Ewen's crusher.

This crusher will be a building fully as large as the largest grain-elevator now to be seen along the Chicago river. It will be located somewhere between Chicago and Lockport. The cars will be carried. along an inclined plane to the top of the crusher, and will there be dumped into gigantic cast-iron jaws, which will operate by steam and which will chew the stone up into small fragments.

From the cast-iron jaws the stone will pass into a big revolving cylindrical screen, which, by means of a series of openings of various sizes, will grade it into separate portions, each of uniformly sized pieces.

From the screen, the stone will pass down along a chute. to the bank of the Canal. From the bank, it will be transferred to barges. In the barges, it will be hauled by Mr. Ewen's tugs to Chicago or to near-by railways.

The steam shovels, the tracks, the cars, the locomotives, the crusher, the screen, the barges, and the

will cost half a million dollars. This is just for getting ready to start. More steam shovels, more locomotives, more crushers, and more everything else will be added as the work proceeds.

What will all this stone be worth when it gets to market? Well, at the present time, crushed stone, when delivered in large quantities, is selling in the downtown district in Chicago for $1.60 a cubic yard. This means that Chicago's rockheap, when crushed and when carried

the preliminary equipment,

down-town, will be worth $36,800,000. Of course, there will be a great gap between the selling price and the net profits. The work of crushing the stone and of transporting it to market will consume many million dollars. The selling price is mentioned only in order to convey a general idea of the amount of money that will change hands in the process of disposing of the mere waste product of a modern engineering enterprise. It is interesting, however, to observe that the selling price of the waste product will be just about the equivalent of the actual cost of digging the Canal. The Canal Board has spent some $50,000,000; but a full third of this sum has been devoted to widening the Chicago river and to erect

ing new bridges and doing other work which cannot be classified as real excavation.

The cost of the excavation proper, including the purchase of the rightof-way, certainly did not exceed $36,800,000; and that will be the selling price, if present market conditions hold good, for the waste stone of the rock sections of the Canal. The clay and dirt from the earth sections will still lie on the banks, and may some day be used in manufacturing brick or in filling-in low places in the environs of Chicago. Meanwhile the stone from the rock sections will do something in the way of reimbursing the people of Chicago for the expense to which they have been sub