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This broke down, and in succession each floor below gave way beneath a load which was quadrupling. It was so tremendous that no construction could have withstood it. I see nothing in a hasty examination to indicate that there was any serious fault in the design of the work or in the quality of the material. I am of the opinion, however, that the amount of the reinforcement and its placement are open to discussion. I believe that the responsibility for the failure lies with the contractor and the engineers who are responsible for the design and execution of the work."

A contractor, however, is inclined to place the blame upon the system of construction. He says: "It seems that the construction is quite mongrel in character, being a combination of hollow tiles and concrete, and not reinforced concrete as a whole. Such reinforcement as was used was of an entirely inadequate proportion to the requirements and was wholly without reinforcement over the hollow tiles, the supports for which were evidently removed before the cement was perfectly set.

"The legs for supporting the wet concrete were small and placed directly on the shallow tiles; the weight and shock incident to tamping proved too much for the tile, which gave way and precipitated the load on the floors below, which were unable to withstand the sudden shock and, consequently, collapsed. Had the work been monolithic and properly reinforced the collapse would not have occurred. This is plainly proven by the fact that the corridor floor at the first story, a monolithic, reinforced floor, is unbroken, although it withstood the full impact of the falling beams. From such examination as I could give I cannot say whether the materials used were good or bad."

When the mass of wreckage is cleared away it will be possible to determine which of the many views of the cause of the disaster is the correct one, and who is responsible for the loss of life and property. The hotel company has decided to rebuild the destroyed portion with all possible speed and the ruins are fast disappearing. Public opinion will not condemn the use of concrete on the strength of one such disaster.

Cheer Up!

THANK God for the man who is cheerful,

In spite of life's troubles, I say:
Who sings of a brighter to-morrow
Because of the clouds to-day.
His life is a beautiful sermon,

And this is the lesson to me—

Meet trials with smiles, and they vanish;
Face cares with a song, and they flee,

The men stand by the conveyor, and sort the material as it is slowly carried past them.

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A

By M. G. Furber

GREAT corps of street cleaners is hard at work in New York City, gathering up every bit of rubbish and making the streets as spick and span as a ship's deck. These workers are a municipal staff, and they are employed by the city not only for hygienic purposes but chiefly for economic reasons. They save the city many thousands of dollars a year by supplying fuel for a large electric lighting plant.

This is the first time that rubbish has been systematically collected and used as fuel; and the big plant where the work is done, located at Tompkins and Delancey streets, is attracting general interest.

Hundreds of carts, each carrying 1,

000 pounds of all sorts of odds and ends, drive up to the plant daily. There, commences a thorough sorting and distributing of the refuse. Picturesque sons of Italy swarm the sorting rooms, where they gather around the long slides down which the rubbish passes to the great furnaces, eagerly snatching out buttons, rags, and other odds and ends which they deem valuable. For these prizes they pay the city so much a pound as "rags," and many queer things are stowed away in their linsey woolsey bags. Occasionally an old coat or vest or a disreputable purse slips along the trough, and is quickly snatched out by an alert watcher who has visions of riches tucked away in pockets or in the compartments of the purse. These dreams are sometimes realized, for both money and jewels at

rare intervals are swept into the city's huge heaps of rubbish and filthy garbage. All day long a stream of wagons and of sorters passes in and out of the yards of this incinerator, and all day long the workers are rapidly separating the combustible from the non-combustible, feeding the huge furnaces with the former and disposing of the latter in various ways.

Previous to the construction of the present plant and a smaller incinerator at Forty-seventh street, this material was disposed of by dumping it into the sea.

belt, which allows the rags, paper, and wood in all forms to be passed slowly in front of the gang of pickers who remove all rags and similar refuse. The remaining rubbish, largely of combustible nature, then passes to a small sorting space, where the non-combustible matter, such as cans, bottles, wire springs, etc., is removed. The final sorting space is immediately adjacent to the furnace doors, through which the combustible material is passed at a regular rate independent of the demands for steam by the electrtic light plant.

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or placing it as filler on low land. It is estimated that the disposal in this manner has cost 30 cents per cubic yard, and that the incinerator, treated simply as a means of destroying the rubbish, will effect a saving of $10,000 per year.

Features of particular interest in connection with this novel plant are the construction and operation of the furnace, and the means employed in handling the unusual fuel. The fuel-conveyor serves to elevate the rubbish from the dumping place of the street cleaner to the stokeholes of the furnaces. The conveyor consists of an engine-driven, linked iron

There are two furnaces, each of which is equipped with a top, side, and end doors. One of the furnaces is constructed with a single combustible chamber and an ash-pit; while the other is of the two-story type, being supplied with two sets of grates, one above the other, and a lower ash-pit. The side doors have been provided for the purpose of removing any non-combustible material that might pass unnoticed into the furnace through the top doors. Bulky rubbish, such as furniture, etc., is fed through the end doors.

Each furnace is operated entirely dis

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tinct from the other, although the gases from the two pass finally to the same chimney, which carries the smoke to a height (200 feet) sufficient to eliminate any objectionable odor.

It may be of interest to note the results of tests made upon a lot of rubbish. In a certain run of ten hours, during which a total weight of 102,531 pounds of rubbish was used, the average horse-power developed was 232.7. One pound of rubbish furnishes sufficient heat to evaporate 1.6 pounds of

STOKERS AT WORK.

Ramming small rubbish into the incinerating furnace.

water; or 21.6 pounds rubbish furnish one horse-power. An An analysis of the rubbish used, showed that 43.8 per cent was combustible material, and 7.4 per cent ash, while 48.8 per cent was taken by pickers or discarded as non-combustible. Even the ashes are made use of, the American Tobacco Company taking them for fertilizer.

Under each boiler, entirely distant from the main incinerator furnace, is placed an auxiliary furnace, in which bulky matter may be burned, or coal may be used in emergency. Thus, when the proper dampers are closed, boilers may

be fixed in the usual way. The room in which the incinerator and boiler plant are placed is entirely separated from the dynamo room. In the dynamo room are placed all the apparatus for using the steam, also the steam auxiliaries, and this room is in charge of the Department of Bridges.

Strong batteries are being arranged for, in which to store the electricity generated in the daytime to help out during the night. The object of this is to be able to run the big furnaces 24 hours a day and use most of the electricity at night.

FEEDING RUBBISH TO FURNACE THROUGH TOP FEED-HOLE.

The plant cost $34,000 for the incinerator, and $47,400 for boilers and electric generator. It won't take many months to cover the expense of equipping this valuable plant, for, besides saving that $10,000 a year previously expended in disposing of the city's rubbish, there will be the doing away with the enormous coal bill contracted every year for the lighting of the Williamsburg bridge and vicinity. It is a profitable venture and one which other cities would do well to follow.

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O

By F. C. Perkins

PEN fire places, stoves, steam, hot water and even electric radiators all are out of date. C. Herrgott, a French inventor, proposes to supply the residences of

ELECTRIC HEATING GARMENTS.

people who can afford luxuries, with furniture and fittings which will make special heating apparatus unnecessary, even in the coldest weather. At his factory in Valdoie, near Belfort, France, M. Herrgott is making rugs and carpets, curtains, hangings and other so-called thermopile fabrics, which, when properly connected with a supply of electric current, will keep an apartment at almost any desired temperature.

In appearance and texture the electricheating rugs can hardly be distinguished from those of ordinary manufacture. They are woven of wool and the other usual materials, about an invisible and finely divided skeleton of specially prepared metallic threads, which is autoresistant, exactly like an incandescent electric light filament. These threads are very supple, do not buck'e in weaving and present a very large heating surface in proportion to their small diameter. All the fabrics are woven so as to produce a fixed degree of temperature from a given current and there is no danger, whatever, of their being destroyed or even injured by overheating.

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