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Modern Industry's Horn of PlentyBy-Product Coke Ovens

While the beehive Oven produces coke alone, the by-product oven yields coke, gas, tar, ammonia, and benzol, some of these things being, in turn, the source of innumerable useful products. By-product

ovens are tall and narrow-like bureau drawers set on edge. They are charged from the top with crushed coal, closed air-tight, and heated by the burning of gas (generally produced by the ovens themselves) in flues that alternate with the ovens in each "battery." The picture shows the "pusher" side of an oven battery, with the big electric ram by which, when coking is complete, the mass of red-hot coke is pushed out of the oven upon a car, on the opposite side of the battery. The car hurries the coke to the quenching station, where it is drenched with water. The gas from the ovens is drawn by an "exhauster" into the big pipe seen running along the top of the battery, and thence by other pipes to the byproducts building for treatment to recover by-products

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One of the
By-Products-
Ammonium
Sulphate

Ammonia, produced in different forms in the by-product ovens, is only a little less remarkable than the much-talked-of coal tar for the number and importance of its industrial uses. One of the standard products of the ovens is crude ammonium sulphate, used as a fertilizer. The picture shows this substance in storage. The machine in the left background is used for filling the bags. A large part of the ammonia used in American refrigerating plants is likewise obtained from byproduct coke ovens

I

T matters little just what one's complaint against the railroads may be, the management is to blame. Whether there is only an old sleeping-car with the storage battery run down doing chair-car duty up the Hudson River; or W. & B.'s ten-car shipment is fortyeight hours overdue; or Tom Jones's flivver stalled her engine on the crossing and the flier completely demolished the antiquated ark once called an automobile -"the management is to blame." Yes, the president should be advised of the situation, and he, personally, should make amends.

Well, I have been employed on one of the biggest railroads of our country nearly twenty-five years, and I have never seen a railroad president yet. But there are lots of other things to look at that to me are just as important as the president.

I

HAVEN'T worked twenty-five years for this railroad of mine and not learned to like it. I like them all. And I take a great deal of interest in looking over the motive power of other railroads, comparing their equipment with my own, watching their trains roll by. When they stop, I like particularly well to see how their crews do their bit, how the flagmen protect the rear of their trains. There is far more that may be wrong with a railroad than just "careless management" at the top.

I read the other day that there were just a few less than two million employees on the Class I railroads the past year. And a short while ago I noticed that a vice-president said he would like to meet personally all the men on his system. If he ever does, he won't get much else done that day. And, too, if he does meet them, probably some of the boys will soon call him "Bill," or whatever his first name is, and try to tell him all about some little grievance that even their employing officers will not take time to hear.

Now, it's employees that I started to talk about, not presidents or their problems or possibilities; but first I want to say just a little about the duty of one official of the railroad, the superintendent.

It is the duty of the superintendent to make his particular division "pay." To do that he must keep the number of employees cut down as closely as he can and still expedite the work, and keep the

By MILLS C. LEONARD

Locomotive Engineer, Pennsylvania Railroad overtime of those who do the work down to the lowest possible figure. But his is an uphill job.

Overtime? What is overtime on a railroad nowadays? Overtime is a bonus paid to its employees for stretching their day's work out as long as it can be stretched.

Sounds unusual, doesn't it? But it's true. Under the present system of paying employees in local road freight service, the workman gets from three to four dollars for the second eight hours. of a sixteen-hour tour of duty over and above the same rate that he gets for the first eight hours. That second eight hours, or fraction thereof, is paid for on the minute basis, at an hourly rate of three-sixteenths of the daily rate. It is called by various names: "bootleggers' pay," "inch and a half," "shoes for the kids," "gasoline," "pay me," and "time and a half."

Overtime does not affect passengertrain service. The overtime that puts the "big dent" in the earnings of a railroad is paid to crews in local and pool freight service. Some idea of the numbers to whom it is paid may be had when I say that approximately ninety per cent of the men employed in road service are freight men, with the remaining ten per cent in passenger service. It is the slow freight, local freight, and such service as has no schedule that is slowed down by the time-and-one-half payment for overtime.

they ask such questions as these: "How much overtime can you make on the run?" "Can't you make it pay another hour?" "I hear Bill Smith makes five hours a day overtime on his run. My first chance I'm going to bump him. I want that run.”

There never has been any kind of given arriving time for freight trains. Once a crew is ordered and out on the road, it is up to the crew and despatcher to advance the train to the next terminal. And to-day runs that should be made in eight hours (without any overtime) are in the overtime column, some quite deep, according to the ability of the crew as "overtime getters."

Freight trains having work to do must clear through trains. The station work or run between stations is so arranged as to cause the despatcher to put them in at the first siding. He knows they will not get clear at the next, and if he asks a reason for their delay, a very plausible reply is ready. This is a typical case:

A train stalled east of Mosier yard and delayed a passenger train. The despatcher sent this inquiry, "Please advise why you stalled east of Mosier and delayed No. 3." The answer was: “Italian woman had cow tied north of track and grazing south of track. When engine passed over rope, began slipping. Sand very poor, could not get engine to hold rail."

And, as it now is, I do not like this I "bonus system." Service is the only product a railroad has to sell, and I know you can't get service when the men that are serving you are paid a "bonus" for taking their "good old time" to accomplish a given task. Surely, no one, not even a railroad president, can see any incentive for giving speedy service when there is a "bonus" paid for doing the work slowly.

A

M I not right when I say that the system is all wrong? Who pays the bill? Who waits for his freight? Of course, not all the delay in freight can be charged to the bonus system. But all of the railroad systems could, and would, give far better service if it were done away with.

To-day, in talking with one another regarding their runs, slow-freight men do not ask how soon the runs can be made or how good their engines are, but rather

Do not mean to say enginemen alone are the perpetrators of this nefarious stealing of time, for which the public has to pay; the entire crew has a hand in it. The brakeman, in a railroad man's language, "can get where the work hain't" about as easy as anything you ever saw. The conductor always has to come over from the "rear end" and look the ground over before a move can be made. The flagman may not have had to go back very far to insure full protection, but after he has been called in you would think he had come a mile or two before you get the signal. If the engineman happens to "let her out a little," at the next stop the trainmen ask him if he has gone crazy or has it in for the fireman.

"Bonus," as I understand it, is something given for special service performed over and above the regular pay or wages. So why not pay it out in such a way as to necessitate the giving of real service in order to secure it? Suppose, for in

stance, my run is of one hundred miles or less, with eight hours as the basic day, and eight dollars my rate for the day. If I can take my run in and complete that day's work in six hours, I should receive one-half of the pay for the two hours that I saved, or one dollar in addition to my regular full day's pay-in all, nine dollars.

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of the crew, if the men have met the standard of service required and still make overtime, then the overtime rate should be paid, based on the standard of service given. In other words, if the service performed were equal to the completion of that tour of duty in six hours, then the overtime rate should be oneeighth of nine dollars. Standards of service could be very easily arrived at through various means which space does not permit me to enumerate at this time.

With a working agreement of this nature, it would be of vital importance to the management to keep the rolling stock, locomotives, etc., in first-class condition. It would also be of even greater importance to those men who operate trains to give one hundred per cent service, or even better than that, if it were possible, to gain the bonus. There would be fewer working units to maintain, since in speeding up the service even thirty per cent it would require just that many fewer cars and engines to give the same service; and that would effect a greater saving to the railroads. Both the men and the company would profit, as well as the public.

This is not a matter for the management to adjust alone; they are powerless under the present conditions, so they go on contentedly and charge the overtime to the public. Perhaps criticism of the whole situation by the public would give them a leverage by which conditions might be readjusted.

PUBLIC opinion gave the railroad men

the time-and-one-half pay. Public opinion alone can now combat the evil perpetrated on the public-that of boosting freight rates and slowing down the movement of freight.

It sums itself up to just one requisite: Having assumed the proportions of a "bonus," it should be abolished, and something should be put in its place that will create an incentive for better, cleaner, and faster work. Employees of a public utility never much criticised by the public should come in for just as great a share of it as the manage

ment.

An Account of Stewardship

FIFTY years ago Dr. Alexander Graham Bell was busy upon a new invention-the telephone. The first sentence had not been heard; the patent had not been filed; the demonstration of the telephone at the Centennial Exposition had not been made. All these noteworthy events were to occur later in the year 1876. But already, at the beginning of the year, the basic principle of the new art had been discovered and Bell's experiments were approaching a successful issue.

The inventor of the telephone lived to see the telephone in daily use by millions all over the world and to see thousands of developments from his original discovery.

If he had lived to this semicentennial year, he would have seen over 16,000,000 telephones linked by 40,000,000 miles of wire spanning the American continent and bringing the whole nation within intimate talking distance. He would have seen in the Bell System, which bears his name, perhaps the largest industrial organization in the world with nearly $3,000,000,000 worth of public-serving property, owned chiefly by an army of customers and employees.

He would have seen developed from the product of his brain a new art, binding together the thoughts and actions of a nation for the welfare of all the people.

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Fiction

FRIENDS OF MR. SWEENEY.

By Elmer Davis. Robert M. McBride & Co., New York. $2.

A rattling, good, up-to-the-minute story of New York. As fresh and modern as this morning's paper; as satirical and pungent as George Ade at his best. If there's been a more amusing novel of American city life this year, we've missed it. It is not a "study" of anything, it's not psychological (three hearty cheers!), but for sheer amusing power we give it 98 per cent plus.

THE VENETIAN GLASS NEPHEW. By Elinor Wylie. The George H. Doran Company, New York. $2.

A highly imaginative story, by a writer who commands a delicate style. A fragile creation, as iridescent as an icicle sparkling in the sunlight. This country has two novelists with a highly developed imagination: Mr. Cabell and Mrs. Wylie. But Cabell is often long-winded, and even wearisome. Mrs. Wylie is neither; her touch is always light. There is no one in America exactly like her.

Biography

MEMOIRS OF LEON DAUDET.

Edited and The

translated by Arthur Kingsland Griggs.
Dial Press, New York. $5.

An entertaining and unintentionally amusing book by one of those delightful anachronisms, a partisan of the pretender to the throne of France. M. Daudet, son of the famous novelist, really wishes to restore the French monarchy and to turn somebody or other into Henry V, or, maybe, Louis XIX, Roi de France, with the white flag and gold lilies and all the rest of it. Here he tells of his acquaintance with authors and statesmen and other public characters in France for the past fifty years.

THE DIARIES OF GEORGE WASHINGTON. 1748-1799. Edited by John C. Fitzpatrick. 4 vols. Published for the Mount Vernon Ladies Association of the Union by Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. $25.

Only about one-sixth of Washington's diaries have ever been published before. Now all that are available are presented in these four handsome books. From his journey over the Blue Ridge when he was sixteen to his last careful record of the weather (and nothing else) on December 13, 1799, the day before his death, the diaries are here, so far as they are to be found to-day. There are distressing gaps; the worst of these is from his appointment as Commander-in-Chief in June, 1775, to a day, nearly six years later, in 1781. Thus nearly all the Revolutionary War is lacking. So is his

Edited by EDMUND PEARSON

record of his election as President and his early days in the Presidency.

The historical importance of the diaries is therefore considerably impaired. But as a record of the private citizen, the gentleman-farmer, the diner-out and

Books for Gifts

For Different Tastes

PLUCK AND LUCK
By Robert Benchley

THE GREATEST BOOK IN THE WORLD
By A. Edward Newton

THE LE GALLIENNE BOOK OF AMERI-
CAN VERSE

CARTOONS FROM "LIFE"
By Ellison Hoover
FRIENDS OF MR. SWEENEY
By Elmer Davis
RECOLLECTIONS OF THOMAS R.
MARSHALL

A VOLUME OF STEVENSON
In the new South Seas Edition
THE VENETIAN GLASS NEPHEW
By Elinor Wylie

THE POETRY CURE
Edited by Robert Haven Schauffler
WOMEN

By Booth Tarkington
ROVING THROUGH, SOUTHERN CHINA
By Harry A. Franck

TONY SARG'S BOOK OF ANIMALS
LORD TIMOTHY Dexter
By J. P. Marquand
THE TALE OF GENJI
By Lady Murasaki
UNCOMMON AMERICANS
By Don C. Seitz
MANY FURROWS
By Alpha of the Plough
FOOLISH FICTION
By Christopher Ward

THE PRIVATE Life of HELEN OF TROY
By John Erskine

drinker of tea with this one and that, the fox-hunter, and the practical agriculturist the story is complete and surprising. Washington's intense preoccupation with farming will probably amaze many persons who think of him as perpetually engaged in riding a white horse and flourishing a sword; or crossing the Dela

ware; or standing, hand in his breast, in front of two marble columns, and beside a table on which rests a copy of the Constitution. Here are the names of those who dined with him; here is the list of his slaves; here is an enormous amount of information about weather; and here is the record of hogs killed. Here are the dates when he began to plow Field No. 1, and when they dug the ten rows of carrots. These farming diaries are not everything. Do not think this is but a dry chronicle of seed-times and harvests. The days of the Presidency in New York, his "progresses" in state through the country, are also recorded. As a whole, no more important work of American history has been published this year.

UNCOMMON AMERICANS. By Don C. Seitz. The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapolis. $3.

These are called "pencil portraits" of men and women "who have broken the rules." Mr. Seitz has an attractive and wholesome liking for the odd and bizarre; in this book he sketches lightly (as his phrase "pencil portraits" indicates) the careers of twenty-two eccentric Americans. With some, as with Whistler, the eccentricity was a minor characteristic of a great genius; with others, as with Henry George and Susan B. Anthony, the main characteristic was independence, the willingness to rebel, and the desire to reform.

Others, like George Francis Train and Lord Timothy Dexter, well-nigh submerged their ability in their peculiarities. Still others, like Ethan Allen, General Forrest, Israel Putnam, David Crockett, and John S. Mosby, were brave men of much nobility of character. Yet they were markedly different from their neighbors in almost every way. Although the atmosphere of the book is of a past long dead, the writer of this note is amused to discover that he has seen at least one of these men (George Francis Train), while with two others he has held speech -Colonel Mosby, the guerrilla chief, and Hinton Helper. This is an admirable book for a gift, and will please any man interested in American history or in the oddities of human life.

THE LIFE OF W. T. STEAD. By Frederic Whyte. 2 vols. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. $12.

An extended biography of the English journalist, editor of the "Pall Mall Gazette" and the "Review of Reviews.” A reformer, "impossible as a colleague,” said Bernard Shaw (!); he was conspic

uous and sometimes influential for many years in England and America. Many who had disliked him as a crank nevertheless came to love him as a man.

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF LAURENCE STERNE. By Wilbur L. Cross. 2 vols. The Yale University Press, New Haven. $7.

A new edition of this excellent biography.

THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON. By James Boswell. Edited by Arnold Glover. Introduction by Austin Dobson. 3 vols. E. P. Dutton & Co., New York. $10.

A reprint of an edition first published in 1901. An admirable edition to read. Annotated, indexed, well illustrated, and made agreeable. These are not large books; the type is good and legible; they would classify as books to be taken in the hand and to be read at the fire, and as such would be commended by the Doctor himself. Better to own than the Birkbeck Hill edition, which has so many notes that the tail of annotation wags the dog of text.

Essays and Criticism

THE GREATEST BOOK IN THE WORLD, AND OTHER PAPERS. By A. Edward Newton. Little, Brown & Co., Boston. $5. Mr. Newton's books are all good-looking; well printed and well illustrated, and prettily, if not satisfactorily bound. This is no exception. His title essay is, of course, about the Bible. He also writes about London, about Gilbert and Sullivan, book-plates, travel, and other pleasant topics which are usually described by the rather sickly word "bookish." Mr. Newton knows more about books than most of us, he owns costlier and rarer books than any of us, except a few great millionaires (who seldom write for this section of The Outlook), yet his own writings are jolly and popular. He has many prejudices, and, as nearly all of them are exactly like our own, we pronounce them to be sound prejudices. It warms us to the very gizzard to hear him lead the cheering for Gilbert and Sullivan and for Dickens. A fine book; your friend will be glad to get it for Christ

mas.

History, Political Economy, and Politics

BATTLES BY SEA. By E. Keble Chatterton. The Macmillan Company, New York. $2.50. Strategic and historical studies of naval fights from Salamis to the Falkland Islands.

THE WAR FOR SOUTHERN INDEPENDENCE. Vol. VI of A History of the United States. By Edward Channing. The Macmillan Company, New York. $4.75.

Here is a history of the Civil War at once readable and just. If any Northern historian can ever write of this war as to be acceptable to fair-minded Southerners, Professor Channing has

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