and mechanical industry, but the myriad conceits that have come ostensibly to facilitate the process of living. In the search for new comforts, for means of avoiding

of farm labor, ingenuity has been more heavily taxed to find the quick and easy way of doing the world's work and keeping food in i

in recognition as the first exponent of wire's usefulness should have grown in this period from

OF THE ROEB

ure of Roebling products and the value of the output ran far into the millions. The factory which was so meagre and so humble in 1848 has spread its buildings not only over the surrounding acres, but across what were then neighboring farm lands until, constrained not alone by the pyramid

ing firm withdrew from the competitive field of engineering contracts

cuted the plans for the Brooklyn Bridge, is an engineer of well-known ability. His intimate contact with all the affairs of the company during such a long period of development, his kindly and generous support to constructive achievements, has been a source of pride and invaluable assistance to the younger generation of the Roebling fraternity. His two brothers, Charles and Ferdina

he globe. A clear and far vision, an uncanny ability to go straight to the point and a keen knowledge of human nature, were a few of the strong traits of his mentality

theirs would be no bed of roses, that manhood was an estate where responsibility must be accepted and assumed, and with this teaching ringing in their ears th

TH WIRE R

their father had in so large a measure developed. Karl's talents lay principally in the gift he had of drawing from his associates their whole-hearted fidelity and devotion to the caus

t they have always recognized the necessity of surrounding themselves with a strong organizat

ded by a corps of competent assistants, all functioning smoothly like a well-balanced machine. Karl left this as his heritage to the business. He never did things by halves. His working day was long and intense, but to

facturing and engineering side of the business. In more recent years, however, he has devoted his attention to its financial affairs. His close contact with his f

RENTO

the city. The Delaware and Raritan Canal and the Trenton Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad pass along its western boundary and directly before the door of the offices. The office building was e

n devising he strove to meet the growing demands for rope. Some of the machinery he built is still in service in production of standard lines, showing how swiftly and how far, from c

ORN AND KI

alf a mile farther to the south, als

bling, with a station of its own, is ten miles farther down the Delaware. All told, there are probab

its equipment is a substantial one. While in some lines there is activity partitioned among all three plants, in the main the various divisions of labor are well concentrated. For the most part the Upper Works, though a considerable quant

RA PLANT

ion. With the company's large acreage at this location, its townsite and the facility of river transportation as well as rail, with unlimited water, of which this plant uses more than is pumped by the city of Trenton itself, the situation offers large opportunity for expansion and pr

CROSSING

here the salvage of a hundred battlefields. It lies there sadly rusting under the weather, waiting the moment when the mills shall stretch forth hands and hurry it in, rush it like a neophyte through the fierce initiation of heat and chemistry, and having changed the very

G WIR

buildings the analytically measured proportions of this or that, which fit it to bear up the traffic of a giant bridge or convey a whisper of telephonic sound or register split seconds in an Elgin

led steel dippers take out a few thimblefuls from time to time and hurry the sample away to the chemist, who, like a chef, tests the quality and prescribes the seasoning. By and by it is run off, from an opening in the bottom of the furnace into a huge caldron they call a "ladle." A fift

OO

ated again, it is marched up on a steel rollway, also controlled by a "man higher up," and into the hungry jaws of a machine that, after a series of swallowings, disgorges it at last, shrunken in sheer humility to a diameter of four inches and with a very l

LL

purities accumulated in its ingot state, and sends them to the "scrap" heap, then lops the bloom as a man saws firewood, but a great deal faster, into billets va

and, by a trick of wire pulling, deposits them on other car

THE ROLL

ysical and chemical character, waiting the next purgatory of change. One pile is marked for one mission, one for another, ranging through all the uses wire can be put to.

erry one. If they were kneaded in the blooming mill it was a mild experience. Here they are mauled and manhandled and masticated by swift, continuous and looping mills that are born with a huge appetite for the largest billets, and make rods of great lengt

MINUTE JOUR

lways the lightning speed and always the long tail, red hot and smaller than before, and longer, playing "snap the whip" down the steel grooves to the bottom of the "pit," then straight away up the incline, a flash of fire in the darkness, and on from roll to roll. The men who handle these rods hold their ticklish posts only twenty or thirty minutes at a time. A straight eight hour day, if a man came th

a bath of acid. This takes off the scale the rolling left on them. But acid in wire steel is like heresy in the church. It has to be purged away. This is done by immersion a

of whirling wheels spin the rod down ever smaller and smaller till what was once a stodgy four foot billet is perhaps a thousandth of an inch thick, fifteen odd thousand mi

OF THE WI

its way, they would make you take off your hat to a piece of wire for the rest of your natural life. But it isn't all, what happens to the outside. There are wire doctors who follow the changing symptoms of the metal through its many processes, with diagnostic eye as keen as any medico's fo

ying wet wire to attain certain conditions; there is lubrication by means of dry materials as well as oil, a

WIRE ROPE CABLE D

stand, and for bending. There are microscopic tests for molecular condition and men who will almost tell you from a microscopic section the maximum service of which the rope made from a given wire is capable. Any bundle of wire that doesn't pass the test for the job on hand is discarded and used for something else, and a record of it all is kept with scrupulous care. Any foot of wire that passes through the ship

DER OF

e hardest quality-plow steel is the convincing name for it-can be seized by its sharpened end with a clamp they call a dog and drawn through a smaller hole, in a still harder piece of steel, three or four feet until it can be fastened to a drum, and then be wound off in miles almost without

or at first the rod-is run from a portable bobbin they call a swift, that stands on the floor, and the wire, after it has been given the hole, passes to a bobbi

NG TH

ole figure and uses a diamond. Cutting the steel dies is a cunning craft enough, but the expert, who, with a hair-like drill and a dab of diamond dust can penetrate a diamo

other, to be applied to its various objects or for sale, or else it is twisted into rope, of which the Roebling Company manufactures four hundred kinds, sizes and many qualities. The common fence wires a

ANUFACTURES F

s and parts that are made from various forms and widths of flat wire is as long as the list of Smiths in a New York directory. In the novelty shop, which does a million things, wires are cut and mechanically bent in hundreds of thousands of shapes, for clothes hangers, pail ear staples, daubers for bottles, meat skewers, hog rings, thread guards fo

to order, to provide hard-wearing parts for typewrit

NG "MIL

se are now passed through a straightening machine, which lays them out in uniform bundles of some ten feet in length, which again may be cut to shorter lengths for special purposes. In the build

RE AND CO

al system are mostly steel, but copper is used at stations and on sidings where the leakage from standing cars is apt to contain acids. Copper wire of all sizes down to the very fine is spooled and sold for use in arts and manufactures. For marine uses a deal of copper rope is made, and copper strand is tw

coils and divers other functions. Electricity as an agent would be a halting cripple without wire. The dynamo would have little more u

is trolley wires, which are of grea

day the company owns a complete list of the wire it has made for special and even eccentric purposes, or knows

AND FI

ervice out of doors, under water or under ground, to ensure long life needs an exposed surface more resistant to moisture than the naked steel. Copper is proof, but the pure wire is exp

alvanizing, the fixing of a coating of zinc on the steel has multiplied many fold the utility of steel wire in pla

lly the incidental result of a dip in sulphate of copper, for other purposes in the course of fabrication. The coating of wires is chiefly done in the wire works of the Kinkora Mills, t

HROUGH THE R

ing its detail and its rate of speed, but which is all centered on one idea, to keep the stream of wire and wire rope, of all sizes, kinds and colors, moving toward the shipping room. It all seems so easy in its progress, so free from friction or any trace of confusion, that the l

PLETED LOCOMOTIVE

el in this succession of high-roofed, airy buildings, you come always upon some new regiment of machines, some new container of chemical or metal, with a long line of reels unwinding wire to undergo some additional treatment. And always moving among the buildings are cars, big

ULA

wire for insulation the process is strongly reminiscent of some of the New England textile mills. Long rows of machines, black and silent and swift, reaching upward toward the ceiling, revolving rapidly on an upright shaft; long arms trailing downward, with wheels and bobbins like fingers plying dizzily but swiftly in and out around the wire which unwinds from its spool and keeps forever climbing. It is all like a Maypole, and the bobbins go in and out like children carrying each its ribbon. As the wire climbs, the whirling fingers braid around it a coating, tight fitting and impervious. Sometimes, where d

once more to pass through a bath of asphalt compound. After this process, which leaves a dull, dirty-looking surface, the s

HONE

en at the opposite ends of a long cable to pick out unerringly the wires with which connection is to be made. Colors are few but possible combinations are many. The machining of this is more than ever like the Maypole, with pink and blue and yellow strips of paper flashing in the shadows. When the wires, paper covered, are broug

its spool, the heavy cable moves up to a machine built strong and four-legged from the floor. In the mid height of this, a few feet above the floor, is a square chamber containing molten lead. The cable passes in at the rear and upward. It requires some credulity to believe that it is the movement of the molten lead that carries the cable along, but in any case when it

and in such volume that they look easy. The man in the street, hurrying about his