The Mechanical Handling and Storing of Material

4 THE MECHANICAL HANDLING OF MATERIAL In some ports, New Orleans and St Louis amongst others, the use of wheelbarrows was the first step in the right direction, and superseded the last-mentioned process. The gangs with wheelbarrows consisted of about twenty men, and they delivered on the average 6 tons per-man per day. The next step was the adoption of narrow gauge lines with hand trucks, which raised and delivered 10 tons per man per day. By sub- stituting self-unloading trucks for ordinary hand trucks, the capacity per man was raised Fig. 1. Coaling of a Battleship at Nagasaki. to 12 tons per day. But even this improvement gives a far from satisfactory result. The process was too slow, and therefore too expensive, and also subject to strikes and other interruptions. It was not until a few years ago that satisfactory appliances were introduced. In addition to these considerations, there remains the great difficulty, if not impos- sibility, of handling the annually increasing quantities of material to be dealt with without the aid of machinery.