The Mechanical Handling and Storing of Material

INTRODUCTOR Y 7 investment of ^1,000 in machinery; hence in his quest for economy the engineer is ever on the alert to reduce the wages bill, and handle everything automatically. The modern flour mill may be cited as an example of automatic handling. So perfect is its automatic character that wheat may be unloaded from an ocean-going steamer, stored, cleaned, graded, ground, dressed, packed, weighed, registered, and delivered into a railway truck for dispatch to the consumer without any manual labour whatever. The consequence is that, whereas a few years ago it would have required twenty to thirty men to produce a given quantity of flour, the same result may now be effected by three or four, who are simply employed in adjusting, cleaning, and lubricating the machinery. Notwithstanding this, it would be rash to assume that the multiplication of mechanical appliances is detrimental to the interests of the worker, though it may be so in isolated cases. On the contrary, experience has shown that his daily life is thereby made easier, his intelligence improved, and his wage-earning capacity increased. Viewing the introduction and use of labour-saving machinery from a broad and unbiased standpoint, we must arrive at the conclusion that all machines, which have been substituted for actual human muscular effort, have at the same time opened new opportunities for the employment of men, not only to tend such plant—and its usually increased capacity—since their introduction, but also for the manufacture of the new machinery itself; work which previously did not exist. There is also the use of machines for operations wholly beyond the unaided capacity of the muscular effort of man, even when leaving social economy out of the question. In the following chapters will be enumerated devices by which the burden of human labour has been lightened by the use of machinery, and the capacity increased of the branch of manufacture concerned. In the construction of machinery for the mechanical handling of material, the following local conditions have necessarily to be largely taken into consideration. Whether the material is to be elevated or conveyed from the store, the manufactory, or the mine, to the market, to other stores, to the point of shipment, to freight cars, or whether it is to be handled at the point of consumption. Then it depends on the distance to the destination, the quantity per hour, and the nature and size of the material that has to be dealt with. A review seriatim may be taken of the various appliances which have been devised tor the conveying and handling of grain, coal, ore, and coke. Coal, which is not only a raw material of prime necessity in almost every branch of industry—notwithstanding the headway being made by oil fuels—but is also a material of considerable intrinsic value, a value which is subject to rapid and sensible depreciation from careless handling, deserves the first place, as no doubt it has been the subject of more careful thought on the part of engineers than any other heavy material. It may, however, be observed that the same means of automatically conveying and handling coal are very generally applicable to other heavy substances, such as ores and coke, though no doubt the special nature of the material to be handled must always be taken into account. The loading of ships with coal is a comparatively simple matter. The railway trucks containing the coal may either be lifted and their contents then shot into the ship, or they may be tipped from the quayside, or the coal may be discharged from self-emptying railway trucks. The main point is this, that the coal is allowed to discharge itself by its own weight into a shoot which conveys it into the ship’s hold. To prevent depreciation by rough handling, many ingenious forms of discharging apparatus have been invented,