Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 130, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 June 1910 — WHAT THE STEAM SHOVEL IS DOING FOR THE WORLD [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

WHAT THE STEAM SHOVEL IS DOING FOR THE WORLD

HE American steam shovel —and all steam shovels are of American manufacture — marks an era in man’s conquest of nature. Cne of the most powerful of tools that steam and steel have made possible, it ranks among ihe greatest labor savers and wealth producers engineering genius has

devised These grunting Titans, although almost unknown beyond the shores of America, are adding hundreds of millions of dollars to the world’s wealth and doing the work of armies of men. Whether digging the big canal across the Isthmus of Panama, loading ore trains on the lake iron ranges, leading new railroads across the Rockies, tearing away the mineralized walls of Western canyons, making huge excavations in the rocky floor of Manhattan island, stripping coal veins in Pennsylvania, quarrying railroad ballast in the Mohawk valley, or delving for copper in Spain, where once toiled the slaves of the Caesars—the steam shovel tells a splendid story of the American industrial advahce. The biggest user of steam shovels in the United States is the Steel Corporation That is why the trust com niands the iron ore market. The millions of dollars a year that the trust saves by using steam shovels would pay the dividends on a good share of the half billiofi dollars of common stock Up in one of the great opencut iron mines in Minnesota ore is mined and carried away with amazing speed. The mines are worked from the surface by open cut, as a reservoir or canal would be dug. Over railroad tracks run through the pit the big ore trains are hauled alongside the giant shovels. One shovel, picking up six tons of ore at each assault on the ore bank, loads a fifty-ton steel car in three minutes Trainload after trainload of ore is hauled away to the ore docks at the head of the lakes, there to be put aboard the big lake ore ships at a speed of 300 tons a minute. The Panama canal job has recently thrown the American steam shovel in the limelight before the world When our government undertook the task that had baffled the world’s and promised that it would be completed within a few years, even the American

people were skeptical. But the engineers who planned the work knew the possibilities of steam shovel excavation—then untried on big canal work. They had seen giant shovels in iron mines and stone quarries, and they knew that steam shovels anddynaniltecotlldmako mountains disappear. The government put in the biggest order for steam shovels ever given in the country. These shovels were sent in ships to the isthmus as fast as they could be made. Now there are more than a hundred shovels cutting the canal from ocean to ocean, and making world records in heavy excavation work. Just as American steam shovels have revolutionized iron mining and copper mining, so have they revolutionized canal digging. When the Erie canal was built, in the ’2os, the pick and shovel, the wheelbarrow and the wagon, were the only tools in excavation work. The Suez canal cut was 80,000,000 cubic yards. It took ten years to do the work, even though most of it was sand. The Paqpma canal calls for 140,000,000 cubic yards of rock and earth excavation and dredging. Last year 35,000,000 yards were completed, or nearly half as much work as was done on the whole Suez canal. On the central division, which includes the Culebra rock cut, Ihe steam shovels did 50,000 yards a day, 1,500,000 yards a month This steam-shovel performance on the Panama canal makes the Suez canal construction look like digging a sewer trench The first steam shovels were in railroad construction, and they now are part of the working equipment of every important railroad in the .country. Every big contractor has his battery at shovels; some contractors have scores of them at work from ocean to ocean In the rebuilding of American railroads, especially through the mountains of the West, where enormous quantities of rock had to be handled in reducing grades and curves, the steam shovel was of Invaluable service. Harriman, in rebuilding the Union and Southern Pacifies, tore away mountains and filled up canyons with steam shovels. On the new 'lines that have been built to the coast—the St. Paul, the Western Pacific, and Clark’s road—the steam shovel has made new records in railroad construction. Many qiiUions of dollars have been saved, and improvement work, of hitherto 'prohibitive cost, has been made possible.

Road Building and Mining Marvels, Impossible a Few Years Ago,Jiave Become Familiar Facts in Engineering*