Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 January 1912 — FILLING THE FIREBOX [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

FILLING THE FIREBOX

NOT A SNAP FOR STURDIEST OF HARD-MUSCLED YOUTHS. Increasingly Hard to Find Men Able and Willing to Take the Position and Automatic Stoker Is Contemplated. If prophecies are fulfilled the next great evolution in railroad operation

will be the general introduction of auto mafic stokers to relieve locomotive firemen of a task that has grown beyond the powers of human muscles. For three consecutive years

the standing committee on stokers that has been appointed by" the American Railway Master Mechanics’ association has predicted the advent of the automatic, or mechanical, stoker; and according to popular belief, “three times is the charm.” Not every one knows what firing a locomotive means. To the country boy who sees the fireman lolling on his cushioned seat box while his train stands on the siding waiting for the limited, it means a life of indolent ease at good pay with abundant opportunities for long range flirtations with the girls along a strptch of a hundred and fifty miles of steeh highway. Consequently he loses no time in applying at the nearest division beadquarters for a job. He is received with dissembled, but none the less sincere, joy;- for tho demand for firemen is great and the best ones are farm bred. —. — But the “cornfield sailor” who has the strength of mind, character and muscle to struggle through all the preliminaries required to reach the left side of the cab imediately discovers that in addition to anticipating the coming of the pay car and throwing kisses to the prettiest girls along the road he is also expected to shovel from fourteen to twenty tons, or even more, of coal a day; and that this coal shoveling occupies his attention so fully that by the time he gets to the end of his run he doesn’t care a hang if he never sees a paymaster or a rural coquette for the rest of his natural life.

To a husky young man, shoveling twenty tons of coal a day may not sound like a terrific undertaking; but that is because he fails to appreciate the difference between shoveling that quantity in the cou,rse of a ten-hour day, standing on a steady footing and pausing for a moment whenever he feels like it to gaze at the scenery or light a cigarette, and trying to keep his balance on a joltifig, jerking, plunging steel deck which tries ceaselessly to pitch him head first into the Bide of the cab, while with legs spread wide apart he humps over a scoop shovel, working 'with frantic energy to get coal into the firebox fast enough to keep steam up. While the engine is running the fireman must be straddled put on the deck working continually to the limit of his strength, for ordinarily he will have to get from two and a half to three tons of coal into the firebox every hour. Three and a half tons is generally regarded 7 as the limit of a fireman’s capacity, hut this has been greatly exceeded on the fastest trains from New York to Chicago.