Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 274, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 November 1913 — FROWN ON ALL WASTE [ARTICLE]

FROWN ON ALL WASTE

RAILROADS ARE KEEN ON SAVING ' THE PENNIES. Not ths Slightest Scrap Allowed to Be Thrown Away —Saving by This Policy Amounts to Thousands of Dollars a Year. It probably would surprise most persons to know that every little sheet of paper and every piece of iron or steel and every piece of old oily waste used in railroad work is saved and sold after its usefulness to tiye railroad company is ended. It also is sur prising to know that the wastes of a big railroad corporation have a lot to do with the dividends on the stock, for whatever waste is saved and sold is just that much profit for the company and its owners. Even the sawdust and shavings of the railroad shop are saved and used either for packing ice or for heating the furnaces. The cloths and cotton waste that are used in wiping the machinery and keeping it bright and shiny are never thrown away, but are carefully saved and used for starting the fires in locomotive furnaces, instead of soaking wood kindling in kerosene. Tons and tons of waste paper are collected in all the little railway stations, and when there is a big pile it is put into sacks and shipped to a division point and baled and then sold to paper houses that use this waste paper for a base for new pWpej*. “We don’t know Just how much'of a saving is made every year by these little waste accumulations, but it amounts to thousands of dollars and tons every year,” said the general manager of a western road. “This company has its general scrap yards. All of the broken pieces of rail, old spikes, bolts, nuts, broken switch frogs and everything else of an iron or steel nature is gathered up by each section foreman, and whenever is enough of this scrap to make a carload on any division a car is sent out on a local train, the scrap iron and steel loaded into the ear and it goes into the general scrap yards. “The company employs many specially trained men at the yards. They sort over the piles of scrap and pick out what can be made useful to the company. Whatever cannot be used is sold for old iron or old accumulations of ordinary iron and steel scrap on the system exceeds fifty thousand tons a year* About half of it is available for use after being worked over and the other half is sold to steel mills. “We do not try to clean and use again the waste that is used for rubbing machinery, because it is full of grit, fine particles of steel and sand which would damage the bearings. But we use it for starting fires in the furnaces. The waste that is used in the journal-boxes of all cars is saved and it is run through machines when too dirty and thorouhgly cleaned. The waste is dry and almost as clean and white as the day it was purchased and it is used over again. The oil is strained and ready for use a second time, instead of being thrown away.”