Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 April 1875 — The Field for Skilled Mechanics. [ARTICLE]

The Field for Skilled Mechanics.

A practical mechanic, says the Springfield Republican,, who has been looking over the locomotive works of England, wrices to the Railroad Gazette a letter, comparing the British engines with American, and makes some very pointed suggestions. He thinks the American locomotive material the best, and that the American engines are put together with the most skill, all the parts being easily accessible and adjustable. On this account a class of repairs frequently necessary can be done in twentyfdur hours on the American machine which on theßritish necessitates the taking apart of nearly the whole engine and the building up again. The position of the bClt-heads and nuts where they can be easily reached makes all this difference. The use of forward trucks also in America enables our engines to run double the length of time of their rivals, an English engine “ tearing itself to pieces in twelve months,” to u|se the mechanic’s expression. On the other hand, apart from this fault ih their general plan, the British engines are built better than ours and have fewer breakages. There are “no broken straps, no abominable cast-iron cross heads," in the technical language of the writer. The proportion of the parts is better, and on the “ a British engine is a com-

pany’s engine, while an American engine is a. builder’s engine.” And one great occasion of the superiority of the British article, says our observer, is the “ general employment of skilled draughtsmen to carefully design all the parts before they are made in the shop, while in our railway work-shops draughtsmen are unknown.” The excellence of American tools 6s attributed to the constant emJ plcyment of the best skill in design in American tool-shops, while the rule-of thumb guess-work is elsewhere in our industries too generally prevalent. Nevertheless, even with this drawback, the great superiority of the American system of providing for the locomotive a flexible bed-truck enables us to contest the mar kets of Canada, Russia and South America. The Custom-House returns show that for the past two years sixty or seventy American locomotives a year have been sent abroad, at an annual valuation of nearly a million dollars.

We have treated this subject thus fully in order to suggest and enforce the veryfirst importance to our mechanics cf education in their respective tradesThe alert American intelligence is the promising thing for us to cultivate. It will do more for our industries than pro. tection or free trade. It is the one steady element of our industrial success on which we can rely. We can illustrate, this by the steady growth of the exportation of manufactures of iron for the past quarter of a century. This export tation represents the degree to which American skill in ironworking is able to J revail over the skill of foreigners. low during this interval we have had low tariff and high tariff, destructive war and general peace, and yet tho growth of this exportation for long periods has been quite steady. In 1850 it amounted to $1,900,000. in 1853 to $2,500,000, in 1860 to $4,500,000, in 1873 to $12,500,000. It has more than doubled every ten years. American skill comes in direct competition with British in all the (rest of America. The engineeringSjournals tell of a railroad bridge in Peru which, after being twice set up by English makers and engineers, was at length contracted and built by American parties before it would stand. In the same way the American chilled castiron car-wheel, after having made the conquests of Canada and South America, is being reluctantly adopted in Great Britain. We cite these cases, not toprove the superiority of American skill, but to show how directly it comes in compete tion with. British. The necessity of technical education is one thing; how to provide it and acquire it is another. We do not believe that it is necessary -to engraft it upon the public schools,' which cannot assume the burden of educating either professional men or artisans as such. We will now merely take occasion to suggest that the mechanics themselves do not realize their own opportunity and the opportunity of their sons. American artisans are not a pauper class, and they are able to spend and do spend much for the education of their youth, but it is too often to make them lawyers, ministers and doctors, or journalists, or insurance agents, or bank clerks, or merchants, or drummers—all avocations which are crowded, and in which success is doubtful, and the opportunity for failure abundant, while the field of skilled industry stands wide open and almost tenantless. The Nashville Union and American says the loss by the late floods was overestimated. The total direct loss in East Tennessee will not reach $500,000. The disaster will hardly shorten crops by a single acre; the wheat land that got washed will be available for corn, and it and the rest of the bottom lands will raise a better crop for having been overflowed.