Omaha Daily Bee Newspaper, August 17, 1902, Page 27

| & " Yankee Aladdin HAULING AMERICAN GENERATORS (Copyright, 1902, by Frank G. Carpenter.) ANCHESTER, Eng., August 7.— (Special Correspondence of The Bee.)—The modern Aladdin is an American, and his name is George Westinghouse. His lamp is an electric one and when he rubs It his in- dustrial palaces spring up in all parts of the world. Everyone knows of the great works at Pittsburg. They have a capital of $20,000,000, they employ 9,000 men and their field is the United States. There are West- Inghous_e works in France, Germany, and in Russia, but most wonderful of all, es- pecially in their construction, are the Brit- ish Westinghouse works at Trafford Park. Only a few months ago the grass grew where their foundations now stand, but they are already turning out all sorts of elec- trical appliances for every part of the Brit- ish empire. I despair of giving you an adequate con- ception of these shops. They are the big- gest works of the world that have ever been erected at one time. The buildings cover twenty-six acres and the floors thirty-eight. There are twenty-seven miles of railroad track in the grounds about them and 3,000 men have been kept busy for fifteen months laying the bricks and joining together the iron and glass. Visiting the Great Shops. There is a big wall around the grounds and in entering the factories my letter of introduction was carried to the offices by an English policeman, and.it was in com- pany with Mr. Loud and Mr. Mitchell, the manager, and chief superintendent, that I took a walk around the great structures The trip was a Sabbath day’'s journey. It seemed to me that we went miles in pass- ing up omne building and down another, going from floor to floor, now standing in the mighty bays away up under the glass roof and now walking on the ground amid the immense machines used for various kinds of electrical manufacture, I got some idea of the size of the buildings by these machines. Looking at them from the roof, those at the end of the shops seemed no bigger than wheelbarrows and an immense boring machine, the biggest ever erected in England, having a weight of 250 tons, looked quite small from the gallery. We went through the blacksmith's shop ich is bigger than a half dozen ordinary actories, and the great iron foundry. We next entered the machine shop, which has an area of about nine acres, being larger than any other machine shop of the united kingdom. Electric cranes, which can lift many tons at once, run along overhead and the machinery below is of every de- scription. The steel furnaces in another part of the works are a new thing in England. They are so made that the whole furnace can be turned by the pulling of a lever, so that ten pounds or ten tons or more of steel can be run out in a mighty golden stream to make the enormous castings required. The buildings, in short, look more like great exposition structures than common workshops, and their contents are more in- teresting than any exposition I have yet visited. The roofs are of iron and glass, so that the shops are flooded with light, and this brightness is added to by the white paint with which everything connected with the interior is covered. Great atten- tion has been pald to the comfort of the employes, and the workmen will probably be the envied of their kind in the British Isles. The buildings have cost, so I am told, about $5,000,000 and the machinery within them about $5,000,000 more. American Town in Heart of England. When these works are in full operation they will employ about 5,000 hands, and a town built on the American plan is growing up there to house them. A building com- pany entirely independent of the electric company has been formed and this com- pany now ownse 120 acres of land adjoining the works. It has laid out a town just as we lay out our towns in the west. The streets are in regular blocks, and they are marked by numbers. The ordinary British and His Work MR in STEWART IN THE CENTER OF HIS CORPS OF YANKEE ASSISTANTS WESTINGHOUSE WORKS AT TRAFFORD PARK. IN THE MACHINE SHOP BEFORE THE TOOLS WERE INSTALLED. street has no name that indicates its loca- tion, and the people here are surprised at this settlement of First street, Second street, Third street and Fourth street and of numbered avenues. About 3,000 build- ings are to be erected and about 600 are un- der roof. The houses are called cottages, but they are in reality little two-story bricks of from four to six rooms built in blocks. Each house has its bath and its electric light, which are quite curiosities in workmen’s dwellings in England. The houses will be rented at cheap rates to the Westinghouse men, but there will be no compulsion, and any man can live where he pleases. The town company expects to put up a large hotel for commercial travelers, and will also have schools and club buildings and recreation grounds. I understand that a number of Americans have stock in the company and that some have bought land adjoining the town expecting to grow rich off the Increased values created by the Westinghouse works. Astonishes the Britishers. The rapid construction of this factory has been a miracle to the English. The job was offered to the local contractors on the condition that it should be finished within twenty months. The Englishmen replied that no man living could put up buildinge like these in less than five years. The Westinghouse company thereupon went to America for its builder. They chose a smooth-faced, stocky contractor named Stewart, who had made a reputa- tion for quick work in Pittsburg, Chicago and New Orleans. They showed him the plans and told him that they wanted the buildings completed within fifteen months. Mr. Stewart replied that he could do it and he put the plans in his left breast pocket and started for England. He had never crossed the ocean before, but this did not phase him. He took a corps of Yankee assistants with him to use as su- perintendents and settled down in a little hotel outside the works. He had only 238 men when he began, but four weeks later his force numbered 2,500 and by advertis- ing extra wages he got the best of the English bricklayers and carpenters for miles around to work on his job. His men kept a record of what each hand did and the prospect of completing the bullding was dally estimated by the amount being done. He soon saw that he must get more work out of his men or the buildings would not be completed in time. He was surprised at the poor results obtained in comparison with what he had been accustomed to in the United States and it seemed to him that the men were not doing half work. The masons were laying only 450 bricks a day and upon his objecting he was told that 850 bricks were the tale required of each man by the London county council. Mr, Stewart told the men that they ought to lay as many as 2,000 bricke a day and they laughed at the idea. By pushing and by rewards he at last got them up to an average of 800 bricks a day, but there stopped. He then imported some American masons and set them working beside the Hnglish laborers. The Americans easily lald from 1,800 to 2,200 bricks daily, and the Englishmen, who were too proud to be beaten by the ‘‘blarsted Yankees,” put on a spurt and did equally well. Stewart in- creased the pay according to the work and there was no objection from the trades unions. The bricklayers kept up their hus- tling from that time on to the end and the result was that he got an average of 2,000 bricks daily out of each of them. He pushed the carpenters in much the same way and by the use of automatic ma- chinery quadrupled the product of his steel and iron works. To make a long story short he put up all the buildings in the time he had contracted for and made 2 reputation for himself as a wonder among the con- tractors of England. He is still in the country and has been asked to take charge of the building of the Midland hotel in Man- chester. The hotel was begun before the laying of the foundation of the Westing- house works, but little or no progress has been made upon it. The Midland railway wants the work rushed and it has given the charge of it over to Stewart. Mr. Stewart says there is no trouble in handling English labor if you do it after the Amer- fcan methods of paying big wages and of ipsisting that it be done your own way. Ghosts of Feudalism Shaken, These Westinghouse works are shaking the ghosts of feudalism. They stand upon the old Trafford estate, which has been cut up to make a building site for them. The Trafford estate has been in one family for 1,000 years. It consisted of 2,000 acres and is known as Trafford Park. Ralph Trafford held it at the time of the Norman conquest, and as you stand in the Weus.inghouse buildings you can plainly see th. old an- cestral hall, which was erected when Queen Elizabeth reigned, looking out of the trees. Sir Edumund Trafford was knighted by Henry VI, it may have been because the king thought he had discovered, as he claimed, the philosopher's stone, which would turn everything it touched into gold. However this may be, the Trafford family has been a rich one throughout the genera- tions and it has, I understand, other valu- able estates outside this today. How Hooley Made $3,000,000, In the last few years, however, the means of 8ir Humphrey de Trafford became crip- pled by extravagances of various kinds and he sold his ancestral home, so it is said, to pay debts of honor. At any rate it came into the hands of Hooley, the mushroom millionaire, who made a fortune in floating companies in assoclation with lords and dukes, whom he bought by the score at so many guineas per head for the use of their names. Hooley pald about $2,000,000 for the property five years ago and later on sold it to the Trafford Park company for $5,000,000, making a cool $3,000,000 out of the operation. The Trafford Park company still owns the most of the estate and it was from them that the Westinghouse company bought the land for their shops. They have 130 acres and therefore plenty of room for expansion. Other shops have sprung up on other parts of the park, for the place is espe- clally fitted for manufacturing. It is just on the edge of the sister cities of Manches- ter and Salford, whick have a population of 800,000, and is the most thickly settled part of industrial England. The park borders upon the Manchester ship canal, so that the factories within it have a water route to the sea. The country about it is grid- ironed with raillways and machines can be shipred to every part of Great Britain. Fortunes in Electrieity, There is no doubt in my mind but that a great deal of money will be made within the next few years In Great Britain in all sorts of electrical undertakings. The country is just on the edge of its elec- trical development, but it is growing so rapidly in this respect that the factories cannot keep pace with it. In 1897 the ag- gregate capital employed in electrical in- dustries was about $300,000,000 and this has now increased to almost $800,000,000. There are, I am told, about 1,600 different electrical enterprises in the United King- dom and these during the year 1900 paid an average dividend of 7% per cent, Great Britain and America together have 21,000 miles of electric car tracks, and of these only 900 belong to Great Britain. Still this country has almost as many large towns as we have. Its people live in towns and the most of them in towns large enough to have electric cars. The towns are situated close together and in the future the whole country will be covered with a network of electric lines as though by a spider's web. The field of electric lighting is also great. Very little of it is found in private houses, and the municipalities will eventually sup- ply electric lights to their citizens at a moderate profit. Fifteen million dollars’ worth of loans were sanctioned by Parlia- ment for such lights in 1900 and in the two years preceding the total loans authorized amounted to more than $50,000,000. Manipulated by Yankees. So far the chief establishments for mak- ing electrical supplies here have originated in or have been backed by the United States. All the companies are under Brit- ish names, and they use to a large extent British employes, although more or lese Americans are connected with all of them. The British Thomson-Houston company is closely assoclated with the General Elec- tric company of New York. It has just fin- fshed building large electric works at Rugby at a cost of more than $1,000,000. The Dick, Kerr & Co., makes electrical supplies at Preston, near Liverpool. It has bought the Walker patents and has Prof. Sldney Short, who was manager of’' the Walker combination in the United. States, as its head. In addition to these there are many smaller electrical companies which are entirely British, but the bulk of the electrical machinery used here in the fu- ture will be made In the works originated by the Americans. The people here want American machinery and even the engi- neers of the municipalities frequently stip- ulate in their contracts that their engines, cars and dynamos shall be of American make. . Of all the electrical works, however, the British Westinghouse company has by far the greatest. It has put more money into its business and is doing everything on the largest scale. Its capital is $10,000,000 and it is already paying 6 per cent dividends on its preferred stock. I get this from a statement made by Mr. George Westing- house at a meeting of the shareholders in London not long ago. In his speech he re- ferred to the wonderful prosperity of the Pittsburg works, which had paid 7 per cent dividends right along on a capital of $20,- 000,000 and at the same time accumulated a surplus. He sald that the British company during the past year had made enough to give the preferred stockholders 6 per cent and in addition a surplus of $90,000. This had been done although all the orders had to be executed in America, and now that the works In Great Britain were in opera- tion the profits should be much larger. In this speech Mr. Westinghouse spoke of the gas engines which were being made in the United States and which will be also turned out here in Manchester. He believes that gas rather than steam is to be the future motive power, and is making simple gas engines at Pittsburg which will furnish as high as 2,600 horsepower. I am told that the works here are already loaded with contracts, among which are some of the largest contracts ever issued One is the transformation of the Mersey tunnel railway at Liverpool from steam to electricity, and others are the power houses and equipments of the enormous rallroad system of underground London. The Metropolitan roads, which are headed by Mr. Yerkes, will have sixty-nine miles of double lines and the District railway, which runs outside these, will have thirteen miles of double line, the cars of both companies running to a certain extent over the tracks of the other. FRANK G. CARPENTER.