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RBMEHBER THIS OLD STAND.........m SMOKERS, ThC America Exchange DULU1H, WINN, CAPITAL, 9500,000m We issue certificates to depositors, allowing interest at the rate of* 2 per cent per annum on deposits of any amounts for a period of 3 months or longer Ring up 520, ga Zeniiti Phone V. If 1IV1VU1 M. F. Connel. THEY'RE AFTER MI We have the Standard, New Home, Domestic and many ethers. Can suit you in price as well as quality. Will take your old ma chine as part payment on a new one. Also have supplies for all machines. W Howard kalir Uf ml SUPEKM, ST. P. J. McLaughlin. Zenith Phone 1130. IDEAL PLUMBING AND HATING CD., Practical Plumbers* Steam atidGas Pitting. Scientific Ventialtion. Jobbing Promptly Attended to. Estimates Cheerfully Qiyen. 105 W. FOURTH ST. DULUTH, MINN. liT Capital and Surplus, $850,000.00. The FIRST NATIONAL BANK Of Duluth, Has Opened a Deposits of $1 and,upwards received. BOOKS GIVEN. INTEREST ALLOWED. In opening accounts by mail, send specimen signature and address. Book will be returned to you with instructions as to withdrawals and future deposits. ESTABLISHED 1888. a. PURE WINES AMD LIQUORS 1492 For FAHtlLY AND MEDICINAL PURPOSE. There la Nothing Purer than |, |. LEVIN'S BOURBON, RYE and BRANDY. 501 WEST SUPERIOR STREET. LET US WRITE YOUR Fire Insurance. Real Estate Loans and Insurance. GEO. H. CROSBY, 106 Providence Bldg. Telephone No. 24. Ujontyoi Union cimti See that this label appears on the box from which you are served^. PATRONIZE HOME HIIIU8TRY SMOKJ5 CI^^,R^ TH AT 6EAR T?HE. ABOVE ABOVE LABEL. THE STRUCTURAL WORKERS. AS HARPKR'S^ If you will look into the literature of work you will find the term "Rough Necks.'?'' There was a time, not yet beyond the memory of the present gen eration of scientific labor, when it had a meaning: and a fair one. The men that went by it were bluff, hardy fel lows, picked up -from the four corners of outdoor labor, rovers and wanderers, good mechanics, but those who liked something more exciting that the hum drum of the shop, called now here, now there, by the demands of the great new American trade, the day of ^ron con struction in bridge and taassive build ing:, when skeleton frame ,and spanning steel fabric were first coming' into play. "Rough Necks" there are no longer, though a\ times when the descendants of these pioneers sit about and tell stories of their hardous experiences the words may be heard, pronounced half laughingly. Now and again, by rare good fortune, an old-timer like "Skib ber Hicks" may be met with. But it is men of a new type that hold the field. In place of "Rough Necks" it is today bfidgemen and structural iron workers, young men for the most part, not a few of them men of education and parts, all mechanics of the highest skill. In the eyes of ail men, not hidden in shops nor burled in the bowels of the earth, they are continually plying their muscular yet delicate and venturesome craft. Look up fifteen stories along the steel ribs of a great business structure just under way and the structural workers are like insects'creeping over the great metal limb. Then climb up beside them, if you can, and look down. The street below seems peopled with fllies. With but a plank, perhaps a beam of iron only, as a resting place between earth and sky, the workers are doing wonderful things, just how wonderful you must be up there to see. There on a platform 100 feet in the air stands a little forge. One man stands before it heating rivets and then passes them on to another, who drives them home. Further along, on another section, a compressed-air riveter, with its long pipe, does two men's work. Again the grouping takes on a different form. Hanging down from a trolley that is part and portio of a giant traveler, hangs a bar of steel. There are half a dozen tons of it or more. Chains grasp it a little above the middle, so that the bar hangs vertically at an angle, like a pencil between the fingers. The trol ley is so mechanically perfect that not only can it move the piece just over the point where it is wanted, but the hoist ing engineer far away can lower it neatly by fractions of a foot. Down it comes, in obedience to signals from the men, who grab it with hands or hooks. The swinging bar is guided into place with a nicety. It may be a post (upright), a diagonal, an upper or lower cord bar in this great span. Pit ted in, it now awaits its pin. On a wire rope from the traveler above comes dangling a smaller steel bar, a ram. A gang of men seize it, twisting it at right angles to them. Back and forth they swing it, until, gaining finally the proper momentum, they crash it against the pin again and again, driy ing it home by inches. I "sat in" (one night in this Year of Grace 1901) a group of bridgemen and a warm and cozy room of a boarding house in one of the larger American cities, and had drawn for me hour after hour, rough plans of beam, cord, post diagonal, pin, batter post, member and span, catching glimpses of mechanical wonders and niceties by the way. They were told so rapidly and enthusiastical ly that only a scientist could have ap preciated their fine points, and heard meanwhile stories of hazard and risk. I commenced to understand how it was that a man down in Pennsylvania to day, a man with one crippled hand, acknowledged one of the greatest structural iron men and bridge builders in this country, William Wennas, could, though no trained engineer, rise as he had done. For in the men before me there was a quality of speech and men tal fiber that set them apart from la bor's ranks, and made them what the world of the present calls "specialists." In my travels among these iron men of the bridges I discovered very nearly the same characteristic running through them as a class, knowledge and habits of speech one does not ordinarily think of among workingmen. Not that all out of these hundreds show It. Some men, when spoken to, had not the facility of educated speech. I dare say they could rivet quite as well, had as trained an eye and as clear a me chanical head. But the perfect remains that an astonishingly large percentage of these men impress the student of social facts at sight. Thus, after a day in the clouds, treading on narrow beams at "leery" heights, one bridgeman—a man, by the way, who is known all over the country from his feats of riding on box-cars "when "broke" and wanting to get to another city without paying railroad fare—was found reading John Sher man's "Reminiscences," with intelli gent interest enough to regret that he could not understand all the details of the financial'struggles in congress. And the present writer would defy any man to tell more clearly, translating the! technical terms into simple English, the story of how a span was laid down, how iron was "telegraphed," than did three worthies of steel, Billy Beatty, Johnny Brown and John Davis, one night. Beatty, though a bridgeman of but five years' standing, had in that time been in twenty-seven states and territories, and the others are as widely known. After all, it is the man who builds rather than the machine that helps him. One thing you notice in all this raising of iron and steel that is done as true as a hair, that the laborer has little part in it. There is no place for the unskilled, ignorant man in this tradie any more'than there would be In a football game. What each foreman wants is the "know." the wprkman of the trained eye that has turned his trade Into a.professio*. One inexperi enced fellow may hold the lives of fifty in the hollow of his handrj There Is a."nigger-heMj?*®" say, who does nbt'hnota riia business. His duty Is to care for the line that controls the lowering or rising, of-* the cord (bar) of Iron that now must be put Into place. The line Is wrapped four or five times around a "spool" (a cylinder or oval of metal), and is to be paid out to him. If, he lets the line slip, disaster is spelled. He is supposed to be competent and to obey signals. There may be men on that, bar or on adjoining beams that would be hurled through space'by the slightest jar. "Move it a hair," he is ordered (a lit tle.) "Move It a red hair!" (a velry lit tle.) Tranquilly intent upon his work, the bridgeman goes on. But the "ttlg ger-head man" has been known to lose control of his line. In the interest of the moment, in* the carrying out of his work, the structural iron-worker forgets all the danger. He tells of risks, narrow-eScapes, deaths of close firiends one niglrt, bright and early the next morning he is walking along a four-inch beam, 150 feet above the water or land, with never a thought of the danger. "Leery?" (afraid dizzy.) "Why, no!" one man after another answers. I don't know why not, though, except that we never do. A' hundred feet above ground is very nearly the same as ten to us." And the man that falls and gets badly hurt comes back as soon as he gets out of the hospital, and it makes no dif ference to him. The absence of dialect that will be noted in the anecdotes scattered here and there in this article, often told as closely, as possible in the iron men's own words, J- needs some explanation. The reason is that there is practically no dialect among them. Nearly all are workmen that are widely "traveled, nearly all are American-born,, with any provincialisms they may have had knocked off by contact with men from other sections. Americans, Scotchmen, Irishmen, Englishmen, make, up the roll of these iron-workers, with a few Canadians, Indian half-breeds, who are highly esteemed for their "endurance, strength and skill. "I never knew but one Italian iron man," said one of the oldest. bridgemen in the country, "but he was a good one. We take another kind of men, you see." What this trade or profession has come to be may be told from a, figure or two. "The National Order of Bridge men and Structural Iron Workers" (the union which is said to have among its members 95 per cent- of- the skilled men) has over thirty "locals" in this country and Canada, and its-New Tork "local"' alone numbers 3,000 men. The trade, despite the skilled men in it, Is not thoroughly organized as yet, aifd wages vary in different parts of the country. The wage rate runs from $5 a day' (from eight to ten hours) down to the vanishing point, the present New York rate being $3.76 for a day of eight hours, with double pay for over-time. Thus, regardless of his skill, the iron man finds it difficult to make more than $22 or $23 a week,'though on rush jobs, when men must be had hurriedly and were hard to get, men have earned up to nearly $50 a week by .working overtime. Iron' men come fntof the trade in many a way, and thus, while there are only two sorts of structural iron-work ers in reality—the incompetent, which the foreman sends to the. rejrf at a moment's notice, and: the .competent-* there, are in practice several grades the iron men themselves, the "snakes" and the "bull gang." The "snake" is simply a new man, clever, skilful and willing enough but who/needs a little breaking in. "He is a man," says the old bridgeman, "who can get out on the work all right and isn't a bit 'leery,' but who. doesn't know what to do when he gets there. He may be such a clever feller, though, that he will only be a 'snake' a few days." With the "bull gang" is is different. In all bridge and building" construction there is a certain amount of "toting" to be done. Machinery can de much in the way of transporting, but it does riot always pay to rig up elaborately to accomplish something that two or four strong men can. do in a few mo ments. Nor does it pay to use the com paratively high-priced iron men for odds and ends of fetching and carrying. Here the "bull gang" comes into play, a body of ordinary laborers and. young fellows, who are battered from pillar to post as they are needed. Let a boy be likely, quick, observing and handy, some foreman is sure to pick him out when he needs another man. The "pushers" (the assistant foremen) have their eyes open as well for this^sort of youngsters. Thus a boy. suddenly be- comes an iron man at a jump, his nerve already trained. for, heights, his foot hold sure. Many a good bridgeman has come out of some "bull gang/' It Is now here, a thousand miles away tomorrow, with these men. Their trade makes them rovers, going wherever a great job may be. At this moment they are in Philadelphia/ now in a town on a Canadian river,' in camp far in the thinly settled parts of the south west, even abroad. In New York to day7 there are some men who have only recently returned from India. A gang came back from Egypt a few ^months ago, having performed a notable ex ploit in bridging' the-Nile There are American iron men down in Cuba, and contracts have beejT. signed for over a score of bridges in South Africa, all to be done by Americans, to be started when the Boer war has. run" its course. There is one consideration which is of much importance. Each engineer has his own methods. As one bridge is built, so is frequently not.-another. A tradition of erection Is ibrOken in the twinkling of an eye by la man: that has new ideas of how to do a thing. A foreman of an iron gang no longer has to figure out a problem. The engineer's office worksitoiit forhim. Hels giv^n a blue print with the precise way each piece of steel or iron should go marked out upon it, each piece numbered. From the mills the pieces come, num bered correspondingly. The fpreman has simply, to follow the print of the architept absolutely to'\Iiifrlicate it in red paint. It t* the iron man's job to erect "rigging*' to get his pieces up, to put. them in place and fatten them together., A Simple proi#» accomplished high Vu' if but, Ui mu«t be 6 «ir juggling The new Quebec bridge, the -iron Work of which will be commenced this summer, is said to have the longest and heaviest, span .in the world. Its. channel span will be 1,800 feet long and 28,000 tons of iron will.be used in the entire job. At Dayton, Pa., there stretches a viaduct between mountains 1,150 feet apart, 157 feet high. It was built by a cable Of an inch and a half diameter between the mountains, each end held by "two 8x16 timbers eighteen feet long, buried twelve feet in the ground. On a trolley running upon this, the iron was moved to the precise spot needed, "telegraphed," as the iron men say. The building of a "bridge" of struc tural iron along the James river at Richmond, ,Va., three and a half miles long and fifty feet high, is another of the interesting tasks the iron men have been upon recently. The "traveler," which, moving upon each span as.soon as it was finished, and then carrying the beams and girders in its long iron arms, placed them in their proper posi tion and held up the entire span until its weight of 240 tons was complete and it was all fastened together firmly, from fifty feet overhead, is credited with be ingx the finest traveler ever built. It was 246 feet long and weighed 340 tonSi Toehold it in'position when it was bear ing the weight of each nearly complet ed new span, it had on its back end four carloads of iron and rails, weigh ing 120 tons in all. With workers themselves it is the sudden, -the unexpected, that always happens. On the East River Bridge, one day in February of this year, a young, fellow stepped backwards off his platform while passing on a rivet. He shot down, feet foremost, with a wild look of terror on his face, his mouth opened for one single scream. The men of his gang caught one glimpse of his face as it Went over the edge and when the man was picked up, his eyes were staring wide open, looking upwards. Among the things that iron men have to fear are the flying off of red-hot burrs from iron while riveting, the breaking- of planks, the giving way of rigging, which, in an instant, may bring down a derrick, a traveler, into a heap of collapsed iron. But hear, the iron men and their own stories. A 'group of them sat one night in my presence and spun yarns. "Out on the Louisville bridge," said John, as he took a fresh puff of his cigar, "the false work suddenly gave way. The false work, you know" (to me), "is the ^temporary wood bracing we work upon while building. The men below could see it buckling the fellers on top knew when they started to work on it in the morning that it wasn't saft. All at once, as I Say, it went. One of the fellers made a jump for the river. It was 200' feet down, but he tried it. As he jumped he interlocked his legs (he had on big heavy boots). Those boots' weight carried him down straight. He struck'the water on his feet and wasn't hurt at all. A few days later he was out walking, slipped, fell three feet and broke a leg. That's true I knew the man." "A feller fell twenty-two feet once in Pittsburgh," put in another man, "in sand, too, and broke his neck." "That shows you how its goes," said Billy. "You can never tell. I remember a man who was standing on a traveler up eighty-nine feet. The. light of a line that' ^as-picking dp a stick of timber swuhg Over' and took him off his feet, knocking them right from under him. But he came down square on those feet of his, let me tell you, after falling the whole eighty-nine and the only harm it did hiifti was' to* drive his hip up four inches. That was all." "I had the strangest experience once, said one of the youngest of the crowd. "All of us know how the burrs fly while riveting is goinfe on. A piece of red hot metal, small as it is, if it hits in the right spot, will put a man's eye out, That wasn't the way with me. I've two good eyes left. But I happened to have my mouth open and the red-hot "burr flew right in my throat. It burned the roof of my mouth badly and then dug into my right cheek, somehow. But the doctor at the hospital could never find the bit. They thought it must haVe worked out in some way and that must have swallowed it. "Do you remember the- span over the South Channel at Cornwall, Ontario, in 1898? I can tell you exactly the time —it was almost noon, on the sixth ^of September, on a Tuesday—when the pier gave way. There were sixteen men killed in that. The bridge was almost finished, and was. ready to turn over to the railroad people in a week or two. It had three camel-back spans, and its piers were supposed to be on blue hard pan. A cpjjpr, dam had been built over one of these and filled up with con srete \nd cement. Big, solid blocks of stone had been put upon that. "We had been given the foundations for it all right, and we'd put our iron work on that. There was a big trav eler up, and when the pier gave, and two spans crumbled with a crack, the traveler, of course, came down. One man on it iiever tried to jump, and rode the -traveler as it fell, hanging on to a cord (of steel). He was never hurt. Thai' particular steel bar hap pened to stop ten feet away from the water, and he Simply climbed off." "Once," said Billy, returning to his reminiscences, "a man I knew, who was working on the bridge of an iron house roof, lost his hold and com menced to slide down the" corrugated iron. It was a slide of about twenty five feet to the edge, and then came a drop of fifty .feet as he" knew, on some heaps of scrap-iron. Down he went, and just at the* edge a rivet caught his corduroys and held him there." "I've seen a sheet of iron pome round unexpected and slice the side off a man's face," announced a quiet little bridgfmah in the irroup, and there is many another story I should like to have space to. tell* gL, tT -a 1*411 ume'llmlt. hindled on a .... '•Stunts/', as the trade knows them, that would have, seemed, .out of the question a few years ago, are now done .readily by especially Revised machinery and the impromptu ingenious devices of competent foremen. The steel frame of even'the highest sky-scraper is now hut an .ordinary piece of work, the Sole trick being to reduce the time record. On the~ Cleveland and Ohio bridge, girders weighing fifty-five tons each ^tvere swung aloft, and one reliable old iron man tells of how he has seen a weight of sixty-three, tons in mid-air. |rw#!i Soma Handsome Pattens at* 8M0KE "ft*-. For the "UNION LABEL"? It »o w# ktTS spleRdll Uis ftf Salts, mfjrm las' !h« Vatofe Lab«l» at— SPRING OVERCOATS, with Ualoa Label, at- ONION LABEL BATS,at- REMEMBER, boaght of as, .• t\ -,^'7 .i-W" r£ $8, $10, $12, $13.50. :'7!41 $18, $20 and $25. $8, $10, $12, $15. $1, $1.50, $2, $2.50, $3. All the Lsteat liripg Bleeluk (aarantee in roa raa eack aat e»«*r rlsfc whatever* CHAS. W. ERICSON, THE CLOTHIER. 219 WEST SUPERIOR ST. HOMEMADE. CLEAR HAVANA. POMKSTIC. OUR SPECIAL. Union Label. Union Label.. Best Five Cent Cigar in the City. Manufactured by CULVER & CO., THE SMOKERS' FAVORITES. RETAILERS' GREATEST SELLEW. TOM REED LA AGILIDAD The Well-Known, and Always Re liable Domestic. .SKILLED LABOR CAN PRODUCE. MANUFASTSSSB BY Ron Fernandez Cigar Company. UNION LABEL. HOMEMADE. W, A. 8COTT, President. jU,L.McC0RMlCK,Ylce-Fre8., Duluth,Minn, *v Hajward, wis,- DELICIOUS, WHOLBSOMEi PALATABLE il article HOLDING YOUR OWN Jar is a pleasure when you can hold it in the brewing of beer that will coin-. pete with the best breweries In this country or Europe in the manufacture of pure, rich and creamy bottled beer, that possesses the qualities of all with the palatable flavor and strengthening qualities of the best beer. Try it as an appetizer and tonic—it is good. Brewhi MiHfefl c«. EITHER PHONE 241. MADE IN DULUTH. MADE IN DtTLUTH. C. J. PETRUSGHKEy Manufacturer of and Dealer la White Pine Packing Boxes and Shooks SpeciaItle«~Beer Cases, Egg Case* and Baaaaa Cratea. JUST OPENED—Department for Building Materials. PRICES ALWAYS CHEERFULLY QXVEI9 50th Avmiue Wwt, Comer Main Street* 'Pi -O. BOX'-186. ,- :',WS8T:.DOI*Jtt. SMOKE KELLEY RYAN W. First St. 18 TELEPHONE 141. A Clear Havana That Has No Equal. 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