The turning out to perfection of an oilcloth carpet in those days was a task that would make a person in these piping times of labor-saving machinery wish for something easier. All the smoothing or rubbing down was done by hand. Heavy, long-bladed knives, as big as the "Sword of Bunker Hill," were used to scrape down the rough body coats of paint, and a smooth surface, on which to stamp the geometrical figures in colors, was fetched after long and laborious polishing with bricks and pumice stone.
Drummers employed by Mr. Bailey traveled to Massachusetts, to New York, and away down into the South, and ere long the demand for oilcloth carpeting became so general that other factories were built and made to chatter and clank with the new industry. There was living not far from East Winthrop at this time a shrewd, wideawake Yankee farmer named Sampson, who had kept his weather eye peeled on the progress of Ezekiel Bailey, and when housewives everywhere began to yearn for the new carpeting, taking a neighbor in as a partner, Mr. Sampson built a factory, and in a very short time was in a position to be considered a formidable rival of Mr. Bailey.
But the originator of the oilcloth carpet was not to be outdone. Discerning good returns from a plant established close to a big center of consumption, Mr. Bailey entered into a deal with New Jersey capitalists, and a big factory was set a-going in that State. A trusted employe of the Bailey concern, Levi Richardson (who still lives and is the proprietor of a modest little store in East Winthrop), was sent to New Jersey to instruct the green hands there in the art of manufacture. While thus engaged, Mr. Richardson's brain was busy with the problem of labor saving, and one day a phantom device for smoothing and rubbing down the first rough coats on the burlaps took form in his mind, and for some weeks he spent his spare time in experimenting. The result was the present patent used in most factories, whereby as much rubbing down can be done in one day as could have been accomplished in four by the old hand method.—Industrial World.
THE KOPPEL ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVES.
The question of the design of small locomotives for use on pioneer lines has been always a difficult matter.
The needs of the railway contractor have called for such locomotives, for which several systems of power have been tried. In many ways the electric locomotive has distinct advantages over its rivals, steam and compressed air, for these narrow gage lines. Reviewing these advantages briefly, we see that the electrical equipment is more economical to work, as one good stationary engine develops power much more cheaply than several small locomotives. Again, the electric locomotive can be more readily designed for narrow gages than steam or compressed air locomotives.
Fig. 2.—THE SECTION WITH THE SUPPORT FOR THE OVERHEAD LINE