wlessness, it is
desirable to have a district-messenger signal-box in the works, visited
once an hour, with the understanding that if the call is not made within
fifteen minutes of the appointed time, it will be assumed that there is
trouble and help sent at once.
Safety requires that the lanterns should be securely guarded; that the
handle and sustaining parts of the lantern be connected together by
rivets or by locking the metals together without relying on soldered
joints; and thirdly, that the lamp should be put in from above, and
never from the bottom.
CONSTRUCTION.
In its design, a mill for any standard line of manufacture is not a
building whose arrangements and proportions are fixed upon at the whim
of the owner, but it must conform to certain conditions of dimensions,
stability, light and application of power to satisfy the requirements
essential for furnishing every advantage necessary for producing the
desired results at the lowest cost.
The destructive consequences attending fire in such buildings, whose
iron and masonry construction is called fireproof, show that some other
form of construction is necessary to obtain the desired results of
minimizing the annual cost of the maintenance of the invested capital,
as represented by insurance, depreciation, interest and taxation. There
is little incentive for entering into unusual expenses in the
construction of a manufacturing building for the purpose of increasing
its resistance to fire, unless the additional interest on such increase
in the investment is to be met by a corresponding reduction in the
annual cost of the fire-hazard. In addition to these questions,
involving the annual maintenance of the plant, the increase in the
expense of the building above a certain point may prove poor management,
by locking up capital for too long a time, and may tend to prevent the
improvements in arrangement and construction which are necessary for the
most advantageous manufacturing.
The method of mill building known as slow-burning construction combines
the advantages of low initial cost and great resistance to destruction
by fire, the final result being that the manufacturing is housed at the
minimum annual cost. The fundamental principle of such construction is
to mass the material in such a way that there shall not be any concealed
spaces about the structure, and that the number of projections of
timbers, which are more easily ignited than the flat surfa
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