blowing so hard, until a third fellow climbed to the top of the column, like a monkey, and stuck to it like a fly, holding on with his knees and one hand while he stretched out over Broadway, caught the hand of the other fellow on the girder, and pulled the end of the girder in place. Jiminy, you did take care of my hat—did n’t you? How did that happen?” continued Will, as he gazed at it ruefully. But he added: “Oh, well, who cares? It was worth it.”
I was relating my experiences to him when “the boss” came back from the inspection of some riveting and hailed us.
“Here, Will, and you—what ’s your name?”
“Jim,” I answered.
“You and Jim come on down with me. You can just take the back stairway down. I won't have you wandering all over. I have got to keep you at the rear of the building, or the superintendent might see you.”
“All right, Mr. Hotchkiss.” Will had already learned his name, also that he was the assistant superintendent on his afternoon tour of inspection. “He makes two trips from top to bottom, every day,” said Will, when there was a lull in the racket made by the pneumatic hammers.
At each story, Mr. Hotchkiss made us wait while he walked around to look at the character and progress of the work. At every opportunity Will quizzed him, and he was always good-natured enough to answer our questions explicitly.
I was astonished to learn that every steel piece in the building was numbered and had a fixed place on the plans. “Why, certainly,” said Mr. Hotchkiss, “this whole building is constructed on paper first. Every part is figured out in proportion to the load it has to carry, and then the parts are made at the factory. The holes are drilled for the rivets, and everything is prepared so that we can put the pieces together with as little work as possible. First the setting gang assembles the parts, fastening them with a few bolts, just enough to keep them in place; then the fitting gang goes over the work, reams out holes that do not quite match, and corrects any little misfits due to the warping of the metal. Finally, the riveting gang comes along and replaces the bolts with rivets.”
Mr. Hotchkiss hurried off to see the boss of the arch men, while we filled our heads full of questions to spring at him on his return.
“They ’ve got to hurry up with those floors,” said Mr. Hotchkiss, when he came back. ‘We are not allowed to let the steelwork get more than three stories ahead of the floors. We are way behind now, and there is liable to be trouble. The arch men can’t keep up to the iron-workers. It takes them only about five days to put up two stories of steelwork. The columns,” he explained, “are always two stories high. The entire steelwork for two stories at a time is ordered from the storage yard over at Bayonne, a couple of days before we need it. There a man sorts out the numbers we call for and ships the stuff on a
lighter to the Battery, after which it is drawn by horses to the building. Sometimes the load is pretty heavy. The heaviest we tried to handle was a girder weighing 61½ tons. It was eight feet high, nearly eight feet wide, and about twenty-five feet long. We did the hauling one.jpg)
Photograph by Brown Brothers.
Hand riveting where the pneumatic hammers cannot be used.
