Items of Interest August 20, 1932 Issue

Items of Interest

"One man working alone cannot do it, but all working together can," is a reminder which fronts one mounting the temporary wooden stairs to the upper floor in Section "B" of the new Publishing House. It is not posted there in reference to the work of building, but it is applicable in that larger meaning; for certainly it takes all working together in the best sense of obedience, coöperation, promptness, and effi ciency to complete on schedule the various operations; and many important operations there are.

Looking down from the first floor into the basement of the Monitor pressroom already referred to in these columns one might almost think a band of tailors were at work, but it is the metal workers drawing shapes on large pieces of galvanized copper bearing sheet steel and cutting them out to fabricate the heating and ventilating ducts. The shapes are many, due to the required varying dimensions of the ducts which branch off for lines to various departments and fit around concrete columns, partitions, et cetera. After cutting these sheets the edges of each section are bent at right angles to fit over the corresponding sections which form the sides of the ducts into which diagonal crisscross lines are impressed, slightly strengthening the metal and putting the maker's characteristic design upon it

Climbing to the fourth floor where the Publishing House bindery will be placed, one sees here erected the eight gasoline-operated derricks used in the setting of the limestone on the outer walls. The operator of each derrick works from signals and cannot see the setting of the stone. Three slow rings on his bell induce him to gently play out the wire cable that holds the stone, and he knows that the workmen below are easing it into place. Three quick rings and he plays the cable out fast, which lays the stone in the position desired. One ring and he holds the rope as it is; two and he pulls it free. At the edge of the roof on top of a temporary structure erected all about the outer parapet wall are eight men, each of whom observes both his respective derrick on the roof and the setting of the stone by the mason and his helpers below. Each man on the parapet holds a key position between the stone setters and the derrick operator serving them, and he handles the derrick cable, moving it from place to place in picking up a stone, and so on, and signals the derrick operator.

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