Editorial Comment

Editorial Comment.

There may be mechanical merit in the wire saw, that is, a machine using several strands of twisted wire running in sheaves, and of any desired length, but the economy of such a device is a mooted question. A number of years ago STONE printed a complete description of the most famous of this class of sawing apparatus-the Belgian invention-and we are still receiving frequent inquiries concerning it. It is referred to and illustrated incidentally in this issue in the article on "Quarrying." A couple of these devices were installed in this country, but after a short experience, they now repose in the scrap-pile. It may be they were not properly erected or operated. A few months since it was announced that an Albany, N. Y., man was organizing a company to manufacture an invention of the same general character as the Belgian saw, and that tests of it had proved satisfactory in a quarry at West Rutland, Vt. We have tried to get onto this new thing, but our efforts are not yet fully rewarded. If the spiral wire stone saw is an all-around good thing it will not take long to find it out, and the manufacturers who introduce it will reap a fortune in its sale. Stone men are yearning for a more economical and capacious machine than the old-timer gang, but it will necessarily be a mighty good machine that can beat that ancient method.

Baltimore, Maryland Sixty-Year-Old Granite

Truly, granite is impregnable against "the tooth of time," as well as against the thunderbolt and the tornado's fury. An item states that blocks and slabs that have been in the walls of a building in Baltimore for sixty years are being returned to the quarry town from which they came to be used until the end of time as bridge masonry and railway track ballast. Much of it is beautifully carved and as flawless as the day it was first set in place. If they had been of proper form they would have gone back into the larger new granite structure that is to replace the old one. The incident is a valuable lesson to builders.

Building the Old Cathedrals

In the olden times, during the years when the better class of the old cathedrals were built, the workmen were responsible for many of the beautiful details of carving, molding, and otherwise. During later years this thing has been controlled more largely by the architect, until it has come to pass that his duties have expanded to such an extent as to lead to disastrous results. There is a tendency to return to first principles. Architects are taking into their offices specialists in iron work, in stone, carvers in the ornamentation details of design. This first made its appearance in stone-carving and work of that kind, and suggested a higher field of usefulness, and it is altogether satisfactory to the workmen who have to do with these things. There is less that is mechanical in such an occupation; it offers more for mind, and altogether makes his work pleasanter. There is certainly more satisfaction in originating a piece of carved work than in carrying out some one else's designs, and in the multiplicity of things which belongs to an architect this has been made necessary, and in time it will secure enlarged development. It is true that these old cathedrals were under the administration of one general head, one architect, during his lifetime, or it is possible that the buildings were erected from the plans originally prepared, and that the whole work was carried out according to the original idea, but the multiplicity of detail, the amount of work to be done, and the particular skill required in its execution, suggested as a proper course the leaving of a great many details in the hands of the workman, whose only object and only inducement was to do the right and proper thing.

An Editorial View of the Cemeteries of the Future Seen in 1895

Some day "a city of the dead" will be platted, in which private monuments will not be allowed to

disfigure the landscape. It will not be a "potter's field," but the most beautiful construction which intelligence and skill can make. Individual graves will be designated by a mark that will neither obstruct the view nor mar the beauty of its charming stretches of sward and foliage. The grotesque "angels," the distressful "doves," and the lugubrious "lambs" will not serve to express the morbid sentiment of friends of the departed; the commonplace designs in stone, marble, granite, slate and white bronze, which make our cemeteries resemble a forest of chimney pots, will not be found therein; the selfishness of wealth, that sorrows in memorials that serve to inform future generations that those who lie beneath were better equipped to do mankind a larger service (but didn't) than the plebeians who sleep in the humble graves within its shadow, will not be seen in that modern city of the dead. In the midst of the beautiful city will rise a pantheon designed to commemorate the noblest of human virtues; musical fountains will splash their waters in rhythm with the chorus of birds; each grave-mound will be a bed of blooming flowers; no chapel bell will note the coming cortege, for the mournful procession will have been abandoned; the sorrows of the bereaved will no longer be a spectacle for gaping crowds upon the highways or within the city where their loved ones are to abide forever-that will be reserved for the cloisters of the home that has the mantle of grief upon it-the fashionable funeral will be dispensed with. Death is what the Father of Life teaches it to be-one step higher. We shall put away our dead with that understanding, and it shall be written in the records of the Pantheon who they were-but there will be no mention of what they were. That part will be left for the living to remember without consulting a death certificate.

When that day comes, the monumental dealer's occupation will be gone. It will be well. His traffic, as displayed in the cemeteries of the present day, will bear witness against any excuse he may offer for remaining in that business. And as the world moves, so must he, in the eternal fitness of things, get out of the way. Very few are now in the business who wouldn't quit it at once if they could. Orders for monuments do not increase at such a ratio with the death list to make the business of the monumental dealer profitable. There is more money for him and his workmen in constructing work for the habitations of the living, than in turning out hideous memorials to the dead. He will find better work to do with his cultured brain and experienced hand. The peripatetic tombstone agent will trouble him no more; nor will sordid legislators deny him redress for work set up upon which he cannot lean a lien. The crooked dealer in the adjoining county will lead as straight a life as himself; the interminable wrangling with the wholesaler over crow's feet and splinters, freight bills and rebates, will be ended. He will be less a funereal member of society, and his shop will not be the rendezvous for ghost-walks. Vale, the monumental dealer! Hail, the Phidian order of stone-workers!

Bedford, Indiana, Oölitic Stone Price Competition

A Year's experience under a fair agreement has not confirmed wisdom among Bedford stone quarrymen. One year ago they resolved not to do it. Today it appears one or a number have done it, and the deuce is to pay all over the oölitic region. Just which one of the companies first tasted of the forbidden fruit and thus brought forth judgment upon all, we cannot definitely say, but everyone now seems to have a knife in the boot for use on the others. What a sorry spectacle it is, to be sure! With the best building limestone in American, with an extensive and rapidly expanding market for it, with inexhaustible quantities, with quarries highly developed and excellently equipped, with mills of ample capacity and modernly arranged, with millions invested, and big, brainy men in control, yet they periodically pitch into each other like opposing teams of football players, striving to reach a goal, which, if attained, would certainly not overcome defeat in the count of the full score. Big quarries, no more than little ones, can produce a living profit on first-class buff or blue oölitic stone in selling it for less than 20 cents a foot in Chicago, the nearest big market for it. Hard times and consequent low prices have not yet reduced its cost value below that score. While it is probably true that no system of stated prices can be established that would represent the actual value of the different products from the district, or the actual cost of their production, still no reason exists why the best grades should be beaten down in price to the point of no profit, that "a moral lesson" may be taught a quarryman who has sold inferior stone at half price. Better show up his stone than try to do up the quarryman. Compromise is a good thing sometimes to save reputation. The reputation of oölitic stone is at stake in this constant warfare over what this or that quarryman has been doing with prices. If the quarryman who has cut prices is selling off an inferior grade of stone to get even, the contractor and builder who buys it for the better grade ought to know it. It would be wiser to spend money in that way, than to sacrifice it by slashing profits to meet the unfair competitor. We had a talk with one of the largest cut-stone contractors in New York City about this very point. He says "Bedford" is far and away the leader in the stone market of New York. The thing he feared most was that it would suffer in reputation through the use of the cheap material than is sold for genuine oölitic. Few of the architects and builders know anything as to the varying qualities of the stone. The quarriers of the high grades that have given this stone its prestige, should see to it that the soft and scabby varieties, that are sold as oölitic, should receive proper classification. If they did that they would not be called on to cut prices of the high grade material. The contractor has the correct view of it. It's amazing that the quarrymen themselves do not see that their action in slashing prices to get orders away from competitors is plunging of the very wildest sort.

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