his original
scheme for those details that he foresaw would become requisite--such,
for instance, as ample stock capacity for raw materials and their
automatic delivery in the various stages of manufacture, as well
as mixing, weighing, and frequent sampling and analyzing during the
progress through the mills. This provision even included the details of
the packing-house, and his perspicacity in this case is well sustained
from the fact that nine years afterward, in anticipation of building an
additional packing-house, the company sent a representative to different
parts of the country to examine the systems used by manufacturers in
the packing of large quantities of various staple commodities involving
somewhat similar problems, and found that there was none better than
that devised before the cement plant was started. Hence, the order was
given to build the new packing-house on lines similar to those of the
old one.

Among the many innovations appearing in this plant are two that stand
out in bold relief as indicating the large scale by which Edison
measures his ideas. One of these consists of the crushing and grinding
machinery, and the other of the long kilns. In the preceding chapter
there has been given a description of the giant rolls, by means of which
great masses of rock, of which individual pieces may weigh eight or more
tons, are broken and reduced to about a fourteen-inch size. The economy
of this is apparent when it is considered that in other cement plants
the limit of crushing ability is "one-man size"--that is, pieces not too
large for one man to lift.

The story of the kiln, as told by Mr. Mallory, is illustrative of
Edison's tendency to upset tradition and make a radical departure from
generally accepted ideas. "When Mr. Edison first decided to go into
the cement business, it was on the basis of his crushing-rolls and air
separation, and he had every expectation of installing duplicates of the
kilns which were then in common use for burning cement. These kilns were
usually made of boiler iron, riveted, and were about sixty feet long and
six feet in diameter, and had a capacity of about two hundred barrels of
cement clinker in twenty-four hours.

"When the detail plans for our plant were being drawn, Mr. Edison and I
figured over the coal capacity and coal economy of the sixty-foot kiln,
and each time thought that both could he materially bettered. After
having gone over this matter several times, h