CHAPTER V

MECHANISMS, PROCESSES, AND ORGANIZATIONS

The problem of giving directions for making or doing something, or of explaining the working of an organization, is not always easy to solve. Most difficulties, however, occur through lack of considering just what the problem involves, and through lack of sufficiently simplifying the material. Thus, when you ask an old man in a strange city where the post-office is, he is likely to reply somewhat as follows: "You keep on just as you are going for a little ways, and then turn down a narrow street on the right and go along for four blocks, and then turn to your left and go until you come to a square, and then go across it and down a side street and through an office building, and then it's the stone building on the corner of the second street to your right." You stroke your chin, meditate a bit, and, if you are polite, thank your informant for his kind intentions. Then you ask the next person whom you meet to tell you where the post-office is. The old man meant well, of course, but he failed to simplify. So did the author of the little book that Johnny received for Christmas mean well when he explained how to make a beautiful chemical effect. But Johnny, who was a fairly impetuous youth, did not stop to read the footnote at the end which warned against working near a fire. When he was seraphically pouring his chemicals together near the old oil lamp in the "shop" there came a flash, a deafening roar--and little Johnny had no time either to examine footnotes or, after the smoke had cleared, for _post-mortem_ complaints. The trouble lay in the fact that the author did not give Johnny the necessary information at the essential time.

It seems that neither piety nor wit will suffice to locate post-offices or direct experiments or explain machines. Better than either of these is the ability to make the mechanism, the process, the organization transparently clear, with each bit of information given at exactly the proper moment. For, since the object of such explanation as attempts to make clear is primarily information, the main quality of the writing should be clearness. Everything that stands in the way of this quality should be made to surrender to explanation. If the subject is itself interesting or remarkable, the facts may speak for themselves, as in an account of the nebular hypothesis; if the subject is merely common, as for example the force pump, the primary aim should be clearness. Pleasing presentation, however desirable, is secondary. No amount of pleasant reading on the subject of making photographs, the working of periscopes, the organization of literary societies will be of value if at the end the reader has not a well-ordered idea of how to go to work or of how the thing of which you treat is operated.

General Cautions

For these reasons certain principles of caution can be laid down. The first caution is, do not take too much for granted on the reader's part. First of all take stock of your reader and his knowledge of the subject and then write in accordance with your discoveries. If, in explaining the bicycle to a Fiji Islander, you fail to note that the two wheels are placed tandem rather than parallel, he may form a thoroughly queer notion of the machine. And your protest, "Why, I supposed he would _know that_!" is in vain. This caution does not mean that you must adopt a tone of condescension, must say, "Now children," and patter on, but that you will not omit any important part of the explanation unless you are sure that your reader is acquainted with it. The second caution, which is corollary with the first, is that you do not substitute for the gaps in the written information the silent knowledge that is in your own mind. The danger here lies in the fact that, knowing your subject well, you will write part of it and think the rest. Having for a long time practiced the high hurdles, for example, when you come to explain them you will run the paradoxical risk of being so thoroughly acquainted with the subject that you will actually omit much vital information and thus make your treatment thin. And the third caution is, avoid being over technical. An expert can always understand plain English; a layman, on the other hand, can soon become hopelessly bewildered in a sea of technicalities. Treatment of technicalities demands sense, therefore; when a term is reasonably common its presence can do no harm, but when a term is known only to the few, substitute for it, when writing for the many, plain English, or define your terms.

Centralization

Perhaps the greatest lack in expositions of this type is centralization. A reader rises from the account of a cream separator or a suspension bridge or the feudal system with the feeling that many cogs and wires and wheels and spouts and lords and vassals are involved, but without a clear correlation of all these elements into a clear and simple whole. Now a suspension bridge is much more organic than a scrap heap, and the feudal system than a city directory. It is for you as the writer to make this clear, to show that all the things are related, that they affect each other and interact. For this purpose you will find the greatest help in the device of ascertaining what the root principle is, the fundamental notion or purpose of the subject that you are explaining. For example, to make your reader see the relation of the various parts of the tachometer you should discover and present the fact that the machine relies primarily on the principle of centrifugal force as affecting the mercury that whirls as the automobile moves. Once this principle is grasped by the reader, the various parts of the mechanism assume their proper places and relations and become clear. Now obviously this root principle is to be sought _in the subject itself_; here is no place for an author to let his fancy roam where it will without keeping an eye steadily upon the machine or process. You are trying to explain the machine, not some vague or fanciful idea of what the machine might be if it were like what your fancy says; therefore, in the words of the good old advice, which comes handy in most writing, "keep your eye on the object," which in this case will be the machine or the process or the organization. And the more complicated the mechanism or process, the more necessary will be the discovery of the root principle--a printing machine, for instance, with its amazing complexity, will be helped wonderfully by such a device, and the reader will welcome the device even more than he would in an explanation of how, for example, a fountain pen works--though he will be glad for it in any case.

This root principle, nucleus, core, kernel can often be stated in one sentence. You can say, for instance, in speaking of bridges like those across the East River, "A suspension bridge consists of a roadway hung by wires from huge cables which are anchored at the ends and are looped up over one or more high supports in the stream." This sentence may not be immediately and entirely clear, but it serves to show quickly what relations parts have to each other, and to it the reader may refer in his mind when detailed treatment of the maze of wires and bolts becomes bewildering. Often this sentence need not be expressed alone; it should always be thought out in the writer's mind.

If it is expressed, such a sentence may stand at the beginning as a sort of quick picture, or it may come at the end as a collecting statement of what has preceded, or at any point where it seems to be of the most value to the reader. It may take various forms as, for example, it may state in essence how the machine or process works, is operated, or what it is for, or of what it consists. If it occurs at the end as a summary, it may be a summary of _facts_ in which the points made or the parts described are enumerated, or it may be a summary of _essence_, in which the significance or the principle of the thing is stated. In the following examples the sentence will be found near the beginning in both cases, and in the nature of a statement of the principle of operation.

Of tools used for cutting, perhaps the most remarkable of all is the oxygen blow-pipe. This is a little tool something the shape of a pistol--which a workman can easily hold in one hand. It is connected by a flexible tube to a cylinder of compressed oxygen, and by another tube to a supply of coal-gas. Thus a jet of oxygen and a jet of coal-gas issue from the nozzle at the end of the blow-pipe, and, mingling there, produce a fine point of flame burning with intense heat. If this be directed upon the edge of a thick bar or plate of steel it will in a few seconds melt a tiny groove in it, and, if the pipe be moved along, that groove can be developed into a cut and in that way very thick pieces of steel can be severed quite easily. The harder the steel, too, the more easily it is cut, for hard steel contains more carbon than soft, and that has a tendency to burn with oxygen, actually increasing the heat of the flame. A bar of iron a foot long can be cut right down the center in fifty seconds. It is said that scientific burglars have been known to use blow-pipes to open safes with; but a very strange thing about them is that, while they will cut hard steel of almost any thickness almost like butter, they are completely baffled by a thin sheet of copper. The reason of this is that copper is such a good conductor of heat that the heat of the flame is conducted quickly away, and so the part in contact with the flame never becomes hot enough to melt.[55]

[55] Thomas W. Corbin: _Engineering of To-day_. By courtesy of the publishers, Seeley, Service & Co., London.

* * * * *

There is another very efficient substitute for the dynamite cartridge, which may abolish blasting even in hard-rock mines. It is a hydraulic cartridge, or an apparatus that works on the principle of the hydraulic jack. Unlike dynamite, which consists of a lot of stored and highly concentrated energy that is let fly to do what destruction it may, the hydraulic cartridge is absolutely inert and devoid of potential energy when placed in the blast-hole. Only after it is in place is the energy applied to it. This it gradually accumulates until it acquires enough to burst open the rock without wasting a lot of energy in pulverizing it. The apparatus is under the direct control of the miner all the time. There is nothing haphazard about its operation.

The cartridge consists of a strong steel cylinder, made in various sizes. Disposed at right angles to the length of the cylinder are a number of pistons, or rams, that may be forced out laterally by pumping water into the cylinder. The cartridge is introduced into the blast-hole with the rams retracted. Then a quick-action pump is operated to move the rams out so that they come in contact with the rock. After this, by means of a screw-lever a powerful pressure is exerted upon the water, which forces out the rams until the rock gives way under the strain.[56]

[56] Taken from _The Century Magazine_ by permission of the publishers, The Century Co.

Processes

The development of this kind of exposition will vary somewhat according to the nature of the subject. If you are explaining a process--how to make a campfire, or how to find the width of an unbridged river, or how to make bread--you will naturally follow the chronological order and tell what to do first, what second, and so on. If several materials are to be used in the process, you may enumerate them all at the beginning, for collection, or state them piece by piece as they are needed. For example, you may say, "In making a kite you will need so many pieces of such wood of such and such sizes, with paper or cloth, strong twine, glue, nails, etc." You may cast the whole process into a personal mood by telling how some one, perhaps yourself, did it on a previous occasion. This method, if it is judiciously used, adds interest. You must take care not to seem to encumber obviously simple directions, however, with the machinery of personal narrative so that the whole account is longer than it should be. In case you are treating some process in which mistakes are easily made, you can often help the reader by showing how some one--preferably yourself--did it wrongly and thereby came to grief. Or you can state concisely what not to do if there is chance for mistake. In developing films, for example, you may warn the reader not to mix any of the Hypo with the Fixing Bath; in picking his apples not to break the twigs of the tree; in paddling a canoe through rapids not to become excited. Note how, in the account which follows of how to handle a punt, the author makes the material quite human and personal--to the reader's pleasure.

You may get yourself a tub or a working-boat or a wherry, a rob-roy or a dinghy, for every craft that floats is known on the Thames; but the favorite craft are the Canadian canoe and the punt. The canoe you will be familiar with, but your ideas of a punt are probably derived from a farm-built craft you have poled about American duck-marshes--which bears about the same relationship to this slender, half-decked cedar beauty that a canal-boat bears to a racing-shell.

During your first perilous lessons in punting, you will probably be in apprehension of ducking your mentor, who is lounging among the cushions in the bow. But you cannot upset the punt any more than you can discompose the Englishman; the punt simply upsets you without seeming to be aware of it. And when you crawl dripping up the bank, consoled only by the fact that the Humane Society man was not on hand with his boat-hook to pull you out by the seat of the trousers, your mentor will gravely explain how you made your mistake. Instead of bracing your feet firmly on the bottom and pushing with the pole, you were leaning on the pole and pushing with your feet. When the pole stuck in the clay bottom, of course it pulled you out of the boat.

Steering is a matter of long practice. When you want to throw the bow to the left, you have only to pry the stern over to the right as you are pulling the pole out of the water. To throw the bow to the right, ground the pole a foot or so wide of the boat, and then lean over and pull the boat up to it. That is not so easy, but you will learn the wrist motion in time. When all this comes like second nature, you will feel that you have become a part of the punt, or rather that the punt has taken life and become a part of you.

A particular beauty of punting is that, more than any other sport, it brings you into personal contact, so to speak, with the landscape. In a few days you will know every inch of the bottom of the Char, some of it perhaps by more intimate experience than you desire. Over there, on the other curve of the bend, the longest pole will not touch bottom. Fight shy of that place. Just beyond here, in the narrows, the water is so shallow that you can get the whole length of your body into every sweep. As for the shrubbery on the bank, you will soon learn these hawthorns, if only to avoid barging into them. And the Magdalen chestnut, which spreads its shade so beautifully above the water just beyond, becomes quite familiar when its low-reaching branches have once caught the top of your pole and torn it from your hands.[57]

[57] John Corbin: _An American at Oxford_. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, publishers.

Mechanisms

If you are explaining a mechanism, you may follow different orders. You may explain chronologically, showing what happens first, what next, and so on, as in the printing press you would show what happens first to the paper, and then what processes follow. Here you must be careful not to give a long list at the beginning of all the different parts of the machine. Such a list bewilders and is rarely of any real value. Instead of saying, for example, that a reaper and binder consists of a reel, a knife, a canvas platform and belt, etc., you will do well to simplify at the beginning, and say, perhaps, that from the front the machine looks like a dash with an inverted V at one end: thus: ____[Greek: L] and then go on to relate the various parts to this simple scheme. The brief paragraph which follows illustrates the principle in a slight space.

The stone-boat is a peculiar vehicle incidental to America, and has nothing whatsoever to do with the water. It resembles a huge metal tray or shovel hauled by a team of horses. And its special path is as novel as the boat itself. It is only two wooden lines fashioned from tree-logs adzed roughly flat on the upper side, well greased, and laid promiscuously and roughly parallel on the ground. The stone is prized and levered on to the tray, and hauled with a speed, which, bearing in mind the primitive road, is astonishing, to the dump, where a sharp swing round on the part of the horses pitches the mass down the bank.[58]

[58] F. A. Talbot: _The Making of a Great Canadian Railway_. By courtesy of the publishers, Seeley, Service & Co., London.

If you prefer, you can use, instead of the chronological order, the device of showing what the need was for the machine and how it fills the need, or what the object of the machine is and how it accomplishes that object. An explanation of the cotton gin might present the woeful waste of time before the gin was invented and then show how the invention annuls that waste. One of the periscope might state the object of invisible observation and then show how, by tubes and mirrors, this object is accomplished. Or finally, as a third general method, you may state the root principle and then expand in detail. With this scheme you might state that the piano is an instrument in which felt hammers strike metal strings that are stretched across a sounding board, and then go on to show the significance, as related to this notion, of keys, pedals, music rest, and other details. Often this method is the most helpful for a reader, since it gives him at once a nucleus of theory round which he can group the details with immediate or rapid understanding of their relations and significance. In so simple a machine as the ice cream freezer to introduce names like "dasher" without previous warning may result in momentary confusion, whereas if the principle is stated at the beginning, and the reader knows that the object is to bring the cream into contact with the coldest possible _surface_ so as to produce speed in freezing, the "dasher," when mentioned, is at once significant. The description and explanation of a track-layer, which follows, is so made as to be both clear and interesting.

The track-layer is one of the most interesting tools with which the railway-builder carries out his epoch-making work. It is a cumbersome, ungainly, and fearsome-looking implement, but with a convincing, grim, and business-like appearance. From the front it resembles a gallows, and for this reason has earned the sinister sobriquet of "the gibbet" among certain members of the engineering fraternity. On the front of the truck there is a lofty rectangular scaffolding of rigid construction, strongly based and supported for the hard, heavy work it has to perform. A jib runs forward into the air from the bottom of either leg to meet at the outer extremity and to form a derrick. The car on which the structure is mounted carries a number of small steam-engines, each of which has to perform a particular function, while at the commanding point high up on the rectangular construction is a small bridge, from which the man in control of the machine carries out his various tasks and controls the whole machine. Ropes, hooks, and pulleys are found on every side, and though, from the cursory point of view, it appears an intricate piece of mechanism, yet its operation is absurdly simple.

This machine constitutes the front vehicle of the train, with the bridge facing the grade and the projecting boom overhanging the track. Immediately behind are several trucks piled high with steel rails, fish-plates to secure connection between successive lengths of rails, spikes, and other necessaries. Then comes the locomotive, followed by a long train of trucks laden with sleepers. On the right-hand side of the train, level with the deck of the trucks, extends a continuous trough, with its floor consisting of rollers. It reaches from the rearmost car in the train to 40 or 50 feet in advance of the track-layer, the overhanging section being supported by ropes and tackle controlled from the track-layer truck whereby the trough can be raised and lowered as desired.

The appliance is operated as follows. The engine pushes the fore-part of the train slowly forward until the end of the last rail laid is approached. The rollers in the trough, which is in reality a mechanical conveyor, are set in motion. Then the gangs of men stationed on the rear trucks with might and main pitch the bulky sleepers into the trough. Caught up by the rollers, the ties are whirled along to the front of the train, and tumble to the ground in a steady, continuous stream. As they emerge, they are picked up by another gang of men who roughly throw them into position on to the grade. Other members of the gang, equipped with axes and crowbars, push, pull, haul, and prize the ties into their relative positions and at equal distances apart.

When thirty or forty sleepers have been deposited in this manner, a pair of steel rails are picked up by the booms from the trucks behind the track-layer, are swung through the air, and lowered. As they near the ground ready hands grasp the bar of steel, steady it in its descent, and guide it into its correct position. The gauge is brought into play dexterously, and before one can realize what has happened the men are spiking the pair of rails to the sleepers, have slipped the bolts into the fish-plates connecting the new rail with its fellow already in position, and the track-layer has moved slowly forward some 13 or 16 feet over a new unit of track, meanwhile disgorging further sleepers from the mouth of the trough.

The noise is deafening, owing to the clattering of the weighty baulks of timber racing over the noisy rollers in the conveyor, the rattle of metal, and the clang-clang of the hammers as the men with powerful strokes drive home the spikes fastening the rail to its wooden bed, and the hissing and screeching of steam. Amid the silence of the wilderness the din created by the track-layer at work is heard for some time before you can gain a glimpse of the machine train. The men speak but little, for the simple reason that they could scarcely make themselves heard if they attempted conversation. Each moves with wonderful precision, like a part of an intricate machine.

In this way the rail creeps forward relentlessly at a steady, monotonous pace. The lines of sleepers and rails on the track disappear with amazing rapidity, and the men engaged in the task of charging the conveyor-trough and swinging the rails forward, appear to be in a mad race with steam-driven machinery. The perspiration rolls off their faces in great beads, and they breathe heavily as they grasp and toss the weighty strips of timber about as if they were straws. There is no pause or diminution in their speed. If they ease up at all the fact becomes evident at the front in the course of a few seconds in a unanimous outcry from the gangs on the grade for more material, which spurs the lagging men on the trucks behind to greater effort. The only respite from the exhausting labor is when the trucks have been emptied of all rails or sleepers and the engine has to run back for a further supply, or when the hooter rings out the time for meals or the cessation of labor.

The track-layer at work is the most fascinating piece of machinery in the building of a large railway. The steam-shovel may be alluring, and the sight of a large hill of rock being blown sky-high may compel attention, but it is the mechanical means which have been evolved to carry out the last phase--the laying of the metals--that is the most bewitching. One can see the railway growing in the fullest sense of the word--can see the thin, sinuous ribbon of steel crawling over the flat prairie, across spidery bridges, through ravine-like rock-cuts, gloomy tunnels, and along lofty embankments. Now and again, when the apparatus has secured a full complement of hands, and every other factor is conducive, the men will set to work in more deadly earnest than usual, bent on setting up a record. Races against time have become quite a craze among the crews operating the track-layer on the various railways throughout America, and consequently the men allow no opportunity to set up a new record, when all conditions are favorable, to slip by.[59]

[59] F. A. Talbot: _The Making of a Great Canadian Railway_. By courtesy of the publishers, Seeley, Service & Co., London.

Organizations

If you are explaining an organization you may again use the chronological order and show how the organization came about as it is, how for example the Federal Reserve Board was appointed for certain reasons each of which has its correspondent in the constitution of the board. Such a method is useful in explaining the feudal system, the college fraternity, the national convention of a political party. Or, finally, you can state the root idea, sometimes appearing as purpose or significance, and then expand it. A labor union, thus treated, is a body of men who individually have slight power of resisting organized capital, but can collectively obtain their rights and demands.

Aids in Gaining Clearness

Clearness then, through centralization, is the all-important necessity of expositions of this type. To aid in gaining this quality you will do well to avoid technical terms, as has already been mentioned. You can make use of graphic charts when they will be useful, so long as they are not merely a lazy device for escaping the task of writing clearly. Some machines, such as the printing press or the rock drill, defy explanation without charts and plates. Textbooks often wisely make use of this device. You can also use familiar illustrations, as the one here used of the reaper and binder or the one likening Brooklyn Bridge to a letter H with the sides far apart, the cross piece extended beyond the sides, and a cable looped over the tops of the sides. Such illustrations at the beginning of the whole or sections are useful in helping the reader to visualize. Another important aid to clearness is to take care that nothing is mentioned for which the way has not been prepared. Just as in a play we insist that the action of a character be consistent, that a good man do not suddenly commit wanton murder, and that the villain do not suddenly appear saintly, so we rightly demand that we be not suddenly confronted with a crank, wheel, office, or step in a process which bewilders us. You ought to write so that your reader will never pucker his brow and say, "What is this?" And when a detail has some special bearing, introduce it at the significant point. To have told little Johnny in the beginning that he must keep his chemicals away from flame would have avoided explosion and death; to declaim loudly after the explosion is of no value. And finally, from a purely rhetorical standpoint, make careful transition from section to section so that the reader will know exactly where divisions occur, and make liberal use of summaries whenever they may be useful without being too cumbersome.

Notice how, in the following paragraph, the writer has given the gist of the machines so that, if he wishes to expand and make a full treatment, he will still have a nucleus which will considerably facilitate the reader's understanding.

Continuous dredges are of four types--the ladder, the hydraulic, the stirring, and the pneumatic dredges. The ladder dredge excavates the bottom by means of a series of buckets running with great velocity along a ladder. The buckets scrape the soil at the bottom, raise the débris to the surface and discharge it into barges or conveyors so as to send it to its final destination. The hydraulic dredge removes the material from the bottom by means of a large centrifugal pump which draws the materials, mixed with water, into a suction tube and forces them to distant points by means of a long line of pipes. The stirring dredges are those employed in the excavation of soils composed of very finely divided particles; they agitate the soils and the material thus brought into suspension is carried away by the action or current of water. The pneumatic dredges are those in which the material from the bottom is forced into the suction tube and thence into the discharging pipe, by the action of continuous jets of compressed air turned upward into the tube.[60]

[60] Charles Prelini: _Dredges and Dredging_. By courtesy of the publishers, D. Van Nostrand Company, New York City.

Notice also the care with which the author of the paragraph which follows and explains the phonopticon states early in his treatment the scientific basis for the operation of the machine, without knowing which a reader would be hopelessly confused to understand how the machine could possibly do what the author says it does.

The element selenium, when in crystalline form, possesses the peculiar property of being electro-sensitive to light. It is a good or bad conductor of electricity according to the intensity of the light that falls upon it, and its response to variations of illumination is virtually instantaneous.

This interesting property has been utilized in a wide variety of applications, ranging from the transmission of a picture over a telegraph line to the automatic detection of comets; but by far the most marvelous application is that of the phonopticon.... It is an apparatus that will actually read a book or a newspaper, uttering a characteristic combination of musical sounds for every letter it scans.

The principle of operation is not difficult to understand. A row of, say, three tiny selenium crystals is employed, each crystal forming part of a telephone circuit leading to a triple telephone-receiver. In each circuit there is an interrupter that breaks up the current into pulsations, or waves, of sufficient frequency to produce a musical note in the receiver. The frequency differs in the three circuits, so that each produces its characteristic pitch. Although the conductivity of selenium is increased by intensifying its illumination, the electrical connections in this apparatus are so chosen that while the crystals are illuminated no sounds are heard in the telephone, but when the crystals are darkened, there is an instant audible response.

The apparatus is placed upon the printed matter that is to be read, with the row of crystals disposed at right angles to the line of type. The paper directly under the crystals is illuminated by a beam of light. This is reflected from the unprinted part of the paper with sufficient intensity to keep the telephone quiet, but when the crystals are moved over the black printing, the light is diminished, and the crystals lose their conductivity, causing the telephone to respond with a set of sounds which vary with the shape of the letter. Suppose the apparatus was being moved over the