Part 6

This is reckoned by "dry" assay, being two per cent. off from "wet." For the lead in the ore, 30 cents per unit up to 30 per cent., 40 cents up to 40 per cent., and 45 when over 40 per cent.; but both lead and copper will not be paid for in the same ore. From the total is deducted $20.00 as fee for treating it. For the assaying a capital laboratory of several rooms is provided, where two assayers and two chemists are continually busy. Every lot, as purchased, is kept separate and subjected to a homeopathic process of dilution, until a sample is obtained that represents most exactly the whole. The arrangements for crushing and sampling the ore are very complete, and a large number of lots can be handled at once. When the final sample has been reached it is subjected to a very careful assay, not only to determine what shall be paid for it, but to find out what are its qualities in relation to the process of smelting. This process requires a certain percentage of lead, a certain amount of silica, and a certain proportion of iron and lime in each charge. It is the duty of the assayers and chemists to ascertain precisely the proportions of these ingredients in the ore under consideration, in order to know how much lead, iron, lime or silica, to add in order to make a compound suitable to fuse thoroughly, even to the dissolution of the desperately refractory zinc and antimony; and which, also, shall yield up every particle of silver and gold. The iron and lime have usually to be added outright in this smelter; but the proper proportions of lead and silica are obtained by combining an ore deficient in one of these elements, but containing an excess of the other, with ores oppositely constituted. It is one of the advantages of the smelter at Pueblo, that, being centrally placed and down hill from every mining district, it can draw to its bins ores of every variety; thus it is able to mix to the greatest advantage, and in this economy and the attendant thoroughness of treatment, lie the possibilities (and actuality) of profit.

The lime for flux is procured three miles from town, and costs only $1.00 a ton, while every other smelter in the State must pay from $2.50 to $5.00. Its building-stone is a splendid quality of cream-tinted sandstone procured in the mesa only a short distance away. So widely satisfactory have been its results that the Pueblo smelter does the largest business of any in Colorado. I saw ore there from away beyond Silverton; from Ouray and the Lake City region; from the Gunnison country and the Collegiate range this side; from Leadville (competitive with Leadville's own smelters); from Silver Cliff and Rosita; and, finally, from numerous camps in the northern part of the State. The last was surprising; for it meant that all that weight of ore had been brought hither past the furnaces at Golden and Denver, because the owners realized more for it, in spite of excess of freight, than they could get at home. The superintendent told me that they handled more ore from Clear Creek county than all the other smelters of the State; and he explained it by showing how his nearness to fuel, and consequent saving in this important item, with his cheap labor, permitted him to bid and pay more than any other smelter could for choice ores, for which a premium is given. These facts were held in mind when, encouraged by the railway, the smelter was placed here, and the expectations of its projectors have been more than gratified. The present capacity of the establishment is 125 tons of ore a day in the fourteen blast furnaces, and 100 tons a day in nine large calcining furnaces. Expensive improvements, and of the most solid character, are being made constantly in all parts of the works. The most important of these has been the erection of machinery for refining the bullion, which has a capacity of twenty-five hundred tons a month, and is constructed on the best known principles. It has been customary in the West to send to New York the lead which results from silver refining; it is made into sheet-lead and leaden pipe, in which form it is bought by wholesale houses in Chicago and St. Louis, to be again sent to Colorado, at the rate of perhaps a thousand tons a year. Now it is proposed to keep at home the profits and freightage of this costly and heavy material in house construction. Machinery has therefore been added to make up all the lead into sheets, bars, and piping. This is done so cheaply, that Pueblo can now send it across the plains and undersell Chicago and St. Louis in the Mississippi valley. The supply largely exceeds the home demand, and a new export for this State has thus been created. Utah will henceforth yield a large portion of the bullion to be refined. Another experiment will be the refining of copper. There are various mines in New Mexico and Arizona--many of them worked in ancient days by the Spaniards--which supply a base form of metallic copper. This crude copper is now nearly all sent to Baltimore, and there refined and rolled. The New Mexico division of the Denver and Rio Grande will soon penetrate the region of some of these mines, while the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe makes others accessible. Side-tracks from both these roads run into the smelter's enclosure. To bring the copper here will therefore be an easy matter: and it can be produced in shape for commercial use much more cheaply than any Eastern factory is able to turn it out.

Another large factor in Pueblo's revival was the establishment there of the steel works. These are the property of the Colorado Coal and Iron company, composed of the leading men in the Denver and Rio Grande railway, so that, though the two corporations are distinct, their interests are closely allied. This powerful association was formed in 1879 by the consolidation of two or three other companies having similar aims, and it became the owner not only of the steel and iron works here, and of a great deal of real estate, but also of nearly all the mines of coal and iron now being developed in this State. Its capital is ten millions, and its principal offices are located at South Pueblo. It employs over two thousand men in its various enterprises, and is constantly enlarging its operations and perfecting its methods. Many of its coal banks will be referred to in other paragraphs of this volume. The ore derived from all its iron mines is exceptionally free from phosphorus, and therefore well adapted to the manufacture of steel. The subjoined analyses exhibit the character of these ores:

Metallic Phos- Mag- Manga- Iron. Silica. phorus. Lime. Alumina. nesia. nese. Sulphur. Placer 52.2 12.64 .051 5.70 3.6 3.12 .34 Trace. Salida 65.8 5.78 .015 .34 1.5 .81 .22 .014 Villa Grove 57.3 5.03 .019 1.87 .006

A conservative estimate places the amount of iron ore the company has developed at over two millions of tons. Besides these high-grade ores, there are others of an inferior grade, which, being mixed with mill-cinders, will produce the commoner sorts of pig-iron, suitable for foundry-work. Limestone, valuable as flux, is quarried from a ledge within seven miles of the furnace, with which it is connected by rail, and the supply is practically inexhaustible. Gannister and fire-clay, also, are found in abundance in the vicinity. With coal, coke, iron and all the furnace ingredients radiated about this point, which, at the same time is nearest to the Eastern forges whence must be brought the massive machinery to equip the works, it requires no second thought to perceive that South Pueblo offers altogether the most profitable site for vast factories like these.

Immediately following this decision, in the spring of 1879 a large tract of mesa-land was secured, beside the track of the Denver and Rio Grande railway, about a mile south of the Union Depot, where not only the foundations of the mills, but a village-site was laid out and numerous side-tracks were put down. Very soon the tall chimneys of the blast furnaces began to rise into the ken of the people of Pueblo. Simultaneously a large number of fine cottages were built as homes for workmen, and other structures were set on foot, among them a commodious hospital, for joint use of the mills and the railway company. It is a very pleasant, well-ordered and growing little town, known as Bessemer, and even now the space between it and the city is rapidly filling up. The present daily output of the blast furnaces is one hundred tons of pig-iron, but soon a twin furnace will double the productive capacity of the works. Besides the furnaces, the plant includes Bessemer steel converting works, a rolling and rail mill, 450 by 60 feet, a nail mill, a puddling mill and foundry. All of these establishments are in every way equal to the best of their kind in the East. The blast furnace is fifteen feet base and sixty-five feet high, with fire-brick, hot-blast stoves, and a Morris blowing engine. In the steel-converting works the arrangement of the plant is similar to that of the new Pittsburgh Bessemer Steel Company, which has given exceptionally good results. The rail mill plant consists of Siemen's heating furnaces and heavy blooming and rail trains, and the puddling and nail mills are equipped with the best modern machinery. At Denver the same company owns a rolling mill, where bar and railroad iron and mine rails are manufactured: these in the future will mainly be supplied from South Pueblo. The effect upon Colorado of this forging of native iron for home consumption must be very important. All iron and iron ware is nearly doubled in value by the necessarily high rates of freight across the plains. Manufacturing, now that the crude material can be obtained on the spot, is cheaper than importing, and in the wake of the blast furnace must follow a long train of iron industries. Already negotiations are on foot for the establishment of extensive stove works (a million of dollars was sent East last year from Colorado in payment for stoves alone), and the erection of car-wheel shops is also contemplated. Indeed, in this mining country, which also is a region that is rapidly filling up with large towns, the demand for manufactured iron of all sorts is very large. It is another step in the gradual movement of trade-centers westward.

A still clearer idea of the great value of its interests to the State, and of its local works to Pueblo may be obtained from the report of the productions of the Colorado Coal and Iron company for the year 1882 which, briefly summarized, aggregates as follows: Coal, 511,239 tons; coke, 92,770 tons; iron ores, 53,425 tons; merchant iron, mine rails, etc., 3,883 tons; castings, 2,752 tons; pig-iron, 24,303 tons; muck bar, in four months, 1,253 tons; steel ingots, eight months, 20,919 tons; steel blooms, eight months, 18,068 tons; steel rails, eight months, 16,139 tons; nails, four months, 16,158 kegs; and spikes, six months, 5,022 kegs.

The economy of location, and the successful results attending the establishment here of the great enterprises referred to, are attracting many others. During the past season one of Leadville's largest smelters, having been destroyed by fire, has been rebuilt at Pueblo, and more will naturally follow.

The mercantile part of the community, however, while admitting all the claims of the steel works and the smelter to their great and beneficent influence upon the destiny of the new town, puts forward its own claim to the credit of commencing the progressive movement. When, by the extensions of the railway into the back country of Colorado, merchants began to perceive that at Pueblo they could buy goods of precisely such grades as they desired a trifle more cheaply, and get them home a trifle more expeditiously, than by going to Denver or Kansas City, Pueblo began to feel the impulse of new commercial vigor. When it came to reckoning upon a whole year's purchases, the slight advantage gained in freight over Denver, to all southern and middle interior points, amounted to a very considerable sum. Here, far more than in the Eastern States, the freight charges must be taken into account by the country merchant; particularly in the provision business, where the staples are the heaviest articles, as a rule, and, at the same time, those on which the least profit accrues. This consideration, impressing itself more and more upon the good judgment of the mountain dealers, is bringing a larger and larger trade to Pueblo, until now she is beginning to boast herself mistress of all southern and middle Colorado and of northern New Mexico. She can not hope to compete with Denver for the northern half of the State, but she does not intend to lose her grip upon the great, rapidly-developing, money-producing San Juan, Gunnison and Rio Grande regions. And as the visitor sees the railway yards crowded with loaded freight trains destined for every point of the compass; notes the throng of laden carts in the furrowed streets; observes how every warehouse is plethoric with constantly changing merchandise, often stacked on the curbstone under the cover of a canvas sheet because room within doors can not be found; witnesses the temporary nature of so many scores of buildings for business and for domiciles, and learns how most of their owners are putting up permanent houses, multitudes of which are rising substantially on every side;--when he has caught the meaning of all this, he finds that Pueblo has an idea that her opportunities are great, and that she does not propose to neglect them in the least particular. There is much wealth there now, and more is being introduced by Eastern investors, or accumulated on the spot, not only in trade, but in the very extensive herds of cattle and sheep that center there. Yet this seems to be but the incipience of her prosperity,--a prosperity which rests on solid foundations, existing not alone in the industries I have catalogued and the trade which has centered there, but in the fact that values are not inflated and that the real property of the city is mortgaged to a remarkably small degree.

Pueblo, though I have treated it as a unit, really consists of two cities, having the rushing flood of the Arkansas between them. Each has water-works, and civic institutions separately, but I have no doubt this cumbersome duality will be done away with in time. It is on the South Pueblo side that the railways center at the Union Depot. The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe sends hither daily its trains from Kansas City, and hence the Denver and Rio Grande forwards its passengers northward to Denver, westward to Silver Cliff, Leadville, Salt Lake City and Ogden, and southward to El Moro, Alamosa, Del Norte, Durango, Silverton and Santa Fe. It is on this side, also, that the factories are, and that others will stand. Here, too, are being placed the great wholesale depots.

There is too much rush and dust and building and general chaos in the lowlands, where the business part of the town is to make a residence there as pleasant as it will be a few years later; but upon the high mesa, Whose rounded bluffs of gravel form the first break upon the shore of the great plains that extend thence in uninterrupted level to the Missouri River, a young city has grown up, which is admirable as a place for a home. Here are long, straight, well-shaded streets of elegant houses; here are churches and school buildings and all the pleasant appurtenances of a fine town, overlooking the city, the wooded valley of the Arkansas, the busy railway junctions, and the measureless plateaus beyond. One gets a new idea of the possibilities of a delightful home in Pueblo after he has walked upon these surprising highlands.

Nowhere, either, will you get a more inspiring mountain landscape--the far scintillations of the Sangre de Cristo; the twin breasts of Wahatoya; the glittering, notched line and clustering foothills of the Sierra Mojada; the great gates that admit to the upper Arkansas; and Pike's "shining mountain," surrounded by its ermined courtiers, only a little less in majesty than their prince.

V

OVER THE SANGRE DE CRISTO.

RALEIGH: Fain would I climb. But that I fear to fall,

ELIZABETH: If thy heart fail thee, Why, then, climb at all?

Toward the middle of one bright afternoon we were pulled out of Pueblo, our three cars having been attached to the regular south-bound express. We had fully discussed the matter, and determined to go on to the end of the track, or, more literally, to _one_ end--for there are many termini to this wide-branching system--on to the warm old plazitas and dreamily pleasant pueblos of New Mexico. Why not?

But so inconsequential and careless an "outfit" was this, that no sooner had our minds been fairly settled to the plan (while the shadow of the Greenhorn came creeping out toward Cuchara and we were heading straight into its gloom) than somebody proposed our spending the night quietly in Veta Pass.

This mountain pass and its "Muleshoe," dwarfing in interest the celebrated "Horseshoe curve" in Pennsylvania, because occupying far less space, just as the foot of a mule may be set within a horse's track--these have been famous ever since railroading in southern Colorado began, and naturally we did not like to go past them in the darkness. We wanted to see how the track was laid away around the head of the long ravine, whether it doubled upon itself in as close a loop as they said it did; and whether the train really climbed through the clouds about the brow of Dump Mountain, as the pictures represented. So we told the conductor to drop us.

It was dark by the time we had been left in good shape on the terrace-like siding in Veta Pass, and, weary with our swift run, we were quite ready to shut out the gathering shades and be merry over our dinner; but first, all eyes must watch the departing express begin its climb up Dump Mountain. Think of swinging a train round a curve of only thirty degrees, on a very stiff grade, and with a bridge directly in the center of the turn! That is what this audacious railway does every few hours in the "toe" of the Muleshoe. From our lonely night-gripped dot of a house on the wild hill side, we could see squarely facing us both the Cyclopean blaze of the fierce headlight, and the two watchful red eyes glaring scornfully from the rear platform; by that we knew that the train had doubled on its own length of only six cars. Then, with hoarse panting and grinding of tortured wheels and rails, the two powerful locomotives began to force their way up the hill side right opposite us, the slanting line of bright windows showing how amazingly steep a grade of two hundred and seventeen feet to the mile really is. The beam of the headlight thrust itself forward, not level, as is its wont, but aimed at a planet that glimmered just above a distant ghostly peak.

"Do you remember," murmurs the Madame in a low voice, as she stands with bated breath beside me; "do you remember how Thoreau advises one of his friends to 'hitch his chariot to a star'? Doesn't this scene come near his splendid ambition? Will that train stop short of the sky, do you think?"

Surely it seemed that it would not, for only when the stokers opened the doors of the laboring furnaces, and volumes of red light suddenly illumined the overhanging masses of smoke, touching into strange prominence for an instant the rocks and trees beside the engines, could we see that the train stood upon anything solid, or was moving otherwise than as a slow meteor passes athwart the midnight sky. It was easy to imagine that long line of uncanny lights a fiery motto emblazoned upon the side of the dark mountain, and to read in it, _Per aspera ad astra_.

Yet the scene was far from fanciful. It was very real, and a fine sight for a man interested in mechanical progress, to watch those great machines walk up that hill, spouting two geysers of smoke and sparks, and dragging the ponderous train slowly but steadily along its upward course. Now and again they would be lost behind the fringe of woods through which the track passed, and then we would see the cone-like, rugged spruces sharply outlined against the luminous volumes of smoke. A moment later and the train disappeared around Dump Mountain, with a sardonic wink of the red guard-lights at the last; but presently we had knowledge of it again, for a fountain of sparks and black smoke from the engines blotted out the scintillating sky just above the highest crest of the ridge.

"Suppose it had broken in two on that hill-side," remarks the Artist, as I am carving the roast, five minutes later.

"It wouldn't have mattered," is the reply. "I once saw a heavier train than that break on this very mountain, the three rear coaches parting company with the forward portion of the train."

"But wasn't that criminal carelessness?" cries the Madame, who is death on inattention to railway duties. I should hate to be a neglectful brakeman before her gray eyes as judge!

"Not at all," she is informed. "The cars were properly coupled with what, for all any one could see, was a sufficiently strong link, but the strain proved too great for the tenacity of the iron."

"Well, I suppose they went down the track a-flying, or else over the precipice."

"Not a bit of it. The two parts of the train stopped not more than twenty feet apart. When the accident occurred the engineer knew it instantly by the jerking of the bell-rope, and stopped short. As for the rear cars, they were brought to a standstill at once by means of the automatic brakes. I tell you they are a great institution, and indispensable to success on any road which has heavy grades to overcome."

"How do they operate?"

"Well, it is the Westinghouse patent and rather complicated. Better go out to-morrow and see the apparatus on the engine. It works somewhat in this manner: When the valve on the retort under each car is set in a particular way, the letting off of the 'straight' or ordinary air-brakes causes the compression of an exceedingly powerful spring on each set of brakes. If, however, you destroy the equilibrium by forcibly parting the air connection between that car and the locomotive, as of course occurs when a train breaks in two, the great springs are released and jam the brake-shoes hard against the wheels, gripping them with tremendous force. That's what happened instantly in this case, and those heavy cars, which otherwise would have carried their cargoes to almost certain destruction, halted in a single second."

"But--what if--" began our lady member in an alarmed tone; whereupon she was speedily interrupted by the learned gentleman who was dividing his time between dinner and lecture:

"My dear Madame, our cars, like all the rest on this admirably-guarded railway, are provided with the automatic apparatus I have described. Since it is useless to pretend to one's-self, or anybody else, that an accident will never happen, it is well to understand that every precaution known to intelligent management has been provided against any serious harm resulting when things do go wrong. In consideration of all which profound explanations I think we deserve a second glass of claret. My toast is: The Automatic Brake!"

And we all responded, "May it never be broken!"

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