Book Description

Excerpt from Report of the Proceedings of the Annual Convention of the American Railway Master Mechanics Association, 1886 I recognize your Association as having done more, perhaps. M develop the country than any other Association in our land. Themillionaire may spend his millions in building railroads and look for large profits, but without your brains and your intelligence to carry on all the details of his work I am afraid his profits would not amount to anything. So far as our city is concerned, I don't know that we can show you anything very original or new in the way of improvements. We have got what we consider a very finely constructed water works, but other cities have precisely the same, and I don't know that we excel other cities in that respect. Our sewerage system, I believe, is more perfect than that of any other city in the country. Boston proper, some time ago, had about seventy sewer outlets pouring all its filth around the city. Now we carry that out to the ocean at an expense of over six millions of dollars, and we al ready feel the benefit of it. Our health department shows that the life of our citizens has been prolonged by it three or four years; that is, the death rate is less to-day by three or four on the thou sand than it was years ago before that great improvement was made. I see that one of the papers to be read before your Association is Shop Tools and Machinery. That is a subject that I think you can enlighten us upon. Boston is the only city in the country, I might say, that does not encourage mechanics. On every en gine, on every little tool that a mechanic uses, Boston places a tax I don't believe in it, and a great many of us don't, and I hope you will show us the advantage of such things so that we will make a change in that respect and encourage you mechanics to come here without taxing your intelligence, your boilers or your tools, but en courage you to go to work among us to build up the industries of the city. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.