[Illustration:  “THE SMITH A MIGHTY MAN IS HE.”]

* * * * *

BURNING BRICK WITH CRUDE OIL FUEL.

At the present time there is not the least reason why either wood, coal, or any other solid fuel should be used for the burning of brick.  This style of burning brick belongs to a past age.  The art of brickmaking has made tremendous progress during the past quarter of a century.  It is no longer the art of the ignorant; brains, capital, experience, science, wide and general knowledge, must in these days be the property of the successful brick manufacturer.  There are some such progressive brick manufacturers in Chicago, who use neither coal nor wood in the drying or burning of their clay products.  Crude oil is the fuel which they employ, and with this fuel they obtain cheaper and better brick than do manufacturers who employ solid fuel.  Some of these manufacturers have expressed themselves as preferring to quit the brick business rather than return to the use of wood or coal as fuel in brick burning.

This shows plainly that progress in our art, when it does come, comes to remain.  It is true that crude oil for brick-burning purposes is not everywhere obtainable.  But there is a fuel which is even better than crude oil, namely, fuel gas, and which can be produced and employed on any brick yard at a saving of seventy-five per cent. over coal or other solid fuel.

The Rose process for making fuel gas gives a water gas enriched by petroleum.  Roughly, about half the cost of this gas as made at Bellefonte, Pa., was for oil.  The gas cost 6.68c. per 1,000 cu. ft., with oil at 21/4c. a gallon.  At double this price the gas would cost but 10c., and show that in practice, foot for foot, it equals natural gas.

Fuel gas means a larger investment of capital than does any of the other modes of brick burning, and is, therefore, not within the reach of the entire trade.  The cost of appliances for burning brick with crude oil is not very large, and as all grate bars, iron frames, and doors can be dispensed with in the use of crude oil fuel, the cost of an oil-burning equipment is but little in excess of an equipment of grates, etc., for coal-burning kilns.

At works using small amounts of fuel, especially if cost of fuel bears but a small proportion to total cost of the manufactured product, oil will be in the future very largely used.  It is clean, as compared with coal, can be easily handled, and when carefully used in small quantities, is safe.  There are several methods of burning oil that are well adapted to the use of brick manufacturers and other fuel consumers.

The Pennsylvania Railroad made some very thorough experiments on the use of petroleum in their locomotives, and while the results obtained are reported to have been satisfactory, it was the opinion of those having the experiments in charge that the demand for the Pennsylvania Railroad alone, were it to change its locomotives from coal to oil, would consume all the surplus and send up the price of oil to a figure that would compel a return to coal.