Abroad at Home: American Ramblings, Observations, and Adventures of Julian StreetStreet, Julian
General
Abroad at Home: American Ramblings, Observations, and Adventures of Julian Street
Street, Julian
United States -- Description and travel; United States -- Social life and customs -- 1865-1918
We were taken in automobiles from one end of the city to the other. Down
by the docks we saw gigantic, strange machines, expressive of
Cleveland's lake commerce--machines for loading and unloading ships in
the space of a few hours. One type of machine would take a regular steel
coal car in its enormous claws and turn that car over, emptying the load
of coal into a ship as you might empty a cup of flour with your hand.
Then it would set the car down again, right side up, upon the track,
only to snatch the next one and repeat the operation.
Another machine for unloading ore would send its great steel hands down
into the vessel's hold, snatch them up filled with tons of the precious
product of the mines, and, reaching around backward, drop the load into
a waiting railroad car. The present Great Lakes record for loading is
held by the steamer _Corry_, which has taken on a cargo of 10,000 tons
of ore in twenty-five minutes. The record for unloading is held by the
_George F. Perkins_, from which a cargo of 10,250 tons of ore was
removed in two hours and forty-five minutes.
Some of the largest steamers of the Great Lakes may be compared, in
size, with ocean liners. A modern ore boat is a steel shell more than
six hundred feet long, with a little space set aside at the bows for
quarters and a little space astern for engines. The deck is a series of
enormous hatches, so that practically the entire top of the ship may be
removed in order to facilitate loading and unloading. As these great
vessels (many of which are built in Cleveland, by the way) are laid up
throughout the winter, when navigation on the Great Lakes is closed, it
is the custom to drive them hard during the open season. Some of them
make as many as thirty trips in the eight months of their activity, and
an idea of the volume of their traffic may be gotten from the statement
that "the iron-ore tonnage of the Cleveland district is greater than the
total tonnage of exports and imports at New York Harbor." One of the
little books about Cleveland, which they gave me, makes that statement.
It does not sound as though it could be true, but I do not think they
would dare print untruths about a thing like that, no matter how anxious
they might be to "boost." However, I feel it my duty to add that the
same books says: "Fifty per cent. of the population of the United States
and Canada _lies_ within a radius of five hundred miles of Cleveland."
* * * * *
I find that when I try to recall to my mind the picture of a city, I
think of certain streets which, for one reason or another, engraved
themselves more deeply than other streets upon my memory. One of my
clearest mental photographs of Cleveland is of endless streets of
homes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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