A steam─shovel crew has a good deal more pride in its work, and will continue working under more disagreeable weather conditions, than a drilling gang; and when drilling in front of a shovel, severe weather conditions may cause the drilling work to stop without interrupting the operation of the shovel. If, then, the drills are working too close to the shovel, the shovel may catch them. On the other hand, it is unwise to blast far ahead of the shovel, for a number of reasons. In the first place, there is no advantage in investing money in drill holes, except to avoid such a contingency as outlined above. In the second place, it is impossible to tell how effective the blasting has been until the shovel has attacked the broken rock; and if the blasting is done far ahead of the shovel, poor blasting may go undetected until an immense amount of financial damage has been done. To cite a specific instance──On a recent piece of important work, a cut several hundred feet long was drilled to a depth of supposedly fourteen feet, and blasted with more or less unsatisfactory results. The steam shovel was then put in, and excavated to a depth of five or six feet. The subsequent cut of from eight to nine feet deep had to be entirely re─drilled and re─blasted. The drilling in the already partly broken rock was immensely difficult, the drills sticking a great deal and a good many of the holes having to be abandoned; while the blasting was unsatisfactory because of the fissures. The rapid reorganization of work can be furthered by the issuance of _special instructions to foremen in the field_. This practice has been admirably followed by Frank B. Gilbreth, and is described in his "Field System." As illustrations of such orders, are the following to drill and blasting foremen, issued on some recent work: INSTRUCTIONS TO FOREMEN RULES FOR DRILLING── Drill foremen are requested to do their utmost to enforce the following rules for drilling: 1. Each drill at the beginning of a hole is to be supplied with a complete set of sharp bits and a pump, which will be laid alongside of the drill tripod by the drill tender, under the directions of the foreman. 2. As soon as a hole is finished, one of the muckers at the direction of the foreman will assist the two drill runners to move the tripod; and the mucker under the direction of the foreman will then pump out the hole that has just been completed. 3. The foreman will then personally, with a wooden rod, measure the depth of the hole, and punch said depth on the drillers' card, the mucker placing a well─made round plug in the hole and hammering it home. 4. Foremen will see that the drills are so distributed as to keep them as near as possible to the manifold, from which the steam supply is taken.