In the handling of scrap and junk the designing engineer has been strikingly ingenious, resourceful, and free with his expressions of resource. The cranes and other mechanical handling devices, which he has evolved, compel attention for the simple reason that they have been introduced to secure a reduction in the cost of moving the material. In this direction finality is impossible of attainment; the necessity to reduce the cost factor is so urgent and continuous. Creative effort, thus fostered, has achieved a distinct triumph during the past few years. It has evolved a new system of dealing with iron and steel, especially the waste, which is rapidly displacing all other methods which hitherto have held undisputed sway. I refer to the lifting-magnet. It was a British mind which first conceived the idea of harnessing the magnet to the wheels of the iron industry. Sir William Sturgeon saw no reason why the toy of our childhood days, the pin-attracting properties of which extended us infinite delight and provoked indescribable wonder, should not be devoted to the movement of ponderous masses of steel. So he made the experiment. But his noteworthy effort proved only partially successful. It did not fulfil expectations, not because the designer was wrong in his deductions, but because he conducted the evolution along fallacious lines. But his failure set men thinking. They followed up his reasonings and discovered why he did not record success. The British pioneer had been content to accept the magnet’s familiar form and to reproduce it upon a larger scale to fulfil his objective. This was why he failed. For such as application as he had in his mind’s eye a modification in design was imperative. The German and American experimentors, who followed in his footsteps, quickly realized this circumstance and accordingly abandoned the traditional horse-shoe form for a magnet of flat drum-like shape. In this modernized and materially changed form the lifting-magnet met with instant success. The Germans were the first to recognize its possibilities, and accordingly developed and popularized its utilization in accordance with their characteristic organized methods, with the result that it was not long before all the leading iron- and steel-works of the country were equipped therewith to their distinct commercial advantage.