percentage of nitrogen and increases the hydrogen, thereby greatly enriching the gas. The temperature of the producer is kept down, diminishing the loss of heat by radiation through the walls, and in a large measure preventing clinkers.

Gas-producers promise to become a more important feature of our industrial works in the near future, and producer-gas must have the benefit of the same scientific study that is given to other forces, which, when intelligently directed and controlled, tend to greater economy and efficiency.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF FRANKLIN B. GOWEN.

BY ECKLEY B. COXE, DRIFTON, PA.

(Washington Meeting, February, 1890.)

SINCE our last meeting, the Institute has lost, by the death of Mr. Gowen, one of its most distinguished members. I shall only attempt in this place to give a brief account of his many accomplishments and achievements; but our records would certainly be incomplete without a recognition of the important influence which he exerted upon the mining and metallurgical industries of this country, and a testimony to his private virtues of character.

Although Mr. Gowen was best known as a great lawyer and as the head of a great railway corporation, he began his career, before he was of age, as the manager of a small anthracite blast-furnace at Shamokin, Northumberland County, Pennsylvania. He left this position, to engage on his own account in the mining of anthracite coal at Mt. Laffee, near Pottsville. This proved an unprofitable business, and, after the panic of 1857, he began the study of the law. As soon as he was admitted to the bar, he at once entered upon the active practice of his profession, and soon achieved an extraordinary success. In 1869 he was made President of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company, and he afterwards organized the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company, the largest coalmining corporation in the world. He became a member of this Institute during the first year after its organization, and remained a member until his death. He always took a deep interest in the work, and was prompt to co-operate by all means in his power in furthering the objects of the Institute.

Mr. Gowen was one of the first to recognize the great importance to both miner and consumer, of the proper utilization of the small

sizes of anthracite which, for many years, were thrown away in the culm-banks. While at the head of the Coal and Iron Company, he did much to bring such materials into general use. At the meeting of the Institute held in Philadelphia in June, 1876, he delivered an address of welcome, which not only was, like all his speeches, eloquent and graceful, but also acquired a permanent professional interest from its forcible discussion of the subject of the utilization of anthracite waste and its lucid explanation of the system for burning coal-dust, invented by Mr. John E. Wootten, an officer of the Reading Company. As is well known, Mr. Gowen introduced this device in the locomotives of the railroad which he controlled, and it is still extensively employed in connection with both locomotive and stationary boilers.

Mr. Gowen was thoroughly convinced of the value of scientific training, and in hearty sympathy with every endeavor to elevate the professional standard of engineers. This was the secret of his interest in the Institute, which he held to be an effective agency in that direction. As an employer of engineers, he selected men worthy of confidence, and then trusted and supported them loyally. The testimony of all who ever served under him, will be found unanimous in this respect, and, on the other hand, the record made by the scientific employees of the Reading Coal and Iron Company, proves that the confidence of its head was not misplaced or abused.

But Mr. Gowen's greatest claim to the admiration and gratitude of his countrymen was due to the courage, perseverance and skill with which he pursued and destroyed the organization of assassins, known as the Molly Maguires, terminated the reign of terror they had maintained in the anthracite regions, and inaugurated in its place an era of peace, safety and order, which has not yet passed away. The full measure of his merit in that undertaking, cannot be appreciated, without considering that he vindicated law as well as justice. The condition of affairs had become so intolerable that many citizens of the better class were seriously considering the formation of a "vigilance committee," to take the law into its own hands, and protect by violence the life and property which violence had put in daily peril. Without stopping to consider in what case this extreme resort might be justified, we must admit that it is an evil, even when it is a necessary one, and that, after the achievement of the main ends sought through such measures, there must follow a period during which the confidence of the citizen in the regular forms of law is weakened, to be restored by slow degrees only. Mr.

Gowen, when consulted in the matter, invariably and emphatically refused to take part in unlawful means of any kind, and maintained that the remedy should be, and could be, found in the regular proceedings of the established courts of justice. To the demonstration of this proposition he devoted his great abilities with a splendid audacity, pertinacity and acuteness, risking his life freely, and knowing neither discouragement nor rest until he had brought to trial, conviction and execution, the chiefs and agents of the conspiracy. The moral effect of his campaign was worth that of a hundred vigilance committees. It is gratefully recognized to-day in thousands of peaceful homes throughout the coal-mining districts of Eastern Pennsylvania, and, indeed, I should scarcely be guilty of exaggeration if I declared that the example set by Franklin B. Gowen, in the suppression of anarchy and crime by the ordinary methods of civilized government, has been an example to the friends of order and justice throughout the world.

Of his personal character, I hardly dare trust myself to speak. For nearly a quarter of a century, he was one of my closest and dearest friends, as well as my trusted legal adviser in all my complicated business relations. He was the soul of honor, a gentleman of the highest and best, type-possessed of a courage both moral and physical, that I have never seen equalled. I esteem it one of the greatest privileges of my life to have known so intimately a man of such a high sense of duty, and one so truly appreciative of the true distinction between right and wrong. Against opponents who were strong and well able to take care of themselves, he was an uncompromising adversary; but towards the poor and weak he had a tenderness almost womanly. Of his innumerable kindnesses to the unfortunate, none save himself ever knew more than a small part; but many have come to my knowledge in various indirect ways.

His love for home and family was deep and strong, and his private life was spotless.

Born February 9, 1836, and dying December 14, 1889, he compressed into a life that scarcely passed its prime a wonderful record of persistent activity. At a comparatively recent period, he had resigned his presidency of the Reading Company, and had resumed the practice of his profession as a lawyer, with every prospect of repeating and surpassing the brilliant successes of earlier years. The tragedy of his premature death has inflicted upon his friends and his country an unspeakable loss.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF WILLIAM R. JONES.

BY R. W. RAYMOND, NEW YORK CITY.

(Ottawa Meeting, October, 1889.)

THE sudden death of Captain Jones, September 28, 1889, became known to his fellow-members on the eve of the Ottawa meeting of the Institute; and at that meeting, Mr. Charles Albert Ashburner, of Pittsburgh, expressed with unaffected feeling and unpremeditated eloquence the sorrow of all. Mr. Ashburner subsequently undertook to revise and extend, for publication in the Transactions, the remarks he had made at Ottawa; but death surprised him also, in the midst of his labors; and it has become my duty and privilege to prepare from the memoranda he left behind, the present brief and inadequate notice. To me, who knew and loved them both, this task of double sorrow recalls them both, with a peculiar sense of presence and of absence. They seem to speak from another land, not far away, yet not with human voices-like an echo and its echo.

William Richard Jones was born in Luzerne county, Pennsylvania, February 23, 1839. His father was Rev. John G. Jones, a Welsh minister, who had immigrated to the United States in 1832. William was the eldest son, and his father's failing health made it necessary for him to begin early the work of self-support. At the age of ten, he was apprenticed to the Crane Iron company, of Catasauqua, and in this humble capacity entered upon the profession in which he was to become famous. Unquestionably, 'the thorough acquaintance with all details, acquired by working his way from the bottom to the top, was one secret of the conspicuous executive ability which characterized him in the height of his career.

According to a letter from Mr. J. H. Geer, Assistant Chief Engineer of the Cambria Iron Company, Mr. Jones entered the service of that company in 1858 or 1859 as a machinist, and continued to work in that capacity until July, 1862, when he enlisted as a private in the 133d Regiment of Pennsylvania Volunteers, in which he afterwards commanded a company. The regiment was mustered out of service in 1863, and Captain Jones re-enlisted in the 194th

Pennsylvania. After his final discharge, he resumed his connection with the Cambria Iron Company, and became assistant to George Fritz, the brilliant mechanical engineer, then in charge of its works at Johnstown. Until Mr. Fritz's death, Captain Jones was busy under his directions in designing, erecting and perfecting the great Bessemer blooming-mill, and other plants of the company.

This position he left to take the place, first of master mechanic, and then of general superintendent, of the Edgar Thomson Steel Works at Braddock, near Pittsburgh. I believe his selection for this trust was due in no small degree to the admiration and confidence of his staunch friend, Alexander L. Holley, who, as designing and consulting engineer of all the great Bessemer works, was brought into contact with the ablest men in that department, and was accustomed to rate Captain Jones as one of the best practical administrators among them.

It was under Captain Jones's direction that the famous blastfurnaces, A, B, C, D, E, F and G, of the Edgar Thomson plant, were erected. As is well-known, an outburst of molten iron and cinder from one of these furnaces inflicted the injuries of which, after lingering two days, he died.

Like all mechanical engineers engaged in the daily routine of administration, Captain Jones devised and executed many things, as the ordinary incidents of duty, for which professional inventors would have taken patents, and it is rather in the works he constructed or re-constructed than in any official record of inventions that the evidence of his fertile ingenuity is to be sought. Yet the number and importance of the patents issued to him is not insignificant, as the following list, for the completeness of which I cannot vouch, may testify:

1876. Device for operating Bessemer ladles.

1876. Improvements in hose-couplings.

1876. Fastenings for Bessemer converters.

1876. Washers for ingot-moulds.

1877. Hot-beds for blending rails.

1878. Apparatus for compressing ingots.

1881. Cooling roll-journals and shafts.

1886. Feeding appliance for rolling-mills.

1886. Manufacture of railroad-bars.

1888. Apparatus for removing and setting rolls.

1888. Housings for rolls.

1889. Apparatus for removing ingots from moulds.