"
"I notice," Hamilton said, "that all the steel here is stored in bars
and rods. Do you buy it that way, or have you a rolling mill in
connection with the plant?"
"Buy it," the other said immediately. "You can't run a rolling mill at a
profit except on a large scale, and, anyway, this is too far from the
source of supply. We get our copper in ingots, but not our steel."
"I notice," the boy continued, fingering a long ticket attached to a
bundle of steel rods by a wire, "that you say here, 'Do not disturb
until report from laboratory is received.'"
"Certainly," said the other, "every order as it comes in is tested. We
have two laboratories, a physical and a chemical, and not a scrap of
material is used until it is found to be fully up to the specifications.
There's no guesswork there, but the most rigid scientific tests. That
keeps any poor material from slipping through.
"Now," he continued, "I'll show you what happens to those bars."
He led the way to a small building where the bars were cut into certain
recognized lengths for the men at the drop forges to handle.
"This forging shop," the manufacturer said, entering it as he spoke, "is
where most of the metal parts of the gun are first roughly shaped, and
this man is working on part of a cartridge ejector.
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