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Many Massachusetts businesses were hurriedly telling employees not to bother coming into the office on Friday during the expected blizzard, while others said they were leaving it up to workers to decide whether they can make it.
With the MBTA shutting down at 3:30 Friday afternoon, including commuter rail lines, and Governor Deval Patrick asking commuters to stay off the roads, most corporate work sites will probably be empty anyway on Friday.
Jones Lang LaSalle, a commercial real estate firm, sent its Boston employees an e-mail in big red letters telling them not to go to the downtown Boston office Friday unless absolutely necessary.
"We're all jamming two days of work into one," said spokesman Stephen Steinberg, who recalls nearly getting stranded during the Blizzard of 1978. "People will still be working, but much of it will be virtual work from home."
In Needham, software maker PTC Inc. will close its campus Friday and is telling the 1,000 or so people who work there to work from home, if possible.
Another major technology employer, EMC Corp. of Hopkinton, told its roughly 9,000 employees in New England to consider staying home on Friday. The company also has a 24-hour "snow line" for updates on company facilities.
Fidelity Investments, which has thousands of workers in downtown Boston, Southern New Hampshire, and Rhode Island, said it expects many people to work from home Friday. Decisions will be up to individual managers, spokesman Vin Loporchio said.
Bank of America will close most of its Massachusetts branches at noon Friday.
Technology is making it easier for companies to close offices during sever weather; many businesses said they expect employees to be able to work from home. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts will close its offices Friday, but an "e-workforce" of more than 700 will swell to more than 2,000 employees sign on from home.
"We are telling everyone tonight to bring home their laptops and power cords so they can work from home," said Katie Burke, a spokeswoman for HubSpot, a marketing software company in Cambridge. As of Thursday evening, the company had not decided whether to close its office on Friday.
HubSpot also created an online chat room — dubbed Snowpocalypse 2013 — for employees to share storm information
The forecast had many companies scrambling to secure their property, especially because near-gale force winds were forecast for Friday night.
Suffolk Construction, which has multiple high-rise building projects underway in Boston, had employees spending much of Thursday battening down work sites.
"The winds get very strong when you get up 300, 400 feet, so we're locking down our buildings and making sure nothing hazardous can break loose," said chief executive John Fish.


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USFWS National Digital Library
Bald Eagle
Haliaeetus leucocephalus
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
The bald eagle is truly an all- American
bird it ranges over most of the
continent, from the northern reaches of
Alaska and Canada down to northern
While our national symbol was in
danger of extinction throughout most
of its range 30 years ago, the bald eagle
has made a tremendous comeback,
its populations greatly improving in
numbers, productivity, and security in
recent years.
Juvenile bald eagles have mottled
brown and white plumage, gradually
acquiring their dark brown body and
distinctive white head and tail as they
mature. Bald eagles generally attain
adult plumage by 5 years of age. Most
are capable of breeding at 4 or 5 years
of age, but in healthy populations they
may not start breeding until much
older. Adults weigh 8 to 14 pounds
(occasionally reaching 16 pounds in
Alaska) and have wingspans of 5 ½ to
8 feet. Those in the northern range
are larger than those in the south, and
females are larger than males.
Bald eagles can live 15-25 years in the
wild, and even longer in captivity. They
typically mate for life and build huge
nests in the tops of large trees near
rivers, lakes, marshes, or other aquatic
areas. Nests are often re-used year
after year, with additions to the nests
made annually. Nests are often 4 to 6
feet wide and may weigh up to 1,000
pounds. Although bald eagles may
range over great distances, they usually
return to nest within 125 miles of where
they were raised.
Breeding bald eagles typically lay
one to three eggs once a year, which
hatch after about 35 days. The young
eagles are flying within 3 months and
are on their own about a month later.
However, disease, lack of food, bad
weather, or human interference can kill
many eaglets; recent studies show that
approximately 70% survive their first
year of life.
The staple food of most bald eagle
diets is fish, but they will also feed on
waterfowl, rabbits, snakes, turtles,
other small animals and carrion. In
winter, eagles that nest northern areas
migrate south and gather in large
numbers near open water areas where
fish and other prey are plentiful. Eagles
that nest in the south during the winter
migrate north in the summer where
food is plentiful.
Wildlife experts believe there may
have been 100,000 nesting bald eagles
in the lower 48 states when the bird
was adopted as our national symbol in
1782. Since that time, the bald eagle
has suffered from habitat destruction
and degradation, illegal shooting, and
contamination of its food source, most
notably due to the pesticide DDT. By
1963 there were only 417 bald eagle
nesting pairs in the lower 48 states.
Bald eagles have few natural enemies.
In general they prefer an environment
of quiet isolation; tall, mature trees; and
clean waters. Those conditions have
changed over much of the bald eagle's
former habitat.
Although primarily fish and carrion
eaters, bald eagles and other raptors
were seen as marauders that killed
chickens, lambs, and other domestic
livestock. Consequently, large numbers
were shot by farmers, ranchers, and
In 1940, noting that the national bird
was "threatened with extinction,"
Congress passed the Bald Eagle
Protection Act prohibiting, except
under certain specified conditions,
the taking, possession, and commerce
of bald eagles. A 1962 amendment to
this Act added the golden eagle, and
the amended law became known as
the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection
Act. In 1967, bald eagles were officially
declared an endangered species (under
a law that preceded the Endangered
Species Act of 1973) in all areas south of
the 40th parallel.
The greatest threat to the bald eagle's
existence arose from the widespread
use of DDT and other pesticides after
World War II. DDT was used for insect
control throughout the country and
its residues washed into lakes and
streams. There, it was absorbed by
aquatic plants and animals that were
eaten by fish. The contaminated fish, in
turn, were consumed by bald eagles.
The chemical interfered with the bald
eagle's ability to develop strong shells
for its eggs. As a result, bald eagles and
many other bird species began laying
eggs with shells so thin they often
broke during incubation or otherwise
failed to hatch. Their reproduction
disrupted, bald eagle populations
Bald eagles are fequently seen perched
on large snags above lakes or rivers.
From this vantage point they can
survey their surroundings for prey
plummeted. As the dangers of DDT
became known, in large part due to
Rachel Carson's famous book Silent
Spring, this chemical was banned for
most uses in the U.S. in 1972.
In addition to the adverse effects of
DDT, bald eagles also died from lead
poisoning as a result of feeding on
hunter-killed or crippled waterfowl
containing lead shot and from lead shot
that was inadvertently ingested by the
waterfowl. In 1991, a 5- year program
to phase out the use of lead shot for
waterfowl hunting was completed by
the Service .
Gradually, the Service assembled
the largest colony of breeding bald
eagles in captivity at its Patuxent
Wildlife Research Center near Laurel,
Maryland, in a major effort to return
healthy eagles to the wild. The center is
now run by the U.S. Geological Survey.
Patuxent's scientists enhanced the
species' breeding potential by removing
the eagle's first clutch of eggs and
incubating them artificially. The
eagles would usually then lay a second
clutch, which the birds were allowed
to incubate themselves. In all, 124 bald
eagles were hatched at Patuxent.
These captive-hatched bald eagles were
an important source for restocking
wild populations in certain areas of the
country and helped to reestablish
a broader distribution. Patuxent's
program came to an end in 1988 as
bald eagles began to reproduce more
successfully in the wild and the center
turned its efforts toward other more
critically endangered species.
Some states, universities, and non-profit
organizations have continued
reintroduction efforts. Two methods
are generally used. Eaglets used for
reintroduction may be captive hatched
or, since usually only two young per
nest survive, they may be transferred
from a bald eagle nest with a clutch of
more than two. These "extra" eaglets
are placed in the nest of an adult pair
whose own eggs are infertile or fail to
hatch. The "foster parents" readily
adopt the chicks and raise them as their
Another method, called "hacking",
involves placing eaglets in manmade
towers at 8 weeks of age. These towers
are located in remote areas where
bald eagle populations are low or non-existent.
The eaglets are kept in an
enclosure and fed by humans who stay
out of sight. When the birds are capable
of flight, at about 12 weeks old, the
enclosure around the artificial nest is
opened and the birds are free to leave.
Food is still provided at the release
site until the birds learn to fend for
themselves in the wild.
Thanks to the banning of DDT and
these other recovery methods, bald
eagle populations have steadily
increased in the past 25 years. From
417 nesting pairs in the early 1960s,
there are now approximately 7,066 bald
eagle nesting pairs and an unknown
number of immature bald eagles in
the conterminous U.S. In the last few
years, several states have had breeding
bald eagles for the first time in years.
The bald eagle was originally listed as
endangered under the Endangered
Species Act in 43 of the lower 48 states
and listed as threatened in Michigan,
Minnesota, Oregon, Washington, and
Wisconsin. (There are about 40,000
bald eagles in Alaska and none in
Hawaii.) "Endangered" means a species
is considered in danger of extinction
throughout all or a significant portion
of its range, while "threatened"
is a less dire category, meaning a
species is considered likely to become
endangered within the foreseeable
future, but is not currently in danger of
In July 1995, the Service announced
that bald eagles in the lower 48
states had recovered to the point
that those populations that were
previously considered endangered
were now considered threatened.
The Service then formally upgraded
those populations from endangered to
In July 1999, the Fish and Wildlife
Service proposed to remove the bald
eagle from the list of threatened and
endangered species. Since then, the
Service has reviewed the comments
received on that proposal along with
new data and information to determine
the best ways to manage for the species
once it is removed from the protections
of the Endangered Species Act. In
2006, the Fish and Wildlife Service
re-opened the public comment period
due to new information on the proposal
to delist. Data gathered during this
comment period will be factored into
a final decision on the status of the
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
February 2006
Bald eagles normally lay two to three
eggs a year, which hatch after about
35 days. The eagles learn to fly within
three months and are on their own
about a month later.
As a recovery method, biologists place
eagles into the nest of adult pairs whose
own eggs failed to hatch. The pair then
serve as "foster parents."
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subset: commoncrawl


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The fifteenth and most recent, however, was perhaps the most difficult for Bailey because of just how far the Broncos had traveled – and the camaraderie that the team formed en route to winning the AFC Championship and playing in the Super Bowl – only to see the season conclude in disappointment.
"You get this far and you're together this long, it does sting a little more because you built up so many more relationships than you have in the past," Bailey said on Tuesday as the players cleaned out their lockers. "I've been through several seasons and forget some of the guys I've played with, but there is not a guy in this locker room I won't remember."
It was a team that accomplished so much throughout the season – but also one that Bailey noted was unable to seize the moment in the Broncos' Super Bowl XLVIII loss to the Seahawks.
"We got close, but obviously we just have to be more ready to play," Bailey said. "I just felt like they were more ready, they wanted it more and the obvious outcome was that they won."
Bailey acknowledged that he hadn't watched tape of the game yet. He also hasn't allowed himself to think too far into what his future holds for next season – although he noted that he isn't the only one on the Broncos roster who enters the offseason with matters to consider.
"A little bit – you don't want to think about that right now," Bailey said. "I think it's obvious for everybody in this locker room. Most people in this locker room have to deal with something coming up."
When that something does come up, Bailey said he's not worried about his role with the team and that he's comfortable with those matters being out of his hands.
"I don't control anything," Bailey said. "I'm under contract for another year, so I'm not concerned with what's going on, really."
Whatever happens, the cornerback said he will address it at the appropriate time.
"Those decisions are not made by me," he said. "I'll deal with that when it comes. There's nothing I can do about that right now."
The 12-time Pro Bowler was certain about one thing, however. After a season plagued by a recurring foot injury, Bailey acknowledged that he felt fine physically throughout the playoffs and entering the offseason.
"I felt good," Bailey said. "I felt pretty good. I've shown that the last two weeks of the season to two weeks in the playoffs. I feel pretty good."
Now, he'll look to begin the healing process after such a difficult loss – and, when the time is right, Bailey will revisit the Super Bowl tape that he would currently prefer to avoid.
"It still hurts a little bit," he said. "But at some point I will look at it."
No matter how painful, however, it's part of a process that the Broncos will have to endure and grow from – one that the team underwent after its January 2013 loss to the Ravens in the Divisional Round, and one that Bailey described quite simply.
"You have to move on."


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Panama Movies
Hands of StoneHD
IMDb: 6.6
111 min
Follows the life of Roberto Duran, who made his professional debut in 1968 as a 16-year-old and retired in 2002 at age 50. In June ...
Actor: Edgar RamÃrez, Robert De Niro, Usher Raymond, Rubén Blades, Ana de Armas, Pedro Perez, Reg E. Cathey, John Turturro, Ellen Barkin, David Arosemena, Óscar Jaenada, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Yancey Arias, Drena De Niro, Ilza Rosario
The Real MiyagiHD
IMDb: 7.3
80 min
The life of Fumio Demura, the greatest karate master of a generation.
Genre: Action, Sport, Biography, Documentary
Actor: John G. Avildsen, Billy Blanks, Lauro Chartrand, Michael Chavez, Fumio Demura, Emil Farkas, Isaac Florentine, William Christopher Ford, Togo Igawa, Pat E. Johnson, Sean Kanan, Ken Kazama, Shin Koyamada, Tak Kubota, Dolph Lundgren
The Three Musketeers
IMDb: 7.3
106 min
The young D'Artagnan arrives in Paris with dreams of becoming a king's musketeer. He meets and quarrels with three men, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, each ...
Actor: Oliver Reed, Raquel Welch, Richard Chamberlain, Michael York, Frank Finlay, Christopher Lee, Geraldine Chaplin, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Spike Milligan, Roy Kinnear, Georges Wilson, Simon Ward, Faye Dunaway, Charlton Heston, Joss Ackland
Escobar: Paradise Lost
IMDb: 6.6
Nicko and his brother take off from Canada in search of an easier life on the beaches of Colombia. Nicko meets a girl in the ...
Actor: Josh Hutcherson, Benicio Del Toro, Brady Corbet, Claudia Traisac, Ana Girardot, Carlos Bardem, Tenoch Huerta, Lauren Ziemski, Aaron Zebede, Frank Spano, Laura Londoño, Micke Moreno, Rossana Uribe, RoChia, Jaime Correa


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Considering the OP is pregnant, she should be able to cook and eat whatever she pleases. Of course, make sure meals aren't entirely pork for her mother, just like I'm sure her mother will ensure the OP has food she enjoys, like bacon after the baby is born. It is a two way street.
Honestly, if it's just for a few days or even a couple of weeks, I just go along with simple restrictions like no pork and alcohol, especially for religious reasons. We never serve alcohol when some people are around, and try to limit bread and desserts when celiacs are around. With those it's not even religion.It just makes it simpler and less fuss.Now a vegan might be really tough; some things are really easy.But if you must have your bacon and wine, I agree with just do it and not contaminate the stuff for the abstainers.
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Real Men Read "Twilight"May 28th, 2009 | By Krystal | Category: Book News, Featured Articles
In his latest article and podcast, NPR's Brad Meltzer talks about why real men read Twilight! It's really pretty funny, and true! "I love this story of the gawky, awkward girl who falls in love with the brooding vampire. And I love that she can't get sexual with said vampire because when her blood gets
[continue reading…]


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U.S. Ambassador Larry Palmer speaks with the press after meeting Honduran President Ricardo Maduro at the presidential house in Teguciugalpa, Honduras. The Obama administration revoked the visa of the Venezuelan ambassador to the United States on Wednesday Dec. 29, 2010, in a tit-for-tat diplomatic response to Venezuela's rejection of Larry Palmer as the U.S. choice to be the next envoy to the South American country.
The United States and Venezuela are starting the year without ambassadors in Caracas and Washington due to an intensifying diplomatic dispute that is likely to persist and boost President Hugo Chavez's long-standing antagonism.
Both sides have shown firmly entrenched stances and no willingness to compromise in the past week as the U.S. government revoked the Venezuelan ambassador's visa in response to Chavez's refusal to accept the chosen U.S. envoy.
"They thought we were going to back down. Anything negative that happens will be the responsibility of the United States," veteran Venezuelan diplomat Roy Chaderton told the Caracas-based television channel Telesur on Thursday.
Chaderton, a close Chavez ally and former foreign minister, said the Venezuelan government is "studying the case with sensitivity ... and will make the respective decisions."
Chavez skipped an opportunity to respond during a three-hour speech Thursday night, saying nothing about the U.S. government's decision to revoke the visa of his ambassador, Bernardo Alvarez. President Barack Obama's administration took that step in response to Chavez's rejection of Larry Palmer, the White House nominee for ambassador who has been awaiting Senate confirmation.
It is unclear what concrete effects those actions could have on U.S.-Venezuela relations. Diplomats from the two countries have already long had reduced contacts due to tensions fed both by Chavez's condemnations of the U.S. and also by the State Department's criticisms of deteriorating democracy in Venezuela.
"Much of the cooperation between the United States and Venezuela in recent years has involved lower-level and lower-profile individuals and agencies than the ambassadors, so the immediate fallout will be limited," said Shannon O'Neil, a fellow for Latin American studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
"But this latest round of escalating tensions ends any hope for calmer relations or more expansive cooperation. Demonizing the United States remains too important a political foil for Chavez," O'Neil said.
Palmer angered Chavez by suggesting earlier this year - in written responses to questions from Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana - that morale is low in Venezuela's military and that he is concerned Colombian rebels are finding refuge in Venezuela.
Chavez has accused Palmer of dishonoring the Venezuelan government by expressing concerns on several sensitive subjects - including 2008 accusations by the U.S. Treasury Department that three members of Chavez's inner circle helped Colombian rebels by supplying arms and aiding drug-trafficking operations.
"This outcome was predictable from the moment Palmer's comments were made public by Senator Lugar in July," said Miguel Tinker Salas, a Latin American studies professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California. "For the State Department to allow this predictable outcome to develop shows that they had no interest in improving relations with Venezuela."
Chavez had vowed not to back down in his opposition to Palmer and dared the U.S. government to expel Alvarez before diplomats confirmed on Wednesday that his visa was revoked. Alvarez was outside the United States when the action was taken, preventing his return.
U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said earlier this week that the United States hopes to improve strained relations with Venezuela. "We believe it is precisely because there are tensions in the relationship that it is important to maintain diplomatic communications at the highest level," Toner said.
The U.S. Embassy has been without an ambassador since Patrick Duddy finished his assignment and left in July.
A previous dispute prompted similar expulsions of ambassadors at the end of President George W. Bush's administration. In September 2008, Chavez expelled Duddy and withdrew his own envoy, saying it was in solidarity with Bolivia after President Evo Morales ordered out the U.S. ambassador and accused him of helping the opposition incite violence. The Bush administration denied it and reacted by expelling the envoys of Venezuela and Bolivia.
After more than nine months, in June 2009, the Obama administration and Chavez's government announced they were restoring their ambassadors.
Since then, the relationship has again grown more hostile.
In the past month, the U.S. State Department has strongly criticized decree powers granted to Chavez in the waning days of an outgoing congress firmly controlled by his allies. A new National Assembly takes office Jan. 5 with a bigger opposition contingent, and the decree powers will allow Chavez to bypass congress and enact laws in a range of areas for the next year and a half.
Despite such friction, the two countries are linked by deep trade ties. Chavez's economy relies heavily on oil sales to the U.S., and also imports large quantities of consumer goods from the United States. Oil sales to the U.S. have declined in recent years as Chavez has sought to diversify his oil market, selling more to allied countries such as China.
Chavez, whose anti-U.S. position has been a defining feature of his 12-year presidency, is likely to use the latest dispute to step up his criticism and rally supporters.
Larry Birns, director of the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs, said the stances of both sides make for a volatile situation, and that if their "rhetoric becomes more shrill, the situation can deteriorate faster than either side originally intended."
Some in the U.S. Congress, meanwhile, are calling for the U.S. to take a hard line against Chavez.
Republican Rep. Connie Mack of Florida said this week that the United States "has looked the other way for far too long as Hugo Chavez destroyed democratic institutions." Mack accused the Obama administration of taking a passive approach toward Venezuela.
"Chavez is harming the future of his country and breeding insecurity in the region and he will have to face direct consequences for his decisions," Mack said. "One day the United States and Venezuela will once again have a strong, mutually beneficial diplomatic relationship, but unfortunately, it does not appear that this will be possible under the leadership of Hugo Chavez."(source)
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Intl Sales (LAW-973-001)
Course information and the syllabus can be found on MyWCL.
This course covers many facets of international commercial sales of goods. The focus of the course is the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (Vienna 1980), generally known as the CISG, with comparisons to domestic systems in both the common law (especially Uniform Commercial Code Article 2) and the civil law (mainly French and German). The class also covers the payment and credit terms typical in such sales, with particular attention to the laws and practices relating to letters of credit. In addition, the course addresses transportation of the goods and the risk of loss.
Textbooks and Other Materials
The textbook information on this page was provided by the instructor. Students should use this information when considering purchases from the AU Campus Store or other vendors. Students may check to determine if books are currently available for purchase online.
There is no textbook to purchase -- all materials will be posted on MyWCL.
First Class Readings
The first class reading assignment can be found on MyWCL.


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The lights are on
For many fans of the Prince of Persia, the 2008 release is a low-point for the series. It kept the series' trademark wall-running and platforming elements, but was a drastic departure in other areas. Some people decry it because of its ending and its lack of challenge, but I absolutely adore it, and think that it's far better than it gets credit for.
Ico taught many developers a crucial lesson in game design: having a sympathetic partner with you during your adventure makes everything more meaningful. This is a lesson that Bioshock Infinite put to good use, and it is one that Prince of Persia arguably executed to an even greater degree. In Ico, you help Yorda through the course of the game. She is a burden, but she is not one that the player minds taking care of. In Bioshock Infinite, Elizabeth is not a burden. She stays out of your way while you work, offering a helping hand when she can. In Prince of Persia, Elika is your crucial partner. You are her burden. She saves you every time you die, helps you fight, and helps you climb. You can engage in conversation with her at any time, building your relationship with her at your own pace. She is the true protagonist of the game, and you'd have to be heartless to not fall in love with her by the end.
The art direction in Prince of Persia is one of the few elements of the game that nearly no one complains about. The game is absolutely gorgeous. It looks like a water-color painting, and every section of its open world is distinct and beautiful. The game even pushes you to great heights in order to look out over its engrossing vistas as you learn about what happened to this world and why Elika is struggling to fix it.
The gameplay looks like a Prince of Persia game, but plays something a little bit closer to a rhythm game, and scales back the focus on combat significantly. You can't die per se, because when you fall from a deadly height, or lose all your health in combat, Elika saves you. This makes the game much easier compared to other games in the series, but it is all in favor of the world and your immersion within it. Not dying means there is no need to simply accept the conceit that characters in video games are constantly dying and reappearing. You don't need to suspend your disbelief. Elika and the Prince's journey is a continuous one.
I won't offer specifics about the ending in fear of spoiling it, but I will say that it is one that is unfairly criticized. It's an atypical video game ending, and I hope that in time, players will be able to understand that it eschewed the 'Hollywood' ending in order to stay true to the nature of its characters and the high-stakes of the world. I'm sorry to be so ambiguous, and I apologize if I am not being ambiguous enough. Ubisoft pulled a Mass Effect 3 nearly four years before Shepard's journey by releasing DLC that changed the ending, possibly in response to the critical reception. I think the ending was beautiful and perfect as it was, and I encourage anyone who decides to give this game a shot to not even bother with it – unless a sequel gets announced.
I still boot up the game every now and then to breathe in its world, and watch the Prince and Elika work together in acrobatic harmony. It's a game whose focus is on the experience and the beauty of traveling through the world. It has more in common with the recently released thatgamecompany title, Journey than the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time trilogy. I am always heartbroken to hear that people don't like it. It's a different type of game with a Prince of Persia cloak, and its well worth the time of anyone who wants to see the medium of video games elevated to a state of legitimate artistic expression.
Email the author Kyle Hilliard, or follow on Twitter, Google+, Facebook, and Game Informer.


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Blade Kitten invites players into the world of Hollow Wish, where they take on the role of Kit Ballard, one of the best bounty hunters in the business. With her pink hair and tail, Kit is part cat, part girl - and fully lethal. As one of the last of her species, Kit commands her unique "Darque Blade" hovering sword to defeat enemies. Also along for the ride is Skiffy, Kit's laid-back sidekick who lends a hand in collecting items, solving puzzles, and when needed, serves as Kit's protector.
Blade Kitten goes beyond most downloadable titles to deliver a strong narrative, with high-quality cinematics, and a colorful, frenetic visual style, that lends to the pick-up-and-play arcade action. Players will jump right in and easily begin exploring and fighting their way through 19 levels, including three exploration levels with Noot (a rideable alien mount).
Blade Kitten will be released as a two-part mini-series available exclusively via digital distribution on the PS3's PlayStation Network.
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Government and Industry Leaders Examine Shakespearean Lessons for Succeeding In Business
An evening of Shakespeare hosted by Stevens Institute of Technology on April 22, 2014 was not the typical literary affair one would expect about the Bard.
William Shakespeare is known worldwide as perhaps the greatest wordsmith and dramatist of the English language. But Shakespeare as business management guru? Probably less known. So what does Hamlet's family drama or the tragedy of Julius Caesar have to do with today's business world? A lot more than meets the eye according to Norman Augustine, former chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin Corporation, and Kenneth Adelman, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and former director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency under President Ronald Reagan. They were invited to speak at Professor Susan Levin's undergraduate Shakespeare class to discuss their book, "Shakespeare in Charge: The Bard's Guide to Leading and Succeeding on the Business Stage."
For Augustine, last night marked a return visit to the Stevens campus. The renowned leader in industry, government and academia was the inaugural speaker of Stevens' President's Distinguished Lecture Series, which began in 2012.
Adelman has taught Shakespeare at Georgetown and George Washington Universities, and is currently serving as executive producer of a future film, "Reykjavik," starring Michael Douglas about the 1986 superpower summit between President Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union.
Augustine and Adelman addressed a crowd at the Lawrence T. Babbio, Jr. Center for Technology Management, where Stevens faculty, students, staff and invited guests listened to the coauthors discuss the relevance of Shakespeare's characters to how leaders navigate the complexities and intricacies of modern corporate life.
The event was very much in keeping with the Stevens tradition of providing students with a humanistic foundation for science and engineering curricula. "From the very start, Stevens has been at the forefront of recognizing the importance of a liberal arts education, evidenced by the Founding Charter of 1870, which called for a "department of Belles-Lettres" that would provide engineering students with a solid grounding in classical studies," explained Lisa Dolling, dean of the College of Arts and Letters at Stevens.
Describing her class as part of the "unique Stevens approach" to traditional literary courses, Professor Levin introduced the two speakers as examples of engineers who not only read, but write and publish about Shakespeare.
In his opening remarks, Augustine expressed his "particular fondness" for Stevens, and his gratitude for the honorary degree he received from the university. In response, Adelman quipped that he has yet to receive such an honor from Stevens.
Throughout the 90-minute lecture, the two displayed an easy rapport and good-natured banter that bespoke of their decades-long friendship and collaboration. What was also evident was their shared passion for Shakespeare. Augustine credited his grandfather for instilling a love of Shakespeare, while Adelman described himself as a late bloomer who became a life-long fan of the Bard's work when he began teaching it to university students. "Shakespeare becomes very addictive, very quickly," Adelman said.
Both agreed that the timelessness of Shakespeare's plays offer insightful lessons for today's CEOs and industry leaders. To prove it, Augustine presented actual scenarios from his own corporate past involving business tactics and ethical dilemmas, and then turned to Adelman to ask what Shakespeare would do in those situations. Adelman was always quick to draw from the many extraordinarily rich and complex characters of the literary master.
The importance of the humanities to science and engineering education was an underlying theme throughout the evening. Augustine, who holds a bachelor's and a master's degree in aeronautical engineering from Princeton University, said a broad understanding of the liberal arts "served him well" not only in life, but also in his career. During his time at Lockheed Martin, Augustine noted that among the 82,000 engineers who worked for him, the ones who rose in management were often the ones who had the ability to communicate effectively.
Adelman added that in a field like engineering where multiple teams work on the development and implementation of complex systems and processes, the command of language and the ability to write are critical to the integration of all the various components and carrying out the different phases of a project. And to become a good writer, he said, one needs to "read a lot, especially great literature."


text: Hey FC, been lurking for a decent time and made an account to ask about a purchase I plan to make soon. I currently own an MFLB and adapter, but I want something with a little more punch and just something to change up the action of vaping- a nice desktop. I came to a forum despite prior research due to the ubiquity of sponsorships- you just can't get honest review anywhere except a forum. Essentially, I want what anybody would want out of a vaporizer, no special requests here. No strict budget either, I'll gladly pay a little more for a good vaporizer but if I only have to spend a little I would love that. My ideas are: Vapobowl+ bong/bubbler- this could be anywhere from $50 to $150 total, I'd love to use hempwick as the design seems to put butane in the vapor as is. Is this a good vaporizing system? I love the action and social aspect of bongs, and I really like the way the "manual vaporizers" work. Would it be usable with hempwick? Would you recommend a turbo lighter for this purpose? If so, could I get a turbo for a reasonable price? (Thinking under $20). I'd love to use the piece for smoking out of as well. What bong/bubbler would you recommend if I went this route? Da Buddah- Maybe through some really cheap glass, I saw some speculation the ceramic heating element (if I am correct it is ceramic) may be harmful? Is the DB something you recommend for flavor? Efficiency? Is it durable? Hard to clean? Anything outstandingly wrong about it? Herbalaire- I see people recommending this a bunch. No idea why but if it's worth the leap I might take it. Can someone explain why it may be recommended? Vapolution- ~$100 glass airway vaporizers? Sounds too good to be true, is there anything outstandingly wrong with it? Same questions as the DBV, really. I could use this with a piece as well due to the lower price. Vrip tech heat wand and glass- I know it'd be $250-$300, but the little I've heard about it is that it is incredible. If it is I would be willing to spring for it. Any input? These are what I've sort of narrowed my choices down to, but if anyone recommends anything my mind is open!


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Chapter 2 Builders of the Young Republic
In 1789 the British consul in America reported to London that "a series of centuries" would have to elapse before a people "possessing [so] strong a natural disposition" to agriculture as the Americans would undertake manufacturing on a large scale. His estimate proved wrong. In less than half a century the young republic emerged as a leading industrial nation, second only to England. About one out of six working Americans in 1800 were engaged in nonagricultural labor; by 1850 the proportion had risen to almost half. The second quarter of the nineteenth century saw canals, steamboats, and railroads carrying the products of American labor, opening up new markets and expanding old ones. A factory system spread from New England to New York, Pennsylvania, and the newly emerging states beyond. Banks were created by the hundreds over the next forty years. America's abundant resources, expanding territory, and growing population lured capital from both here and abroad, often spurring reckless speculation and runaway inflation.
A labor movement sprang into being in most cities, largely because workers hoped through concerted action to maintain their earlier standard of living in the face of rising prices. The labor movement was an urban phenomenon. Old eastern seaboard cities experienced quantum leaps in wealth and population. Western cities, abetted by the transportation revolution, technological advance, and massive immigration, were built overnight.
While urban life was stimulating and exciting, it also bred social tensions and economic polarization. And urban racial, ethnic, and religious heterogeneity produced suspicion and discord. White workers scorned black. Protestants of both races viewed Irish Catholic immigrants with contempt. In Philadelphia in the 1840s, where private fire-fighting companies were organized along ethnic lines, native Protestant workers often fought Irish Catholics at the scene of fires. Bitter riots and the emergence of anti-Catholic political parties disfigured urban life in the decades before the Civil War.
The nation turned increasingly democratic in the early nineteenth century. Labor benefited from the abolition of property requirements for voting and the increase in the number of elective, rather than appointive, public offices. The second quarter of the century became known as the "Era of the Common Man" because Alexis de Tocqueville and other visitors concluded that American democracy was ruled by rural and urban workers of little or no property. Labor's possession of the suffrage was a significant achievement, unknown elsewhere in the world at that time, yet it provided no real assurance that politicians would devote themselves to securing labors interests.
Labor ardently supported the Federalist party. Workers, convinced that "importations were highly unfavorable to mechanic improvement," backed the Federalist protective tariff policy. But by the end of George Washington's second term in 1796 labor increasingly aligned with the Jeffersonians. "Substantial mechanics"--many of whom were small-scale employers as well as workers--remained loyal to the Federalists, while the "middling and poorer classes" moved toward the new party. Not that the Jeffersonian Republicans were a "labor party," either in their leadership or their policies. But their antibanking, anti-British, and pro-French Revolution policies won the support of many, particularly hatters, tanners, and other craftsmen who felt in need of protection against British manufacturers. The Jeffersonians, sympathetic to newer immigrants, attracted the support of Irish and French newcomers. By 1800 most people who worked with their hands preferred the party of Jefferson and James Madison to the party of Washington and Alexander Hamilton.
At the turn of the nineteenth century, workers were differentiated by skill, income, type of workplace, living conditions, property ownership, freedom as against servitude, and relative opportunities for advance. Most were not paid in wages but in goods, crops, meals, and free living quarters as well as money. Nor were such forms of payment confined to rural communities. In the textile mills of New England, weavers typically received only about a quarter of their reward in cash, with the rest of their payment in yarn or storegoods.
The unskilled fared poorly. Laborers, canal and railroad workers, stevedores, and seamstresses, who constituted perhaps forty percent of the urban working class, received one dollar or less per day at the turn of the century. Statistical evidence for Philadelphia and other cities indicates that these rates remained stable over the next three decades. Seamen received similar money wages at the start of the period but only about half as much thirty years later.
While the dollar of 1800 was worth at least seven or eight times our own, the wages of unskilled labor were too low to maintain even a minimal standard of decent living. Price rises only aggravated the problem. According to a New York City physician, the laboring poor in the 1790s lived in "little decayed wooden huts" inhabited by several families, dismal abodes set on muddy alleys and permeated by the stench from "putrefying excrement."
Skilled workers--variously known as craftsmen, artisans, or mechanics--received from seventy-five to one hundred percent higher wages than the unskilled. Some skilled artisans owned homes, modest dwellings to be sure, yet sufficient to contain work area, kitchen, living quarters for the family and in some cases for servants or apprentices.
The tools they owned and their proficiency in using them gave skilled workers marketable assets which enhanced their sense of worth. Working independently or with others as journeymen in small shops directed by master craftsmen, they could realistically anticipate becoming masters someday. In the fashion of the time a master craftsman supervised the production of goods for a custom or "bespoke" market.
In 1810 President Thomas Jefferson's Secretary of the Treasury, Albert Gallatin, reported that "by far the greater part of goods made of cotton, flax, or wool are manufactured in private families, mostly for their own use, and partly for sale." Gallatin estimated that "about two-thirds of the clothing . . . worn and used by the inhabitants of the United States who do not reside in cities, is the product of family manufactures." At the time of his report more than ninety percent of the population did not reside in cities.
A contemporary account describes the extent to which the system of home manufacture had penetrated Ridgefield, Connecticut, a "typical New England town" of about 200 farm families. Few products were bought outside the home by Ridgefield's inhabitants. They made their own soap and candles as well as carpets and linen. Slaughtering was done by a butcher who went from house to house. Tanners, tailors, weavers, and shoemakers were also itinerant craftsmen. Thus, "upon due notice the circulating shoemaker came with his bench, lapstone, and awl, converted some room into a shop until the house was duly shod, the leather used being that sent back from the tanner from the hides of the cows and calves that the family had killed for meat." Hats and furniture were characteristically made by craftsmen in their own shops, often in exchange for the raw material required in their crafts. The system continued throughout the period ending in the Civil War, but by 1830 it had lost most of its vitality, weakened by the urban and transportation revolutions.
Organizations of skilled workers began to emerge in northeastern cities, particularly among printers, carpenters, and shoemakers or "cordwainers" as they were they, called. Some of these groups were confined to masters or employers, charging a high initiation fee and stiff dues that clearly priced out all but employers from their benefits. Journeymen's organizations at first followed similar practices.
These were not so much trade unions in the modern sense as benevolent organizations. The pioneer historian of American labor, John R. Commons, described both the masters' and the journeymen's associations of the Jefferson era as "mutual aid societies." They were concerned with providing death benefits to widows, assisting members who were ill or unemployed, offering loans and credits, maintaining libraries, perpetuating high standards of craftsmanship, and settling disputes among members. Some journeymen s societies had objectives that went beyond "benevolence," prefiguring the spirit of trade unionism that was to sweep across the country a generation later. Journeymen cordwainers in New York and printers in Philadelphia appear to have organized, not simply to provide themselves fraternal benefits but because they had lost faith in their old dream of becoming masters. Increasingly journeymen realized that they were likely to remain journeymen in the future. Spokesmen for the Journeymen Cordwainers Society of Philadelphia contended that they organized in 1794 in self-defense against the masters, whose own society organized five years earlier was allegedly "a league to reduce the wages of their journeymen." Increasingly journeymen's societies supplemented broad mutual aid programs with the down to earth economic demands of wage workers.
They insisted on a minimum wage, either a flat rate per day's work or a minimum rate for each task or piece of work completed, and demanded the equivalent of a closed shop (the term was not then in usage). Organized journeymen compelled employers to hire and retain society members only, and insisted that outsiders be made to join if they hoped to work. Nonsociety journeymen were held in scorn as "scabs." A Philadelphia cordwainer, during a court trial in 1806, defined a scab as "a shelter for lice!"
The growing militancy of skilled workers was demonstrated by "turn-outs" as they were called. These early strikes typically lasted from several hours to several days and were unorganized. The "organized" strikes conducted by the journeymen's societies were usually peaceful. But not always. In an 1806 turn-out that led to a suit against the Philadelphia cordwainers, scabs were beaten and employers intimidated by demonstrations and the breaking of windows. That strike was called to uphold the closed shop. Most strikes of the time, however, demanded higher wages. In 1791, in the first recorded strike in the building trades, journeymen carpenters protested against wages "which are, and have been for a long time too low [and] are meanly attempted to be reduced to a still lower ebb." They demanded additional pay for overtime work and a reduction in working hours.
The working day in urban shops paralleled the traditional working day on American farms--sunup to sundown. The carpenters complained that they had "heretofore been obliged to toil through the course of the longest summer's day," swearing "by the sacred ties of honour" that in the "future a day's work amongst us shall be deemed to commence at 6 o'clock in the morning and terminate at 6 in the evening of each day." The ten or even eleven hour working day, however, was an idea whose time had not yet come.
The right of journeymen to organize and strike did not go uncontested. Commencing in Philadelphia in 1806 and continuing there and in other cities, journeymen were hauled into court about two dozen times during the first half of the nineteenth century. Employers, merchants, and their friends--more often than not, staunch Federalists--resisted what they called "coercive" and "artificial" interference with the natural operations of the free market. In other words, they opposed wage increases. United action by skilled artisans, said one judge, is "pregnant with public mischief and private injury." Strikes, if successful, supposedly would not only harm employers but would jeopardize the welfare of the entire community. A closed shop, according to its critics, was an intolerable interference with the freedom of artisans who chose not to join journeymen's societies.
The legal weapon with which employers challenged organized journeymen was the old English doctrine of conspiracy. English courts treated labor combinations as illegal conspiracies largely on the basis of what Richard B. Morris has called an "ambiguous statement founded on precedents of dubious value, published in 1716," to the effect that "all confederacies whatsoever, wrongfully to prejudice a third person are highly criminal at common law." Employers, their attorneys, and judges and juries in America usually agreed that strikes by journeymen's societies were therefore illegal. Although English common law had no formal standing here, prosecuting lawyers spiced their arguments with references to English precedents. Defense attorneys retaliated, as in the 1806 trial of the cordwainers, when they demanded, "Where is the evidence of this common law? Is it founded on practice or usage? None can be proved! Is it founded on any legal decision? None can be produced!" And four years later, the Republican lawyer, William Sampson, arguing in behalf of the embattled New York City cordwainers, ridiculed reliance on nonapplicable English precedents, asking, "How long shall this superstitious idolatry endure?"
To judge from the actions of most juries, the appeal to English common law continued to have force in the United States. Relatively mild punishments were meted out in labor conspiracy trials. The Philadelphia cordwainers were in 1806 fined eight dollars each and the costs of the suit. Nine years later Pittsburgh journeymen, found guilty of "unlawful conspiracy" for "unjustly and iniquitously raising the price of their wages" and "corruptly conspiring"' not to work for any person "who had in his employment any journeyman who did not belong to their said society," were fined one dollar each and costs. In an 1809 case involving a general strike called by the journeymen Cordwainers Society of Baltimore only one defendant out of thirty-nine was found guilty, and there is no record that the judge imposed a sentence.
A decision by judge DeWitt Clinton in 1810 initiated a trend toward narrowing or limiting the application of the English conspiracy doctrine. In the case of New York journeymen, Clinton described the alleged conspirators as "members useful in the community" who had erred not willfully but out of a mistaken view of the law. He assured journeymen that they had the "right to meet and regulate their concerns, and to ask for [higher] wages, and to work or to refuse to work." All that was required of them in pursuit of these ends was that "the means they used [not be] too arbitrary and coercive," as ostensibly they were in the case before him. The fine of one dollar each and costs, he assured the defendants, was meant as admonition rather than punishment. "Shall all others, except only the industrious mechanics, be allowed to meet and plot and yet these poor men be indicted for combining against starvation?" the defense had asked. Increasingly, courts and juries answered in the negative, while continuing to insist that journeymen confine themselves to "noncoercive" practices. Until 1842, courts commonly held that journeymen's unions and strikes were precisely such condemned behavior.
The technological, economic, and social changes that overtook the United States early in the nineteenth century had a marked impact on American workers. Improvements in turnpikes or toll roads gave way to a "canal fever," accompanied and followed by the appearance of steamboats and, in the 1830s and 1840s, railroads. The resulting sharp reduction in transportation costs enabled sellers to compete successfully in. distant markets, opening up great profit making opportunities to efficient large-scale manufacturers. Limited custom order and local trade gave way to a massive national market, inevitably affecting the conditions of the workers who produced for this market. It became easier, for example, to break a strike: In 1833 newspapers in Philadelphia ran advertisements for 200 workers to replace cordwainers striking in New Brunswick.
Merchant capitalists increasingly assumed control not only over the sale of goods but over their production. Their possession of substantial capital and easy access to credit enabled them to contract for massive orders all over the country. The size of their operations enabled them to cut prices below those fixed by masters and journeymen whose shops were in effect taken over by the capitalists.
On the surface little seemed to have changed. In the typical shop the master was still the chief, and the craftsmen he presided over still owned their tools. Their style of work in many cases differed little from what it had been in the eighteenth century. But the merchant capitalist supplied the raw materials and owned and marketed the finished product made in the shop. In Common's words, the "masters now became small contractors employed by the merchant capitalist and, in turn, employing one to a dozen journeymen." Since the profits of masters came "solely out of wages and work," they sought to "lessen dependence on skill and to increase speed of output. They played the less skilled against the most skilled and reduced wages while enhancing exertion."
To increase profits, masters introduced the "sweating system," demanding greater productivity from skilled workers. By resorting to cheaper labor--prisoners, women, children, the unskilled--the apprentice system broke down as employers placed decreasing reliance on skill. In printing, as in other trades, control passed from the profession itself into the hands of outsiders. As labor historian Norman Ware observed, the employment of "two-thirders" or partially trained journeymen and children reduced the status of printers from "men with a profession to wage earners." A mechanics' newspaper complained that "the capitalists have taken to bossing all the mechanical trades, while the practical mechanic has become a journeyman, subject to be discharged at every pretended 'miff' of his purse-proud employer."
The cheapest labor, however, was factory labor. Unlike urban shops employing a few skilled craftsmen using their own tools, factories employed large numbers of semiskilled and unskilled workers operating machines own by the companies. Two distinctive types of factories emerged. The first was the Lowell or Waltham system, named after the Boston suburbs in which it flourished. Its unique feature was its reliance on a female labor force quartered in boarding houses controlled by the factory owners. The second, the Fall River system, like the factory system in England, employed children and male adults as well as women and made no special provisions for housing. This system proved to be the most durable, but the Lowell system excited more interest.
A sharp controversy arose over the conditions of work and the quality of life enjoyed by the mill girls. A contemporary admirer described the founders of the system as "those wise and patriotic men [who] foresaw and guarded against the evils of social degradation" characteristic of the English factory system, "by the erection of boarding houses [under] matrons of tried character" for a supply of "proud and respectable girls." Charles Dickens and Harriet Martineau were charmed by what they described as clean housing and well lighted rooms, the excellent supervision given happy and healthy young women, and the attractive conditions of work they found in the mills. At a time when the system had come under much criticism, members of an investigating committee of the Massachusetts State legislature in 1845 praised the "neatness, cleanness, good lighting, comfortable temperature, and the cheerful presence of plants on the window sills" of the boarding houses, as well as the appearance of the "healthy, robust" girls who lived in them. The Lowell Offering, a newspaper edited by the young women themselves, gave an impression of contented workers with much leisure time for wholesome and uplifting diversions.
Other contemporaries, however, saw a very different picture. "It is enough to make one's heart ache," wrote New England labor reformer Charles Douglas, "to behold these degraded females now dragging out a life of slavery and wretchedness" in Lowell, to observe them "as they pass out of the factory--to mark their woestricken appearance." The editor of the Boston Daily Times wrote on July 13, 1839, that "the young girls are compelled to work in unhealthy confinement for too many hours every day . . . their food is both unhealthy and scanty . . . they are not allowed sufficient time to eat ... they are crowded together in ill ventilated apartments . . . and in consequence they become pale, feeble, and finally broken in constitution" and in some cases, "debauched." Some young workers complained about overcrowding, "14 hours of toil" per day, unhealthy apartments, bad air, insufficient exercise and leisure--a regimen which hastened them "on through pain, disease, and privation, down to a premature grave." Militant journals such as the Factory Girl's Friend and the Voice of Industry concurred in the indictment.
Is the truth somewhere in between? It may be helpful to think of the Lowell system--which prevailed also in Lawrence, Chicopee, and Lancaster, Massachusetts, and many towns in Maine and New Hampshire--as having gone through several phases. The Boston founders of the system were, of course, interested in making great profits; that is why they sought female labor. But they also understood that to maintain the approval and respect of the larger community they would have to provide decent housing, strict moral supervision, and relatively attractive working conditions. Hours may have been long and wages low, yet they doubtless appealed to young people used to long hours of work on the family farm for no pay whatever. According to historian Hannah Josephson, what drew the young girls to Lowell and other Mill towns "primarily of course was the high wages" or what they thought were high wages.
Wages, however, were never high . Women in the boarding house mills earned approximately $2.50 per week in 1830, although, as a factory agent reported, it was "almost impossible to ascertain the wages paid by his competitors to their female operatives." They typically worked more than twelve hours per day, and minor infractions such as a few minutes lateness were punished severely. One-sided contracts gave them no power over conditions and no rewards for work. The Fall River system was even harsher.
The search for cheap factory labor inevitably led to heavy reliance on child labor. The famous mill of Almy and Brown early in the century employed one hundred children between the ages of four and ten! In the 1820s and 1830s children under sixteen constituted from one-third to one-half the labor force of New England. Their wages hovered around thirty-three cents per week, with fifty cents the average in Rhode Island. No wonder a cotton mill in that state in 1828 put up the following notice: "Wanted. Four families with not less than four children each to work in the mill." Children made up about one-fifth of the Pennsylvania labor force, averaging between seventy-five cents and two dollars per week. In that state, conditions of all factory workers deteriorated in the years before 1840. Wages declined, hours of work were lengthened, penalties were imposed for violations of "arbitrary regulations of lopsided labor contracts." Long hours typically meant more than twelve hours. In several New Hampshire factories managers even made the clock run slow at night in order to get an extra half-hour out of the workers.
In the South the industrial sector thrived on slave labor. A Northerner visiting the antebellum South served that slaves were "trained to every kind of manual labor. The blacksmith, cabinetmaker, carpenter, builder, wheel-right-all have one or more slaves laboring at their trades." Blacks worked as metal mechanics, machinists, shoemakers, bakers, printers, papermakers, textile workers, in every kind of processing, whether of sugar or rice, as lumber and turpentine workers, salt boilers, as steamboat deck hands, firemen, engineers, occasionally as pilots, and as bridge builders. Slavery was particularly important in the South's substantial iron industry. In the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond, the nation's third largest iron company, slaves constituted about one-half the labor force of 1,000. They were engaged in every phase of production, whether as founders, colliers, miners, teamsters, or woodchoppers. At blast furnaces blacks were employed together with a "handful of skilled laborers, usually but not always white," under the direction of a white manager.
Some white workers bitterly resented the hiring of blacks as skilled or semiskilled mechanics. In 1847 striking white workers at the Tredegar company threatened not to return unless recently employed blacks were removed from specified furnaces and mills of the company. Their strike was unsuccessful.
White employers insisted on hiring black labor, not only for its cheapness but for its skill. A white foreman in a southern textile plant observed that blacks did "fully as much work [as whites]" and were "much more attentive to the condition of their looms." An Alabama mine owner reported that " every day's experience confirms my opinion that it is next to impossible to prosecute my mining interest successfully with free white labor. It was unruly, unreliable, and expensive." He concluded: "I must have a Negro force or give up my business." Although industrial slaves fared better than their brothers and sisters in the fields, they were subjected to hard work and long hours. In Louisiana sugar refineries, many worked an eighteen hour day. They had to accommodate themselves to the whims of their masters and occasionally suffered the "brutality that was an integral part of bondage." The fact remains, as Morris showed, that in Virginia, skilled slaves who were hired out received wages, held property, and possessed "some measure of mobility and free choice that compared favorably with the lot of the unskilled."
Living conditions of black workers in the South, according to historian Charles B. Dew, improved modestly. Workers used their pay for "overwork" to buy goods, achieving a degree of material competence unknown to most slaves. While Dew found instances of whipping and cruelty, these were the exception. Iron men sought profit, not the joys of sadism, and treated the skilled labor upon which profit depended accordingly. Instead of degrading the workers, industrial slavery "in some ways . . . provided an environment in which they could develop some sense of personal dignity and individual initiative in spite of the psychological and physical confines of their bondage." The system functioned "more through mutual accommodation than outright oppression."
The situation of black labor in the antebellum South is better understood when viewed in the context of the situation for all labor in that section. Numerous whites, particularly poor laborers, were reduced to a "bound" or semifree status. Many white seamen in the section were treated more brutally than were slaves. Imprisonment for debt may have been abolished in most of the North during the Jacksonian era but not in the South.
Workers in the early nineteenth century, whether factory operatives or skilled mechanics, did not live to work. They loved leisure; plant breakdowns or delays in transporting raw materials were often regarded as offering a splendid opportunity for diversion. An "elderly tailor" in Philadelphia corrected an onlooker's impression that the artisan and his fellows were headed toward a field because they had been laid off. "Not at all, we are only enjoying the Tailor's Vacation," the worker explained. "Pressure is well enough to be sure, as I can testify when the last dollar is about to be pressed out of me; but Vacation is capital. It tickles one's fancy with the notion of choice, 'Nothing on compulsion' is my motto."
Workers enjoyed fun and games outside of work and insisted on introducing them into workshop and mill as well. Required to do compulsory militia service, many artisans turned the occasions into "scenes of riot and disorder," scandalizing the champions of industrial discipline who regarded them as "disgusting and harmful." Philadelphia's artisans, no doubt like those in other cities, delighted in cockfights, roulette, circuses, shooting matches, hunting, and foot racing. Herbert G. Gutman has disclosed that "hunting, harvesting, wedding parties, frequent 'frolicking' that sometimes lasted for days, and uproarious Election and Independence Day celebrations plagued mill operators."
The modern coffeebreak is a pale replica of an old institution. After finishing a difficult job, cabinetmakers in New York City sent out an apprentice who "speedily returned laden with wine, brandy, biscuits, and cheese." In shipyards in the same city, all work ceased several times a day as "every man and boy" in the yard was supplied with "cake or crullers, doughnuts, gingerbread, turnovers, a variety of sweet cookies," and liquid refreshments.
The American worker loved to drink, insisting that liquor be brought in during working hours. That a shipbuilder in Medford, Massachusetts, who refused his men "grog privileges" managed nevertheless to have work completed on a ship has been called a remarkable achievement. Philadelphia artisans insisted on their late afternoon drink, passing a jug around. Not that they abstained earlier. A journeyman there reported that "young apprentices learned to drink while they learned a trade." The youths made periodic trips to the local pub to fill the flasks journeymen brought with them to work. Before returning to the shop the apprentice would "rob the mail"--help himself to a drink. In Lynn's shoemaking shops, historian Paul Faler has found that "no working man would labor unless his employer provided a half pint of liquor per day as part of his wages." Cordwainers drank their daily pint of "white eye," some even "going the whole quart." In the morning and afternoon an apprentice was sent out for "black stop," a concoction made of rum and molasses. The person who made the best shoe was expected to treat, while "the botch who made the worst one also paid the 'scot.'" On coming of age, a worker was expected to provide the "choicest liquors for visiting well wishers."
To an avowed socialist like William Haighton, organizer of the Philadelphia trade union movement in 1827, drinking, "gaming and frolicking" were a snare and a delusion that workers would have been wise to put aside. Interestingly, the line that American workers should turn from intoxicating beverages and "idle pastimes" to sobriety, education, and discipline was advocated by labor radicals, moralistic Protestants, social conservatives, and many employers.
Ideas also intoxicated workers. Beginning in Philadelphia in 1828, a labor movement spread throughout the country during the early 1830s. It consisted of unions and political organizations known as Workingmen's parties. Historian John R. Commons described these groups as America's pioneer labor movement because, for the first time, journeymen's societies in different crafts combined to form one union of the trades--or "'trades' union" as it was then known--in most of the cities of the country. The members of these organizations generally were skilled artisans or mechanics rather than laborers or factory workers. The latter did organize from time to time but most of their attempts failed. The fear that the spread of the factory system would jeopardize the status of skilled artisans impelled many of them to unite. Another reason for organizing was that incomes, insufficient to begin with, were threatened both by inflation and employer pressure to cut wages.
Living conditions even of skilled mechanics were yet another source of irritation. Working-class housing was typically crowded, noisy, and marked by inadequate sanitation and rubbish removal. The era's urban improvements, whether in water supply, street paving, lighting, or safety were characteristically introduced first to the quarters of the well to do. The streets and wards or districts of antebellum cities were clearly differentiated by wealth and class. The rich lived in elegant mansions in exclusive enclaves, leaving the mass of urban inhabitants to the "working class wards." This pattern prevailed for old seaboard cities such as Boston, Philadelphia, and New York, and newer western cities such as Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Natchez. Wealth was grossly maldistributed in antebellum towns and cities. The working people who made up the majority of the urban population owned a pitifully small portion--about five percent or less--of urban wealth.
A contributor to a Philadelphia newspaper in 1831 cheerfully advised that "with few exceptions, frugal industrious journeymen, unencumbered with families, may save so much of their wages, as in a few years to be enabled to commence business on their own account." A few years later a judge in New York City, at the same time that he branded striking unions as illegal combinations that allegedly were "mainly upheld by foreigners," assured mechanics that in this "land of law and liberty, the road to advancement is open to all and the journeymen may by their skill and industry, and moral worth, soon become flourishing master mechanics" or employers. The men who flocked to the labor organizations showed their disbelief in such comforting promises.
A number of the workingmen's parties were "workingmen" in name only. Yet most of the organizations were authentic. Their memberships were typically small, but that was due in large part to the savage attacks levelled at them by a hostile press. The Boston manufacturer Amos Lawrence, snorting that "we are literally all working men," charged that "the attempt to get up a 'Working Men's party' is a libel upon the whole population, as it implies that there are among us large numbers who are not working men." A more characteristic attack on the new parties took the form of name-calling. They were denounced as "agrarians" or anarchists, "levellers," a "mob," a "rabble" the "dirty-shirt party," "tag, rag, and bobtail," and "ring-streaked speckled rabble."
The Philadelphia party arose out of a decision by the city's Mechanics' Union of Trade Associations to enter into politics in order to promote "the interests and enlightenment of the working classes." This union consisted of societies of painters, glaziers, bricklayers, typographers, and journeymen of a dozen other trades. The Philadelphia party, like so many others, was led by or nominated to office men who were themselves not workers. Stephen Simpson, political candidate of the party, was the well-to-do son of an officer in the great Girard Bank. Robert Dale Owen, a leader of the Workingmen's party in New York City, was the son of a factory owner and had known comfort, even luxury, from childhood. Simpson and Owen, embracing radical social principles that were in some respects socialistic, believed that labor created all wealth and that inequality and social distress were caused by private property.
The many dozen parties in the towns and cities of the country made no attempt to form a national organization, and each went its own way. Yet the program championed by their party journals was amazingly similar. The Philadelphia Mechanic's Free Press, the New York Working Man's Advocate, and the Indianapolis Union and Mechanics' and Working Man's Advocate all listed similar demands. Some of these associations called for an equal distribution of property, others for state-run boarding schools to instill new ideas in the young of the next generation. There was almost universal support for trade unions and mechanics' lien laws to assure that workers had first call on their employers' payrolls; abolition of imprisonment for debt; a tax-supported public school system free of a degrading paupers' oath requirement; reform of a militia system that permitted those able to afford it to avoid service; simplification of the legal system, as well as making it less expensive; and abolition of the system whereby state legislatures enacted special laws conferring monopolistic charters on favored bank directors and other entrepreneurs.
The Workingmen's parties were characteristically disdainful of the major parties. They might on occasion support one or another of them on a given issue, such as backing the Democratic "war" against the second Bank of the United States. In that famous affair, President Andrew Jackson and his party tried to give the impression that they opposed the rechartering of the bank because it allegedly oppressed labor and the poor. Actually, the needs and welfare of labor had nothing to do with the issue. For all his reputation as a champion of have-nots, Jackson paid little attention to labor. He was in fact the first presidential strikebreaker, sending in federal troops to crush a strike of workers against a canal company directed by his friend John Eaton.
The cornerstone of the labor movement, however, was not ephemeral political organizations but trade unions. The first trades' union--or merging of separate journeymen's societies--took place in New York City on August 14, 1833. Realizing that individual societies could not cope singlehandedly with employers, artisans all over the country quickly followed the lead of the New Yorkers. Carpenters, bakers, soap makers, printers, cabinetmakers, masons, bookbinders, house painters, combmakers, brush makers, tailors, hat makers, weavers, jewelers, blacksmiths, machinists, rope makers, sailmakers, carvers, gilders, cordwainers, chairmakers, and artisans in dozens of other occupations formed new societies or flocked to old ones. Unions sprang up in Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Newark, New Brunswick, Albany, Schenectady, Pittsburgh, Louisville, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and most other urban areas.
The new unions were led by idealistic radicals, many of whom denounced private property and the wage system as the root causes of poverty and injustice. Union journals show that every variety of social, economic, political, and judicial reform attracted them and evoked their sympathy. The unions' actions, however, make clear that broad reforms were peripheral. The central interest was wages and hours, the characteristic activity the strike.
Strikes for the ten-hour day were often unsuccessful. In Boston in 1825 the journeymen house carpenters had struck against the sunup to sundown working day they found so "derogatory to the principles of justice and humanity." The master carpenters on the other hand had defended the long working day as "that which has been customary from time immemorial." Backed by merchant capitalists who denounced the strike as a nefarious scheme allegedly put forward by foreign agitators and a press controlled by these merchants, the masters and their influential allies defeated the strike. In 1832, when the house carpenters were joined by journeymen ship carpenters, masons, painters, and sailmakers from Boston and nearby suburbs, a ten-hour strike was again crushed by thc powerful alliance of masters, capitalists, and press.
By the mid-1830s, however, the movement was doing better, at least outside of Boston. In Philadelphia, the achievement of the ten-hour day in 1835 was hailed by unionists as the accomplishment of labor's "bloodless revolution." The national government implemented it first in the Navy Yard in 1836 and for all public works four years later.
Workers had a sense of solidarity that at times transcended the boundaries of their union, but the era's union movement was essentially an intra-urban phenomenon. Although on occasion unionists in one city helped their beleaguered colleagues in another, the central preoccupation of the membership was with conditions in their own community. Significant attempts at creating a national organization were made not by the unions of the different cities but rather by individual crafts. Journeymen house carpenters, handloom weavers, combmakers, cordwainers, and printers took steps to create national societies that would cut across the boundaries of the city and its trades unions. The New York City union journal The Man claimed that the unions had 200,000 members. While most crafts in most towns and cities had societies that in turn belonged to unions, these largely successful organizations did not last long. What did them in was the depression that followed the panics of 1837 and 1839.
Labor suffered for almost a decade in some communities after the debacle of 1837. Lynn, Massachusetts, shoe workers had to forage in the woods for fuel, eat dandelions, and obtain other food by bartering with nearby farmers and fishermen. The New York Tribune in July, 1845, estimated that close to one-third the adult male population remained unemployed. A well-to-do Philadelphian, in a diary entry in 1842, observed that the city's streets were deserted, business was at a standstill, sheriffs' sales were commonplace, and the "injuries of poverty are felt by both rich and poor." Most unions and their member societies disappeared in a time when workers found it impossible to maintain dues payments.
Nonpayment of dues figured in the landmark decision of 1842 handed down by Lemuel Shaw, Chief justice of the highest court of Massachusetts, in the case of Commonwealth v. Hunt. It turned on the refusal of members of the Boston journeymen Bootmakers Society to continue working in a shop that would employ a nonmember. In the case, suit was brought by the nonmember, Jeremiah Horne, when his employer at the society's behest fined Horne for his delinquent dues payments to the union. Shaw's decision held that "the common law in regard to conspiracy in this Commonwealth is in force," thus catering to conservative opinion's reverence for "tradition." Shaw divided conspiracy into two parts: There had to be either "some criminal or unlawful purpose, or to accomplish some purpose, not in itself criminal or unlawful ... criminal or unlawful means." When Shaw declared that the society's purpose of inducing "all those engaged in the same occupation to become members of it" was not unlawful, he provided the first affirmative legal sanction to unionism and the closed shop. Almost anticlimactic was his finding that the means used to withhold labor were also not unlawful.
Unionism did not leap forward as a result of this decision. Nor did conspiracy trials cease altogether. Yet there can be little doubt that the legal recognition of the rights of unions played an important part in abetting their later growth.
Industrial production soared after the early 1840s. In the space of five years, iron production increased by more than 300 percent, anthracite by 1,000 percent, and ship tonnage by about 250 percent. Although factories expanded, relatively small shops accounted for most of the labor force. Philadelphia's textile factories, which after the consolidation act of 1854 numbered 260, continued to have their weaving done by weavers working handlooms in their own homes.
In the 1850s a number of large foundry owners Pennsylvania, eager to corner the national market, sought to destroy their competitors by a ruthless attack on the wages and conditions of skilled molders. Piecework became the rule, performed by poorly trained and poorly paid helpers and apprentices. Skilled workers were now forced to buy their own tools, purchase their necessities in company stores, waive their rights to damages for injuries suffered at work, and submit to withholding of part of their pay until work season's end as an assurance of their good behavior! As for conditions in foundries, an observer whose report appeared in the Atlantic Monthly described a ghastly scene of "masses of men with dull, besotted faces bent to the ground . . . begrimed with smoke and ashes, stooping all night over boiling cauldrons of metal."
A new development in the factory system in some areas was the decreasing reliance on child labor. The change was occasioned by the introduction of heavier, more difficult machinery requiring adult workers. In much of New England, these were increasingly Irish immigrants. Factory workers were not held in high regard. A foreman told a visitor to Fall River in 1855, "I regard my work people just as I regard my machinery ... When my machines get old and useless, I reject them and get new, and these people are part of my machinery."
Evidence indicates that workers did not do well during the prosperity that ostensibly returned in the mid-1840s. The chronically desperate plight of the unskilled, such as female needlework's, was a function of their wages of less than a dollar per week. Between 1837 and 1858 the wages of skilled iron workers in Pennsylvania were reduced by one-third to one half. On May 27, 1851, Horace Greeley's Tribune itemized a "Budget for a Family of 5 for one week." Their expenses came to $10.37 for goods and services that were confined to. the bare necessities. For as Greeley asked in an accompanying editorial, "Where is the money to pay for amusement, for ice cream puddings, trips on Sunday . . . in order to get some fresh air, to pay the doctor or apothecary , . . to purchase books?" It has been estimated that at the time, shoemakers, printers, hatters, cabinetmakers, and most others were averaging roughly one-half the necessary wage--a wage itself found "inadequate to maintain the worker's family at anything like decent comfort standard." The head of the Journeymen House Carpenters of Philadelphia wrote that costs of a decent house with a bathroom, cellar, furniture, bedding, clothing, and amusements left workers without sufficient income to adequately feed their families.
Workers were disheartened too by impersonal relationships in shop and factory. A machinists' blacksmiths' leader, recalling an earlier time when "every worker knew his employer," observed that now "men and masters became estranged and the gulf could only be healed by a strike."
Few workers appear to have responded to the call by some of their leaders that labor adopt one or another variety of socialism. The National Typographical Society in 1850 attacked the wage system, urging labor to "become its own employer, to own and enjoy itself the fruits" of its work. But few workers outside the society listened. A more typical response was the strike. An "epidemic" of strikes swept over the country in the 1840s as business boomed, prices soared, and wages lagged. Some of these were staged by labor "protective associations," but many were spontaneous. Another wave of strikes in the 1850s was almost entirely organized by trade unions.
The nation's second great surge of unionism occurred at mid-century as journeymen once more combined. Influenced at first by the earlier benevolent societies which had included masters in their membership, the new unions quickly moved to oust all but wage workers. Stripped of what Commons called "universal and glowing ideals," skilled mechanics "settled down to the cold business of getting more pay for themselves." These unions concentrated on the closed shop, rules of apprenticeship, wages and methods of payment, strike and members' benefits. They published no journals, substituting strikes for grandiose proclamations. In 1853-1854 alone they staged about 400 strikes, mostly for higher wages.
These strikes did not follow negotiations as we know them. Instead, unions would decide on their objectives and then issue notices such as the following: "On Wednesday evening September 4 the Bricklayers and Plasterers by an unanimous vote declared that they would not work after Wed. the 11th inst. for a sum less than $2.00 per day, on and after that day." If the employer accepted these terms a "trade agreement" was concluded. Such agreements were sought not only from individual employers but [also] from employers' associations, in order to establish uniform wages and other conditions in a craft. Strikes were often directed against recalcitrant or non-association employers.
Once again several unions attempted to organize nationally. The results were not very much more impressive than they had been twenty years earlier, since only three of the dozen or so national unions created in the 1850s managed to survive the depression that followed the Panic of 1857. These were the National Typographical Union, the Machinists' and Blacksmiths' International Union, and the Iron Molders' International Union. While impersonal factors, such as the maturing of a national market, obviously had much to do with the emergence of national unions, the efforts of dynamic individuals such as William Sylvis of the molders cannot be discounted.
One of the most inspirational figures in the history of the labor movement, Sylvis's experiences as a worker reflect the changes that transformed both the economy and the situation of labor in the decades before the Civil War. Sylvis's father was a wagon maker so poor that during the post-1837 depression he had to "place" the youngster with a well-to-do family as an apprentice. On completing his five-year term, Sylvis was given the traditional "freedom suit" of broadcloth, white shirt, woollen hose, calfskin boots, and high silk hat. A leader of the molders' organization in Philadelphia, Sylvis played the decisive part in creating a national molders' union in 1859. Four years later he became the president of the organization, after journeying to shops and foundries ii the United States and Canada, listening to workers grievances, disregarding employer threats, and building the union. He lived from hand to mouth during this ordeal. Sylvis always lived on the brink of poverty, even during the years of his presidency of the international union. When he suddenly died in 1869, he only had one hundred dollars and his family could not meet the costs of burial.
Whether national or local, most unions were destroyed in the wake of the Panic of 1857. On the eve of the Civil War, spokesmen for organized labor cast their lot with the conciliators who would avoid bloodshed at almost all costs. At a workers' meeting, in Louisville on December 28, 1860, friends of William Sylvis, while pledging allegiance to the Constitution and the Union, denounced the "politicians" who had allegedly brought the nation to the brink of an unnecessary war. Labor meetings early the following year were held Newark, Reading, Harrisburg, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Louisville, Norfolk and Richmond, supporting the Crittendon Compromise, which would have legitimized slavery in the territories south of the 36 degree 30' line. Sylvis chaired a meeting in Philadelphia on February 22, 1861, that adopted resolutions in support of the Crittendon plan and the "equal rights of the South in the territories," while denouncing all measures likely to result in war.
The attack on Fort Sumter changed all that. Sylvis himself assisted in recruiting a volunteer company of molders, as he and most other northern leaders rallied to the cause. It has been estimated that mechanics and laborers constituted forty-two percent of the Union army, while skilled artisans were enthusiastic volunteers. Their patriotism had the effect of decimating trade union ranks. Thus one Philadelphia union closed up shop for the duration, resolving "to enlist with Uncle Sam," adjourning "until either the [Federal] Union is safe or we are whipped." Foreign-born workers as well as native-born demonstrated a devotion to the Union that, according to historian David Montgomery, was "rooted in the intense nationalism of the working class." As the war continued, some workers opposed particular governmental policies, such as emancipation or a draft which discriminated against the poor. But their general support of the Union cause did not flag: they accepted emancipation when it came and opposed the draft riots.
The war had mixed consequences for labor. Inflation and mounting taxes hurt workers. Several western states passed antistrike laws, and eastern states gave serious consideration to such measures. Nor did the national government display much sympathy for labor. Workers in the great federal workshops in. Nashville were defrauded of what they believed to be their rightful wages. They were not given the promised time and a half for overtime and were deprived of part of their wages if they quit. In the Brooklyn Navy Yard the back pay of striking molders was confiscated.
Military force was used against striking workers. Leaders in the strike at the famous Parrott gun works in Cold Springs, New York, were imprisoned without trial. In Louisville, General Burbridge drove strikers back to work at the point of bayonets, while in St. Louis General Rosecrans charged picket lines and strike meetings. Soldiers in Tioga County, Pennsylvania, arrested the striking miners' leaders, forcing the rank. and file to surrender to the owners under the threat of starvation.
Strikes not only persisted, however; they multiplied swiftly. They were reactions to a sharp rise in the cost of living that was not matched by wage increases for the great army of unskilled workers.
Trade unions experienced a renaissance during the war, the number of locals increasing by 350 percent between December, 1863, and December, 1864. Unlike the movement of the previous decade, Civil War unions were most articulate, publishing many prolabor journals. These unions consisted primarily of urban artisans, some of whom--like the iron molders--spoke for the unskilled workers in their shops and factories. The trades' assemblies of different unions in a city, similar to the "Unions of the Trades" of the 1830s, was a significant development. Between 1861 and 1865 there emerged more than a dozen national unions, ranging from miners, locomotive engineers, and cigar makers to plasterers, tailors, bricklayers, and printers. Owing much to technological and commercial changes that rendered more parochial unionism obsolete, these unions arose not so much because of the Civil War as in spite of it.
The great war was a disaster to most workers. Certainly it brought no economic salvation to American labor. A New York Times survey in 1869 reported that only one-eighth of the working classes earned sufficient income to afford the "comforts of life." A group of similar size could manage all the necessities. But three-quarter of the workers were found to earn "a meager subsistence. . . their families crowded [together in] slum apartments and boarding house," their standard of living far short of a decent minimum.
During the three-quarters of a century between 1790 and 1865, American workers had helped make the United States one of the two leading industrial nations in the world. For all their signal contribution to America's welfare, however, most workers enjoyed neither influence nor well-being. At the war's end American society was about to experience the dislocations the would accompany the nation's leap into a mature industrialism. Their experience in concerted action helped fortify American workers in meeting the shocks that awaited them.
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I'm using a TB325efi to air arc with a 1/4 rod (air liquide) was wondering what the proper setting would be just doesn't seem to be working as well as it should Ive tryed a few settings and it works but just feel like it could be better any suggestions would be greatly appreciated
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air arc settings
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air arc settingsTags: None
start with all the simple stuff first.
Do you have the process selector set to SMAW or stick? Are your cables hooked up one to the ground(work) and the other to the Constant Current lead terminal? If you are you should be dc, now just the question of polarity, you want reverse or DCRP. Probably wouldn't hurt to set the ignition switch to full run , instead of run/idle. Other than having your air line hooked up and a good supply of air( 80 PSI minimum) you should be ready to rock and roll. Running full amperage at 325 burning 1/4 inch carbons is going to be hard on the machine in the long run, pay attention to your duty cycle. Having said that make sure you have cables to match the output and duty cycle if you are going hard at it. Minimum 2/0 cable and a good Copper Ground clamp. I like the Lenco 300 amp one. Might not hurt to turn the machine down and go with 3/16 carbons if your doing light duty or surgical finesse type gouging. I suppose it all depends on exactly what your doing. Hope this helps!I have a welding addiction
...the only stupid question is the one you didn't ask
Carbon in the right posistion? Air stream has to follow the arc.Miller Trailblazer's ( 2 )...MillerBobcat 250...Millermatic 251's ( 2 )...Miller Syncrowave 200...Miller Syncrowave 180SD...Miller 12VS Suitcases ( 2 )... Hobart Hefty CC/CV Suitcases ( 2 )...Miller 30A Spool Guns ( 2 )...Miller WC 15A Control boxes ( 2 )...Thermo Dynamics Cutmaster 50 Plasma Cutters ( 2 )...Thermo Arc Hi Freq Units ( 2 )...Smith / Victor O/A Sets...DeWalt Power Tools...Craftsman / Snap On Hand Tools... Two Dodge Mobile Rigs
I have a tb275, and prior 302. Hook leads to cc, turn selector to 6010 pipe. Turn amps to 250, gouge away, use 3/16, 1/4 to big for tb302. Also do not turn machine up to max, thats what will damage machine. Not sure why people are so worried about air arcing with machine, same to me as running big wire. Machine is designed for it. Probably gouged 500 hrs on machine, just so much faster and easier. Also be sure to have a good supply of air, 22cfm min, unless u have have the smaller air arc torch, (just bought one k2000, works very well with small compressors).
KevinLincoln ranger 305g x2
Miller spectrum 625
Miller 30a spoolgun
Lincoln 210mp
F550 imt service truck
Your machine should gouge with 3/16 carbons & possibly 1/4". Some 302s can handle 1/4 & some can't, it's right at the limit. Set up dc+ & about 85-90% of power.
What kind of compressor are you using?
All good advice above except the rental part.MM250
Trailblazer 250g
22a feeder
Lincoln ac/dc 225
Victor O/A
MM200 black face
Whitney 30 ton hydraulic punch
Lown 1/8x 36" power roller
Arco roto-phase model M
Vectrax 7x12 band saw
Miller spectrum 875
30a spoolgun w/wc-24
Syncrowave 250
Senior Member
- Aug 2004
- 1958
I also think that you should be using a 3/16" carbon.
I run 1/4" carbon at 350 amps.
Yes you might be able to get a 1/4" to run but they recommend 3/16" for the 302 machine, I'm not sure about the 325.
Have you ran a air carbon arc before to know what is good and what is not,
A possible problem that no one mentioned is how much of the rod is sticking out of the torch, I grip a new rod at the 1/2 way point and pull it out as it gets used up, I never like to have more than about 4" sticking out.
As I was reading through Portable's latest post I realized the issue of electrode length. I had forgotten all about that. Many years ago we hired a "welder". He welded something wrong so I told him to just arc it out with the cac. After awhile he came over & told it was broke & not working right. He showed me with a new cac rod. He put it in the holder with the whole rod sticking out like a new stick rod. He never used one before & just assumed how it worked.
Yes, make sure the stick out length is only about 4" or less. Also make sure the air holes are on the correct side of the rod & pointed the right way.MM250
Trailblazer 250g
22a feeder
Lincoln ac/dc 225
Victor O/A
MM200 black face
Whitney 30 ton hydraulic punch
Lown 1/8x 36" power roller
Arco roto-phase model M
Vectrax 7x12 band saw
Miller spectrum 875
30a spoolgun w/wc-24
Syncrowave 250
air arc settings
Thanks for all the suggestions I wasn't running the amps high enough ... Ya the 325 I'm using has a gouge setting. Also I was gouging through a toggle seat that was about 3-4 inches thick on a jaw crusher in a very awkward position so the deeper I got didn't seem to be blowing the slag away very well .. Also I'd get a few spots that had high carbon deposits from the rod so it would arc until I'd grind it down. Or that's what I figured not exactly sure y that happens
air arc settings
I was told air arcing was bad for the machine so didn't want to set up are new machine wrong and harm it in anyway lots of helpful informations thanks again


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Greetings to everyone,
My name is Agili Ron. I am new member of this site, and want to participate in the discussion board. After a lot of search, I find your community and I am sure that I will get all the information that is required for my work.
Thanks and Regards,
Agili Ron