OCR Text |
Show TEST OF STRENGTH. Montana can justly boast of the most powerful and mighty specimens of the Celtic race. Thomas Tallon. who held the world's chainpion.-hip as a j rock driller, was buried this week. He won his laurels lau-rels in Denver some years ago where stalwart miners from all the west were pitted against him. His record, so far as known, has not been beaten. To R. D. Kehoe is accorded the championship of the world as a shoveler. He, too, is a Montana man and works for the Billings Water Power company. com-pany. His strength and durability are excelled only by the steam shovels. His record of one eight-hour shift is a ditch 200 feet long, two feet deep and 22 inches wide, which means 7'jO cubic feet of dirt dug and flung from its moorings by the two brawny hands of a lineal descendent of Finn Me-Coul. Me-Coul. To realize the achievement of this Irish giant it must be borne in mind that the dirt piled together would make a heap nine feet in every direction. To get this immense pile together it required two seconds for each shovel, which meant thirty shovels a minute. 1,800 in an hour, an equivalent equiva-lent of 14,400 in one shift of eight hours. If we figure each shovel at an average of ten pounds, Mr. Kehoe would have lifted seventy-two tons of earth in eight hours. This record shows not only herculean hercu-lean strength, but grit and human endurance that arc almost inconceivable.' Mr. Kehoe received for his day's work $10. He came to America from Ireland Ire-land twenty-four years ago. Suppose he kept up that record for twenty-four years, be would have dug out of the bowels of the earth 071. 120 tons of dirt, for which he would be entitled to $87,000, and all justly earned by the sweat of an honest man. |