Background
Arthur John Mason was born on June 1, 1857 in Melbourne, Australia, to Cyrus and Jessie (Campbell) Mason. His parents were of English extraction, his father a first cousin of Robert Browning.
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book
The Oriskany Fauna of Becraft Mountain, Columbia County, N.Y.
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Arthur John Mason
Edit Profileagriculturist engineer inventor
Education
Mason was educated in the public schools and took some engineering work at the University of Melbourne.
Career
At the age of sixteen he was employed by the Victorian Government Railways, first as a member of a surveying crew in the bush, then as field engineer in charge of construction, and finally, after 1876, in designing all types of railroad structures from bridges to depots. In May 1881 he sailed for San Francisco, intending to study American railroad building and, eventually, to return to Australia. After two years' work with various Western railroads, and some experience with mining surveys, he settled in Kansas City, Mo. , where he became assistant city engineer. In the early nineties Mason had begun to take out patents on excavating devices, and in 1894 he joined Frank Kryder Hoover in the firm of Hoover & Mason, Contracting Engineers. The concern, which designed and built conveying and excavating machinery, lasted until 1910, when Mason sold his share to his partner. Interested in developing excavating machinery for use on the Chicago drainage canal, Mason went to Chicago in 1900; two years later Hoover & Mason's offices were moved there. Meanwhile he was hired by the Illinois Steel Company to design machinery for handling iron ore. The next ten years he spent in the steel industry, patenting, with Hoover, numerous contrivances for expediting the movement of ore from the mines to the mills. These ranged from a grab to load and unload ore to a specially constructed ore boat. The two men also acquired Tennessee phosphate lands and, in 1911, began mining operations, contributing to the enterprise methods of treating the rock. During the First World War Mason was employed by the Emergency Fleet Corporation to ferret out delays in ship construction. In May 1918 he was transferred to the United States Shipping Board and put in charge of the experimental work on ship welding which had been undertaken at President Wilson's suggestion. The signing of the armistice prevented the completion of the experiments. In 1920 he advocated, among other measures, the substitution of machine- for hand-loading as a cure for the ills of the bituminous coal industry. After his retirement from Hoover & Mason in 1910, Mason turned his attention to the problem of drying forage crops artificially.
Achievements
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In 1926 he patented a coal-mining machine. He built an experimental plant at West Point, Miss. , in 1911, patented a conveyor-type alfalfa drier in 1916, and in 1926 made installations at the Walker-Gordon farms at Plainsboro, N. J. On his farm at Flossmoor, near Chicago, he worked out a mechanized system permitting continuity of operation and full use of the growing season in the production of alfalfa meal from the green crops. The Mason Alfalfa Process Company, of which Morris Llewellyn Cooke was president, was formed to market the drier and other machines he had developed. In 1931 the Franklin Institute awarded him a Wetherill medal in recognition of his pioneer work.
Works
book
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The Oriskany Fauna of Becraft Mountain, Columbia County, N.Y.
( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
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The Oriskany Fauna of Becraft Mountain, Columbia County, N.Y.
Views
Tied up with Mason's interest in alfalfa was his conviction that corn culture exposed the Middle West to extensive sheet erosion. Tied up with Mason's interest in alfalfa was his conviction that corn culture exposed the Middle West to extensive sheet erosion. He was among the first to measure its actual effects, comparing nearby fields with the virgin soil along the Illinois Central right-of-way. He advocated soil-binding crops as part of a reasoned plan for machine-age farming. On the problems of agriculture Mason brought to bear an engineer's impatience with waste in any form. He conceived of a farm in terms of a factory; indeed, his machinery was too expensive and his six-hundred-acre operating unit too large for the generality of American farmers. His fresh curiosity, versatility, and tendency to go to the heart of things are evident in his occasional writings, some of which have had considerable influence on students of soil erosion.
Personality
Mason was slight in stature, had gray eyes, and, in late life, a shock of gray hair. To his contemporaries he was humorous, quizzical, and imaginative; his ideal of a "permanent" agriculture for America is not likely to be forgotten.
Connections
On January 28, 1886, he married Hattie Adelaide Devol; they had four children, Arthur, Marjorie, Harriet, and Carroll Adelaide.
