r^ff^ I THE ST©FbY OF R-ON AND STEEL BY J, RUSSELL SMITH 703 iiU.,*^i4ii!i, ■ 'jiiiiSJW'i ITHACA, NY. "iiiihchajcci iof I lie iwc c\ llic Witk part of tka irvcome "^ of tke »M« E^Sfflll^ BA\MR^ NON-RESIDENT LECTURESHIP IN CHEMISTRY ENG?^TE^I>!G LIBIlAli DATE DUE um^^i^^m ^^^TW^ S£^98iJ Cornell University Library TN 703.S65 The story of iron and steel. 3 1924 004 660 068 Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924004660068 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL THE SLAG PIT. Loading slag into a freight car. THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL BY J. RUSSELL SMITH, Ph.D. ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF INDUSTRY, WHARTON SCHOOL OF FINANCE, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA AUTHOR OP *'tHE ORGANIZATION OF OCEAN COMMERCE" ILLUSTRATED NEW YORK AND LONDON D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1929 A, t c Copyright, 1908, by D. APPLETON AND COMPANY Printed in the United States of America PREFACE This little volume, the outgrowth of courses in American industry, is an attempt to present the main facts of iron and steel making so that any intelligent person can grasp the essence of the complex technical phenomena of iron and steel making -without even having to meet tech- nical terms. The constant object has been to make every paragraph intelligible to the lay reader, and, in addition to presenting an under- standing of the main technical facts, the major object has been to point out the economic sig- nificance of it all, for iron and steel are ab- solute fundamentals of the present industrial state. I wish to express my indebtedness to the following authors and works upon whom I have freely drawn: J. Lowthrian Bell, F.R.S., " Manufacture of Iron and Steel "; Campbell, PREFACE " The Manufacture and Properties of Iron and Steel "; Swank, " Iron in all Ages "; F. Pop- plewell, " The Iron and Steel Production in America "; E. S. Meade, " Trust Finance." I am personally indebted to my colleague, Prof. E. S. Meade, for valuable suggestions, and to a number of iron manufacturers (who do not wish their names mentioned) for much useful information. J. Russell Smith. Wharton School, Universitt of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. CONTENTS CHAPTER I IRON ORES AND THEIR FORMATION PAGES Iron occurs everjrwhere — How it is collected into ores • — ^The action of water, of limestone — The wide distribution of ores — The leading ores: The oxides, the carbonates, the sulphides — Methods of puri- fication 1-11 CHAPTER II THE EARLY HISTORY OF IRON How discovered — Antiquity of iron — General use of it in ancient civilization: Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome, England — Primitive methods of making; the Catalan forge — Fine quality; decline in the art — Continuance of primitive methods . 12-22 CHAPTER III THE BEGINNING OF MODERN IRON-MAKING AND ITS INTRODUCTION INTO AMERICA The origin of the blast furnace — Seventeenth century iron-making in England — The scarcity of fuel; the use of coke — Colonial iron-making in America, Virginia, Massachusetts and other New England vii CONTENTS PAGES colonies, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Carolinas, Ken- tucky, and Tennessee 23-40 CHAPTEE, IV THE ANTHRACITE EPOCH Fuel required in smelting — America continues to use charcoal — Stationary industry in early nineteenth century — Widely scattered — The introduction of anthracite — The hot blast — Rapid extension of anthracite 41-51 CHAPTER V THE COKE EPOCH Early trials of coke, failures, success, and slow growth; competition of anthracite — Coke boom — Geo- graphic distribution of iron at three periods — Pittsburg's rise; reasons therefore, charcoal iron in Appalachia and Champlain — Cause of location of iron industry — Alabama, Colorado — The by- product coke oven — Smelting with raw coal. 52-70 CHAPTER VI THE NINETEENTH CENTURY LEADERSHIP OF GREAT BRITAIN IN IRON AND STEEL England our industrial model — American colonies ex- port to Great Britain — England's technical con- tributions; puddling, hot blast — Bessemer process — Increased use of iron — England's industrial ad- vantages: peace, good resources — The British iron districts 71-87 viii CONTENTS CHAPTER VII THE AGE OF STEEL PAGES The importance and uses of steel; power, machinery, transport, structures, industry — Control in manu- facture, the blast furnace and its control, the Bessemer process, the open-hearth process, the rolling mill 84-107 CHAPTER VIII THE TWENTIETH CENTURY SUPREMACY OF AMERICA Later maturity of American industry, greater growth, causes, market, resources, technical improve- ments — Ore handling — Furnace practice — De- velopment of machines — Continuous operation — Specialization — Integration . , . 108-126 CHAPTER IX THE CARNEGIE STEEL COMPANY England had small producers, America large producers — Uncertainty of steel price and profits — Need of cash reserves — Price control by pools, by the trusts of 1898-99 — The competition of groups — The overcapitalized trusts — The Carnegie Com- pany controls raw materials — Mr. Carnegie's threat — His company bought out . . . 127-143 IZ CONTENTS CHAPTER X THE STEEL TRUST AND ITS RIVALS PAGES Formation of United States Steel Corporation to pre- vent competition — Its control of output — Not feared by iron producers — They share its price control — Feared by steel finishers ; reasons for this — Controls two thirds of total output — Its raw material reserves — The Great Northern ore lease — The future of the corporation — The German steel trust . . .... 144-164 CHAPTER XI THE NEW STEELS AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE Steel an alloy — Effect of carbon — Other alloys: sul- phur, phosphorus, nickel — The high-speed steels • — Importance in machine shop work and in present industry .... 165-172 CHAPTER XII THE ORE SUPPLY AND STEEL SUPPLY OF TO-MORROW The vast consumption — The changing sources of sup- ply, England, Germany, United States — The world's supply — Transportation improvements — ■ Improvements in smelting — Supply assured 173-188 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE The slag pit . . . Frontispiece Lake Superior open-cut ore mine . Facing 8 Catalan furnace . .... 19 Pig-iron casting floor by a modern blast furnace . 26 Row of Connellsville coke ovens burning ... 57 Bessemer converter . . .78 Seven-ton steam hammer . . Facing 90 Power bending rolls for ship plates . . Facing 94 Two modern blast furnaces with row of stoves between 97 Ore dock on the Great Lakes with ore heaps for the winter supply of furnaces . Facing 116 A train cf filled molds at the stripper . . . 120 Steel plants at (1) Duquesne, Pa., (2) Munhall, Pa., (3) Bessemer, Pa. . Facing 142 Spiral-geared, pneumatic, clutch planing machine Facing 170 On the Great Lakes. Unloading an ore steamer Facing 180 XI THE STORY OF IROK AND STEEL CHAPTER I IHON ORES AND THEIR FORMATION The crnst of the earth contains the seventy elements recognized by chemists as constituting all known matter. Among the seventy are half a dozen or so which we know as the useful met- als, and of these iron is by far the greatest in quantity, the cheapest, and, most fortunately for mankind, the most useful. Iron is everywhere, but not in its pure state. It is one of the peculiarities of nature's way of disposing of the elemental materials that almost none is to be found in its pure state, and when so found, it is a rare exception. Iron is one of the most elusive of the metals in the respect of its rare occurrence in the pure state. Indeed, it is very difficult to obtain pure iron in the laboratory, and the iron of commerce is never pure. Like other metals, it is distributed widely 1 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL throughout the surface of the earth, and appar- ently it is rarest in that part of the earth 's crust to which man has access. Astronomers, as they weigh the spheres in the invisible balances of their mathematical minds, report that the aver- age weight of the earth is much greater than the weight of the surface which we can see. This inequality is caused by the occurrence near the center of the earth of vast masses of met- als, iron included. If some Jules Verne could delve a few thousand leagues beneath the sur- face of the earth he would doubtless come to such mountains of iron as man has never dreamed of. Some estimators think that as much as a fifth of the whole content of this globe is iron. Man's opportunity for getting at these riches, however, is limited thus far to the sur- face of the earth and to about five thousand feet beneath it — merely the planet's skin. In this small fraction of the earth's mass are all the available supplies of the good metals. Only by the uncommon occurrences of nature have these been collected in masses which are sufficiently rich for our use. Only here and there has there been such a combination of circumstances as to make any of the metals available for immediate use ; but fortunately the conditions for the col- lection of available iron have been brought into 2 IRON ORES AND THEIR FORMATION combination more frequently than for any of the other metals. Iron in its wide distribution often occurs in unsuspected forms. Whenever, as we go up and down, we see a red-colored surface, or a reddish tint upon the solid substances of the earth, we see iron — the bank of red clay, the red brick, the red paint upon the house wall, the complex- ion of rosy youth, or my lady's ribbon. Even the rosy apple derives its tint from iron which it contains; and the orchardist who selects his apple land sees to it that it contains iron to color the fruit which he hopes to sell. Further than this, the iron which is so common upon the earth's surface occasionally falls from heaven in the form of meteors ; indeed, meteoric iron is about the purest which is found in all nature, and strange to say, the meteoric iron has a sur- prising degree of uniformity and always con- tains with it a small amount of nickel. How- ever, this choice quality of iron does not come to us in quantities sufficient to serve a use more important than that of specimens for museums. The chief condition which contributes to make available this widespread but unusable stock of iron is the fact that it is soluble in water; that is the real reason why the surface 3 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL of the earth possesses so much less iron than does its interior. For unknown millions of j'ears the rain has been falling upon the hillsides, taking a minute quantity of iron into solution and carry- ing it away to the sea, and burying most of it beyond the reach of man. In all ages conditions arise here and there which cause the water to drop its iron. We then have the conditions for the formation of the ore iron upon which the iron industry rests. Certain lakes throughout many parts of the world possess minute organ- isms having the power to cause the iron in the water to be deposited on the bottom of the bog or lake in the form of a fine powder. This is called bog ore; and in some parts of the world it has been at times of importance in the manu- facture of iron; for example, certain bog depos- its in eastern Massachusetts furnished that com- monwealth with iron for more than a century in the colonial period. The conditions which make for the deposit of bog ore are still in ex- istence. The flowing waters continue to dissolve iron from the hillsides and the organisms in the ponds continue to precipitate it to the bottom. In parts of Sweden there are some of these lakes where the resulting iron-ore ci'ops have long been harvested from time to time, the deposit in a few years or decades again becoming of suffi- i IRON ORES AND THEIR FORMATIOlN cient thickness to make profitable its collection for smelting. This bog ore has doubtless been formed in past times in the same manner ; and we have here a probable explanation of the peculiar fact that in some parts of the world, particularly in Eng- land, this ore is mixed largely with coal, the coal and iron having been deposited in the swamp simultaneously. The fact that coal is always, and iron is usually a swamp product, is a par- tial explanation of the fact that in many parts of the world we find the two closely associated • — a fact of very great industrial importance, be- cause the coal is now necessary for the smelting of the ore. This particular coal-ore compound, as found at Cleveland, England, actually con- tains about enough coal to provide for the satis- factory smelting of the ore. This, however, is quite unusual. Limestone is the most common agent for the bringing about the deposit of the iron from the water in which it is dissolved. It is a peculiar fact that water containing iron, coming in con- tact with a stream containing lime, is compelled to drop the iron. The consequence is that wher- ever there are limestones we have the possibility of iron ore being deposited through the simple flowing of spring water over limestone. This 5 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL process often takes the form of the water-dis- solving pockets in the limestone, and afterwards depositing iron in the place from which the lime- stone has been dissolved. Such was the forma- tion of the famous Cornwall iron deposit in Pennsylvania, and of many similar deposits in this and other countries. We quite commonly find iron-ore deposits along the edges of lime- stone deposits; and geologists tell us there are long strings of iron ore reaching in an almost continuous line from New York, through Penn- sylvania, Virginia, and on to Alabama. Fur- thermore, these deposits are not in a single string, but in a number of strings, the explana- tion being that they lie along the edges of the limestone outcrops which run through this re- gion. The famed fertility of the Shenandoah and Cumberland valleys, sometimes known to- gether as the great Appalachian valley, is due to the same limestone that produced the numer- ous ore deposits that made their early iron in- dustry. The same alternation of limestone with other formations occurs in the other parts of the Appalachians, and has given us ores in the west- ern hills and in the upper Ohio Valley, and espe- cially western Pennsylvania. There seems to be a slightly different expla- nation of the widely known and justly famed 6 IRON ORES AND THEIR FORMATION ore deposits around Lake Superior. Here are found iron ores in greater masses and greater richness than in any other part of the world. The rocks in which they are found are very an- cient, and the geologists were at a loss to ex- plain the almost fabulous ore deposits there existing, and particularly the very irregular shape and large masses in which they were found. Of late the commonly accepted ex- planation of this most fortunate occurrence is as follows: For vast periods of time water containing small quantities of iron appears to have trickled deep beneath the earth's sur- face through rocks which slowly decomposed, and as the rock dissolved, particle by parti- cle, iron was deposited in its place, until it replaced the original rock. Thus was formed the petrified wood of the West, and the present great iron-ore masses which the prospectors in the Lake Superior woods are constantly ex- posing. This combination of circumstances — first, the commonness of iron throughout the whole of the surface of the earth ; second, its solution in water; and, lastly, its deposit wherever this water comes in contact with certain organisms or limestone— has given to man a world-wide distribution of iron; and, furthermore, it is in 7 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL forms more available and more abundant than those of any other of the great metals. It is only exceeded by aluminum, which we have thus far not learned to win for common uses. These iron deposits which have been so praised are masses of ore which, as might be expected from the proclivities of iron and from the nature of ore deposits, are rarely pure ore; even the ores are mixed with foreign matter. The foreign substances are chemically separate from the ore with which they are mixed, and the ores themselves are of many varieties. Ores may be classed in three great groups: First, oxides, or combinations of iron and oxy- gen; second, the carbonates, or combinations of carbon ; and, third, the combinations with sul- phur. In the order of their richness the ores are as follows : First, magnetite, an iron oxide (FejO^), which, when absolutely pure, may have as much as 72.40 per cent of iron. Second, hema- tite, a so-called sesquioxide (FcjOa), which is almost as rich as magnetite, having a possible 70 per cent of iron. This ore occurs in different colors and in a number of forms. Third group, limonite, or watery oxides (2Fe2033Il20). This group contains the bog ore above described and some other less important ores. It is quite natural, considering their method of formation, that they 8 H fc >> ^ S 60 H T3 « O O 0) -a H -tj C5 3 1 ^ o w ft p-l J o c3 rt a n iM hH o s t) ?, C/J o 01 (i ^ ►.^ -^J ^-< <1 o >-i CD J3 IRON ORES AND THEIR FORMATION should contain water so intimately mixed with the ore that it can be got rid of only in a furnace ; consequently these ores can only reach a possible height of 59.89 per cent of iron. Fourth, sider- ite. This is a carbonate (FeCOg). It is some- times called spathic ore, and sometimes clay ironstone, when there is much clay in it. It is also the same ore that occurs in mixture ' with coal ; and when this is the case it is called black band. It is of very little importance in America, but of considerable importance in Great Britain. The last member in the ore group is the sulphide, pyrites (FeS,). Owing to the fact that the ores are always mixed with foreign matter — clay or ordinary earth — or with a great variety of compounds, the ores rarely reach their full possible content by at least ten per cent. This impurity, which make ore leaner, must be extracted by some cheap means, and if possible before it goes to the furnace. This end is attained by a variety of devices, the simplest being sorting and sizing. The workmen pick out the stones and foreign matter by hand, leaving the good ore. The mass is sometimes washed when the foreign matter, like clay, is soft and can be removed by the action of the running water. A third metb od is the piling of the masses of ore, dirt, shale, 9 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL and other foreign stones, so that the action of the frost and the rain will break them apart, and the undesired can then be easily taken out by hand. The fourth method of ore purification is the roasting of ores. This is commonly ap- plied to the sulphides, as by no other means can the sulphur be driven off. The heat of the fur- nace causes this troublesome substance to rise in sulphurous fumes, leaving the ores to be treated later, as are other ores. A fifth method of ore purification, by the use of magnets, is only applicable to magnetite. Strange to state, this valued ore is unlike all other ores in that it, like finished iron, will be attracted by the elec- tric magnet, and by that means bits of ore can be picked out of the masses of foreign stone. If all other ores were capable of this treatment the world would be tenfold richer in iron; be- cause by that means ores of very low iron con- tent could be mechanically picked over ; whereas at the present there has been devised no satis- factory means of separating the small amount of good iron from the large amount of clay, dirt, or stone which so much resembles it in all physical characteristics. These impurities above mentioned, such as wa- ter, carbon dioxide, dirt, and stone, simply serve to make the ore poor, by diluting it, and are in 10 IRON ORES AND THEIR FORMATION that respect directly unlike the three impurities of sulphur, phosphorus, and titanium ; these sub- stances, usually occurring in what might appear insignificant quantities, have the unfortunate effect of rendering the iron practically useless, because of the great brittleness which they add to it. For example, an ore containing one pound of phosphorus to a thousand pounds of iron is practically useless unless some means can be de- vised to get rid of the phosphorus. This was for a long time impossible, and consequently mountains of phosphatic ore were worth no more to mankind than mountains of vulgar stone, and upon the conquest of this scrimption of phos- phorus hinged one of the greatest revolutions in the history of iron making. CHAPTER II THE EARLY HISTOKY OP IRON Stated briefly, iron is made by putting the ore into a fire that is hot enough to melt out the iron, which then trickles to the bottom of the mass. The metal which is thus won has, as everyone knows, the characteristic of promptly getting rusty. Iron rust, or iron oxide, as it is technically called, is formed by the union of the iron and the oxygen of the air; the process is called oxidization. It is nothing less than a return to the ore. In a few short years this process causes the farmer's wire fence to drop to pieces, eats the nails out of the buildings, puts holes in the roof, and in a generation or two rusts large pieces of iron into a powdery, brown heap. Because of this prompt destruction of iron, it is prone to disappear with the bones of the men who make it. The eonseqiient rarity of its occurrence in prehistoric remains, influenced scholars for a long time to harbor the incorrect inference that the ancients knew nothing of iron. This inference, however, is entirely erroneous. 12 THE EARLY HISTORY OF IRON The manufacture of iron, even among many of the semisavage tribes, has been for ages widely distributed. There has been no civilization of which we have record that has not made use of iron. When, where, or how the first iron was made history will never tell, for iron is older than history. Its discovery may have been by accident. The great silver mines of Potosi in South America, so runs the story, were discov- ered through the melting of the silver by a camp fire. Another camp fire, in another part of the world, may have discovered to man the first lump of iron ; a lightning bolt from heaven may have been the agent; or a forest fire, sweeping over great tracts of wilderness, may have re- sulted in its discovery. There is a record that in the fifteenth century before Christ the na- tives of Crete first learned from a forest fire that the ores of their island would make iron. Aceoi'ding to the classifications of some his- torians, iron was not the first metallurgical work performed by primitive man. History prior to definite dates is sometimes divided into the fol- lowing epochs : The rough stone age, the smooth stone age, the bronze age, and the iron age. There is, however, no certainty that bronze pre- ceded iron, although its priority is suggested by ancient remains, and by the fact that it is made 13 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL of copper and tin, two metals which occur occa- sionally in their pure state, and whose extrac- tion is, therefore, a matter of great simplicity. In 1837 explorations beneath the great pyra- mid of Gizeh revealed a small piece of iron, used in the structure of that great monument, and therefore probably dating back to four thousand years before Christ. This exceptionally long life for a bit of iron is only explained by the fact that in the exceedingly dry climate of Egypt the process of rusting goes on very slowly. Iron was not cheap in the Egyptian lands, else it would not have been the spoil of the conquering monarchs, but its use is widely indicated by the pictures remaining upon the walls of existing ruins. Ruins of large iron works have been dis- covered on the Peninsula of Sinai, and there is much evidence that iron was well known to the Assyrians, Chaldeans, and Babylonians, Avho occupied the plains of Mesopotamia for several millenniums before the time of Christ. The Hebrews were well acquainted with iron. So early as in the fourth chapter of Genesis, Tubal Cain, born in the seventh generation from Adam, is introduced to us as " an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron." When the Israelites went into Canaan, the natives of that land fought them from iron chariots; the terri- 14 THE EARLY HISTORY OF IROT^ ble Og, King of Bashan, had an iron bed, and the spearhead of Goliath weighed six hundred shekels of iron. Job mentions both iron and steel when he says, " He shall flee from the iron weapon, and the bow of steel shall strike him through." Numerous other Scripture refer- ences show the familiarity of these people with iron. The Greeks also were conversant with the metal, although in the Homeric poems its men- tion evidently indicates that it was rare and precious. Some centuries later, in Alexander's day, four kinds of steel were described, with their fitness for different uses, and Alexander took plunder of iron from the conquered princes of India. In the third century B.C., the Ro- man carpenter, mason, and shipwright used iron tools, and Pliny tells us that " iron ores are to be found almost everywhere." But the Romans had been preceded in the knowledge of iron by the people of Spain, who even before the Roman times were famous makers of iron. This the Romans learned to their sorrow when the Spanish swords in the hands of Hannibal's men mercilessly cut down the more poorly equipped Romans at Cannae, 216 B.C. Caasar found the Britons in possession of iron which they had made; the Scandinavians were 15 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL also masters of both iron and bronze in Roman times, as evidenced by the remains of Viking boats. This iron, though its use was widespread, was everywhere dear, and may almost be ranked as a precious metal. Nor did a thousand years of Christendom do aught to cheapen it. As late as the fourteenth century it was too costly to re- place brass in the kitchenware of the ordinary dweller of England, who used steel only where its great strength and cutting ability were required, as in hoes, scythes, forks, and, above all else, in swords. The victory of William the Conqueror, at Hastings, in 1066, was attributed by him largely to the superior weapons of his men, and he exalted the smith, who was also a sword maker, to a rank equal to the highest official, a posi- tion which the British blacksmith held through several centuries, while the might of armies rested upon the excellence of the sword. From the beginning of iron making, before the dawn of history, down almost to the time when Columbus set sail to discover America, there was surprisingly little progress in the process of the manufacture of iron, and, indeed, there was some loss of knowledge of the art. Most of the early methods of making iron, which have in modern times been replaced by astonish- ing improvements, are still to be found in oper- 16 THE EARLY HISTORY OF IRON ation in remote corners of the world. Less than half a century ago explorers in central Africa described the modern method of iron making in that country. Two men squat over a charcoal fire, which is between them. Both urge it on with hand bellows, and charge it alternately with lumps of charcoal and lumps of iron ore. The result of the day's labor of these two men is a dozen pounds of iron. Even in Roman times in Britain and in Belgium iron was made in a con- ical hole in the ground. This hole was dug in some hilltop with free access to the prevailing wind which rushed through a converging tun- nel into the bottom of the fire hole. This prim- itive forced draught could only be used on days when the prevailing wind blew. At other times the furnace had to be idle. This exceedingly primitive method is not, however, typically de- scriptive of even very ancient iron making, for history knows not when the bellows was in- vented. There were other very early methods of making the forced draught necessary for the slowest iron making. In the monsoon countries of southeastern Asia, where the bamboo grows, as in India, Burmah, Borneo, and even Mada- gascar, the natives early discovered that by working loose pistons through a hollow bamboo, practically as we work a pump, they could force 17 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL air through their fire, and by this means they made iron before- the Christian era. This bam- boo device is a near ancestor to the modern air pump. Possibly a more ingenious device is the goatskin bellows, widely used throughout the world, and pictured thirty-five centuries ago upon Egyptian walls. The operator has two goatskins, one under each foot, both con- necting with the same pipe, for carrying the air to the fire. When the bellows is full of air, the weight of the operator forces it into the fire. At the same time he pulls a string, which inflates the other goatskin through a hole in the upper part. Over this hole, when the skin is full of air, the operator deftly places his bare heel, and his weight starts a current of air from the sec- ond goatskin. In the meantime the first is be- ing filled in a similar manner, and thus a con- stant blast is maintained. The primitive methods of the ancient world finally focused themselves, so far as the Mediter- ranean basin and European countries were con- cerned, upon the so-called Catalan forge, which was first devised and used in Catalonia, Spain. This difi'ers but little from the ordinary black- smith forge, which has the air blast furnished by a bellows, or if possible by a waterfall throiagh the device known as the trompe. 18 THE EARLY HISTORY OF IRON This consists in letting the water fall through a pipe and carrying with it bubbles of air, which escape at the bottom of the pipe into Catalan Furnace an airtight receptacle. There the accumulated air has a pressure derived in being carried down- ward in the falling water. The primitive iron 19 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL maker, however, who used the Catalan forge had the option of making his iron where a water- fall would give him the desired air blast, or if it involved less labor, he could use his muscle, and make a bellows blast near where there was an abundant supply of ore, rather than carry the ore to the waterfall. Both methods were used; and clinkers are found high up on the Pyrenees, far removed from water. The Roman iron industry in Britain was prosecuted with considerable vigor, as shown by the large clinker deposits which they have left. At a later time these tailings left by the Romans served for several centuries as a profitable basis for iron smelting, so rich were they in good iron, which the Romans themselves could not extract. Some careful experiments recently made with the old Roman method of making iron have led to the conclusion that it could not now be so made for less than $1,000 a ton. This may well explain why the Roman Coliseum, in which each stone was held to its neighbor by iron clasps, has for centuries shown only gaping holes, where some enterprising vandals have cut the rock to get the small piece of iron. The Catalan forge (devised no one knows when) was the staple and standard method of iron making through the Middle Ages. After- 20 THE EARLY HISTORY OF IROM wards, the Germans by a series of slow improve- ments evolved the first form of blast furnace. Before this time iron had not been melted. The primitive forges merely produced a lump of crude iron at the bottom, which was hammered, to make it ready for the various uses to which it was put. It should not, however, be in- ferred that because the iron was costly and the methods primitive the quality was inferior. If we may believe half the stories which we read about the excellence of the swords of Toledo, Bilboa, and the Damascus blade, the Avorld has lost something of the art of tempering steel. It is plain that Asia knew less in 1800 about the making of iron than she knew twenty -five hun- dred years before. There is in India a column sixteen inches in diameter, weighing seventeen tons, the whole of malleable iron, and dating back at least twenty-five hundred years, during most of which period the Asiatics have had at their control no method of duplicating this splendid piece of metal. Asia made as much iron, and as good iron, and probably applied as good methods in the time of Nebuchadnezzar as in the time of Queen Victoria. A French Royal Commission in 1880 found in Cambodia a locally famous iron district which was exporting iron over a wide area at a cost of about three hundred 21 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL dollars a ton. It was made by one of the above- mentioned primitive devices. The quantities used were small, but served to supply the sim- ple needs of the primitive Indo-Chinese. While for five centuries the blast furnace has been important, the Catalan forge or its equals is not limited to such remote regions as Cam- bodia or the head waters of the Nile. Twenty years ago it was used for making iron in its original home, the Pyrenees, in France, in the Appalachian regions of the United States, where in secluded valleys, remote from the railway, far beyond any good road, the American mountain- eer still worked the little forge to make his iron, while his wife worked the spinning wheel to make his clothes. But these are economic bayous which stagnantly branch off from the main stream of iron making, which has in the past centuries flowed with an ever-increasing tumult of improvement. CHAPTER III THE BEGINNING OP MODERN IRON MAKING AND ITS INTRODUCTION INTO AMERICA Modern iron making may properly be said to have begun with the achievement of the blast furnace and the resulting making of cast iron. The forges which had been used from time immemorial and finally resulted in the Catalan forge did not succeed in melting the iron so that it could be poured. It merely made a lump of metal of fine quality, which could be heated red-hot and refined and hammered into iron and steel. As stated in the last chapter, the excellent quality of this forge iron is witnessed in the achievement of the Saracen sword makers, whose Toledo and Damascus blades have never been excelled. But at best it was a costly and slow method, comparable to the work of the sil- versmith, and as little suited to meet the needs of a modern machine civilization as is a canoe for attending to our ocean traffic. The lump of forge iron, or, as it is sometimes called, the bloom, from the bloomary, was comparatively 23 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL small, rarely being above one or two hundred weight in size. After the decline in the iron maker's art, which accompanied the general lapse of knowl- edge during the mediaeval period, the iron in- dustry first revived in the lower Rhine Valley, where, in the latter part of the medieval period, the Germans had an improved form of the Cata- lan furnace, which they had built to a height of ten to sixteen feet, and called the stiickofen. It was sometimes called the wolf oven, so named because the metal resulting from its operation was called a wolf. This furnace had an output in its best form of lOQ or 150 tons in the year, and represents the final form of the Catalan forge in Europe. The next stage was merely the enlargement of this German stiichofen to a greater height. It was rechristened the blow oven, and the greater heat of its flame succeeded in melting the iron and making it flow so that it could be cast. This improvement may properly be said to have re- sulted in the blast furnace, first used in Belgium, about 1340. It should be noted that there is a great resemblance in the names " blow oven " of the German and " blast furnace " of the English. This device was improved and per- fected during the fifteenth and sixteenth cen- 24 BEGINNING OF MODERN IRON MAKING turies by the Germans, Belgians, and the French. Strange to say, it vvas nearly two centuries be- fore it was widely introduced into Europe, not being known in Saxony until 1550, although it was used in England a century earlier. By 1550 in central Germany its bellows were worked by cams upon the axles of water wheels, which also operated heavy hammers for the purification of the metal. By 1680 a blast furnace in the Forest of Dean, England, was described as being thirty feet in height, operating continuously for months, and making cast iron, which was described under the names of sows and pigs. Pig iron is the crude product of the blast furnace, and bears its bucolic name because the molten iron is al- lowed to run from the furnace, over a floor of sand, in which are impressions into which the iron is permitted to run and cool in any shape desired. The most convenient shape is the one by which little side depressions lead off from a main trench in the same way that cross streets leave a main avenue. These depressions on the casting floor are separated by very narrow sand banks, causing the main channel and the side channel when cast into iron to considerably re- semble a family of infant swine feeding; hence the name pig iron. 25 THE STOKY OF IRON AND STEEL Charcoal has been the universal fuel for the .smelting of iron among savages and among all civilizations from the earliest date down to the successful introduction of coke about the mid- dle of the eighteenth century. Therefore, for- PiG Iron Casting Floor by a Modern Blast Ftjbnace ests to supply wood to be burned into charcoal were a very important part of the natural equip- ment for the making of iron. In a small coun- try like England this pressure was soon felt, and as early as the reign of Elizabeth the devasta- tion of the forests caused Parliamentary action 26 BEGINNING OF MODERN IRON MAKIlsG prohibiting the establishment of more furnaces in certain counties. The British iron industry, thus restricted by law and by the open fields that it produced, followed the vanishing forests from one county to another. In 1719 the result- ing devastation was again violently assailed in Parliament ; but the scarcity of charcoal in Great Britain had already resulted in the relative de- cline of the industry in that country in com- parison to Germany, with its better forest re- sources. In 1749 England was making 18,000 tons of iron per year and importing 20,000 tons from Germany. As early as 1619 a man by the name of Dud Dudley had succeeded in making charred, or partly burned, coal serve the purpose in his blast furnace, but this was not very profitable, and his equipment was broken up by the out- raged charcoal burners, who saw in his improve- ment the threatened ruin of their business. It was not until more than a century later, through the activity of one Abram Darby, of Coalbrook- dale, that the successful introduction of charred coal or coke as an iron-making fuel came about. This discovery, like that of the blast furnace itself, did not revolutionize the iron industry of the whole world. In America, for example, its introduction did not come until late in the nine- 27 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL teenth century, because of the lack of develop- ment of coke-making coals and the abundant supply of other fuels. Coke-made iron, like the blast furnace, was limited to certain favored dis- tricts. It had its quickest development in Eng- land, where its discovery came in the nick of time to save the declining iron industry from ex- tinction. The early making of iron in America and its continuance until far past the Revolutionary pe- riod was entirely supported by charcoal, of which the country had an abundant supply. As early as 1585 Sir Walter Raleigh's unsuc- cessful expedition brought back from North Carolina glowing accounts of iron ore. The early Virginia colonists were confident of the splendid quality and quantity of the colony's iron resources, and the year after the settle- ment of Jamestown seven tons of iron were smelted in Bristol from Virginia ore. Twelve years latei^ in 1620, at a convenient waterfall, sixty-five miles up the James, an iron furnace was begun ; but the roseate hopes of its build- ers did not result in the smelting of iron. Dis- ease, death, delay, financial difficulties, and, finally, the Indian massacre of 1622, caused the abandonment of the enterprise. The first iron smelted in America was made in Massachusetts. 28 BEGINNING OF MODERN IRON MAKING In 1644 John Winthrop, Jr., son of the gover- nor, began the building of iron worte, having previously gone to England and formed " The Company of Undertakers for the Iron Works," with a capital of £1,000 sterling. The next year he was making iron at Lynn, and three years later the output was seven tons a week. The company soon got into bad repute because of the devastation of the adjacent forests, and law- suits resulted from the overflowing of their dam, from which came their power. Forty years later the plant was entirely closed down. It was, however, followed soon aftci" its origin by other works, and for the century following 1620 Massachusetts was the chief iron maker among the colonies. In 1658 some of the Winthrop associates founded iron works in New Haven, Conn., and shortly ffter that works were built in Rhode Island ; but the other New England States made no iron until the eighteenth century. It should be noted that most of the early New England works were bloomaries, although there were some blast furnaces making castings. In 1784 there were seventy-six iron works in Mas- sachusetts, but many of them were small. For a century Massachusetts iron was made from the bog ore from glacial lakes and ponds, which so 29 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL abound, particularly in the eastern part of that State. Every two decades the crop was gath- ered afresh and together with the marine shells from the neighboring sea was burned in char- coal forges. Some of these early works were abandoned because of the exhaustion of the ad- jacent supply of wood. In 1804 one of these furnaces, known as the Federal furnace, was declared by its owner to be the finest furnace known. He stated that it had two bellows 22 feet long by 4 feet wide, which were operated by a water wheel 25 feet in diameter. It was at that time chiefly depending upon bog ore brought bj^ vessel from Egg Harbor, N. J. This ore, having thirty to forty per cent iron, cost $6.50 per ton delivered. Local bog ore yielded from twenty to thirty per cent, and cost $6 at the furnace, while a poor grade of bog ore, yielding but eighteen per cent, was bought by some forges at $4 per ton delivered. About 1750 a new iron field was opened in the western part of Massachusetts, in the older ore deposits of Berkshire Hills, and in 1765 there was here a famous furnace 28 feet in height. Adjacent to the Berkshire region was Litchfield County, Conn., which began to produce iron about the same time, and for a century was a famous ii'on district. A noted furnace here 80 BEGINNING OF MODERN IRON MAKING required three tons of ore and 250 bushels of charcoal to make a ton of iron, and made 2^ tons of iron per day. In 1800 this county had 50 bloomary forges, and throughout the middle and latter part of the eighteenth century this type of iron works was very common upon the streams flowing into Long Island Sound from the north. It was not until 1775 that iron was made in Vermont, and the famous Champlain district was not opened until 1801. New York seems to have been a slow State in the development of iron works, the beginning being in 1740, in the region east of the Hudson, which was really a part of the Massachusetts- Connecticut field. In 1752 the Stirling forges in Orange County were established, and soon became one of the leading works in the coun- try. Here was made the famous chain that was stretched across the Hudson at West Point by the Americans to block the passage of the Brit- ish ships. Here, also, the anchors of the first American war vessels were forged. By the end of the eighteenth century this plant was pro- ducing 2,000 tons of iron per year. New Jersey duplicated the history of Massa- chusetts in the use of bog ores. An iron maker from Massachusetts settled in the low-lying part 31 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL of the State, near New York Bay, and started up the first establishment in 1676. In the mid- dle of the eighteenth century, Burlington, on the Delaware, and other places to the east of it (Mount Holly and Egg Harbor), were using bog ore from the numerous ponds of central Jer- sey. The pine forests of this State furnished good charcoal, and this section had many plants in the quarter century before the Revolution. The works at Burlington made shot for the Revo- lutionary cannon, as did other works in north- ern Jersey, at Mount Hope and Hibernia, which in 1777 were the only blast furnaces operating in the State. An act of the Legislature ex- empted their workmen from military service because of the importance of the work in supptying ammunition for Washington's ar- tillery. The north Jersey ore field, comprising the older deposits of magnetic ore, was making a little iron as early as 1710, and between 1725 and 1770 this district, with its good ores, its wooded hills, and rapid streams for power, was quite an important center. It enjoyed a dis- tinct advantage in being near the New York market. The State of Pennsylvania, now the admitted leader of all the country and of the world in 32 BEGINNING OP MODERN IRON MAXINQ the making of iron and steel, was also prominent in the colonial period, but it was nearly three- quarters of a century behind Massachusetts in getting started. It is probable that 1716 is the date of the first iron making in that colony, and by 1734 there were about twenty bloomaries and other iron works near Philadelphia. Between 1730 and 1750 the industry spread to the north and west, into Montgomery, Bucks, Berks, Chester, Lancaster, and Lebanon coun- ties. One of these plants, established in 1751, was the forge at Valley Cieek, which became famous as Washington's headquarters under the name of Valley Forge. The Pennsylvania industry differed from that of the other colonies by changing shortly after 1730 almost entirely from the use of the blooni- ary forges to furnaces, which made pig iron, to be later refined into higher grades or made into castings. In another respect, also, the Pennsyl- vania iron works were unique at this time — that is, in the prohibition of the sale of intoxicating liquors in their vicinity. In 1723 the iron makers sought of the Legislature and received its permission to have prohibition for twelve years within three miles of a blast furnace, un- less otherwise requested by the ironmasters. This restriction worked so beneficently in the 33 THE STORY OF IKON AND STEEL cure of labor difficulties that it was asked for and regranted in 1735. During the first quarter century of iron mak- ing in Pennsylvania the industry had spread quite generally in the region between the Dela- Avare and the Susquehanna, and northward to the mountains. Near midcentury it crossed the Susquehanna, with establishments at York in 1756, and six years later iron was being made in Cumberland County. In 1767 the Juniata Valley, the chief tributary of the Susquehanna, was the scene of new blast furnaces. Although the colony was late in starting, there were built within it sixty furnaces in the sixty years in- tervening between the founding of the iron industry and the Declaration of Indepen- dence. In 1759 a foreign observer reported that the Pennsylvania iron industry was more advanced than that of any other colony. At the Reading, Cornwall, and Warwick furnaces, which were 32 feet in height, the weekly output was 25 to 30 tons of iron, an output greatly exceeding that of the small bloomaries, which were to be found in most of the other colonies at that time. A typical iron works of this period was the Martic furnace and forge on Pequea Creek, among the Susquehanna hills of western Lancaster County. 34 BEGINNING OP MODERN IRON MAKING This property consisted of 3,400 acres, nearly all woodland, for the supplying of its own char- coal. It had two forges for the working up of its own product, and its remote location en- abled it to remain undisturbed and serve the country well in making muskets and other sup- plies for the Continental Army. It was the almost universal custom in 1760 for the Pennsylvania iron works to close down during the heat of the summer. Doubtless the shortage of water power at this season was a con- tributing cause. Water was the universal power in this as in the other colonies, the steam engine not being introduced until after 1800, although it had been in use half a century earlier in the British iron works. In 1760 most of the Penn- sylvania iron works were within a forty-mile radius of Philadelphia, although, as above men- tioned, there were several beyond Susquehanna, and there were several erected beyond the Alle- gheneys late in the eighteenth century. In 1778 the first plant began work in the Wyoming Val- ley. Delaware and Maryland took a less conspicu- ous part in the colonial iron manufacture. Dela- ware began in 1726, and other plants soon fol- lowed, but they were not of the largest type, owing to the rather meager ore deposits of this 35 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL State. Even as late as 1810 it had only forges, without a single furnace. Maryland, which had begun making iron in 1716, exported three tons of bar iron to England in 1718, but was the next year without works, and the Legislature offered 100 acres of land to anyone who would start making iron within the State. There were soon other works established, and like their predecessors they were located around the head of Chesapeake Bay, particu- larly at the Northeast, which during the colonial period was the center of Maryland's iron manu- facture. In 1761 the eight furnaces in the State had a capacity of 2,500 tons of iron per year, and the ten forges increased this by 600 tons. In the decade preceding the Revolution there were scattered plants in the piedmont counties of Frederick and Carroll. The Hagerstown Valley of western Maryland was also the scene of iron making before the Revolution, and the first can- non cast in the State of Maryland was made for the Continental Army on a branch of Antietam Creek near Hagerstown. Virginia, despite her early attempt in 1620, did not succeed in making iron until ninety-six years thereafter, and by 1732 there were only four furnaces in the State and no forges. Her iron makers then boasted, however, that their 36 BEGINNING OP MODERN IRON MAKING industry was carried on in the most modern method of the time. The beginnings of iron making were in the tide- water district. The first important plant was located on the peninsula between the Rappahannock and the Potomac, and according to Colonel Spotswood and Mr. Chis- well, who were pioneers here, the equipment for the beginning was rather large. ' ' For one mod- erate furnace 4 square miles of woodland and 120 slaves were required. One furnace cost £700, ready for work; Mr. Chiswell's property cost £12,000, including furnace, 15,000 acres of land, the necessary cattle, 80 negroes, and the expense of making 1,200 tons of pig iron." Be- fore 1760 there were plants in the Shenandoah Valley, and they are reported as having been numerous there before the Revolution. This sec- tion, M'ith its many outcrops of limestone in con- tact with other rocks, gave many ore deposits easily accessible. North Carolina was exporting to Great Britain as early as 1728 and 1729, and continued to do so at intervals until the Revolution. Apparent- ly this metal was made in the eastern part of the State from bog ore. The neighboring State of South Carolina was very slow in the beginning of iron manufacture, the first being in 1772, but the forge was promptly destroyed by the Loyal- 37 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL ists upon the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. In 1816 there were only nine bloomaries in four counties. Georgia made no iron in the colonial period, and established its first bloom- ary in the coast district in 1790. One of the most interesting colonial iron dis- tricts was that in the southern extension of the great valley and the neighboring Appalachian Mountains. The great valley running from Harrisburg, past Hagerstown, thence along the drainage systems of the Shenandoah, James, and Roanoke, was the avenue of entrance for settlers into Kentucky, Tennessee, and western North Carolina. There was a large emigration along this route at the close of the Revolutionary War, and the southwestern counties of Virginia had several iron works erected within their confines during the last decade of the eighteenth century. In 1791 the Bourbon furnace, one of the pio- neer iron works of the Mississippi Valley, was established in Bath County, Ky. This Bour- bon furnace was built so nearly on the frontier that the workmen who constructed it were con- stantly under guard to protect them from the Indians. The plant was, nevertheless, of the best design, producing three tons per day. It served a great need in that remote common- wealth, where the commodities of import were 38 BEGINNING OF MODERN IRON MAKING received from Pittsburg, whither they had been carried in wagons over the Appalachian Moun- tains at great cost. The pots and kettles and blacksmith iron of the Bourbon furnace had therefore a wide market throughout the settle- ments of Kentucky. They were later floated down the stream to Cincinnati and Louisville. In 1810 contracts for artillery supplies were made with the United States Government, and in December, 1815, General Jackson worked his historic destruction of the British at New Or- leans with cannon ball, grapeshot, and chain shot from this Kentucky furnace. About the same time furnaces were erected in the valleys of western North Carolina; and in 1790 a plant was established in cast Tennessee. This plart, wl.ich was located at the junction of the forks of the ITolston River, had a rather sur- prising ability of shipping iron by the use of twenty-five-ton boats to the lower settlements, and even to New Orleans. The journey down the Tennessee River was a long one, but scarce- ly a thousand miles, as described by a writer of that day. This brief sketch of iron manufacture in the United States shows that when George Wash- ington became President of the country iron was being made in practically every State; in- 39 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL deed, in George "Washington's administration there were many more iron districts than in that of Theodore Eoosevelt, and iron making was so widespread because it was a local industry of small extent. CHAPTER IV THE ANTHRACITE EPOCH The fuel required for the smelting of iron must burn very easily, must furnish great heat, and must be so physically hard as to bear up the burden of the ore that lies upon it ; otherwise, it may crush down the fuel and smother the fire. Charcoal is an ideal fuel, if it can be had, and where it has been found in sufficient abundance it has met all needs. But no important iron district can grow enough wood to supply its farnaces with charcoal,' and consequently the charcoal industry has always been short-lived or insignificant in any particular locality. England was far ahead of America in the de- velopment of substitutes for charcoal. To these expedients she was driven. Before the settle- ment of America the people in some parts of England were crying out because of the forest devastation wrought by the coal burner, and the consequent necessity for a substitute led to the invention of a method of making iron with coal. Bituminous coal itself is unsuitable, because in 41 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL burning it melts down into a soft mass and chokes the fire. In the modified form of coke, however, Darby succeeded (1740), and by the end of the eighteenth century the use of char- coal as iron fuel had been almost entirely aban- doned by Great Britain. In addition to the above stated reasons why Great Britain so early took her iron industry over on a coal basis, it should be pointed out that there were abundant supplies of coal and iron lying near each other ; the British people had been using coal for at least two hundred years, and were well ac- quainted with it. In America this history was not duplicated for many decades. For nearly half a century after England had abandoned charcoal, Amer- ica used nothing else. Our fuel supply and other conditions were too radically different. ]\Iost of the country was still covered with vir- gin forests, whose removal was required by the progress of agriculture. The forest was cut to make new fields for the settler, there was no mar- ket for his timber, it was too heavy to carry many miles, and the clearer of the forest re- joiced that he could burn his heavy logs into light charcoal that could easily go miles to mar- ket. The fuel supply was therefore abundant in practically all localities at a time when Eng- 42 THE ANTHRACITE EPOCH land's populace wailed and lamented over their bare hills, and legislated against the charcoal burner. In America, the distance between the known coal fields and the iron-making centers was great, and transportation of coal to iron or iron to coal was almost impossible, except in a few favored localities. In England, they were side by side. The manufacture of coke was an art not well known in this country, and some of the first coal with which the experiments were tried produced an inferior article. Further than this, the iron users were prejudiced, and not unnaturally, in favor of charcoal iron, which to this day has not been excelled. A prejudice, it should not be overlooked, is one of the hardest things for a business to combat. It was therefore quite natural that the Penn- sylvania Society for the Promotion of Internal Improvement should write to its European agent in 1825 the following unflattering account of the iron situation : No improvements have been made here in it within the last thirty years, and the use of bituminous and anthracite coal in our furnaces is absolutely and en- tirely unknown. Attempts, and of the most costly kind, have been made to use the coal of the western part of our State in the production of iron. Furnaces have been constructed according to the plan said to be 43 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL adopted in Wales and elsewhere ; persons claiming ex- perience in the business have been employed; but all has been unsuccessful. Accompanying the lack of advance in technical knowledge there had been little economic change in the iron industry of this country in the fifty or sixtj' years following its independence. Char- coal furnaces and forges were still used, and they combined to make the same scattered in- dustry that had prevailed in the preceding century. It extended from Massachusetts, through southern and western New England, to Lake Champlain, down through the Berkshires and the New Jersey hills, all through Pennsyl- vania, both east and west, and throughout the Atlantic plain, to Carolina, Georgia, and Ala- bama. Iron plants were, however, not so nu- merous in the Southern States as they were in the North. In 1830 Berks County, Pennsyl- vania, had 11 furnaces and 24 forges. In 1840 Franklin County had 8 furnaces, 11 forges and rolling mills. Cumberland County had G furnaces and 5 forges. Bedford County, includ- ing Fulton, had 9 furnaces and 2 forges. By 1856 Virginia had erected 88 furnaces in 31 counties, and 59 forges in 29 counties, and more than half were in operation in that year. The 44 THE ANTHRACITE EPOCH industry had also crossed the Appalachian Mountains, and western Pennsylvania had made iron before 1800. In 1805 Fayette, one of the western counties, had 5 furnaces and 6 forges, and by 1840 they were numerous in the upper Ohio Valley, and were scattered throughout Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and also in Missouri. The reason for this widely scattered industry was due to the nature of iron making and to the conditions of trade and commerce of the coun- try at that time. We were not a manufacturing people, and the chief consumers of iron were the blacksmiths, whose resounding shops stood at the crossroads in almost every township in the United States. This was before the exten- sion of railroads, and transportation was diffi- cult. It is hard for us who have been born, edu- cated, and brought up after the epoch of the railway, the telegraph, and the dailj' paper to appreciate the isolated conditions existing in 1840. In practically all parts of the United States the conditions of transportation were, with the exception of an occasional turnpike, the same as in the last decade of the eighteenth century. At that time an observer reported that he had seen 500 pack horses at one time in Car- lisle, Pa., going westward through the great val- ley loaded with merchandise. Part of this cargo 45 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL was bar iron, which was bent to fit the horse's back, and in the iipturned ends barrels, kegs, and packages were hung. Thus loaded, the ani- mals started off in trains, and in hilly districts the trails over which they went were at times so deeply washed that their packs came in contact with the ground. So universal was this method of transportation that when wagons were intro- duced the pack carriers considered that their rights had been invaded, and the wagon was not alwaj's a great financial improvement over the pack animal in long-distance transporta- tion. It is quite natural, owing to these conditions, that there should have been a local demand for a great number of small furnaces; and in re- sponse to this demand furnaces continued to thrive in the remote agricultural settlements in the valleys of New England and Virginia, and in fact in almost the whole settled part of the United States, each supplying the village black- smiths in the small territory near to it. It was a fortunate occurrence that the more concentrated iron industry, made possible through the use of anthracite coal, had as its necessary complement the railroad. This new opening of markets and the use of the new fuel came almost simultaneously, and for the 46 THE ANTHRACITE EPOCH first time in American history we were able to transport the product of the most favored local- ity to the great markets. Anthracite coal was a boon to iron makers. It possesses the desired fuel qualities for iron making, being pure, burn- ing with great heat, and bearing the burden of the ore upon it. Unfortunately for its intro- duction, it was so hard and so difficult to burn that the early attempts at iron making were a long series of failures. As early as 1807 the Lehigh Coal Mining Company leased a tract of land of 200 acres for a period of twenty-one years to Messrs. Butler and Rowland, who had a patent right to make anthracite iron, and were granted by the coal company the privilege of mining both coal and iron ore without charge for twenty-one years. But their scheme proved to be only a hope. Nothing came of it, and their lease lapsed seven years later. The year 1812 marks the first actual intro- duction of anthracite coal into iron works al- though it was scarcly a profitable venture. Of the first shipment of seven wagonloads to Phil- adelphia, two loads were sold at cost of trans- portation, and the others given away because there were no purchasers. According to the story of some chroniclers, attempts of one of the purchasers to make fire in the heating fur- 47 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL naee of the rolling mills at the Falls of Schuyl- kill, now Philadelphia, resulted in a half day of disappointing labor. It would not kindle and the workmen condemned it in disgust, slammed the furnace door, and went to dinner. This gave the anthracite the undisturbed time it needed for kindling, and upon the return of the dis- gruntled workmen, the furnace seethed at white heat, and anthracite was thus introduced to Philadelphia after it had brought its vendors into ill repute by causing them to be accused of trying to sell stones as fuel. By 1823 it was being used in rolling mills at Boston; in 1825 a Phenixville steam engineer first successfully used it under a boiler, and in 1827 it was used in the same plant to heat a puddling furnace. In the meantime experimenters were constant- ly failing both in this country and abroad in their attempts to smelt iron successfully with anthracite. Most of these experimenters used a mixture of anthracite coal and charcoal; but this did not produce satisfactory results. The real trouble lay in the fact that it was practical- ly impossible to make a fire burn fast enough when it was fed with cold air, and success only came with the introduction of the hot blast or the feeding of the fire with previously heated air. It is strange that the white men of West- 48 THE ANTHRACITE EPOCH em civilization were so long in discovering this simple device. Chroniclers report its use in a primitive form in the smelting furnaces of the natives of Peru centuries before. These metal- lurgists put glowing coals on the metal pipes that carried the air to their forges. The first American iron furnaces with hot blast had spe- cial ovens, burning anthracite coal, but they were soon heated with the flames from the fur- nace itself. The first successful smelter of iron with an- thracite was one Dr. Geissenhainer, a native of Germany, who spent his life in Pennsylvania and New York. His triumph, in September, 1836, was followed di^ring the next four years by a number of attempts by various ironmas- ters who made small amounts of iron after his method. But these were trials rather than suc- cesses, for all were temporary, and none was followed up. It did not become a real industrial factor until 1840. On January 18th of that year a dinner was given to celebrate the fact that certain iron makers of Pottsville, Pa., had won a prize of $5,000 that had been offered by public-spirited citizens for the first continuous operation of a blast furnace for three months with anthracite coal only. The year 1840 thus becomes the beginning of an iron epoch in Amer- 49 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL iea. In that year there were six furnaces in Fennsylvania dependent entirely upon the new fuel. New Jersey had one the next year. In 1 846 there were 42 anthracite furnaces in Penn- sylvania and New Jersey with a capacity of 122,000 tons per year. This average of more than 3,000 tons per furnace, or 60 tons per week, shows that they were twice as large as the best charcoal furnaces of the preceding century. With knowledge concerning the art of using mineral fuel, the blast furnace had now a basis upon which to grow, as the fuel would bear any load that was put upon it. At this time, too, the blast became better and stronger through the substitution of engines for water-wheels for the running of the air pumps. In 1849 a turning point was reached in the iron industry, when the standard for iron quotations became a ton of anthracite iron rather than a ton of charcoal iron. In 1856 there were 121 anthracite fur- naces in running order. Of these, Pennsylvania had 93, New York 14, Maryland 6, New Jersey 4, Massachusetts 3, and Connecticut 1. Char- coal was distanced, and henceforward kept the second or third place. In 1854 the two fuels had produced almost identically the same amount, about 340,000 tons. The next year anthracite was 40,000 tons ahead, and the strong boom 50 THE ANTHRACITE EPOCH shortly thereafter in the anthracite iron made it reach 500,000 tons in 1860, or about double the charcoal-made supply. By 1880 anthracite iron was nearly 2,000,000 tons; but it is inter- esting to note that the charcoal iron had reached a half million tons, which was greatly more than in the period when anthracite was first intro- duced as a fuel, and fifty per cent more than at the time when the anthracite product first ex- ceeded that of the charcoal. The reign of an- thracite, however, was short; bituminous iron deposed it, and soon outstripped it in the race for statistical totals. CHAPTER V THE COKE EPOCH The kingship of anthracite was very short in the kingdom of iron. It was scarcely to have been expected that this coal, all located in such a small area of one State, and comprising such an insignificant fraction of our total coal re- sources, should have long continued to be the chief source of heat in the smelting of iron after men had once learned that mineral fuels of any sort had been adapted to the profitable making of iron. The bituminous coal which underlies half of the State of Pennsylvania and areas in other States plenty large enough to make a good hand- ful of European kingdoms was destined to overtake anthracite and place it even more defi- nitely in the rear than it, in its turn, had done for the time-honored and age-long charcoal fuel. The surprising thing is that our bituminous coal resources, like our anthracite coal resources, remained so long unused in the face of success- ful practice for so many decades in England. 52 THE COKE EPOCH This disparity certainly could not have con- tinued in any age but that of sailing vessels and the stagecoaches. With our present facility for exchanging ideas and commodities it would have been almost impossible for the English process to be so long limited to England. While the English iron maker had with alacrity seized upon coke in the middle of the eighteenth cen- tury, it was 1819 before we find out in Arm- strong County, Pennsylvania, at the Bear Creek furnace, the first serious experiment with coke; and after making three tons of iron the furnace chilled so that the attempt was abandoned, and the familiar charcoal again taken up. Nor were other attempts at copying the English rapidly made, and even when attempted they were un- successful. In 1835, ninety-five years after the English success with coke, the Franklin Insti- tute, of Philadelphia, offered a premium of a gold medal " to the person who shall manufac- ture in the United States the greatest quantity of iron from the ore during the year, using no other fuel than bituminous coal or coke, the quantity not to be less than twenty tons." It is quite an interesting commentary upon the state of the journals and the general communi- cation of that time that this medal appears never to have been awarded, although in the 53 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL same year a furnace at Huntington, Pa., had succeeded in running a month on coke, and two years later one at Uniontown, in the southwest- ern corner of the State, made a hundred tons, and then returned to the old stand-hy of char- coal. The period of most active experimenta- tion, from 1836 to 1839, was identical with that which brought anthracite to the front. But the coke experiments, while often technically suc- cessful, were financially unsuccessful, probably the greatest of these failures being that of a Boston company, which erected a large furnace near Lockhaven, on the Susquehanna, and al- though they made between 1837 and 1839 3-500 tons of iron, it was so costly that the enterprise failed, with a loss of half a million dollars. The first real success was not, as was the case with anthracite, a Pennsylvania achievement, but it was on Georges Creek, near Frostburg, in the mountains of western Maryland, that a large furnace was built especially for coke in 1837, and by 1839 it was successfully making 70 tons a week, and the success was permanent. The next year the Mount Savage Company, m the same vicinity, built two large coke furnaces. These successes, however, were rather a demon- stration than the beginning of an epoch. Prog- ress in coke-made iron was for a time exceed- 54 THE COKE EPOCH ingly slow. As late as 1849 there was not a single plant nsing it iv the State of Pennsyl- vania. Many who tried it had failed, giving signal proof of the maxim sometimes attributed to Carnegie as one of his favorites that " pio- neering doesn't pay." In 1856 there were 21 eoke-iron furnaces in Pennsylvania, and 3 in Maryland; but it was not until 1865 that any rapid strides in the coke- iron industry began. In that year only 100,000 tons of coke were used, but in fifteen more years the amount of coke consumed had increased over twentyfold. During the period from 1840 to 1865 these two mineral fuels, anthracite and coke, were running side by side, with competition greatly in the favor of anthracite. There were several good reasons for this; one was the low cost of the anthracite coal. At the present time most people are acquainted with anthracite prices only as for a domestic fuel purchased from a coal combine which possesses an absolute monopoly and a perfect power to set the price at the highest figure the consumer will pay. In the middle of the nineteenth century it was other- wise. The coal producers were many, and they competed with each other in a desperate manner that put prices down to the bottom. Anthracite in 55 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL those days was easier to get. The great depos- its were new. The best seams only were being worked. The chambers from which it was brought were near the surface, and its extraction was easy. It therefore afforded a strong compe- tition in price with any other kind of coal. Another reason for the successful competition of anthracite lay in the fact that it possessed a geographic advantage in transportation. The most important mines were at the head of a rail- road running steadily downgrade to tide water on the Delaware, at Philadelphia. A canal came down the Lehigh River to the upper Dela- ware and connected with the Delaware and Raritan Canal, which passed from Trenton to New York. Thus, in a period when the rail- roads had reached no high efficiency, the iron industry in the anthracite district had the ad- vantage of the cheapest kind of transportation to the sea and to all the great markets of the manufacturing East. Transportation condi- tions had changed during the period from 1865 to 1880, when coke-made coal took its great boom and experienced its twentyfold increase in less than as many years. The war was over. This was a period of great advancement in railway transportation. Western Pennsylvania, the cen- ter of the coke industry, was brought into con- 56 THE COKE EPOCH Row OF CONNELLSVILLE COKE OvENS BURNING nection with the East by good railroads; also with the Great Lakes and with the Mississippi 57 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL Valley. It further had at its disposal the potent influence of the Ohio River boats. There was then developed in M^estern Pennsylvania a coal seam of most remarkable quality in the making of coke, one which had a signal influence upon the American iron industry, and, indeed, upon the iron industry of the world. This coal seam, with its chief mining center at Connellsville, has caused that town to be known wherever iron manufacture is talked or written about. Con- nellsville coke was the standard by which all other cokes were measured. It was sought by all iron makers who eould reach it, and many who could not reach it failed because they could not. Upon the basis of Connellsville coke has arisen Pittsburg's greatness, and to the same cause we may attribute the decline of anthra- cite. For just twenty years, from 1855 to 1875, anthracite was in the lead. In the latter year it was eclipsed by coke made from bituminous eoal, each having about 900,000 tons. Eight years later, in the prosperity of 188.3, anthracite iron had doubled, and the coke-made output had more than trebled. The geographic distribution of the iron in- dustry during the past seventy-five years has been most varied, due to the fact that it has responded during that time to three distinct 58 THE COKE EPOCH influences. As explained above, during the char- coal epoch, it was made in almost every com- munity where ore and charcoal could be found, because the transportation cost was so great that it could not profitably be carried great distances ; and also because the amount required in every community was small, and a small plant, cor- responding to the local grist mill or the local sawmill, could supply a community's need. In a country like the eastern United States that was everywhere forested and possessed numer- ous small deposits of iron ore, natural condi- tions favored the widest distribution of the in- dustry. With the coming of anthracite, while many of the small charcoal furnaces remained in the distant localities, the iron industry had for the first time a geographic emphasis. This was sup- plied by that section which was enabled to make iron in large quantities for export to the great consuming centers.. This district was upon the highlands between the Delaware, the Schuyl- kill, and the Susquehanna valleys, and besides possessing all the anthracite, it is about equi- distant and only a hundred miles from Phila- delphia and New York. These advantages made possible the first leadership in American iron making and the development of the first great 59 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL shipping field. At this time the Schuylkill Val- ley stood high as the great iron-making center, but furnaces on the Susquehanna were favorably located, and northern New Jersey also lay as near the fields as did southeastern Pennsyl- vania, while southern New York was on the con- tinued arc of the same circle that, having its center at the anthracite mines, passed through southeastern Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and north Jersey. Then came the coke epoch. Again the basis for geographic emphasis changed, and with it the iron industry slowly crawled over the Appa- lachian Mountains into the drainage basin of the upper Ohio. Coke-made iron before 1890 meant almost entirely western Pennsylvania iron. Between 1873 and 1883, while anthra- cite iron increased fifty per cent, and charcoal iron remained stationary, bituminous iron in- creased one hundred and seventy-five per cent, and of the iron included in these later anthra- cite figures at least a half was smelted with a mixture of bituminous coal. Pittsburg, which has gradually become the capital of the iron world, has become so because of the wonderful efi^ect of its location with re- gard to resources and transport. It lies in a high rolling country full of deep, sharp valleys, 60 THE COKE EPOCH which can be crossed by railroads only at the expense of heavy grades, and therefore great cost in building and in operation ; consequently, the railroads all run down streams, and all the streams gather into the rivers which mingle their waters at Pittsburg. These rolling hills flanking all these streams have in their sum- mits, most easily accessible, the wonderful seam of Pittsburg coal. Natural gas hisses from the orifices in the rocks. Forty miles up the naviga- ble Monongahela is Connellsville, capital of the world of coke. In many of the valleys is the limestone, so greatly needed in the making of iron, and reasonably abundant supplies of iron ore are also in the district. Pittsburg could not help becoming the iron center, and when, in the period of the early eighties, the supply of ore began to be derived from the upper Lake Su- perior region and transportation lines were or- ganized to carry it, we had laid the basis for the iron d . elopments which have culminated in the aston. King production of recent years, which has been one of the most spectacular occurrences in all industrial history, and which has held the attention of the whole world as probably no other purely industrial achievement has ever done. The stream of ore from Superior, and of coke from Connellsville, borne on the wheels 61 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL of gravity down the valleys which meet at Pitts- burg, have been fed into the roaring furnaces that have made Pittsburg the " Smoky City," and given it an iron output which no prophet of 1850 would have believed possible for a con- tinent. Pittsburg possesses an unprecedented and al- most iindreamed of iron production because transportation made possible the assembling of the widely scattered raw materials and the mar- keting of the product over hundreds of thousands of square miles. In interesting contrast to this is the fact that after Pittsburg had become the leader of the iron industry of the country, there still continued in the southern Appalachia a local iron industry which had through all the progress of smelting and transportation re- mained unchanged. As late as 1883 there were in northwestern North Caroliua two dozen forges of the old Catalan type, and another dozen in the adjacent counties of Tennessee. This was a pioneer iron district and a good one in the last decade of the eighteenth century when the whole country was backwoods. As the hardy pioneers of Virginia pushed westward, some of them went into the mountain valleys that had no outlet to the west for the aspiring emigrant. Their descendants are there yet, and there has 62 THE COKE EPOCH been no outlet anywhere for the sale of com- modities or the import of commodities or of new ideas. Here, where the frontiersman of 1790 got caught in the wilderness, from which he could not escape or ship his produce, he could not change his industrial condition. Some one has lately had the insight to name him our " contemporary ancestor," Avhich, indeed, he is, unchanged from the Revolutionary pe- riod. Here, ninety years after the first char- coal forges were established, the type of furnace was absolutely unchanged. Its blast was still operated by the primitive trompe ; they were fit- fully operated according to the needs of the local blacksmith and as the supply of Avater in the fluctuating mountain stream permitted. The name of " thundergust forges " was not inap- propriately applied to them, because of their operation immediately after a shower had filled the streams. The bar iron thus produced was at that time used as legal tender in Johnson and Carter counties, Tenn., where the natives brought it to the little country store and exchanged it for such coffee, sugar, and calico as they got. The merchant then sent the bars of iron which he had thus secured on to the markets at Knox- ville, Bristol, and other points which connected with the outside world. 63 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL The last twenty-five years have caused this wilderness to be invaded on all sides by the railway, the symbol of modern industry and the distributer of products of centralized manufac- ture. Many of the formerly unbridged streams are bridged and some of the closed valleys have been opened up ; but it is doubtful if yet the Catalan forges in the remote hills are all cold. Certainly some of them have operated in the twentieth century. At the same time that the primitive Catalan forge held sway among the Appalachian moon- shiners, a modified form of the same device was holding its own in the Lake Champlain district. Here the old Catalan had been improved by the Americans, until it deserved the name of the American bloomary forge. The blast was heat- ed, and while it used charcoal the resulting blooms were 300 to 400 pounds in weight, the quality excelhmt, and it was sold for special uses. The status of this industry is shown by the sur- prising fact that between the years 1875 and 1882 its output increased from 23,000 to 43,000 tons; thus nearly doubling in the face of the triumph in production of Pittsburg coke-made iron. During the last twenty-five years the Cham- plain district has shifted to a coke basis, and 64 THE COKE EPOCH there have arisen two other new iron centers, one in Alabama, the other in Colorado. In the mak- ing of iron it is usually necessary for the fuel or the ore to be transported to some common meeting place, and in the working out of this problem of transportation the location of the iron industry has usually responded to the motto that " the ore goes to the fuel," an ex- ample of this being the great movement of Lak(; Superior ores to the western Pennsylvania coal fields. But it is not, however, a maxim of abso- lute sway. The question is rather complex, and is to be answered by weighing various freight factors involved in getting the ore and the fuel to the furnace and the finished product to the market. It is, therefore, a triangular problem, and it sometimes works out to the moving of the fuel rather than of the ore. Examples of this are afforded by the present industry on Lake Champlain and in northern New Jersey. Here are ore fields of excellent character; in both fields iron is being made with coke from western Pennsylvania. The reason they can afford to break the maxim and carry the fuel to the ore is found by noting the disposition of the finished product. It goes to New England and the East, and the fuel is therefore moving toward the final market of iron. In the same 65 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL way, in the Pittsburg region, the ore from Su- perior has practically been traveling toward its •market, which was in Pittsburg and the cities of the East. Latterly there has arisen a new iron industry on Lake Superior near that ore field. This industry is of comparatively small extent, and although it uses eatitern fuel, it will doubtless grow, because the market will be found in the rapidly developing Northwest. The Alabama iron district is one of the cheap- est, if not the cheapest iron district, in the en- tire world. It possesses a phenomenal natural equipment. Jutting out of the hillsides that flank one side of the broad open valley are thick deposits of iron ore. On the other side of the valley are the coal mines and the coke ovens, and the limestone is at hand. Instead of carrying ore a thousand miles, as at Pittsburg or the Eng- lish furnaces, or fuel 600 miles, as at Lake Champlain, the raw materials for these south- ern furnaces are shifted across the valley by switching engines, and the local supply of cheap black labor helps to give a wonderfully low cost. The Colorado field has local ore and local coal not far away, and while costs are higher than in any of the great eastern iron districts, the furnaces here have the advantage of a local mar- ket which can be supplied from rival fields THE COKE EPOCH only by metal upon which a freight of one to two thousand miles has been levied. As a re- sult, the Colorado furnaces have in that State and in adjacent Rocky Mountain regions a wide field in which they have transportation advan- tage over all rivals. This is, however, a district of sparse population, a whole State sometimes not equaling a big ward in some of the eastern cities. The iron product of Colorado is there- fore comparatively insignificant in the coun- try's total production. The output of the Pittsburg furnaces is great- er than ever and steadily growing ; but the lead- ership of Pittsburg is declining, as shown by its decreasing proportion of the total output. There is a distinct movement of iron smelting toward the shores of the Great Lakes. As it now is, the coke and the ore are both put upon cars and unloaded at Pittsburg. By erecting a blast furnace on the shore of the lake, one han- dling of the ore can be avoided by simply ex- tending the journey of the coke across to the lake, where it is dumped into the storage bins of a blast furnace whose ore bins are filled direct from an ore steamer. The production in Cleveland and other lake-shore points is conse- quently increasing more rapidly than in Pitts- burg, although it is yet comparatively small. 67 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL The action of the Lackawanna Steel Company is illustrative of this point. This great com- pany was a relic of the anthracite epoch, with its plant on a hill at Scranton, exactly over an anthracite mine. But the rising price of an- thracite led the managers of this company to abandon the region, and, as a result of the search for a better location, they finally selected Buf- falo, where their water-borne ores could be un- loaded beside their furnaces, which are fed by coke from western Pennsylvania. The supremacy of Connellsville coke is also on the wane. The coke is as good as ever, but there is another kind ; and its appearance in the iron industry affords a good indication of the in- security of any industry where men count upon a continued dependence upon existing industrial processes. Connellsville coke was and is vastly better than any other when made in the old- fashioned wasteful beehive oven, which pollutes the air and kills the vegetation of the surround- ing community by belching forth in smoke, flame, and utter waste all of the volatile con- tent of the coal. This has long been caught in the city gas works in the form of gas and tar, and now the process has spread. A new inven- tion, the by-product coke oven, makes coke and saves the treasures which the Connellsville coke 68 THE COKE EPOCH burner wastes. By the old process no other coke was so strong as that of Connellsville, and there- fore fit to bear the burden in the furnace, and many other coals possess enough of sulphur or other foreign substances to spoil the iron in the making. The way the by-product oven han- dles these difficulties is shown by the experience of the Cambria Steel Company at Johnstown. This plant had long been a slave to Connellsville, whence it brought its coke over the Pennsyl- vania Mountains. The small cubes of pyrites, or iron sulphide, in the otherwise good local coal rendered it unfit for blast-furnace coke. That coal is now ground up, washed like the material of a placer gold mine, the sulphur cubes ex- tracted, the crushed and purified coal com- pressed into bricks, converted into coke in a by- product oven, the gas and tar saved, and the coal satisfactorily used in their blast furnaces. Here we see a process which leads to the de- centralization of the iron industry. Instead of being dependent upon one superior kind of coke, produced in one narrow territory, we are learn- ing day by day how to make coke out of poorer and poorer coal over a wider and wider terri- tory, and the area of successful blast furnaces of the most modern type is again spreading. There is no likelihood, however, of smelters of 69 THE STORY OF IRON aND STEEL this type ever going into the geographic odd cor- ners sought out by the charcoal forges of a cen- tury ago. Iron has at times been made directly from coals other than anthracite, but this has not been an important factor in iron production. It is claimed that during the Revolutionary War a furnace six miles from Richmond, Va., smelted iron from coal produced in Chesterfield Coun- ty, Va. This was apparently a war emergency, and the use of coal as an industrial factor had its real beginning in 1845 in eastern Ohio. The coal of Shenango and Mahoning valleys, which has at times been called semi-anthracite, but has latterly been classed as bituminous, is locally known as " splint '•' coal, and possesses rare' blast-furnace qualities. In 1856 the district of these two valleys had six blast furnaces in Penn- sylvania and thirteen in Ohio, but it has de- clined rather than advanced as a factor in iron making. Coal of this character is unusual, the only other district of importance being that near Glasgow, Scotland, where it has also been used to some extent. CHAPTER VI THE NINETEENTH CENTURY LEADERSHIP OF GREAT BRITAIN IN IRON AND STEEL England is our mother country; and she re- mained so in an industrial sense longer than in a political sense. In 1776 we declared our political equality, and in seven years had proved that our claims were founded in fact. It took another century and a little more for us to develop an iron industry which reached equality with that of Britain. In the middle of the seventeenth century when the hardy Winthrop, backed by British capital, ■smelted the first American iron in Massachusetts, the mother country had three hundred furnaces and had been making iron for an unknown num- ber of centuries. The next hundred years did not, however, increase the British leadership ; for it was a period of decline in the iron industry of that country. This was the time when the de- mand for charcoal was causing a shortage of fuel supply in Great Britain, and that country was growing more and more dependent upon 71 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL Germany, until, by 1740, instead of 300 furnaces there were but 59, and they made only two fifths of the iron consumed in the country. At the same time the American iron industry was stead- ily increasing, exportations across the Atlantic being quite frequent, and the situation as it then stood promised that America might soon become an important factor in supplying Britain with iron. The then existing course of affairs was dis- turbed in an unpredictable way by invention, as has been so frequently and is so constantlj^ the case in nearly all industries. Based upon the conditions of 1700, Britain was a declining fac- tor, and the American colonies were a rising factor in the manufacture of iron ; but the con- ditions of 1700, like the conditions of any other day, were not destined to last, but to melt away before improvement. England has shown a his- torical priority not only in the making of iron, and also a priority in the making of revolution- ary inventions affecting that industry. In 1740 came the British invention of coke-smelted iron, as related in a previovis chapter. Here a new vista opened before Great Britain. But it was not until the nineteenth century that her great leadership was made manifest. The forty-eight years after the discovery of coke smelting wit- nessed a gradual development of the British iron 72 LEADERSHIP OF GREAT BRITAIN industry near its coal fields, and the output in- creased from 17,000 tons to 68,000 tons. At this time the average output for the 85 furnaces in the country was 15| tons per week. In 1784 an Englishman named Henry Cort gave to the British iron industry a great push forward by his discovery of the puddling fur- nace and grooved rolls to assist intEe^puTtftca- tion of the iron. To fully understand the signifi- cance of these technical improvements a little explanation of iron making and purifying must be given. The old forge iron, which everywhere prevailed before the invention of the blast fur- nace and the making of cast iron, was never really melted. It was made into a viscous lump and taken from the forge to be hammered and reheated and refined in refinery forges or ' ' finery ' ' forges, until it was of the desired con- sistency and quality. Thus, by a single process, the ore was made into malleable iron, or iron that can be hammered. This was called direct iron, because made in one process. The blast furnace product is indirect in that the molten iron is run into molds and hardened into lumps, which are later purified and made into malleable iron. Cast iron was easier to make but much less pure than forge iron, because while melting in the furnace it absorbs impurities. The liquid 73 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL iron, just as water or any other liquid, is prone to absorb things with which it comes in contact. Water running over salt or dirt will absorb some- thing, and molten iron running down through the fiery furnace absorbs carbon from the fuel. Cast iron can be counted upon to have, conse- quently, three and one half to four per cent of carbon. It will also have some silicon and some phosphorus. These foreign substances are the penalty that seems to be imposed in compensation for the cheapness of making cast iron. They render the product useless for many purposes. They make it brittle, and it cannot be forged either hot or cold ; but, because of their presence, it is more easily melted. Before Henry Cort made his puddling fur- nace this iron had to be purified in hearths and with hammers, laboriously, as had the old forge iron. Cort evolved the scheme of having a basin-like hearth, full of molten pig iron, across M'hich rush the flames and burning gases from a fire behind a low partition. The chief objec- tionable element in cast iron is carbon, making it brittle, and as carbon is combustible, the flames gradually burn it out, the process being hastened by the stirring of the metal by a rake in the hands of the puddler, a laborer with a hot and arduous task. At last, as the carbon is burned 74 LEADERSHIP OF GREAI BRITAllN out, the fusibility of the iron decreases, and it rolls about, a viscous, spongy lump of tough, tenacious, red-hot iron of nearly pure composi- tion and every pore filled with molten lava, which was the slag that floated on the top of the molten metal, and resulted from the combustion and from the partial destruction of the lining of the hearth. Except for the pores full of slag, this lump of iron from the puddler's rake was a great improvement over the old forge refining, and its further purification was promptly made easy by Cort's grooved rolls, which repeatedly squeezed the hot metal and ejected from it all the impurities many times faster than they could be hammered out. Without these discoveries we could apparently never have had such fundamentally important pieces of metal as a railway iron or a ship 's plate. The unaided hammer could not have achieved them. The puddle and the grooved roll closed the era of the blacksmith's supremacy and opened the era of machine manufacture. In seven years from 1784 Cort's processes had re- sulted in 50,000 tons of puddled iron per annum. In 1816 Samuel Baldwin Rogers made further great improvements by inventing a new lining for the puddling furnace, which greatly in- creased its efficiency. 75 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL In 1828 another profound change came into iron manufacture through the invention, by Mr. J. B. Neilson, also an Englishman, of a hot blast for the blast furnace. This invention increased the efficiency and decreased the cost of the proc- ess, but just why this should result scientists had not entirely agreed, or even that it should result at all. It was soon discovered, in practice, that the feeding of a blast furnace with air heated to 600 degrees Fahrenheit caused the same furnace to double its output, with no fuel increase. Here was a cheapening of cast iron to match the advantages that puddling and rolling had given to the manufacture of iron into mallea- ble forms. The economic results of these inven- tions were seen in the greatly increased use of iron. For centuries the anchors of ships had been supported by heavy ropes, which were sub- ject to being frayed by many possible accidental causes, and were subject to decay through the action of marine animals and plants. In the effort to preserve them they were kept scrupu- lously clean, as witnessed by the sailor's saying, " Six days thoii shalt work and do all that thou art able, and on the seventh heave up and scrub the cable." After 1830 the heaving up ceased, for the shipmaster found it cheaper to replace his cable with the malleable iron chain. 76 LEADERSHIP OF GREAT BRITAlM The \¥ater pipes of great cities had been wooden logs, with holes bored in them, and care- fully jointed together, with possibly an iron band or two on the ends ; now iron pipe could be used. Gas, long known in the laboratory, could not be distributed through wooden pipes, but the cheapened iron made possible the great retorts for its manufacture and storage, and the pipes for its distribution throughout the cities. The railway had been used about British collieries for about two hundred and fifty years. As early as 1740 some one had suggested that iron be used in place of the wooden rails upon which the coal cars ran, and by 1780 cast iron be- gan to be used slightly, but wood was con- tinued in use until 1840. By 1820 there was a little malleable iron used for rails; but this, too, was sparingly applied, and it is more than a mere coincidence that the cheaper iron of the middle of the first half of the nineteenth century happened to come at the same time that the railway appeared. The railway had de- manded it generations before. When this iron came the railway became important. By the middle of the eighteenth century the field for the use of iron had so widened that the new uses to which it had been put brought it again into places where it was found unequal for 77 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL Bessemer Converter the tasks required of it. It could not bear the strain; a stronger metal was needed. Again 78 LEADERSHIP OF GREAT BRITAIN consumption demanded progress in manufacture. The steel of that day was good, but far too costly. Just at this stage another revolution was brought I about by the invention of Sir Henry Bessemer 's I new steel-making appliance, which bears his name. Than this there could be few better monuments to commemorate the career of a \ manufacturer. The value of his contribution \ will be better understood by noticing the process which it succeeded. Steel is simply a mixture of iron with a small amount of carbon, very intimately and evenly associated in i ts ma ss. The carbon content of steel varies from .40 per cent to 1.50 per cent. Cast iron, therefore, differs from steel by having from three to ten times as much carbon in it. Wrought iron is iron with almost all the carbon worked out of it, and this approach to purity gives iron a toughness and pliability needed by the blacksmith in his work. _Steel making ^ is, therefore, a process of mixing carbon and . iron in proper proportions. Inasmuch as it cannot be made satisfactorily in a puddling furnace, by reducing the carbon to a proper point and then stopping the furnace, it has been found neces- sary to burn the carbon all out, making wrought iron, and then working it back to steel by recar- burizing under such conditions that the carbon 79 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL can be controlled. The process of puddling is itself expensive, and the wrought iron thus pro- duced was, before Bessemer 's day, made into the best steel by the costly process of cementation. In this way so-called blister steel was produced, by putting the wrought iron into a closed retort with charcoal (which is carbon), and then heat- ing it to a red heat in the closed retort, where no air was available to burn up the carbon. The iron was allowed to remain in this red-hot carbon bath for days, the carbon penetrating the body of the iron at the rate of an eighth of an inch a day. When the iron had had time enough to be car- bonized clear through, it was taken out, a rough, ragged bar, called blister steel. The slow addi- tion of the carbon had given it a fine quality and great possibilities for fine work. It was now ready to be worked up into cutlery and the finest edged tools that man makes. There was nothing the matter with it, except its cost. Railroad men would think they had entered a new era if they could use it for rails. Fine cast steel, such as is used for great cannon or the shafts of steamships and many critical pieces in heavy machinery, is made by melting the blister steel in a crucible and then casting it. But the cost of all this work made a metal so high-priced that for the larger and cheaper industrial uses it was out of the 80 LEADERSHIP OF GREAT BRITAIN question. Man has never seen the time when his industry could afford to use a cast-steel rail or a cast-steel bridge or a east-steel building. Nevertheless, the industries of 1850 demanded cheap steel. Bessemer gave it by the profoundly important and simple device bearing his name, patented in 1855 and 1856, and finally success- ful in 1858. Instead of the puddler raking for hours his little puddle of iron into a viscous ball, later to soak for days in the' charcoal bath to be recarbonized, Bessemer ran tons of molten iron into a great pear-shaped retort, and through holes in the bottom air, under pressure, was blown. The oxygen of the air united with the carbon in the molten iron, and the heat of this burning made in the retort a roaring fire, gener- ating enough heat to keep the iron hot and to make it hotter. Sometimes it became too hot and had to be cooled by steam or masses of cold iron thrown into it. In twenty minutes this air blast had burned the carbcn out of many tons of metal, and the iron now having the composi- tion of wrought iron is raised to steel by having thrown into it spiegel iron, or ferro manganese, an alloy. Both are rich in manganese and carbon. As the iron content of the Bessemer converter is known and the content of the spiegel iron is known, the carbon in the steel is under perfect 81 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL control. The workman watching the flames cuts off the blast at the moment when the changing color tells him the carbon is gone. The carbon of the added material makes steel, and the man- ganese gives to the steel a toughness needed to make it stand the strain of being rolled into de- sired shapes while red-hot, without breaking. This invention, it should be noted, like the two others mentioned in this chapter, was broaght about in England, but through the co- operation of gentlemen, some of whom were not natives of England. ^^ Here is the real beginning of the modern perio(l""in iron and steel making. It is Bessemer 's steel that has made possible the thousand new uses for that metal and the tre- mendous increase in iron manufacture that has marked the forty-nine years since Bessemer 's success, at the risk of his life, mid the flying showers of molten metal that were ejected from his experimental converters. England has had scientific progress as the basis for her nineteenth century leadership, and she has had peace. There has been no war what- ever in England during the period since the dis- covery of coke-made iron, and upon every battle- field of the nineteenth century have roared the guns of English manufacture. The wars of other countries have been England's market; 82 LEABERSHIP OF GREAT BRITAIN and while the industries of the belligerents have stood still, England has forged iron with re- doubled speed, at the same time making extra profits from the enforced purchases of her idle rivals. This was as true with the United States as with the Continental countries, and more so, because of the greater length of our Civil "War, which absorbed the attention of the whole American people for four full years, during which time England was firmly establishing the Bessemer process and getting herself in a better position to supply the United States in the period of peace which followed the Civil War. We were at that time profoundly dependent upon England. The succeeding boom in rail- road building was supported by her railroad iron. As much as one fifth of the British iron product of 1870 was sent to this country, and even in 1880 our total pig iron production of more than 4,000,000 tons was not quite half that of Great Britain. Germany was producing one third as much, and England justly claimed that she was " the workshop of the world." The leaders of the British iron industry and the British publicists were sitting complacently upon the pinnacle of their prosperity ; they com- fortably congratulated themselves upon their success, and looked down with benignant uncon- 83 THE STORY OP IRON AND STEEL cern upon an occasional carping prophet who peered across the Atlantic and across the Chan- nel to see in America and Germany the possibili- ties of a growth which might take England's supremacy from her. And that supremacy has gone. England's leadership at the end of the third quarter of the nineteenth century was naturally founded and securely held. In addition to the technical progress, peace and undisturbed in- dustry, she had natural advantages for iron manufacture equaled by no other country. Four of her five great iron manufacturing industries were upon tide water, which gave easy access to the cheapest of transportation, that upon the sea; and within these iron districts there were other advantages no less important. Middlesborough, located on the river Tees, on the northeast coast, was in the center of the ore region producing the famous Cleveland ores. A short distance to the north was Durham, the center of the best coke-making industry, and a short railroad haul brought these two materials together upon the banks of the Tees, whence the steamers could carry the finished product to all the coasts of England or to all the ports of the world. As the Cleveland ores declined in quan- tity, the furnaces of this district could change 84 LEADERSHIP OP GREAT BRITAIN over to the supply of Spanish ore, brought to them for a freight of $1.50 a ton. The favored location of these furnaces enabled them to make this change without any costly reorganization. With these favorable conditions it is plain why this iron district should have reached almost its maximum at a period when the iron and steel industries of Germany far up the Rhine, and Pittsburg, at the source of the Ohio, were in their infancy. Just across the narrow island of Great Britain on the west coast, upon the shores of Cumberland and west Lancashire, were the west-coast hematite ores, which had a great in- crease in the output between 1870 and 1880, reaching nearly 2,000,000 tons per annum, a large part of which was, when smelted, sent across the Atlantic to build the American rail- roads. These seaside furnaces were but a few hours in a coasting steamer from Liverpool, the great port for American trade. The returning grain ships often took the iron for ballast at almost no freight rate. This ore field is now also declining, and the works at Barrow-in-Fur- ness have been almost stationary in their output for the last twenty years and are smelting greater and greater proportions of Spanish ore. The third of these favored British iron dis- 85 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL tricts is that of West Scotland, near Glasgow, where iron has been important for one hundred and fifty years and where the making of iron has been particularly favored through the fact that the ore was blackband and containing in itself considerable carbon to help in the smelting. Further than this, the coal of Lanarkshire has the rare quality of being what is called " splint " coal, which can be put directly into a furnace for the smelting of iron without the intermediate cost of being made into coke. Here again was a district which could develop early, having its coal and its favorable ore almost side by side and both beside the sea. The maximum ore output of this district was reached in 1870 and has since been followed by a sharp decline, and the industry fed upon Spanish ore has not increased for forty years. The history of the iron industry of South Wales, near the Welsh coal fields, is but a repe- "^ition of the others mentioned above, and Eng- land's leadership is plainly seen to be due to the fact that her advantages of peace, technical progress, abundant capital, and favorable natural resources enabled her to reach a stage of mature development some decades before the same re- sults could be achieved in Germany, where po- litical dissensions occupied the first two thirds of 86 LEADERSHIP OF GREAT BRITAIN the century, or in America, where in addition to the disturbance of Civil War, we had the whole vast continent to develop, and a comparatively sparse population with which to achieve the result. CHAPTER VII THE AGE OF STEEL SteeIj is a giant.. It shows itsgiant q^ualities in almost every aspect Jit is the strongest of our abundant metalsj it has the most inconceiv- able variety of uses; from it we erect our most gigantic and imposirig structures, our most enor- mous machines, our greatest ships. The archae- ologists and ethnologists have agreed that before the dawn of datable history a milestone of progress was marked when our half-naked an- cestors had at enormous cost won a pound or so of iron per capita and begun the iron age of the historians. The keen analyst of the pres- ent, seeing our railways, our ships, our cannon, our sky scrapers, has erected another milestone, as he calls this The Age of Steel. The close of the Civil War found the iron- making world in full possession of the Bessemer process of converting that metal into steel, and the United S+ates and Europe as well were upon the verge of a great industrial and rail- road expansion which made exceeding demands THE AGE OP STEEL for both iron and steel. This great boom, end- ing with the panic of 1873, was supported large- ly upon iron, but in the following decade the manufacture of steel advanced to the point where it was rapidly replacing iron in the most fundamental uses, such, for instance, as the railroad rail, steamship plate, and the railroad and highway bridge. From^ 1880 onward, the replacing of iron by steel and the expansion of the uses of steel have gone bh" with tremendous speed. The variety of uses for this metal, is abso- lutely beyond enumeration. It has resulted in a per capita increase of iron which when chart- ed shows a rising curve that makes one wonder what we are coming to. Within the space of a generation we have increased our iron consump- tion fourfold, and each man, woman, and child among us is now responsible for the annual manufacture of several times his weight of iron, most of which is consumed in the form of steel. Some of the more important of the uses which have resulted in this increase are worthy of con- sideration here, because they characterize the age of steel. First of all, this is the age of power. Man has changed his economic and social conditions in that he has harnessed the forces of nature 89 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL to make them do his work. This is one of the most characteristic conditions of our modern civilization, and it should be noted that the har- ness for our power is, in every case, iron. Our main dependence, thus far, has been upon fuel, chiefly coal. This coal is burned upon an iron grate beneath an iron boiler, whence the gases and smoke are carried away into the open air through a tall iron smokestack. The power in the form of the steam generated in the boiler is kept imprisoned in iron pipes until released in the steel cylinder, where a steel piston drives forward a steel rod, which communicates the force to a steel fly wheel, turning on a steel shaft, and sending the power away to various place? where man wishes to use it. Portable engines, entirely made of iron and steel, are drawn about the country, or move themselves and carry loads. They traverse the highways to the farmer's dooryard and thresh his wheat, dig his well, and saw his wood. They penetrate the forests and send forth lumber; and in the level lands of the West they stand peacefully in a fence corner, and stretch an iron arm across broad acres, where through the shin- ing hours of a single sun circuit they upturn broad acres to the cloudless sky and prepare them for the swiftly coming season, and even in 90 SEVEN-TON STEAM HAMMER. The small handle at the right controls the blow. THE AGE OP STEEL the moonlight night of the rush season it labors tirelessly on while the displaced horse must rest and munch, his hay. The engine eats and works at the same time, and when it rests it does not eat. Other sources of power are also iron-har- nessed. The dynamo rests upon a heavy iron frame and swings its iron arms and iron mag- nets through space, whence it mysteriously winds out power. The water wheel is of the hardest steel ; it is fastened to the end of a long steel shaft, and is fed by water conducted in a penstock made of steel boiler plates. The second of the great classes of iron uses is to be found in the machines that are driven by the power that man has learned to harness. Our coal and iron and copper are hoisted by strong engines lifting their burdens on steel cables. Our clothes are made in iron looms. The bricks of our houses are shaped in iron molds. The wood of our floors is ripped from a log of the primeval forest by a steel saw, and shaped and planed in a big steel planer. Our daily pabulum of print is thrown forth almost miraculously from a huge steel printing press, and the letters of the morning mail are clicked off on a steel typewriter, and posted in an iron letter box. The machines of the farmer are as 91 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL dependent upon steel as are those of his towns- man brother. The multiform plows which dig up the earth are made of steel ; so are the reaper and mowing machine and the planter, which glide over the surface. So, also, the hay fork which mechanically flings hay to the top of the barn, high overhead. Transport is the third member of the mechan- ical trinity which goes with power and machines to make the present epoch. It is a well-known fact that for a long time the railways consumed half of man's total iron product. The locomo- tive is iron and steel from end to end and top to bottom; it runs upon rails of steel, steel- spiked to the sleepers beneath. It is probable that ere long we will be driven to use steel ties to which the rails shall be fastened. Streams and valleys are bridged with flying structures of steel. The wheels and running gear of the car have nearly always been made of iron and steel, and lately progress has gone farther and the freight car made of steel throughout has become a standard and the steel passenger coach is being rapidly introduced. In the city, the street railway is a heavy con- sumer, and every improvement undertaken in- creases the demand for more steel. The elevated railway is nothing but a bridge spanning the city 92 THE AGE OF STEEL in all directions, and the subway, its latest rival, is but a steel tunnel burrowing beneath the ground. In the country, the erection of the trolley lines is now giving us a second set of railways, and even the poles are coming to be made of iron. Half a century ago iron ships began to be common, a quarter of a century ago the ship- builder turned to steel, and now there is almost nothing else afloat upon the high seas. In the selection of material, the builder of the harbor lighter and the pleasure rowboat have followed the lead of the builder of battleships and ocean greyhounds. Upon the land, we are having a steady in- crease of that stationary device for transporta- tion, the pipe line, consuming annually tens of thousands of tons of metal as it reaches from the Atlantic to the Lakes, and the Lakes to the Gulf. Our structures are becoming more and more dependent upon the products of the blast fur- nace and the steel mills. Our fathers contented themselves with brick and stone and wood. The limitation of wooden beams and the cheapness of Bessemer steel caused that material to be used in heavy structures in a limited way soon 98 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL after its introduction. As wood increased in value, knowledge of the use of steel increased and brought about the wider and wider introduc- tion of this material in building, until we now see the modern sky scraper, in which wood is eliminated and steel is the absolute essential. In the old days of wooden structures, the wood demanded iron nails for its construction and gave a larger iron market than was furnished by such a masonry-using country as the continent of Europe. As the wood is eliminated its re- placement to a greater and greater extent by steel tremendously expands the market for that metal. The shingle roof has been largely re- placed by tin plate, chiefly composed of steel, or by galvanized steel, which is now gaining in favor. The improvements in the comfort of modern structures buiifc for human occupa- tion have centered themselves largely around plumbing, heating, and lighting, all of which ends have been achieved by the more and more extended introduction of pipes of steel and iron. Not to be overlooked in the class of structures is the farmer's hiimble fence. The extravagant rail fence of the pioneer was gradually replaced by more economical wooden fences, and this within the past twenty -five years has almost uni- formly given way to wire, which is stretched 94 m Ah w O 1^ CO O o l-H « w m o P4 THE AGE OF STEEL across the prairies of the West and the hills of the East in countless millions of miles, and as these then turn rusty, break down, and return to the elements, they must be continually re- placed by more of the same kind, for there is no substitute yet in sight. Modern industry, which supplies our wants as never before, uses iron and steel at every turn. The grosser industries of the oil refinery and the gas worlds show from afar their metal makeup. Even our food has dependence on metal. This is an age of canned goods, and the can which brings our Alaska salmon. East India pineapples, California asparagus, or Maryland peaches is made of tin plate. Minnesota wheat is pulverized into the world-famed flour by hard steel rollers ; the baker turns it into a savory loaf in a metal oven. Whoever heard of a factory without machines of steel? The fine gentle- man who parades the streets has, like the horse, steel nails in his shoes, and his tailor has fas- tened his clothes together with metal buttons, after having made the clothes through the agency of steel shears, needles, and sewing ma- chines. When emergency carries us to a hospital, the surgeon performs his wonders with instruments forged from the product of the steel crucible, 95 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL and when all is over, nails hold together the boards which form our coffin. If, perchance, we die abroad, we may return in a casket of steel. Preceding, accompanying, and permitting this great increase in the uses of iron and steel, there has been development in its manufacture. The multitude of uses means that there must be many grades and kinds of iron and steel, and that the manufacturer must have perfect con- trol of the product turned out in the various stages of its manufacture. This control he has. It is therefore natural to expect that the blast furnace should be among the most thoroughly organized and most highly developed pieces of mechanism yet devised. It is certainly the most fearful of all man's creations, and considering the character of the process which goes on with- in it and its unapproachable heat, it is \uider a wonderful degree of control. At the present time, the best blast furnaces are a hundred feet high, consist of a great iron stack lined with some nonfusible material, and when in opera- tion are filled from top to bottom with roaring fire. Into their fiery throats are fed alternately small carloads of coke and ore and limestone, and from the bottom there flows away at inter- THE AGE OF STEEL Vals two molten streams — one the precious iron upon which our civilization rests; the other the Two Modern Blast Furnaces with Row of Stoves Between useless slag, to be got rid of in the cheapest possible way. 97 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL The unassisted fuel could not furnish enough heat to extract the iron from the ore without the presence of the limestone flux, which greatly re- duces the melting temperature and helps get rid of impurities in the following manner. All ore contains a certain amount of waste matter commonly called gangue. This is usu- ally acid in its character, and the limestone hav- ing an opposite alkaline quality, called by the chemists a base, serves to neutralize it and make it melt at a lower temperature. Further than this, the melted limestone seems to have an affinity for dirt, similar to the affinity water has for salt, so that as the furnace gets hotter and hotter, the iron will drop to the bottom, and along with it flows the molten slag, which, fortu- nately, has the quality of being considerably lighter than the molten iron. Because of this convenient fact, the iron goes to the bottom, as milk goes below the cream in a pail, and can be drawn off through a low outlet after the slag has been drawn off at a higher outlet. The blast- furnace process in its entirety is not so simple as just described, for it is complicated by many refinements in which lie the fine points of the ironmaster's art. By controlling his ores, his fluxes and his furnace temperature, he controls the quality of his iron. All iron contains some 98 THE AGE OF STEEL silicon, a substance of which common sand is a compound. The amount of silicon can be eon- trolled in two M'ays : If the iron is smelted at a temperature of about 800° C, it will have about one per cent of silicon ; 300° more heat will make it take three per cent of this impurity. As sili- con is an acid substance and is neutralized by a base of limestone, an abundance of limestone slag will serve to dissolve the silicon and give low silicon iron, whereas a scarcity of limestone and much heat will give high silicon iron. All iron insists upon absorbing a nearly uni- form amount of carbon, amounting to three or four per cent, but this substance, fortunately, can be removed with ease and no great expense by the Bessemer process. Sulphur, which is exceedingly injurious in iron and can never be removed unless it be done in the blast furnace, is best got rid of by having a limestone or basic slag and a very high tem- perature. Phosphorus the smelting master cannot con- trol. That which is in the ore and the coal goes into the iron. A small amount of it is practi- cally ruinous to iron by making it brittle, and for a long time many otherwise good ores were useless until made available by recent discov- eries. 99 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL It is thus evident that there are many kinds of cast iron, depending upon the amount of carbon, silicon, sulphur, and phosphorus, and the particular forms in which some of these occur. The burning of this modern furnace takes place under a forced draught or air blast of from eight to twenty pounds per square inch. This pressure serves to drive the air upward through the hundred-foot mass which burns within the furnace. Otherwise, the fire would smother. The gas which results from the im- perfect combustion within the furnace is a most valuable by-product and serves a valuable pur- pose in promoting the furnace operation, and sometimes leaves a product to sell. A part of the gas is taken to the boilers, where it gener- ates power for the blowing engines. Another part of it is used in the so-called stoves to heat the air blast on its way to the furnaces. These stoves are almost as large as the furnace itself, and consist of great iron tanks filled with open work of brick. Each furnace has two or more stoves. The gas is led from the furnace to the first stove, where it is mixed with air and burned as it passes through the brickwork, which is thus heated to red heat, and when the desired temperature is attained, the gas is 100 THE AGE OF STEEL turned into a second stove, while the air blast, passing through the first, is raised to a temper- ature of 800= to 1,100° C, at which red-hot temperature it enters the furnace to the great acceleration of the heat and combustion within. It is taken into the furnace near the bottom in pipes called ' ' tuyeres, ' ' which are cooled by con- stantly flowing streams of water to prevent their melting. These economical uses of the blast- furnace gas are a factor in the cheap iron making of the present. The pig iron resulting from the blast furnace is made into fine steel by the Cementation and Crucible processes, and into a cheaper steel by the Bessemer process, as previously explained. This process disposed of carbon and silicon with a flash and a roar, but, unfortunately, it could not make any use of iron containing phosphor- us in appreciable quantities, because the puri- fication which went on within this converter was limited to silicon and carbon only. Con- sequently, the first part of the Bessemer period started a great search for so-called Bessemer ores, or ores free enough from sulphur and phos- phorus to make good steel by the revolution- izingly cheap process. After this had gone on for a score of years, we came, in 1878, upon an- other steel horizon through the discovery by 101 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL Messrs. Thomas and Gilchrist that by the simple device of putting into the Bessemer converter a limestone rather than a sandstone lining, the chemical state of the burden was changed and the basic limestone lining proceeded to extract the phosphorus from the iron. This so-called basic process made possible the use of ores high in phosphorus which hitherto had been of no avail, and the steel industry had a new road opened before it. But owing to the fact that the Bessemer converter keeps hot by the im- purities it burns, it is necessary in this process to have about two per cent of phosphorus be- fore there could be enough heat for the con- version of phosphatic iron. The result is that owing to the comparatively low phosphorus in the American ores, the basic Bessemer process has been limited to Europe, although many fine American ores have too much phosphorus to be classed as Bessemer ores. Fortunately, these intermediate ores were not stranded uselessly between the two horns of a dilemma in phosphorus. The principle involved in the basic process was applied to the open -hearth process, which is a much better process of making steel and one now rapidly superseding the Bessemer, partic- ularly in America. The Bessemer process is 102 THE AGE OF STEEL quick and cheap. There is a roar, a flying of sparks, and it is soon over. It is done so quickly that the product is not uniform and the recent great outcry against the steel rails is partly a condemnation of the Bessemer process. There is no time for testing the steel, and there is no time for slow work. It is like a pilot shooting rapids; he succeeds or he fails, but he doesn't try twice with the same boat. The rush of the Bessemer process arises from the necessity of keeping the iron molten through the burning of the silica, the carbon, or the phosphorus which it contains. When they are gone, it must be rapidly moved onward or it will "freeze," and the results, whatever they may be, are final. The open-hearth process is a slower process with control. It is the invention of the Messrs. Siemens, who took out patents in 1856, the same year that Bessemer registered his invention. The process is really akin to puddling, in that there is a hearth of metal heated by gas flames beating over its surface. The process as first invented was not hot enough for success until its improve- ment eight years later by a Frenchman named Martin, who applied to it the so-called regen- erating device, which is essentially the same as that above described in the blast-furnace stoves. 103 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL The flames, after passing over the steel-melting hearth, are carried through a brick framework which is heated, and after an interval the gas fuel is cut off and enters the furnace through the stove previously heated, while the waste gases heat a second stove on the other side of the furnace. The successful making of open- hearth steel in Prance in 1865 was followed by its introduction to the world at the Paris Ex- position in 1867, where the American commis- sioners were much impressed, and brought it back to the United States, where it was tried in the same year. This process having a fviel sup- ply entirely independent of the iron can go on as long as it is desired. It is under perfect con- trol. Samples can be taken and examined. If too acid, limestone can be added; if it is too alkaline, silica can be added; if more carbon is needed, pig iron can be added; if less carbon is desired, scrap steel can be thrown in; if manga- nese is desired, ferromanganese can be added. If something does not oxidize fast enough, iron ore is thrown in, increasing the iron and en- riching for a time the oxygen content. It is wonderfully like an old-fashioned cook who tastes her soup and adds a pinch of this, a bit of that, and a spoonful of the other, seasoning until the product just suits her. The open- 104 THE AGE OF STEEL hearth process also uses up old scrap material, but it takes from eight to ten hours — a great disadvantage in comparison to the speed of Bessemer. This disadvantage makes a higher price, but with it goes a greater uniformity and strength which for the past forty years has caused this material to be used for boiler plates and other tises requiring steel of great reliability. For such pieces as railroad iron or structural girders, a small flaw which might be fatal to an engine boiler would make little difference, and therefore the cheaper Bessemer steel has been steadily used. Within the past year or two we have heard a great outcry because of the break- ages of steel rails upon railroads and conse- quent railroad accidents. The number of these breakages has assumed alarming proportions, and the railroad men have declared that the steel makers have lowered the quality of their output. The steel makers have replied that the railways were by their heavy cars and greatly enlarged engines subjecting the tracks to strains before unknown, and strains which they could not stand. At the present time it is reported in variou-S quarters that this demand of the railway managers is being answered by ex- tensive preparations for the making of open- hearth rails, and the great trend of steel 105 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL making at the present time is toward the sub- stitvition of open hearth for the cheaper Besse- mer product, as witnessed by the statistics of output. The steel for the greater industries is shaped in a rolling mill. It comes from the Bessemer or open-hearth converter molded into a great billet like a piece of a large wooden beam, and this billet is carried red hot to a so-called soak- ing pit, where the licking tongues of a flame from a gas-fed fire keep it heated until it is ready to start on its journey through the mills. This soaking pit is the starting point of many roads through the mill. It goes off in one di- rection, and successive rollers squeeze it, crush it, and lengthen it into steel rails, in which form it emerges a thousand feet away. Other sets of rolls make the billet into flat beams for bridges or elevated railways. A third set of rolls, also starting near the soaking pits, send the product out of the distant door of the steel mill in the form of great flat plates to make the boiler of a locomotive, or a marine engine, or the sides of a steamship, and yet other sets of rollers will make square rods which finally pass under heavy shears and are chopped into pieces called billets or blooms. These pieces of steel are the raw material for other mills which may 106 THE AGE OF STEEL make wire, nails, or manufacture steel of any other of a thousand forms. Some billets are as big as cord wood, some no larger than lead pencils — ^thus it passes out into the manifold world of manufacture. CHAPTER VIII SHE TWENTIETH CENTURY SUPREMACY OP AMERICA It has been pointed out in a previous chapter that the British iron industry greatly exceeded that of America in 1880. This was because geographical and industrial conditions in that country made possible the early maturity of the iron industry. It was ripe in 1880, but that of America, then in its infancy, has since made prodigious strides toward maturity. This con- tinued and continuing great growth does not in- dicate that it has yet reached that point, but cer- tain it is that we have far surpassed Great Britain or any other country. In 1880 Great Britain made TJ millions of tons of iron; we made less than 4, Germany less than 3. In 1905, a quarter of a century later, Great Britain made less than 10 million, Germany had passed her by a million tons, and the United States was ap- proximately 2| times as great as her one-time peerless leader. At the present time, the State of Pennsylvania makes more iron than the whole British Empire. 108 THE SUPREMACY OF AMERICA The fact that British industry matured earlier than ours is significantly shown by noticing its almost stationary output since 1880, when ours has gone forward so rapidly. By taking aver- ages for five years, between 1880 and 1884 and 1899 and 1903 it is shown that the pig-iron out- put in the United States increased 3.71 fold, Germany 2.68, Austria-Hungary 2.26, Belgium 1.47, France 1.35, Sweden 1.24, and Great Brit- ain remained almost stationary at 1.08. In steel making the ratios are found more strikingly in America's favor, the United States having in- creased 8.21, Germany 7.35, Sweden 6.33, Aus- tria Hungary 5.12, Belgium 4.46, France 3.52, and Great Britain 2.68. It is plain that Eng- land has not had her share of the increase which Levassaur has pointed out as a law of the iron- making world, namely, that " The production of pig iron has doubled almost every tenth year during the last fifty j^ears. " While the mature industry of England has slowty increased, that of America has rioted ahead until it outweighs that of both Great Britain and Germany, which are the only other iron countries of first-rate im- portance in the whole world. This growth has come about from a number of good reasons. First, the American iron maker has had a great market. Here was a country 109 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL almost as large as all Europe, sparsely peopled, rapidly developing, with a population indus- trious, rich, and able to buy iron in large quan- tities, and imperatively needing it to develop their boundless resources. This vast market has been assured to the American iron and steel maker by a strong protective tariff which has always shielded him from the death-dealing competition which the more favorably located and equipped plants of Europe could have dealt twenty-five years ago. At the same time, mature little England, no larger than a couple of me- dium-sized American States, did not need much iron at home, and naturally bewailed the loss of the splendid American market which, the Ameri- can tariff closed to the limitation of the English furnace output. We have had, and still have, unrivaled re- sources for the making of iron. Our ores are abundant and they are the richest that are being smelted in the world. Our coal fields are with- out a rival in the richness and abundance of their seams, their accessibility to the surface, and their good quality for the iron smelter. The necessary flux has been every^vhere abundant. England has been compelled to use poorer and higher-priced materials. Further than this ad- vantage in the staple materials, the Pittsburg 110 THE SUPREMACY OF AMERICA district has had and has diligently used a rich supply of fuel manna — ^the natural gas, unknown in England but spurting from the American earth and burning with a heat five times as great as its rival, coal gas, upon which the English- man must depend. But before these great resources of America could be utilized, a vast work has had to be done in the erection of plants and the establishing of means of transportation, for while our ores and coal are rich, it happens that those which are at the present time giving us our dominant position in the iron industry are situated 1,000 miles apart and present one of the most complicated transportation problems that modern industry has had to face. The list of our equipments has not been perfect, for while our material re- sources have been abundant, the human element, labor, has been proverbially scarce. The very richness of our resources in every respect has made such a wealth of opportunity for occupa- tion that labor is and has been scarce and, as a result, highly paid. As a consequence, the American iron industry has been driven over to a machine basis, and its very success has arisen from the fact that the scarcity of labor has com- pelled the introduction of machinery which has surpassed the dreams of its inventors and given Ul THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL US an iron industry different from that of any other country. It is due chiefly to the machinery and mechanical organization that America is now so far ahead of other iron-making countries. The very speed of our increase has served to promote efHciency. The constant building of plants promotes plenty of experimentation, and new devices thus installed serve to show the in- feriority of the old and to lead to its prompt abandonment in favor of the better. This ap- parent recklessness has been opposed by the policy prevalent in England, where it is common for an old equipment to be used until it is worn out rather than out of style. Traces of the same conservatism in the older districts of the eastern United States are distinctly visible. With the exception of the plants at Cornwall, Pa., Port Henry, N. Y., and Wharton, N. J., the plants east of the Alleghenies bear quite as much re- semblance to those of England as they do to those of Pittsburg. It is in this latter district that the somersault reorganizations have taken place. Taken in its entirety, the most significant occurrence in the last quarter century of the American iron industry was the reorganization of Pittsburg 's iron industry upon a new ore sup- ply. / This shift from a local ore supply to one , / 112 THE SUPREMACY OF AMERICA brought a thousand miles from Lake Superior was effected without in any way impairing Pittsburg 's rate of growth in iron making or her leadership in the iron industry. This city had arisen to its position of promi- nence through purely local conditions of fuel, topography, transportation, and local ore. About 1880, the best of these ores having been used, it was discovered that ores of superior quality could be brought from Lake Superior via the Lower Great Lakes, and thence into Pittsburg at less cost than that at which the poorer local ores could be delivered, and upon this basis Pittsburg has gone steadily onward with its ever- increasing output. This has come about through the installation of well-nigh marvelous mechanisms for handling raw materials, particularly the ore. This is one of the most stupendous transportation problems and consummate transportation achievements of the present period. In 1884 when England was the iron leader, we began to unload the cargoes of Superior ore with shovels, buckets, windlasses, and wheelbarrows, much as George Washington would have ordered it done if he had required the operation to be performed in connection with his army movements. "Within twenty-five years all this has been transformed as completely as 113 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL George Washington's .stagecoach. The ore is never touched by human hand, and with the ex- ception of a very small percentage lying in the bottom of the ship, it is not even lifted by human muscle from the time it is loosened from its age-long resting place beneath the pine roots of the Lake Superior woods until it goes into a seething furnace on the banks of the Monon- gahela. This involves two transshipments and car- riage upon two railways and a steamship. Some of the Lake Superior mines are so favorably located that the ore can be taken out by steam shovels in the manner identical with that of dig- ging a railroad cut, now familiar to nearly every- one. For a few cents per ton the ore is thrown upon cars which are drawn away from 10 to 100 miles to the upper lake ore docks situated high upon the bluffs. From this height the ore runs from the bottom of the car into the top of the ore bin on a high wharf, thence through chutes into the hold of a steamer below. This gravity load- ing serves to fill the steamer in a minimum of time, and almost before she is tied to the dock she is ready to depart for the lower lake port. Here the speed and method of unloading eclipse all records. Special machinery has been evolved whereby steam and electricity operate huge 114 THE SUPREMACY OF AMERICA buckets that grab into the ore in a ship's hold just as a boy's two hands might grab sugar in a barrel. They close upon it and lift it just as easily as the hands could lift sweets. Some of these grab buckets seize as much as ten tons at a time, and there is a row of them, one working at each hold of the ship, which is open from stem to stern. In 1901 a machine that could unload 6,000 tons in 8 to 12 hours for 7 cents a ton was thought to be highly efficient. Shortly after this the 6,000 tons were unloaded by machinery in from 8 to 10 hours for less than 7 cents a ton. In 1903 the record for 5,000 tons by another machine was 3 hours, 36 minutes. This plant with its crew of 17 men would, with the best type of ship, handle 10,000 tons in 6 hours, and during six months of 1903 it handled 24 million tons of ore, and although the plant cost a quar- ter of million dollars, it handled ore for less than 4 cents a ton. But the next year this, too, was outdone, and a new plant whose grabbing hands handled 7| tons each could be operated by two men who, by merely touching levers, controlled 150 horse power and unloaded ore for the astounding cost of 2 cents per ton. This low cost was contributed to by the fact that the machine could reach ninety-eight per cent of the ore in the bottom of the boat rather than requir- 115 THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL ing hand labor to gather up the last part, as was common with most of its predecessors. All of these unloading devices run the ore back long distances on high bridge cranes. Any- where along this journey the touch of a treadle will dump the ere by gravity into cars beneath, provided it is desired to ship it at once to the furnaces. Owing to the fact that the season of lake navigation is open but seven months, and, the blast furnaces operate night and day for years, it is necessary to carry down the lakes in seven months the ore supply for the whole year. Accordingly, the lake docks have, when freezing weather comes in the fall, whole mountains of iron ore which will last until the opening of navigation in the ensuing spring. During the winter the same unloading appliances that raised it from the steamer's hold pick it up from storage piles and load it onto ears to be for- warded to furnaces. Most of it stops in the Pittsburg district, ivhich inchides the upper Ohio Valley and adjacent sections west of the Alle- ghenies, but some of it goes as far west as St. Louis, and considerable quantities cross the Al- leghenies to be mixed with eastern and imported ore. When the ore reaches the blast furnace, cars carrying it run upon high trestles, whence it 116 H H M H o CO PM