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1901.] - MARINE REVIEW. 21 IRON AND STEEL AT THE CLOSE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. BY JAMES M. SWANK, GENERAL MANAGER AMERICAN IRON AND STEEL ASSOCIATION.* The progress of the world's iron and steel industries in the nineteenth century, full details of which have been presented in previous reports, is well illustrated by the statistics which show the extent of their develop- ment at the close of the century and which will presently be given. Every reader of these pages is already familiar with the fact that at the 'beginning of the last century comparatively little iron and steel was made in any country. There was but little demand for these products. In time railroads became, as they still are, the greatest of all the consumers of iron and steel, yet the Stockton & Darlington railroad in England, the first railroad in the world to be built for general freight traffic and passen- ger travel, was not opened until 1825. The street railway dates from 1882. The general use of iron and steel for bridges and for ships and other ves- sels came later, followed by the general use of steel in the construction of large buildings, especially buildings of great height. Last of all we have the steel car for general freight purposes. These are the most prominent uses of iron and steel today, but simultaneously with the development of these leading uses there has been a constantly increasing use of agricul- tural machinery, textile machinery, mining machinery, electrical ma- chinery, machine tools, iron and steel pipe, hardware, stoves, shovels, tin- plates, wire, and many other articles which are made wholly or in part of iron or steel. The railroad era 'began at the close of the first quarter of the nine- teenth century, 'but it was not until the third quarter of the century was well under way that an extraordinary demand for iron and steel for rail- roads and for other than railroad purposes began to manifest itself in any progressive country. In our own country we built more miles of railroad in 1887 than in any year before or since. The building of iron and steel vessels received a great deal of attention, particularly in Great Britain, in the third quarter of the century, but it was in the fourth quarter that the greatest progress was made in substituting iron and steel ships for wooden ships. As late as 1868 only five iron steamships were built in one year in this country for ocean service. We have since built over 100 steel mer- chant vessels in one year, and we have in recent years built a magnificent fleet for the American navy, the frames and hulls and armor being of American steel. Armor plate for war ships was not made in Great Britain until after 1850, 'but its manufacture was not perfected in any country until within the last ten years, while the first contract for American-made armor was not made until 1887. Iron and steel buildings date from the third quarter, but they did not receive much attention from the architects and builders until the fourth quarter, while steel cars were virtually unheard of until the century was nearing its end. The manufacture of tinplates was not introduced into the United States, except experimentally, until 1890. Ina word, while the nineteenth century witnessed the development of the iron age, which was succeeded before its close by the steel age, it would be more exact to say that the last year of the first quarter of the century, when the railroad era began, witnessed only the beginning of this development, and that the last quarter has seen its ripest fruits, even the last few years of the last quarter. The rapid growth of the world's iron and steel industries in the nine- teenth century, and particularly in its last quarter, could only have been made possible by substituting improved methods of manufacture for the slow and expensive methods that were in use at its beginning. The rail- roads of today could not have been supplied with one-half of the rails they need, indeed the half of these roads would never have been built, if the invention in 1855 of the Bessemer process for making steel had not re- sulted in giving to the world steel rails which would last longer and could be much more cheaply and rapidly made than the rails that were made of puddled iron. Nor could the steel that is used today in such large quan- tities for various structural purposes--bridges, buildings, ships, cars, etc.-- have been made at all but for the invention of the Bessemer process and its companion, the Siemens open-hearth process, the latter process dating from 1864. Nor could the pig iron that has been required by the Besse- mer and open-hearth processes have been supplied in sufficient quantities, not even the half of it, if reliance had been placed upon the small furnaces, the lean ores, and the charcoal fuel that were in common use less than a hundred years ago. The modern blast furnace, with its immense blowing engines, its hot- blast stoves, its rich ores, and its mineral fuel to smelt them has been a most powerful factor in the present.marvelous development of the world's iron and steel industries. It could not, however, have become this power-' : ful agent if an abundance of iron ore and mineral fuel had not been readily obtainable. Great Britain early found at home the coke she needed for her blast furnaces; her Durham coke is not excelled anywhere; and when she began to make steel in her Bessemer converters and open-hearth furnaces she drew upon Spain and other Mediterranean countries for a large part of the ores that would make pig iron suitable for these new processes. Germany has found within the last twenty years that she could make pig iron from her phosphoric ores that could be converted into steel by the basic modification of the Bessemer process, and she has well util- ized her resources. Other continental countries have built up extensive steel industries by the Bessemer and open-hearth processes, some of them, like Great Britain, largely importing their supplies of iron ore, and some of them also importing coal and coke. There is, however, a growing scarcity of iron ore and coal in many European countries, and in some the supply is being exhausted. But in the United States nature has been lavish in her supply of all the raw materials that are needed in the manu- facture of any kind of steel, except perhaps the ores of manganese. Iron ores and bituminous coal are found in many states, and anthracite coal is found in Pennsylvania, all in most generous quantities.. In the second quarter of the nineteenth century we successfully introduced anthracite coal and bituminous coke in the blast furnace, and in the same period the iron ores of Lake Superior were discovered. Our Lake Superior and Cornwall ores were early found to 'be well adapted to the manufacture of Bessemer steel by the original process, and also of open-hearth steel, and our Connellsville and Pocahontas coke are equaled in physical and chemi- cal properties only by the Durham coke of England. The first shipment of iron ore from the Lake Superior region was *From the twenty-second annual report of the United States Geological Survey. made in 1850, but it was not until 1860 that the shipments of ore from this region annually exceeded 100,000 tons. Neither Connellsville coke nor any other coke exerted any appreciable influence upon the manufacture of pig iron in this country until after 1850. These dates show how late in the last century we began to utilize the raw materials that now have a world- wide reputation. There is apparently no appreciable limit to the supply of rich and pure iron ores in the Lake Superior region and elsewhere in this country, and we have boundless deposits of good coking coal that are here and there being drawn upon to supplement the coal from Connells- ville 'basin and the Pocahontas field, neither of which favorite sources of supply will be exhausted for many years to come. Many of our rolling mills have been greatly favored with an abundant supply of natural gas, the use of this ideal fuel having commenced in 1874, at the close of the third quarter of the century under consideration. No country in the world possesses the raw materials for the manufacture of steel in such abundance as the United States. And no country in the world has de- veloped a more skillful or more enterprising class of iron and steel makers than our own country. Our blast furnaces, our Bessmer steel works, our open-hearth furnaces, our iron and steel rolling milles, our tinplate works, and our appliances for mining and shipping iron ore and coal are the best that the world has yet seen, and they are constantly receiving the unstinted. praise of our European rivals. While great progress has been made in the last quarter of the nine- teenth century in the development of the world's iron and steel industries the most notable progress has been made in the United States. This country today leads all other countries in the production of iron and steel. This prominence in the manufacture of these articles is only in part due to the bounty of nature in providing liberal supplies of the raw materials needed; it is largely the result of friendly legislation by the general gov- ernment, first, in more firmly establishing in 1861 the protective tariff policy, which has since 'been effectively maintained with 'but brief interrup- tions; and, second, in adopting at about the same time the policy of liberal grants of land to railroad companies. Through the operation of the pro- tective policy the home market has been preserved' for the home pro- ducers of iron and steel and of all articles made from them, and through the operation of the land-grant system, supplemented by the homestead policy, thousands of miles of railroad have been built in the western states and territories that would not otherwise have been constructed. With the building of these roads the population of these states and territories has been greatly increased, the consumption of iron and steel and of other manufactured products has been enlarged, our vast mineral resources have been discovered and developed, and the whole country has 'been enriched. Thousands of new farms have been opened, our agricultural products have been many times multiplied, and both home and foreign markets for the sale of our surplus crops have been easily and cheaply reached. But many of these railroads could not have been built if our protective tariff policy had not built up our iron-rail industry in the third quarter of the century and our steel-rail industry in the fourth quarter: Until we began to make our own iron rails and afterwards our own steel rails foreign manufacturers charged us excessive 'prices for such rails as we could afford to import. Both the industries mentioned had at the first to struggle for their very existence against foreign 'competition, the early duties on foreign iron rails and afterwards on foreign steel rails not being sufficiently protective, but in the end the control of the home market was gained, the production of rails increased enormously, and the prices were steadily reduced. In the meantime, as the direct result of the home com- petition which the protective. policy had encouraged, the production of all other articles of iron and steel greatly increased and their prices were also reduced, mines of iron ore and coal were opened which would otherwise have lain dormant, and a greatly enlarged home market for all the products of the farm was created. After all that has 'been:.said, however, of our wealth of natural re- sources for the production of iron and steel, and of the influence of the protective policy and the land-grant system in promoting their manufac- ture, the truth of history requires that it be distinctly and positively stated that all the advantages above noted would have failed to give to our coun- try in the last quarter of the nineteenth century steel rails and steel in other forms as cheaply and abundantly as they have been supplied if these advantages had not been supplemented by the constructive and executive abilities and the persistent energy of American manufacturers and the in- ventive genius and technical skill of American engineers and mechanics. The courage of our iron and steel manufacturers in entering upon new enterprises of the greatest magnitude and the skill displayed by our engi- neers and mechanics in attaining important and valuable. metallurgical results must be a constant marvel to every student of our industrial his- tory. ar rails afford a good illustration of the marvelous energy and superior skill which have been displayed in the manufacture of iron and steel in our country in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The first experimental steel rails ever made in the United States were rolled at Chicago in 1865, but our Bessemer steel industry at first made such slow . progress, owing to foreign competition and the prejudice in favor of iron rails, that the whole country made only 259,699 tons of steel rails in 1875. © Soon afterwards, however, American energy and skill produced most wonderful results. In 1879 we made more Bessemer steel rails than Great Britain. In 1881 we made 1,187,770 tons of steel rails and in 1887 we made 2,101,904 tons, and we have since increased these figures. Great Britain's largest production of Bessemer steel rails was in 1882, when she made 1,235,785 tons. From 1867 to 1900, both years included, we made 33,064,- 467 tons of Bessemer steel rails, an average of almost a million tons a year, of which 15,668,101 tons were made in the last ten years. The Brown Hoisting Machinery Co. of Cleveland recently secured -- another crane contract from the British ship building firm of Vickers, Sons & Maxim, Ltd. The order calls for a 10 ton cantilever crane driven by an electric motor. The Queensland government has also ordered machinery equipment for the purpose of conveying coal from cars to ships at the Brisbane docks of the government railways. The value of these orders is said to be about $140,000.