INDUSTRIAL STATISTICS. 605 



unfortunately located, and being on these accounts unable to 

 compete with their modern rivals in the production of cheap 

 iron, may be looked upon as being permanently retired from 

 the list of active furnaces. The proportion of these, however, 

 the secretary is careful to add, will hardly exceed one tenth 

 of the whole number of those that are now idle, the larger 

 number of antiquated and badly situated stacks having either 

 been torn down or permanently abandoned since 1873; and 

 as all such actually abandoned furnaces have been from time 

 to time carefully eliminated from the list of existing furnaces, 

 the present number (716) includes a smaller proportion of 

 stacks in danger of permanent abandonment than would at 

 first be imagined. An increase in the demand for pig-iron, 

 especially if accompanied by an advance of a few dollars per 

 ton in price, would, in the opinion of the secretary, enable 

 many old-style and out-of-the-way furnaces to go into blast 

 with profitable results. 



The total productive capacity of the existing furnaces is 

 placed at about twice the present actual output that is, about 

 4,000,000 gross tons and the opinion is expressed that " less 

 than ten years hence all of this capacity will be required to 

 meet the wants of our people, and it will undoubtedly be 

 utilized." 



A COMPARATIVE TABULATION OF PIG-IRON BY STATES, 



for comparison with similar tables published in preceding 

 volumes of the Record, is given on the following page, from 

 the official statements of the Association. 



PRODUCTION OF ROLLED IRON IN 1877. 



The total production of rolled iron in the United States 

 during the year 1877 is represented by the Association's sta- 

 tistics to have been 1,476,759 net tons, as compared with 

 1,509,269 tons in 1876, 1,599,516 tons in 1875, and 1,694,616 

 tons in 1874. The falling-off in the production of this class 

 of our iron products, observable for the year 1877, is confined, 

 as elsewhere observed, chiefly to the item of iron rails. In 

 the last published statistics of the Association, the item of 

 Bessemer steel rails, which had been included among rolled- 

 iron products in previous reports, is separately classified, a 

 fact which will account for the apparent discrepancy which 



