294 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



" raw materials/' and the partly manufactured products which 

 are necessary in the processes of domestic industry, should be im- 

 ported free of tax, I think there could then be very little doubt 

 that we should not only control our home market, but also secure 

 a much larger share in supplying other nations with cotton 

 fabrics than we now enjoy. The number of our spindles might 

 then be almost indefinitely extended ; and when the prices of iron, 

 steel, and copper are the same in this country as they are in Great 

 Britain, making allowance for the cost of transportation, as they 

 would be if free of duty here, I doubt if any carding-engine, 

 combing-machine, or spinning-machinery, or any other important 

 part of the plant, except some specialties, could be imported from 

 any other country. 



The annual consumption of iron and steel in this country is 

 now thirty-five to forty per cent of the commercial or known prod- 

 uct of the world. It is equal to the entire commercial product 

 of the world in the years 1865 and 1866. It is in excess of the 

 largest product ever made by Great Britain. Now, it is upon 

 supremacy in iron more than anything else that the control of 

 commerce rests, and I think we shall soon hold it without lower- 

 ing our prices materially, but in consequence of rising prices 

 abroad. The deposits of fine iron ore suitable for making Besse- 

 mer steel are rapidly diminishing in Great Britain in ratio to the 

 demand upon them. The coking coals, which are necessary in the 

 work, are becoming more costly year by year. As the mines be- 

 come deeper they become hotter, and the veins in Durham, the 

 chief source of supply, are only two feet wide, and they lie hori- 

 zontally, so that the miners must work at a great depth in a very 

 heated atmosphere, lying on their sides. As the necessary conse- 

 quence, although the wages of labor are much less, the cost of 

 coke is much higher than it is in this country. 



Great Britain now imports twenty per cent of all her ores. 

 The chief supply of fine ore has been in the neighborhood of 

 Barcelona, Spain, but that supply is becoming exhausted. When 

 that time comes, Great Britain must get her supply of fine ores 

 from the south of Spain inside the gates of Gibraltar from 

 Algiers, or irom mines not yet worked to any great extent, three 

 hundred miles from the extreme northern end of the Baltic Sea, 

 in Sweden. 



The supply of workmen capable of operating iron-furnaces 

 and steel-works in Great Britain is also relatively small, so that 

 with each advance in the price of iron, an advance in wages is 

 demanded not due to improvements in the processes, but due 

 to the relative scarcity of laborers. On the other hand, the de- 

 mand for iron upon the furnaces, both of Great Britain and of 

 this country, which for many years varied with the activity or 



