AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 161 



imperfect in plan, rude in structure, uncouth and clumsy as to 

 machinery, yet these primitive works produced metal, albeit small 

 in quantity (eight to ten tons per week), of a quality that has 

 never been excelled by the colossal furnaces and forges of this 

 day and generation. The progress of improvement in those early 

 days was slow, painful, and uncertain. Steam and Electricity, 

 twin sons of modern civilization, were unborn, and the mechanic 

 arts only represented what was possible to be accomplished by 



Fig. 9. Old Furnace on the Conemaugh. 



the skill and muscular energy of men and animals. The wonder- 

 working mechanisms now known as " machine-tools " were un- 

 imagined, and men wrought laboriously, by dint of the acute eye, 

 cunning hand, strong arm, and stalwart courage, at subduing the 

 savagery of a continent. 



In presence of so many obstacles, and having such plentiful 

 lack of nearly everything that modern engineers and artisans 

 would regard as indispensable, the failure of the pioneer Ameri- 

 can sons of Vulcan would have occasioned no surprise, and their 

 triumphant success is therefore all the greater wonder. 



Thus far we have spoken chiefly of the furnaces and apparatus 

 used in colonial times for the production of cast iron in its three 

 forms of 



"sowe iron," " 



pig iron," * and " castings," and have 



* Pig iron is usually in tlie form of roughly semi-cylindrical masses about two and one 

 half feet in length, and weighing in the vicinity of one hundred pounds each. These 

 vol. xxxviii. 11 



