AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 165 



Fig. 12. A Tkip-Hammer. 



The simplicity and consequent cheapness of construction of 

 the blomary fires caused them to be largely employed in the 

 early years of the iron manufacture in America ; and a few, that 

 have superior advantages for obtaining supplies of ore and fuel, 

 remain active at 

 the present time.* 

 We are told f that 

 in 1731 there were 

 in all New England 

 " six furnaces for 

 hollow ware and 

 nineteen forges or 

 blomaries for bar 

 iron. At that time 

 there were no fur- 

 naces for pig iron 

 exclusively nor 

 any refineries of 

 pig metal ; there was one slitting - mill and a manufacture of 

 nails." In that year there were no iron- works in New York, and 

 but a few in New Jersey (one furnace and " several forges ") ; in 

 Pennsylvania there were one furnace and three " forges." At the 

 same time there were two "furnaces" and one "blomary" in 

 Delaware, and two "furnaces" and two "blomaries" in Mary- 

 land, and in Virginia there were three " blast-furnaces " and one 

 " air furnace " (a form of reverberatory furnace), " but no forge." 

 The fifteen "furnaces" and thirty "blomaries" above enumer- 

 ated represented the growth of the iron industry of America 

 during the eighty-six years following its birth at Lynn. 



As the result of a superabundance of painful pondering, sup- 

 plemented by a proportional volume of conservative hesitation 

 and doubt, the manufacture of iron slowly increased, not only in 

 America, but in the world at large ; and soon after the " blom- 

 ary process " had been generally recognized as the most satisfac- 

 tory method of making iron, the growing needs of expanding 

 civilization began to demand some means by which the more 

 abundant ores that were not so rich in iron as those required by 



* The " Catalan forge " or " blomary fire " has been an important factor in the growth 

 of the iron industry of the United States, but it belongs to an industrial stage of the past. 

 In 1856 J. P. Lesley, Secretary of the American Iron Association, reported two hundred and 

 four blomaries in active work (in nine States), whose product for that year was 28,633 tons : 

 many of these works must have been idle, as the product seems a very low one, averaging 

 but one hundred and forty tons each. In 1889 James M. Swank, Vice-President and Gen- 

 eral Manager of the American Iron and Steel Association, reports but five forges (four in 

 New York and one in Tennessee), producing iron direct from the ore ; their united prod- 

 uct being 12,407 net tons of blooms. 



\ Bishop's History of American Manufactures. 



