508 Transactions. 



Art. LIV. — The Manufacture of Iron and Steel in New Zealand. 



By S. H. Jenkinson. 



[Rmd before the Technological Section of the Wellington Philosophical Society, 



13th October, 1915.1 



The manufacture of iron and steel is the most important industry a nation 

 can possess, and it is hardly too much to assert that empire and power 

 follow directly on and are measured by the production of iron and steel. 

 Most English metallurgists recognize this so clearly that there must be a 

 great (though as yet unexpressed) jubilation over the fact that Germany pro- 

 voked this war a quarter of a century too early for her recent superiority 

 in iron and steel production to assert itself unmistakably. Now that the 

 engineering trades have clearly proved themselves the basis of all military 

 and naval strength, we can hope that the tremendous and phenomenal 

 strides of the German metallurgical industry within the last few years 

 will be appraised by all our allied statesmen as the most desperate and 

 inexorable menace to the peace and freedom of the world, and that 

 definite, decisive steps will be taken to prevent the German Empire pro- 

 curing that predominance over the European nations which would be the 

 inevitable outcome of, say, twenty years more of her present superiority 

 in the iron trade. Luckily, these steps are simple and obvious enough. 

 The orefields on which Germany depends are in Lorraine and Luxemburg, 

 and her fuel lies in Westphalia. The removal of these provinces from the 

 domination of Prussia to the government of their racially congenial neigh- 

 bours, France, Belgium, and Holland, would end at once the German Empire 

 as an arbiter in the iron trade and a menace to peace and freedom in 

 Europe. By careful effort and the sinking of some metallurgical fallacies 

 Great Britain would again become the arbiter of European metallurgy, 

 and her place as premier nation of the world would be assured once more. 

 Every part of the Empire should strive for this one end — the supremacy 

 of Great Britain in the iron and steel trade, and her consequent supremacy 

 among the nations of the world in military and naval might and power. 

 The effort should be to develop the cheapest Empire source of manufac- 

 tured iron to the greatest possible extent, and to spoon-feed by tariff 

 operations an uneconomic supply in any province at the expense of the 

 cheapest source elsewhere in the Empire should be realized as a suicidal 

 policy that will only tend to keep the Empire in the same desperate position 

 it has been in for the last ten years. L'on and steel supremacy, which 

 inevitably spells military and naval supremacy, can be attained only by 

 concentrating all our iron-manufacture in the most economical position, 

 where vast operations in the one province will induce economics impossible 

 in smaller efforts, and where metallurgical skill and facility will become 

 a racial trait of the inhabitants. A national outlook will warn us against 

 the destructive fallacy of making each or any province of the Empire 

 independent of the others in this industry, since it has been the selfish 

 and disconnected policies of her colonies in regard to iron-importation, 

 that have endangered England's siipremacy in the past ; and no little part 

 of Germany's might and power in August, 1914, can be traced directly to 

 the want of foresight among English and colonial statesmen with regard 

 to the fostering of the relatively declining national production of iron 

 and steel. 



