30 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



either hammered in the forge, or " bloomed " from nine-inch ingots, 

 at the Rensselaer Rolling Mill in Troy, N. Y., or the Spuyten 

 Duyvil Rail Mill at Spuyten Duyvil, N. Y., and then rolled into 

 rails at these establishments, but on the above date Mr. Holley 

 had a thirty-inch blooming mill ready to run. This mill was the 

 joint invention of James Moore, William George, and A. L. Holley, 

 and was built by James Moore, at his Bush Hill Iron Works, 

 Philadelphia. The mill was provided with front and back lifting 

 tables raised by hydraulic power. The tables carried loose rolls, 

 on which the twelve-inch ingot (heavy enough to make two rail 

 blooms) was placed and pushed into the rolls by men. Eight men 

 were required to attend the mill. This mill proved to be a great 

 advance over previous practice, but in the fall of 1873 improve- 

 ments were added (invented by George Fritz, of Johnstown, Pa.) 

 which reduced the force required at the mill to three men and 

 a boy. 



It is manifestly impossible in these pages to give in detail the 

 history of the several Bessemer steel-works now in operation, and 

 I have been thus particular in sketching at length the inception 

 and development of the plants at Wyandotte, Mich., and Troy, 

 N". Y., because they were the genesis of the Bessemer steel indus- 

 try in America, and their history admirably illustrates the mani- 

 fold obstacles which the promoters of all ultra-novel and radi- 

 cally revolutionary inventions have always had to encounter. I 

 well remember the sneers which greeted my statement that the 

 time would come " when a steel rail could be made cheaper than 

 an iron one " ; and now that time having arrived, it is no small 

 compensating satisfaction to know that the faith delivered thirty 

 years ago to the workers at Wyandotte and Troy has expanded 

 with the years and by " works "' has been made perfect : mount- 

 ains have been removed,* and the metal of their ores now in our 

 railways binds the nation together with bars of steel, along 

 which glide shuttle-like, to and fro, the steam-propelled carriers 

 of the commerce of a continent ; interweaving it with the warp 

 threads of agriculture and all arts, and producing a fabric of 

 national prosperity and happiness that shall wear through the 

 ages and continue to clothe this people while time endures. 



A modern establishment for the manufacture of steel rails is 

 vastly different from those ancient " plants " in which bar iron 

 and iron rails were made forty years ago. Works that would 

 turn out seventy tons per day then were thought to be remarkable 

 both in size and in administration, but at the present time there 



* The " Iron Mountain " of Missouri, which at one time was supposed to be inex- 

 haustible, has had all its ore passed through the " furnace " and converted into iron and 

 steel ; and it is only a question of a few years when other great deposits now regarded ag 

 " mountains of ore " will share the same fate. 



