AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 35 



movement is usually very slow, these cranes are very rapid in 

 their action, more so than any other form of crane ; were this not 

 the fact, it would be impossible to handle the vast quantity of 

 hot materials — "ingots," and their "molds" — that must be dis- 

 posed of with great promptness in a modern steel-works. These 

 cranes are veritable giant arms, lifting and conveying with a tire- 

 less strength, insensible alike to heat and weight, such masses of 

 steel as have only come to the knowledge of man since the in- 

 vention of the Bessemer process. 



The various operations of the " converting-house," embracing 

 the turning of the converter, the regulation of the blast, and the 

 movement of the cranes, are all directed and controlled by means 

 of proper " hand-gear " located upon the platform called " the 

 pulpit " represented in the foreground of the picture. 



The general aspect of the interior of a converting-house at 

 night is at once startling and grandly impressive. Here heat, 

 flame, and liquid metal are ever present ; locomotives whistle 

 and puff, dragging with clatter and clang huge ladles of molten 

 iron; the lurid light, flashing and flaming, that illuminates the 

 scene, throws shadows so intensely black that they suggest the 

 "black fire" of Milton, for in such a place it is impossible for 

 a shadow to be cool ; half-naked, muscular men, begrimed with 

 sweat and dust, flit about ; clouds of steam arise from attempts 

 to cool in some degree the roasting earth of the floor ; converters 

 roar, vibrate, and vomit flames mingled with splashes of metal 

 from their white-hot throats ; at intervals the scorching air is 

 filled with a rain of coruscating burning iron ; ingot molds lift 

 mouths parched with a thirst that can only be appeased for a 

 short time by streams of liquid steel that run gurgling into them ; 

 the stalwart cranes rise, swing, and fall, loading scores of tons of 

 red-hot steel upon cars of iron : all these conditions and circum- 

 stances combine to make an igneous total more suggestive of the 

 realms of Pluto than any other in the whole range of the metal- 

 lurgic arts. 



The ingots of steel are taken from the " converting-house " as 

 promptly as possible after they are cast, and carried on iron cars 

 to the " blooming-mill " (Fig. G7), where they are put into gas-fired 

 furnaces (the end of one is seen on the right of Fig. 67), where 

 their heat is maintained, and thence they are taken to the 

 " blooming train " and rolled into blooms. The steel-rail bloom 

 is a rectangular bar of steel, long enough to produce four or even 

 six rails. 



In the cut (Fig. 67) on the left is seen a white-hot ingot of steel 

 being carried on an iron " buggy " to the rolls of the blooming 

 train, which occupies nearly the center of the picture. On the 

 right of this train is seen a bloom about to pass through the 



