PEESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 5 



this source has no doubt had its iuflueuce iu redviciug the price of the article. About 

 twenty-five years ago it stood at =£14 per ton ; then it gradually rose to <£20 ; but it can 

 now be bought in England at <£11 15s. per ton. A chief point to be noted in connection 

 with this instance of the prcA^ntion of w^aste by the Bairds of Gartsherrie and Mr. "W". J. 

 Dunnachie, their manager, is the stupendous scale upon which the works had to be con- 

 structed, the cost amounting, it is said, to i;60,000. 



But, in another department of the metallurgy of iron, waste utilisations of the most 

 extensive character have been perfected during the last eight years, the results of which 

 may not be without their effects upon some Canadian mining interests. Fifty-six years 

 have elapsed since Karsten plainly pointed out the influence which certain small percen- 

 tages of phosphorus exercise upon the quality of malleable iron.' The presence of from 

 03 up to 0"8 per cent, has the effect of making it " cold short," i.e., of lessening its 

 strength at ordinary temperatures. This element is often present in iron ores in the shape 

 of small quantities of apatite or vivianite, and when this is the case, as Karsten declared 

 in 1840, the iron-smelter has no means at his command for preventing the reduction of 

 the phosphorus and its passage into his pig iron. Volumes might be filled in attempting 

 to describe the efforts which have been made during the last thirty years to remove the 

 phosphorus from the ores previous to smelting, or from the pig iron previous to puddling, 

 and to facilitate its elimination in that process or in the Bessemer converter. In the 

 original Bessemer process, it was found utterly impossible to remove the phosphorus. All 

 of that element present in the pig iron stuck to the metal, while boiling white hot under 

 the blast ; passed into the steel ingots without the slightest diminution, and into the rails, 

 axles or tires into which they were manufactured. It was found that for our modern 

 purposes, a much greater freedom from the weakening element waç demanded than in 

 Karsten's time. For rails, O'l to 02 per cent, phosphorus was permitted ; but, for steel of a 

 higher qviality, the presence of barely one-tenth of these quantities (001 to 0'02 per cent.) 

 became the limit. As the demand for steel to replace iron increased, so also did the efforts 

 of iron masters to apply cheap and inferior (because phosphoric) raw irons in the produc- 

 tion of Bessemer steel. The ores free from phosphorus were scarce, and, if we except the 

 Cumberland hematites, had to be brought to England from Spain and Algiers and, in 

 smaller quantity, from Sweden. At last, in May, 1879, the problem was solved at 

 Middlesborough, by Bolckow, Vaughan & Co., who were the first to carry out the inven- 

 tion of Sydney G. Thomas and Percy C. Gilchrist, since become famous as the Basic or 

 Thomas-Gilchrist process. By making use of a basic lining of bricks in the converter, 

 containing not more than ten per cent, of silica, manufactured from dolomite, with silicate 

 of soda as a binder, and employing a basic slag containing not more than twenty per cent, 

 silica, and continuing the " blow " two or three minutes after the removal of the silicon 

 and carbon, these inventors were able to reduce the phosphorus in common pig iron from 

 1'5 to 004 per cent., and to drive it as phosphoric acid into the basic cinder. The conse- 

 quences were far-reaching. Inferior ores and pig irons became available for making- 

 Bessemer steel, and great reductions have taken place in the price of rails, of which our 

 new railways have had the advantage. 



The utilisation of waste ores and of inferior grades of pig iron was not the only 



' Karsten's System der Métallurgie, iv. 25. 



