14 THE IRON ORES OF NICTAUX, AND 
The extent to which the manufacture of basic steel has been 
carried in Germany may be gathered from the fact that in 1894 
the production of pig iron there was in round numbers 
5,000,000 tons, of which nearly 50 per cent. was Thomas iron. 
In England in 1894 the percentage was about 15. In the 
United States matters are much as in England, indeed the 
percentage of basic pig is less. Here, however, the conditions 
are different. The cheap supplies of pure ore available at 
Chicago, Cleveland, etc, from the iron mines of the Lake 
Superior district, and a protective tariff, have permitted an 
adherence to the firmly established Bessemer process But the 
fact remains that in the markets open to the competition of the 
world the cheap steel, low wages, and reasonable freights of the 
German steamers, combine to enable them to undersell American 
and English competitors. 
No metallurgical process during the past thirty years has 
received more attention from the chemist and capitalist than 
the relation of phosphorus to iron and steel. Interminable 
researches on the part of chemists and analysts, costly experi- 
ments, in which capital has lavishly poured out its money, have 
combined to force from nature the secret of pure steel. As we 
have seen, the iron ores of the world are divided, as regards 
steel, into Bessemer and non-Bessemer, according to the propor- 
tions of phosphorus present. 
Speaking in round numbers of the 12,000,000 tons of steel 
made in 1893, about 75 per cent. are made of ores that contain 
not more than .07 of phosphorus to the 100 parts of iron. The 
remaining 25 per cent. are made from ores containing from .10 
to 2.50 per cent. of phosphorus. 
The principle governing both processes of steel making are 
based on the fact, practically correct, that all the phosphorus in 
the ore smelted in the blast furnace goes into the pig iron. It 
thus happens that in the case of a Bessemer pig iron the phos- 
phorus is a trace, while in the case of a basic pig iron it may 
run as high as 2.5 per cent. 
Bearing these distinctions in mind, the question of the adap- 
tability of the iron ores of any district in the Province of Nova 
