4 
ON THE IRON MANUFACTURE IN GREAT BRITAIN. 103 
In the following year a very elaborate inquiry into this subject was made 
by Mr. William Jessop of the Butterley Works in Derbyshire, and the result 
of his inquiries was printed by him for private distribution. His statement 
embraces every iron-work in Great Britain, and gives the number of furnaces 
in blast and out of blast, with the weekly produce of each establishment. 
From Mr. Jessop’s tables it was shown that the number of furnaces in blast 
in that year (1840) was 402, and the number out of blast 88; the weekly 
produce of the 402 furnaces being 27,928 tons, and consequently the yearly 
produce, taken at 50 weeks’ working, 1,396,400 tons. In the production of 
this quantity Mr. Jessop states that there were consumed 4,877,000 tons of 
coal, being at the rate of 3 tons in Scotland, and 3 tons 12 ewt. in England 
and Wales, for each ton of iron. This was exclusive of the coal used in 
converting pig-iron into wrought iron, and which he sets down at 2,000,000 
tons additional (see App. No.7). At the time Mr. Jessop’s account was 
taken, it appeared that out of 420 furnaces erected in England and Wales, 
there were 82, or | in 5, out of blast, and that of 70 furnaces in Scotland, 
6, or 1 in 11, were in that condition. The rapid increase of this manufac- 
ture during the preceding ten years forbids the belief that this large number 
of furnaces could have been idle through dilapidation. In fact, the country 
was then suffering under an amount of commercial depression of no ordinary 
character, and which continued to press heavily upon almost every branch of 
its industry, until the abundant harvest of 1844, joined to the effect of the 
fiscal reforms introduced in 1842, caused the return of healthiness to our 
trading interests. The continuance of the depression, which had no doubt 
extinguished so many of the furnace fires in 1840, caused still more of them 
to be put out of blast in the years immediately following, and it was shown 
by a statement drawn out under the direction of an association of the iron- 
masters of Yorkshire and Derbyshire, that the quantity of iron made in the 
first six months of 1842 in Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Shropshire, 
South Wales and Scotland did not exceed 523,214 tons, or at the rate of 
1,046,428 tons per annum. The quantity of iron made in those divisions of 
the kingdom in 1840 was, according to Mr, Jessop’s statement, 1,343,400 
tons, so that the diminution of production was at the rate of more than 22 
per cent., which rate was probably experienced throughout the kingdom; 
and in this case the whole quantity of iron made in 1842 did not much ex- 
ceed one million of tons, the quantity ascertained by M. Le Play to have 
been made in 1836. 
A great impulse had been given at that time to this branch of industry by 
the demand arising from the construction of railways. This impulse, and 
the subsequent depression, may be easily inferred from the following state- 
ment of the number of railway acts passed in each year from 1831 to 1843, 
distinguishing such as were for new lines from those which authorized ex- 
tensions or amendments in former acts, and giving the amount of capital 
authorized by Parliament to be raised under those acts. 
Acts passed for 
Years. = aac Capital authorized. 
New Lines. |Extensions,&c. P 
£ 
1831. 5 r| 1,799,873 
1832. 5 4 567,685 
1833. 5 6 5,525,333 
1834. 5 9 2,312,053 
