ON THE IRON MANUFACTURE IN GREAT BRITAIN. 109 
be made only by slow degrees, and the same condition applies to all other 
classes of persons whose labour is required for the manufacture of iron. It 
is hopeless to stimulate the exertions of the persons already employed. They 
are naturally ready enough to exact higher rates of wages when the demand 
for their labour becomes more urgent, but sueceeding i in this they prefer to 
obtain the same amount of earnings, with higher rates a wages, to the secu- 
ring of greater gains by the exertion of even “the same amount of toil, so that 
a greater urgency in the demand may be, and frequently is, accompanied by 
a lessened production. 
Under these circumstances, how the enormous demand existing and to arise 
from carrying out the railway schemes already sanctioned is to be met, it 
would be most difficult to say. The laying down of these lines and providing 
them with the needful working stock of carriages, &c. would absorb all the 
iron which it is reasonable to expect will be made in Great Britain during 
the next three years, and it affords no satisfactory solution of this difficulty to 
say that the quantity required will only be called for progressively, and that 
the demand will be spread over the same three years. To render this circum- 
stance effective, we should be assured that no further projeets will be sanc- 
tioned during the time spent in their construction, an assurance for which 
we can hardly look, and even then we should be left without a ton of iron 
applicable to the thousand other purposes for which this metal is so indis- 
pensable. If the difficulty presented by the want of labour could be sur- 
mounted, there appears no rational ground for supposing that we should, for 
a very long time to come, experience any deficiency in the means for making 
iron. In-the anthracite coal district of South Wales, where clay-ironstone is 
thickly interstratified with the coal seams, there appears to be no reason to 
doubt that if the means employed in the anthracite district of America for 
: smelting the clay-ironstone were adopted, it would prove equally successful. 
The difficulty consists in the sluggish nature of anthracite, which requires a 
: more rapid draught than can be provided by the ordinary means of bellows 
and tall chimneys; and this is overcome in America by obtaining a great 
volume of air by means of fanners. The iron made with raw anthracite coals 
has been found by Mr. Mushet to be much stronger than iron made with 
coke, and after a variety of experiments, the earlier of which afforded but 
small encouragement, this fuel has been adopted by the proprietors of twenty- 
three furnaces, who avail themselves of only the ordinary means for providing 
a blast. The manner in which the railway demand has already limited other 
__ uses of iron, may be gathered from the following extract from a letter of 
_ recent date written to me by Mr. Mushet :— 
_ At the above period (1840) merchant bar-iron, boiler-plate, sheet-iron 
_ and rod-iron, principally occupied our mills; but these of late, particularly in 
_ South Wales, have given way in a great measure to the manufacture of 
railway bars, so as to eclipse in a striking manner the varied and extensive 
assortments required by the merchants’ demands.” The long period of dul- 
ness that intervened between 1839 and the beginning of 1845, accompanied 
as it was by a continued fall in the market price of iron, caused this metal to 
_ be applied, most advantageously, to a variety of new purposes, from which it 
will be prejudicial henceforth to withdraw it. In a well-known mercantile 
circular letter issued in February 1845 by Messrs. Jevons of Liverpool, it is 
‘stated that there had arisen “a new and increasing demand for iron roofs, 
iron houses, and fire- proof buildings in Liverpool,” and that during the year 
_ then just passed upwards of 20,000 tons of cast and wrought iron had been 
- sousedinthattown. These gentlemen further stated that preparations were 
_ going forward for the erection of still more extensive ranges of buildings of 
