ON THE IRON MANUFACTURE IN GREAT BRITAIN. 113 
that which we need for converting into steel, to which use Swedish iron is 
peculiarly applicable, and for which its high price causes'it to be reserved. To 
gg our shipments of this metal are fully equal to the quantity imported 
thence. 
After much consideration given to the circumstances in which our iron 
manufacture is now placed, and to its prospects for the future, I venture, 
with some hesitation, to offer the following opinion. 
Legislative sanction has been given in this and the two preceding years 
to the construction of many thousand miles of new railways, in the comple- 
tion of which so many interests are engaged, that we must not expect any 
considerable portion of them to be abandoned by their projectors. We must 
for this reason expect that for some few years to come, during which these 
works will be going forward, the price of iron will be high. The tendency 
of this high price will be, to give an impetus to the manufacture, and to cause 
much new capital to be invested for its extension, for which ample opportu- 
nity presents itself in different localities, although in other places, as in 
_ Staffordshire, where the manufacture has hitherto flourished, there is more 
reason to expect diminution than increase, owing to a failure in the supply 
of materials. The great obstacle to the forming of new establishments, and 
to the extension of those already in operation, consists in the difficulty of 
procuring the necessary amount of labour, miners, furnace-men and others. 
This obstacle will, however, be gradually and progressively lessened, and 
when the present exaggerated railway demand shall have ceased, as it must 
necessarily do through the completion of the lines which alone can be pro- 
fitably opened, and the demand thence arising for iron shall be limited to 
the quantity—still, however, considerable—which will be needed for keep- 
ing the lines in repair (see App. No. 13), we shall find ourselves in posses- 
sion of means for making iron much beyond what have at any previous time 
existed, and very greatly beyond any probable demand to arise from other 
and existing channels of employment at home, or from foreign countries. 
The price will consequently fall, as it has done at former times and under 
analogous circumstances. We shall then find that this metal will again be 
employed in uses from which it may have been excluded by the previous 
high price. From the improvements already made, and from others which 
we may expect will be introduced into the processes of manufacture, we may 
even find that the market price will fall to a lower point than has hitherto 
been witnessed, and new uses may in consequence be discovered whereto to 
apply this metal. All this, however, must be the work of time, and it seems 
but too probable that in the meanwhile our iron-masters will have to undergo 
a somewhat lengthened season of adversity, for the enduring of which they 
are in a measure prepared by former experience. 
