96 ARCHER BROWN 



servative investors have counted it a hazardous field. An 

 industry so vast, so episodical, so filled with promise of still 

 further greatness, and so closely linked with the whole fabric 

 of national material progress, naturally comes in for a full 

 measure of discussion. 



What will be its future? Are the wonderful natural 

 resources on which it is built inexhaustible? Is the support 

 of a protective tariff longer needed or desirable? Can Amer- 

 ican manufacturers hope for a world trade and continue pay- 

 ing to labor double the rates paid by their rivals? Is the 

 enormous home consumption a stable or a temporary factor? 

 Will the consolidation of mines, furnaces, mills, and carry- 

 ing lines, into great corporations with huge aggregations of 

 capital, help or hinder the broad development of the industry? 

 Can the facilities for the cheap assembling of raw materials, 

 which are the wonder of other nations, be further improved? 

 There is material in these and like inquiries for ample and 

 interesting study. 



It is first of all in the vast natural resources of the United 

 States that the industry finds its sure foundation. The 

 basis of all iron and steel making is reliable coking coal and 

 iron ores suited to the Bessemer or the basic process of pro- 

 ducing steel. The Connellsville district in Western Pennsyl- 

 vania carries the largest known seam (9 feet) of high grade 

 coking coal. But the district is distinctly limited, and at 

 present rate of mining, will be exhausted within a generation. 

 Nature, however, was lavish in providing reserves. The 

 developments of the past ten years among the vast bitu- 

 minous coal regions of West Virginia, southwestern Virginia, 

 southeastern Kentucky, and eastern Tennessee, have revealed 

 deposits of high grade coking coal that would seem to be ample 

 to supply the blast furnaces of the world for centuries to come. 

 It is only a question of building railroads, opening mines, and 

 constructing coke ovens. The far sighted action of the United 

 States Steel corporation in acquiring and developing a great 

 tract of this coal in the Pocahontas field in order to conserve 

 its Connellsville supply is the most important step yet taken 

 in shifting the base of fuel supply. 



