FOUNDATIONS OF AMERICAN IRON INDUSTRY 97 



Not all p;()()(l l)i(uminoiis coal will make coko. Indood, in 

 all the great coal fields of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, 

 and important coal sections of Tennessee and Kentucky, 

 there has not been found an acre of coking coal. Draw a 

 circle around the Connellsville section in Pennsylvania in- 

 cluding the so-called Mountain operations adjacent on the 

 east; another around the section where Virginia, West Vir- 

 ginia, Kentucky and Tennessee meet; another around the 

 Warrior coal field in Alabama, and a fourth around a newly 

 developed district in Colorado and Utah, and you have all 

 the known sources of fuel supply for iron and steel making in 

 the United States. It is true that anthracite coal is still 

 used in connection with coke, in the blast furnaces of eastern 

 Pennsylvania, but it is a small and diminishing factor. 



Though the growth of coke production has been very 

 rapid in the past few years, it has not kept pace wdth the 

 demand, and the remarkable year of 1902 witnessed the 

 banking of furnaces for days and weeks because of short fuel 

 supply. As late as 1880 the total coke production w^as only 

 3,3381300 tons. In 1890 it had grown to 11,508,021 tons, 

 and in 1901 it reached 21,795,883 tons, of which probably 

 85 per cent was used in the smelting of iron ores. Of this total, 

 Pennsylvania produced two thirds, West Virginia a tenth, 

 and Alabama, Virginia, and Colorado the remainder. The 

 government records show the cost to have been $1.28 per 

 ton in Pennsylvania, $1.88 in Alabama, $1.15 in Colorado, 

 and $1.11 in West Virginia. No other coke in the world 

 approximates the cheapness of cost of the great producing 

 centers in Pennsjdvania and West Virginia. 



Turning to the other bases of iron and steel manufacture 

 — abundant, suitable, and cheap ores — the foundation seems 

 to be equally secure. There is iron ore in thirty one states 

 fjoi the union. Very many of the deposits, however, are un- 

 I available for one or another cause. Thousands of owners 

 / of iron lands in Virginia. Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia, 

 in the south, and in Illinois, Ohio, Wisconsin, and even Penn- 

 sylvania, in the north, have had their dreams of wealth dis- 

 pelled by finding that the ores were too lean, too high in phos- 

 phorus or titanic acid or some other injurious element, or 



Vol. 6-7 '' ' 



