IRON INDUSTRY IN THE UNITED STATES iii 



The soiithorn ore contains pliosphorus in too largo 

 amomits to make it availal^lo for the BcHKonier process; and 

 this has given it a place somewhat apart in the u'on mdustry 

 of the countiy. The iron made from it has not competed 

 with that from the Lake Superior ore, and has been used 

 chiefly for general foundry purposes. Marketed at a very 

 low price, the increasing supplies have made their way to 

 places further and further removed. Pittsburg itself soon 

 used Alabama iron for foundry purposes; the western states 

 and the eastern alike were supplied; in New England it dis- 

 placed Scotch pig, previously imported in considerable quan- 

 tity; and, finally, it began to be exported to England itself. 

 These exports are probably not of importance in the perma- 

 nent current of trade; the iron has gone out chiefly in a period 

 of unusually depressed prices, and even at this time only as 

 ballast for cotton ships. Beyond this strictly limited move- 

 ment we shall probably see the export of iron from the United 

 States, not in its crude form, but in much more advanced 

 stages. 



Before we close this review of the forces which have been 

 at work in the iron industr}^, some other aspects of the subject 

 deserve brief attention. Here, as elsewhere, the labor situa- 

 tion and the trade union movement have had their influence. 

 But the power of the labor unions among the iron w^orkers has 

 been less in the United States than m Great Britain ; and this 

 fact has been of no small consequence. It is true that the 

 Amalgamated association of iron and steel workere has long 

 been a firm and pow^erful organization, modelled on the British 

 unions and strong in its bargaining %\dth the employers. But 

 some of the large iron and steel establishments have been non- 

 union; and their competition, as well as the example they set 

 of a possible cutting loose from the organized laborers, im- 

 posed a strong check on the union's control of the conditions 

 of employment. The Carnegie company, thus cut loose from 

 the union, as a consequence of the great strike — fairly a 

 pitched battle — at the Homestead w^orks in 1892. The con- 

 sequence has been that the American iron and steel master has 

 felt more free than his British rival to push on with new proc- 

 esses, to remodel his organization, to readjust his labor force. 



