174 WALDON FAWCETT 



nificance, but not so to the young man, with muscles tense, 

 leaning forward close at hand. 



Finally the anxiously awaited shade makes its appear- 

 ance in the fiery tongues leaping toward the roof, and quick 

 as a flash the operator pulls his lever and swings that, and the 

 blast is shut off. A minute too soon or a minute too late 

 would impair the texture of the metal fabric. The young 

 man intrusted with this responsibility looks no older than 

 many a lad just entering college, yet he is a striking repre- 

 sentative of skilled labor in the highest sense of the term, 

 and receives a salary of ten dollars a day. 



After the impurities have been blown out of the molten 

 metal, the converter is again lowered, and the fifteen tons of 

 contents are drawn off into ladle buckets, and poured into 

 ingot molds. This marks a distinct step in the transformation 

 of the iron and steel, and before looking into its mysteries 

 it may be well to glance at the second, or open hearth, method 

 of making steel. Under this plan the iron from the blast 

 furnaces, instead of finding its way to a converter, is placed 

 in open hearth furnaces, immense brick structures which 

 resemble nothing so much as the ovens in a bakery and harbor 

 the hottest heat imaginable. Instead of hot air being forced 

 through the molten mass in this instance, dependence is 

 placed upon the inconceivably terrific heat generated by great 

 gas fires beneath the furnaces. 



After the liquid steel comes from the Bessemer converter 

 or from the open hearth furnaces, it is poured into molds 

 uniform in size, where it hardens in the form of blocks of 

 steel known as ingots. The ingot molds are iron boxes very 

 much resembling large coffins in size and shape. They stand 

 in a row on a train of pygmy cars, and when, one after another, 

 they have been filled by stopping momentarily under the 

 big ladle of steel, from a hole in the bottom of which a glowing 

 stream flows out, the little train rumbles away, throwing 

 out waves of heat, just as did the group of ladle cars in transit 

 for the blast furnace. After the metal has been allowed to 

 cool somewhat, a heavy iron hand, known as a stripper, drags 

 off the molds, or jackets, leaving red hot blocks of kon, each 

 weighing as much as a dozen men. 



