IRON MANUFACTURE IN THE UNITED STATES. 



407 



IRON MANUFACTURE IN THE UNI- 

 TED STATES. In a paper read before the 

 Iron and Steel Institute, by Mr. T. Guilford 

 Smith, of Philadelphia, a brief sketch of the 

 iron manufacture in the United States is given. 

 The following interesting particulars form a 

 portion of it : 



The necessities of the colonies in North America, 

 at a very early date, compelled the inhabitants to 

 begin the manufacture of iron. We accordingly find 

 historical notices of furnaces whose very place is now 

 forgotten, as well as the more enduring ruins of the 

 stone stacks then in vogue. The fuel used at that 

 time was, of course, charcoal, and the furnace was 

 always located near to some iron deposit, wood for 

 the charcoal being abundant every where. 



But, as the forests were gradually cut down, and 

 charcoal became dear in the older settlements, the 

 make of iron decreased, and the furnace itself was 

 finally abandoned for a new one built in the vicinity 

 of fresh woodlands. So the march of settlements 

 has gradually thrust the manufacture of charcoal-iron 

 into the backwoods. Charcoal furnaces are_now only 

 to be found in the extreme Northwest, as in Michi- 

 gan ; or in the South and Southwest, as in Alabama, 

 and Tennessee, where great local deposits of iron-ore 

 exist. 



The destruction of timber in America, which has 

 been going on steadily ever since the first settlers 

 landed, is at last attracting public notice, and it is 

 hoped that, before long, a system of inspection will 

 be instituted in the several States, by which the cut- 

 ting of trees will be limited by statute, and the bal- 

 ance restored by planting each year some approxi- 

 mation, at least, to the number cut down. It may 

 not be out of place to say here that California has 

 created the office of State Forester, and made an ap- 

 pointment to fill it. 



As long as charcoal-iron maintains its supremacy 

 in the market for various purposes, the question of 

 wood-supply is not without interest to iron-men, but 

 its chief aid would be. of course, to supply the de- 

 mand for timber of all kinds which has already risen 

 in value at a rate but little dreamed of a few years 

 ago. But the importance of this subject to iron-men 

 in America was much lessened in 1837, when our 

 first experiments in smelting iron with raw anthra- 

 cite coal were successful at Mauch Chunk, in the 

 Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania. David Thomas, of 

 Catasauqua, was the first to make this application in - 

 the United States. From the discovery in 1837, we 

 now have, in this Lehigh region alone, 38 furnaces, 

 turning out 378,000 tons of iron, while three new 

 furnaces are building, of a total estimated capacity of 

 27,000 tons additional, and the total production in the 

 country reached nearly 2,000,000 tons in 1870. ' 



Up to 1840 but little iron had been made except 

 with charcoal, the immense deposits of bituminous 

 coal, with which coke is now made for iron-smelting, 

 were as yet too far from markets, except in a small 

 way, perhaps, at Pittsburg, or in Virginia, or Mary- 

 land. 



Eastern Pennsylvania, the first home of the iron- 

 trade, is drained by the Lehigh and Schuylkill Rivers, 

 so far as the coal-fields are concerned, both of which 

 flow into the Delaware. The Susquehanna, a little 

 farther to the west, but still flowing into the Atlan- 

 tic, was the next home of the iron industry ; next, 

 the Juniata Valley ; but it was not until the Alle- 

 ghany Mountains were crossed that the manufacture 

 of iron may have said to have fairly " gone West." 



Pittsburg, " where manufactured iron and steel 

 are more largely produced than in any other point in 

 the United States," became the next seat of iron- 



seems likely to rival steel in many of its uses. The 

 manufacture of iron " stopped to breathe " some time 

 at Pittsburg. Before reaching there, coke had been 

 substituted for anthracite coal as a fuel, and coke 

 continues to be the principal fuel used at Pittsburg 

 still. But not far from there, in Clarion County, 

 Pennsylvania, and at Youngstown and Zanesville, 

 Oliio, still farther west, they discovered a coal, called 

 block-coal, which they could use in the raw state in 

 their blast-furnaces, and make an iron of superior 

 quality. This gave a new impetus to what may be 

 now called " Western iron manufacture." Thus far, 

 at all the various halting-places of the iron-trade, 

 local ores had been used mainly, but the time had 

 now arrived when the trade demanded the purest 

 iron-ores available, and were prepared to pay for 

 their transport from a distance, hoping to be remu- 

 nerated in the end by the superiority of the product 

 obtained, which the use of the raw block-coal with 

 them was proved to secure. 



Let us pause here for a moment to examine what 

 this new fuel (block-coal) is, and what are its pecu- 

 liarities, for this coal is found to exist not only in 

 this isolated district comparatively, but in a larger 

 field in the State of Indiana, where its use is giving 

 peculiar value to the iron made with it for making 

 Bessemer steel. 



Dr. Foster, of Chicago ? says, in a pamphlet on 

 " Mineral Wealth and Railroad Development," that 

 " the term ' block,' as descriptive of a peculiar class 

 of coals, came in an unscientific way to the geological 

 vocabulary, but it has now become so firmly rooted 

 that it must hereafter be recognized as legitimate. 

 The physical characters of this class of coals are 

 these : there are two systems of joints traversing 

 the seam perpendicularly, which cut the mass into 

 quadrangular blocks, 2 feet or 3 feet long, and 1 foot 

 or more broad, and the miner, availing himself of 

 these natural divisions, after having undermined the 

 base, is able to pry out the blocks without resort to 

 gunpowder. He can easily take down three tons a 

 day. The sides of the block are smooth, of a dull- 

 bluish color, and are often stained white with fire- 

 clay ; but, if cleft longitudinally, there is seen a mass 

 of mineral charcoal, so slightly cemented by bitu- 

 men, that it readily cracks on handling. This coal, 

 when thrown upon afire, at once ignites with a crack- 

 ling sound, and burns with a bright-yellow flame. 

 It is non-coking, or, in other words, does not run 

 together, thus affording free air-passages. It is so 

 free from sulphur, that it leaves behind a white or 

 grajr flocculent ash, and, subjected to the strongest 

 drafts, it gives no clinker. From careful assays, it 

 is ascertained that this class of coals gives from 57 to 

 62 per cent, of fixed carbon. These block-coals, when 

 tested in a blast-furnace, have all the qualities of 

 charcoal as a reducing agent. Two and a half tons 

 are required to make a ton of iron. It is a significant 

 fact that the puddled iron made at Indianapolis from 

 block-coal pig is employed at Pittsburg in forging 

 gun-barrels." 



From the above description of Dr. Foster, the im- 

 portance of this discovery to the Western manufac- 

 ture of iron is not easy to be over-estimated. Using 

 this fuel, and some 'Lake Superior magnetic with 

 some local ores, soon brought the furnaces at Zanes- 

 ville, Ohio, into notice. The demand for the Lake 

 Superior, or iron-ores as celebrated for their purity, 

 began to increase soon after the discovery of this 

 block-coal. With a view of forming an economi- 

 cal junction of block-coal and Lake Superior iron- 

 ore, the iron-trade took another step farther west, 

 and located itself at Cleveland, on Lake Erie. 



" The census of 1860 gave a total of 76 blast-fur- 

 naces located in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, 

 Wisconsin, and Kentucky, and 24 rail-bar, sheet, and 



manufacture. At Pittsburg, the manufacture of steel boiler-plate mills, with a capital of $8,370,000, em- 

 obtained its first permanent " lodgment " in the Uni- plovino- 2,804 hands, at a cost of $1,094,160, and pro- 



ted States. To-day, the skill and enterprise of her 

 people are engaged in establishing the manufacture 

 of phosphor-bronze, the new metallic alloy, which 



more than the capital of 1860, employ 2,800 hands 



