

MENNONITES. 



METALLURGY. 



533 



they reside. The outcome of this novel agri- 

 cultural experiment in Manitoba, with its pos- 

 sible results in relation to commerce, can not 

 be viewed without profound interest. 



In the autumn of 1874 a small colony of 

 Mennonites, comprising eighteen families, 

 came to the United States from southern Rus- 

 sia, and settled themselves in southern Kansas, 

 Marion, McPherson, Harvey, and Butler coun- 

 ties. These people were comparatively poor, 

 having brought with them an average of $500 

 apiece. They bought wild land from the rail- 

 road (the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa F6) and 

 went to work clearing with such energy that 

 they were soon in comfortable circumstances. 

 This colony was soon followed by a larger mi- 

 gration, which continued steadily, and in five 

 years there were 14,000 Mennonites in the 

 four counties named, who, in that brief time, 

 had almost without exception paid for their 

 farms. These farms range between eighty and 

 three hundred acres, with good, comfortable 

 houses, large barns and granaries, orchards and 

 groves, cattle, hogs, and sometimes sheep in 

 abundance. The laud, except a few acres re- 

 served for pasturage, is generally under a high 

 state of cultivation, and the whole free from 

 indebtedness. 



The colonists brought with them many of 

 the clumsy farm - implements they had used 

 in southern Russia; but, on seeing those em- 

 ployed by the American farmer, they discarded 

 these and adapted themselves easily to the use 

 of the better implements. As is the case with 

 those in Manitoba, the Kansas Mennonites 

 burn the refuse straw from their barns, 

 chopped up, dried, and cut into blocks. They 

 never build their houses at a distance from 

 one another, but invariably in little clusters of 

 two or three, or perhaps a dozen, thus form- 

 ing a number of little villages at a distance of 

 from two to four miles apart. An example is 

 cited of one of these Mennonites who brought 

 with him to Kansas one thousand dollars. He 

 had a family of ten children to support, and 

 by the time he had purchased his farm, erect- 

 ed buildings and bought implements, he was in 

 debt a thousand dollars. This was in 1874, 

 which was followed by a "grasshopper" year; 

 1877 and 1878 were two "dry" years, yet in 

 1879 he was entirely out of debt. He had then 

 a farm of three hundred acres, a comfortable 

 house, plenty of out-buildings, farm-machinery 

 of the very best quality, groves of growing 

 forest-trees, a thrifty young orchard, plenty of 

 neat, closely trimmed mulberry-hedges, and 

 the whole free from weeds, refuse, and litter, 

 and kept in the neatest manner. At this time 

 he estimated his farm to be worth four thou- 

 sand dollars. This, which is a genuine in- 

 stance, is only a type of the success that has 

 attended the industry and economy of the 

 whole population of Mennonites in Kansas. 

 The difference in success between the Men- 

 nonite colonists and the native farmers has 

 been observed in Kansas as in other sections of 



the country, and one cause to which it is at- 

 tributed is the different intentions of the two 

 classes in purchasing their farms and working 

 them. The Mennonite has no object in view 

 but that of establishing and maintaining a per- 

 manent home for his family. The native, on 

 the contrary, buys with a view to selling at an 

 advance in the future, and is content with put- 

 ting a few improvements on it, and holding it 

 for a possible purchaser. 



METALLURGY. Iron and Steel. Mr. P. H. 

 Dudley has made observations in the examina- 

 tion of railway car- wheels which indicate that 

 the value of iron and steel is largely dependent 

 on other conditions than that of mere chemical 

 composition. Mr. J. Lynwood Garrison has 

 reported upon microscopical examinations of 

 iron and steel which go to show that these 

 conditions are largely those of structure and 

 of arrangement of particles. A specimen of 

 No. 3 gray pig-iron was seen, under a power ot 

 fifty diameters, to consist of a heterogeneous 

 mixture of metallic iron and long, narrow 

 black plates of graphite, without crystalline 

 structure the graphite plates appearing like 

 straight black lines standing out in relief. 

 White pig-iron exhibited a highly crystalline 

 structure, the intensity of the crystallization 

 seeming to depend very much upon the degree 

 of chilling, while the graphite plates were few, 

 and parallel to the lines of crystallization. 

 Wrought-iron or mild steel exhibited a fibrous 

 structure running in the direction in which it 

 had been rolled ; and wrought-iron (not steel) 

 did not show, even under a power of a hun- 

 dred diameters, any trace of crystalline struct- 

 ure. Hard or tool steel was highly crystal- 

 line, uniform in structure, and showed no 

 lines of weakness or tendency in the crystals 

 to develop themselves in any given direction. 

 File-steel differed from crucible- steel only in 

 being somewhat more compact and harder. 

 All steels exhibit a similar characteristic struct- 

 ure, which will enable a person, with prac- 

 tice, to judge of their relative qualities by a 

 simple comparison of their compactness, luster, 

 and crystallization. Meteoric iron had a struct- 

 ure of its own, quite different from that of 

 any of the artificial irons or alloys of iron and 

 nickel. In a " burned-out " grate-bar of ordi- 

 nary cast-iron, the side away from the fire 

 showed the structure of unaltered cast-iron, 

 while the side exposed to the heat was changed, 

 to the thickness of one tenth of an inch, into a 

 hard, compact steel. Examinations of " good " 

 and " bad " car-wheel iron showed that the 

 quality of the iron was dependent to some ex- 

 tent upon the distribution and arrangement of 

 the graphite plates. In the good iron, the 

 plates and lines of graphite were very marked, 

 and appeared as an irregular mass of small 

 black lines, while the surrounding mass of 

 metal presented a compact, granular, non- 

 crystalline structure, frequently containing 

 cavities due to occluded gases or air. In the 

 poor iron, while the mass of the metal ap- 



