THE CREATORS OF THE AGE OF 

 STEEL 1 



BESSEMER, SIEMENS, WHITWOETH, AND THOMAS 



THERE is more of truth than poetry in giving to the era 

 beginning with the year 1850 the name of "The Age of 

 Steel." The metallurgical inventions and discoveries 

 which mark abruptly that period have effected a revolution 

 in the industry of the world. Steel is to us what iron was 

 to our grandfathers; what bronze was to the armies that 

 sat in league before Troy; what stone was to the naked 

 savages that dwelt in the caves of Gaul before the begin- 

 ning of history. The very web and woof of modern civil- 

 ization is woven out of steel. The production of steel in 

 1882 was as great as the crude iron product of 1850. The 

 metal is omnipresent ; it has replaced iron, wood, brass, and 

 copper. The rails, ships, cannon, and machinery of the 

 world are steel. The best definition yet given of man is 

 that he is a tool-using animal; his tools are steel, and the 

 tools wherewith he makes his tools are steel. 



As Carlyle says, "We are to bethink us that the epic 

 verily is not Arms and the Man, but Tools and the Man an 

 indefinitely wider kind of epic. Man is a tool-using ani- 

 mal. Weak in himself and of small stature, he stands on a 

 basis, at most for the flattest solid, of some half square- 

 foot, insecurely enough; he has to straddle out his legs 

 lest the very wind supplant him. Feeblest of bipeds! 

 Three quintals are a crushing load for him; the steer of 

 the meadow tosses him aloft like a waste-rag. Neverthe- 

 less, he can use tools; can devise tools; with these the 

 granite mountain melts into light dust before him; he 



*A review published in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 1884. 



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