XIII 



THE AGE OF STEEL 



THE iron industry has of late years become 

 more and more merged into the steel industry, 

 as steel has been gradually replacing the parent 

 metal in nearly every field of its former usefulness. 

 Steel is so much superior to iron for almost every pur- 

 pose and the process of making it has been so sim- 

 plified by Bessemer's discovery that it may justly be 

 said that civilization has emerged from the Iron Age, 

 and entered the Age of Steel. While iron is mined 

 more extensively now than at any time in the history 

 of the world, the ultimate object of most of this mining 

 is to produce material for manufacturing steel. We 

 still speak of boiler iron, railroad iron, iron ships, 

 etc., but these names are reminiscent, for in the con- 

 struction of modern boilers and modern ships, steel 

 is used exclusively. In the past decade it is probable 

 that no railroad rails even for the smallest and cheapest 

 of tracks have been made of anything but steel. 



The last half of the nineteenth century has been one 

 of triumph of steel manufacture and production in 

 America, and at the present time the United States 

 stands head and shoulders above any other nation 

 in this industry. In the middle of the century both 



