744 Transactions of the American Institute. 



settler in this way. Many of the present inhabitants are willing to 

 sell at moderate rates, as they look longingly to a home in the Texas 

 Paradise. 



Mr. Abram S. Hewitt — The region in Alabama to which our 

 attention has been called to-night is unquestionably the most interest- 

 ing region in the United States, with reference to the interests of 

 iron manufacture in this country. It is in fact the only place upon 

 the American continent where it is possible to make iron in competi- 

 tion with the cheap iron of England, measured, not by the wages paid, 

 but by the number of days' labor which enter into its production. 

 The cheapest place, until now, on the globe for manufacturing iron is 

 the Cleveland region in Yorkshire, England. The iron, produced 

 from a fossiliferous ore, containing phosphorus, making it cold-short, 

 costs there about thirty-two English shillings on the average per ton, 

 which represents about ten (10) days' labor. The distance of the coal 

 and the ore from the furnaces averages there about twenty miles. 



Now in Alabama, the coal and the ore are in many places within 

 half a mile of each other. The sandstone formation thins out 

 toward the south, and in Tennessee and Alabama appears to be 

 replaced by this bed of fossiliferous iron ore, which commences in 

 New York with a thickness rarely exceeding two feet, but steadily 

 thickens toward the south, averaging four feet in Pennsylvania, seven 

 or eight feet in Tennessee, while in Alabama, probably because the 

 formation was crushed back upon itself in some way, there are places 

 where the iron has been measured 150 feet in thickness. 



The manufacture of iron is carried on as yet in rather a crude way 

 in Alabama, but the cost of the iron is only about ten days' labor to 

 the ton, or not far from the labor cost in Cleveland. Throwing aside, 

 then, all questions of tariff for protection, here is a possibility upon 

 the American continent of producing iron at as low a cost in labor as 

 in the most favored region of the world, and, allowing for the expense 

 of transportation to compete with them, paying a higher average 

 rate of wages than is paid in Great Britain. 



The consumption of iron is increasing at a rate so Avonderfully 

 rapid, that in ten years it will be impossible for Great Britain to 

 supply the demand. There is no other country in the world which 

 can make iron as cheaply as Great Britain. In fifty years, then, the 

 United States must be the source from which the iron of the world 

 wall be derived. Instead of importing a million of tons per annum, 

 as we now do, in fifty or a hundred years we shall export five or ten 

 millions per annum. This region, so exhaustless in its supplies, so 



