26 BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 



But to distinguish clearly cause from effect is not always simple. We 

 were told at school of the remarkable series of inventors who laid the 

 foundation of the textile industries in the north of England, and of the 

 timely invention of the steam engine ; its application to mine pumping ; 

 the successive construction of the steamer and the locomotive ; the pro- 

 duction of gas from coal. But the close association of ore, fuel and flux 

 made it possible not only to improve machinery, but to increase facilities 

 for the transport of raw materials and their products. When Josiah 

 Wedgwood obtained his inspiration from the remains of Greek art, then 

 being unearthed from the ancient graves of Campania, he first turned to 

 account the raw materials of his native county of Staffordshire, and then 

 promoted canal and road construction to introduce the china clay from 

 Cornwall. 



It is obvious that the growth, if not with equal certainty the origin of 

 the industrial revolution was due to the close association of suitable 

 minerals in England. It was because non-phosphoric ores were still 

 available that, at a later stage, Bessemer was able to give that new impetus 

 which increased the lead of the English steel maker ; and so, when 

 Thomas and Gilchrist came still later, with their invention of a basic 

 process applicable to pig-iron made from phosphoric ores, their invention 

 fell on barren soil in Britain. The new process, however, found applica- 

 tions elsewhere, and, instead of adding to the stability of the English steel 

 industry, it gave the United States the very tonic they required, whilst 

 the industrialists of Germany — where political stability had by then been 

 established — found the opportunity of developing the enormous phosphoric 

 ore deposits of Alsace-Lorraine, which had been borrowed from France 

 eight years before. And so it was through the genius of Sidney Gilchrist 

 Thomas, and his cousin, Percy Carlyle Gilchrist, that Germany was 

 enabled in 1914 to try the fortune of war. 



For the first half-century after the industrial revolution. Great 

 Britain was able to raise its own relatively small requirements of iron as 

 well as of the other metals that consequently came into wider use — copper, 

 zinc, lead and tin. The rapid expansion in steel production which 

 followed Bessemer 's announcement of his invention at the Cheltenham 

 meeting of the British Association in 1856, brought with it the necessity of 

 going further afield for the accessory ores and for further supplies of non- 

 phosphoric iron ores. 



The next important step in metallurgical advance came in 1888, when 

 Sir Robert Hadfield produced his special manganese-steel ; for this led to 



