NATURAL RESOURCES LITTLE. 231 
resources in themselves have only potential values, which require 
for their realization industrial skill, technical knowledge, great 
reserves of capital, and efficient transportation. We have been able 
to demonstrate that, with the exception of the last, we are in posi- 
tion to bring eifectively to bear all these factors so essential to 
quantity production. Even as regards transportation we are, so 
far as the steel industry is concerned, most fortunately situated; so 
fortunately, indeed, that the Great Lakes waterway, which permits 
a transportation rate of less than 0.7 mill per ton-mile, may properly 
be regarded as the determining factor in our position as the world's 
greatest producer of iron and steel. In the decade ending in 1913 
we produced 248,000,000 metric tons of pig iron. The German out- 
put was 140,000,000, and the combined production of the United 
Kingdom, France, and Belgium 154,000,000. Under the stress of 
war our blast and steel furnaces increased their output by 30 to 40 
per cent respectively between 1913 and 1919, thereby justifying the 
conclusion that the United States must now possess one-half the 
steel-making capacity of the world. During the same period the 
British output increased 27 per cent. 
We have already had in the methods of fixing atmospheric nitro- 
gen an interesting example of the extent to which both the absolute 
and relative military position of a country may be modified by a 
new chemical process. An equally striking example is found in the 
metallurgy of steel. The original Bessemer process, using an acid 
lining in the converter, required for its effective operation pig iron 
with an extremely low phosphorus content. Thomas and Gilchrist in- 
troduced the basic converter process by lining the crucible with cal- 
cined dolomite and adding lime to the charge, dolomite itself being 
a mixed carbonate of lime and magnesia. They were thus enabled 
to operate on iron containing 2 per cent or even more of phosphorus, 
thereby making available the great reser\'^es of ore in Sweden, Rus- 
sia, Central Europe, and Lorraine, and so introduced new and dis- 
turbing factors in the industrial, military, and diplomatic situations 
in many countries. 
The supreme importance to modern civilization of alloy steels in 
naval construction, ordnance, metal working, automobiles, and count- 
less other directions is too well known to require comment. The 
metals commonly used in these alloys are manganese, chromium, 
molybdenum, nickel, tungsten, vanadium, and latterly zirconium, 
which finds its chief use in steel for armor plate and armor-piercing 
projectiles. Its ores come from Brazil, but the metal may be ob- 
tained from the zircon sands of the South and from western mine 
tailings. The United States is well supplied with most of these es- 
sential metals, though there is a deficiency in ores of manganese and 
