IRON MANUFACTURE. 469 
county, the two furnaces of the Jefferson Iron Works at Steubenville, 
the furnace of the Steubenville Furnace and Iron Company, and the 
two Mingo Furnaces, in Jefferson county, the Benwood Furnace at 
Martin’s Ferry, and the furnace of the Bellaire Nail Works at Bellaire, 
in Belmont county. The quality of iron principally made by these 
furnaces is a forge iron for conversion into wrought iron by the puddling 
process in the rolling-mills ; considerable quantities of a higher grade of 
iron are also obtained specially adapted for foundry purposes. 
Beside the blast-furnaces of the region, there are several rolling- 
mills producing different kinds of merchantable wrought iron, many 
of the blast-furnaces being run in connection with such works pro- 
ducing the pig-iron for conversion into wrought iron, as at the Cherry 
Valley Iron Works, the Bellaire Nail Works, and others. 
The facilities for transportation in this region are: First, the Ohio 
River, which is at present almost always navigable as far as Wheeling, 
and, subject to changes in the level of the river, to Pittsburgh. The 
Missouri ores are thus directly shipped from St. Louis by boat, and dis- 
charged at the works along the river, and markets are rendered cheaply 
accessible-from Pittsburgh to St. Louis, and all points on the waters of 
the Ohio and Mississippi. Though as a means of communication the 
river is in certain seasons of the year quite uncertain, the improvements 
which must sooner or later be made in its navigation, will fix the river 
in its natural position as the great and cheap highway of the Ohio 
Valley. Second, the railway systems. In an east and west direction 
the region is intersected by two great trunk lines, the Pittsburgh, Cin- 
cinnati and St. Louis Railway from Pittsburgh, passing through Steuben- 
ville, and thence through Newark, Columbus, Cincinnati, ete., and the 
Baltimore and Ohio Railway from Baltimore, passing through Wheeling, 
Bellaire, and westward to Newark, Columbus, etc., and to the Lake 
region at Sandusky. In a north direction. communication is had at 
present from Wheeling through Steubenville, etc., to Pittsburgh, and to 
Lake Erie at Cleveland, by the C. & P. R. R. By this route the Lake 
Superior ores are now distributed to the furnaces on the Ohio. 
Not included in these systems of communication, Leetonia is on 
the line of the Pittsburgh, Ft. Wayne and Chicago Railway, which 
passes east and west through the State, and communication is also had 
with the region of the Mahoning Valley and Cleveland by the N. Y., 
P. & O., New Lisbon Branch. 
