Part 24

Another characteristic of modern manufacturing is exemplified in the 233 study of the iron and steel industry and the relation of capital, labor and product, as is also the concentration of industries into great establishments and groups of establishments. As has already been noted, the value of the product of the iron and steel blast furnaces, steel works and rolling mills grew from 297 million in 1880 to 906 million in 1905, having thus a little more than trebled in that time. In the same period the capital invested in these same establishments increased from 231 million dollars to 936 million; the capital having quadrupled while the product was trebling in value. During the same time the same establishments increased the number of their employes from 140,978 to 242,640, the number of employes having therefore increased but about 75 per cent while the capital was increasing 300 per cent and the value of the product about 200 per cent. The wages paid to the employes increased from 55 million dollars in 1880 to 141 million in 1905; the total wages paid having increased 156 per cent while the number of employes increased 73 per cent, indicating a marked increase in wages paid per individual.

The tendency to concentrate the production of manufactures into great establishments is also strikingly shown in the record of the iron and steel industry in the past few years. The census figures show the number of establishments in the United States in the group, “Iron and steel, including blast furnaces, steel works and rolling mills” at 1,005 in 1880, 645 in 1890, 668 in 1900, and 605 in 1905. The 1,005 establishments in 1880 produced 297 million dollars’ worth of the product; the 645 establishments in 1890 produced 431 million dollars’ worth; the 668 establishments in 1900 produced 804 million dollars’ worth; and the 605 establishments in 1905 produced 906 million dollars’ worth of the product. Thus the average production per establishment was, in round terms, in 1880, $296,000 worth; in 1890, 234 $668,000 worth; in 1900, $1,200,000 worth, and in 1905, practically $1,500,000 worth. This gives an average product in 1905 of 5 times as much value per establishment as in 1880, while the fact that prices of 1905 were less than those of 1880 indicates that the growth in product per establishment was even greater than the above figures of value would suggest. Prices of pig iron, for example, which averaged for “No. 1 foundry” $28.48 per ton at Philadelphia in 1880, averaged but $17.88 per ton in 1905; bar iron, rolled, $62.04 in 1880 and $38.49 in 1905; steel rails, $67.52 per ton in 1880 and $28.00 per ton in 1905; and cut nails, $3.68 per keg of 100 pounds in 1880 and $2.00 per keg in 1905. It will be seen from these figures that prices in 1905 were little more than half as much as in 1880 and that the figures which give an average of five times as much value of product per establishment in 1905 as in 1880 therefore really indicate an average product of probably ten times as much in quantity per establishment in 1905 as in 1880.

That the iron and steel industry is especially suited to production in large establishments is indicated by the fact that the value of the product of the steel works and rolling mills of the United States in 1905 averaged nearly four times as much per establishment as that of those engaged in cotton manufacturing.

Even these figures of value of product per establishment at the various dates and in the various industries do not, by any means, measure the degree of concentration of the industry which has come in recent years, because of the fact that under the most recent methods, many of the establishments are managed in groups, many large mills or factories which were considered by the census as separate establishments being, in fact, combined under one management, as is shown in another part of this work in which trusts and combinations are discussed.

This tremendous growth of the iron and steel industry of the United 235 States--of the world, in fact, but more especially of the United States, seems to justify a somewhat detailed historical and descriptive account of iron and steel making, ancient and modern.

The manufacture of iron and steel is older than history. The material is so widely distributed over the surface of the globe that man in every part of the world and in nearly every stage of civilization long since learned its value. There is evidence that it was known to the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Chaldeans, the Babylonians, the Israelites, the Greeks, the Persians, the Romans. Caesar found the Britons in possession of iron weapons which they had made, and the Scandinavians of that period were also acquainted with its manufacture. The people of Spain seem to have been early and successful workers in iron and steel, if the wonderful stories about the swords and other weapons of the early history of that country are to be believed.

Iron, wherever found in the native condition, is so mixed with rock, dirt and other foreign matter that it can only be utilized by heating and hammering or rolling until the pure iron is separated from the foreign substances. Originally the method seems to have been to heat the ore in fires built on the ground until it became softened, and by hammering it in this condition work out the foreign substances. Then man found that by building the fire in a hole at the top of a hill and leaving an opening at the bottom so that air could be forced into it, the heat could be intensified. Then he learned to build up a wall of mud and stones with an opening at the bottom, and by placing in it alternate layers of charcoal and iron ore and forcing in air at the bottom with rude bellows similar to those now used by blacksmiths, he was able to heat the ore until the iron melted and ran together into a mass which he worked into the steel with which the famous “Toledo blades” and other weapons of that early day were made. Later, the 236 Germans, by building the walls higher and getting a greater mass of the fuel and ore, were able to melt it so that it ran in liquid form into little ditches at the bottom of the furnace. This furnace, which came to be known as the “stuckofen” and “blow oven,” was the precursor of the blast furnace. Meantime the English were developing the process, and before the year 1700 were manufacturing considerable quantities of iron in furnaces in which charcoal supplied heat sufficient, when a blast of air was introduced, to melt the iron. This method of manufacturing iron continued in the European countries during all of the seventeenth century and until the early part of the eighteenth century. Meantime the forests of England were being rapidly destroyed in the sections which produced the iron ore. Prior to that time it had not been found practicable to use coal in smelting the ore, because the weight of the ore was so great that the fire was extinguished as the coal grew soft from the heat. Then, in the early part of the eighteenth century, somebody tried the experiment of treating the coal in a manner similar to that by which wood is turned into charcoal, and coke was produced and found available for smelting the iron ore, the coke being substituted for charcoal. And so the manufacture of iron in Europe went on, developing most rapidly in England which had ore, timber from which to make charcoal, and coal from which to make coke.

Meantime the making of iron began to develop in the United States. The early colonists found ore in Virginia and New England. Small quantities of pig iron were made in Virginia within a few years after the settlement of Jamestown, and in the latter half of the century New England began manufacturing iron from bog ore and charcoal made in the forests which were then so plentiful. Most of these early iron furnaces were “bloomaries,” merely heating the iron so that it formed a lump of 100 to 200 pounds weight at the bottom of the furnace, 237 called a “bloom,” though there were some furnaces which heated the ore until the iron ran into little channels at the bottom and became “pig iron.” Before the year 1800 the State of Massachusetts alone had some 75 iron works, chiefly furnaces, making small quantities of iron. A little later there was built in that state a furnace then declared to be “the finest in America,” having two bellows twenty feet in length and operated by a water wheel. During the next century the size of the furnaces grew slowly and before the year 1800 there were furnaces capable of making two to three tons of iron per day each.

The history of the early iron industry in Massachusetts is not materially different from that of others of the colonies and early settlements. Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, and the Carolinas all had numbers of small furnaces capable of making from a half ton to two or three tons of iron per day. They used charcoal altogether as the fuel, and it was estimated in Virginia and Maryland that for one furnace of average size four square miles of woodland and 100 slaves were required. The fact that there were then no means of transportation other than pack trains and that iron was too heavy to transport any considerable distances, encouraged every neighborhood to sustain its furnace and forge, and from these local factories of pig iron and iron bars the local blacksmith and others who aided him in supplying local wants drew their supplies. It is probable that the number of furnaces and forges in the United States at the beginning of the nineteenth century was much greater than at the end of the century, though the product of 1800 was but 40,000 tons of pig iron, against 14,000,000 tons in 1900 and 26,000,000 tons in 1907.

Meantime the English iron manufacturers had learned to smelt the ore with coke instead of charcoal. The quantity of wood required to make charcoal for smelting the ore had been so great that the forests of 238 England were being rapidly destroyed, and a series of experiments had developed the fact that by heating coal in a pit or oven, in a manner similar to that by which charcoal was produced from wood, the charred coal, called coke, could be used as a substitute for charcoal in iron furnaces. This substitute for charcoal did not come into use in the United States until much later, however, for the reason that the people of the eastern part of the United States were still anxious to get the timber off their lands to use them for agricultural purposes, and so were glad to turn it into charcoal and dispose of it to the iron furnaces at a low cost. In time, however, the supply of charcoal began to run low and the Americans began to cast about for a substitute. After a series of experiments it became evident that the anthracite coal of Pennsylvania could be used for iron smelting, as it was hard enough to bear the weight of the iron ore piled upon it, and also made a much more intense heat than did the bituminous coal which grew soft as it was heated and was useless in the furnace. By 1840 the making of pig iron with anthracite coal became an established industry and by 1854 the quantity of iron made by the use of anthracite was as great as that from charcoal, about 350,000 tons for each. But as the supply of anthracite was limited to a comparatively small area, those sections which had no anthracite and had run short of the timber supply for making charcoal began to cast about for a substitute, and hearing of the success of the English, with “charred coal,” or coke, began its use in the United States; and by 1856 there were more than a score of furnaces making pig iron by the use of coke. It was also found that if the air which was forced into the furnace was heated before entering a much more intense heat could be obtained and the use of the hot blast was soon established.

With iron being made by the use of anthracite coal and coke made from bituminous coal, the people began to realize that the destruction of 239 the forests to produce charcoal should not continue longer, and the making of charcoal iron rapidly decreased. Meantime the railways began to develop and were able to carry coal and coke to the places where the ore could be easily obtained, or to which it could be easily brought. Such a place was Pittsburg, for example. Iron ore was produced in certain parts of Pennsylvania and on the northern shores of the Great Lakes. Coal of a suitable quality for making excellent coke was produced at Connellsville, in western Pennsylvania. Limestone is required in great quantities in smelting iron ore, as the alkaline quality of the limestone neutralizes the acid of the waste matter forming a part of the iron ore and makes it melt at a lower temperature, the melted limestone also carrying off the impurities in the form of “slag,” and limestone was also plentiful near Pittsburg. Some of these materials could be floated down the rivers or on the Great Lakes, at least a part of the way from the place of production to the place at which they were combined, and for the remainder of the distance railways carried them over comparatively level or down-grade routes at small cost.

So, with the advent of the railway and the steamship the methods of iron making changed. The railway and the river or lake steamer could carry the finished product at such low cost that it was no longer necessary that each county should make its own iron, and more than that, they could carry the ore and the limestone and the coal or coke to any place convenient for assembling these necessary materials and distributing the finished product.

This combination of the raw materials and the manufacture of the iron in a few great establishments instead of many small ones encouraged the use of machinery in manufacturing. Machines were wanted for handling the ore, for handling the coal, for handling the limestone, for handling the molten material which issued from the furnace, and for turning it into the finished form, sometimes accomplishing this 240 without allowing the material to grow cold and harden at any point between the time it trickles from the blast furnace and its completion as a steel billet, a rail for the railway, or a roll of barbed wire for the ranchero of South America.

The iron as it leaves the blast furnace is not in a condition in which it can be used for manufacturing. It contains so much carbon and other impurities that it is brittle and breaks easily. This condition is similar to that of the “blooms,” or chunks of metal which came from the early furnaces and which had to be refined by laborious processes of reheating and hammering until the impurities were worked out.

Before the year 1800 it had occurred to somebody in England that if flames could be forced across the surface of the molten iron and the iron kept in a state of constant agitation the flames would burn out the carbon. This was accomplished by making an open hearth to contain the molten material and “puddling” the iron as the flames were forced across the surface. Then a series of grooved rollers was devised, between which pieces of partially cooled iron could be passed and repassed, and this machine process worked out the “slag” and other impurities which had been formerly worked out with hammers. This puddling and rolling began in England before the year 1800 and “the puddle and the grooved roll,” says J. Russell Smith, “closed the era of the blacksmith’s supremacy and opened the era of machine manufacture.” It was an adaptation of these methods and combination of them with the concentration of the material at convenient centers that proved the beginning of the machine-manufacturing methods in the United States at a considerably later period than in England.

The most notable step in developing the use of iron, however, was that by which it was quickly and cheaply turned into the reliable form known as “steel.” As already explained, the iron when it leaves the 241 blast furnace contains such quantities of carbon, silicon, sulphur, phosphorus, and other impurities that it is brittle and unreliable as to tensile strength, flexibility, or the qualities which make it available for edged tools. The puddling process already described deprived it of the carbon and sulphur, but left it too soft for immediate use. It required a small and fixed amount of carbon to give it the qualities of steel and this was replaced by reheating it in air-tight receptacles in combination with powdered charcoal. By this process steel was made, but it was a slow and expensive process. About the middle of the last century, William Kelly, of Pittsburg, conceived the idea that by forcing air through the molten iron as it came from the furnace the oxygen of the air would combine with the carbon of the iron and burn out the carbon, leaving the remainder pure iron. A series of experiments proved the accuracy of his theory, and he made steel by this process. About the same time Sir Henry Bessemer, of England, devised a similar process and it was put into practical operation in England and later in the United States. By this process, developed almost simultaneously in America and England by these two men, the transformation of iron into steel in a brief space of time and at a small cost was established, and the manufacture of steel developed with wonderful rapidity. The quantity of steel manufactured in the United States in 1870 was but 69,000 tons; in 1880, 1,247,000 tons; in 1890, 4,277,000 tons; in 1900, 10,188,000 tons; and in 1907, 23,363,000 tons. With this great development in manufacturing came a great development in the use of machinery for handling not only the finished steel itself but the pig iron from which it was manufactured, the iron ore from which it was produced and the coal and limestone used in its production. With this growing use of machinery in the manufacture and the great increase in the quantity used in the industries of the world have come the enlargement of the establishments 242 and the increase in the capital invested described at the opening of this section.

This process of burning out the carbon and other impurities from the molten iron by forcing air and thus combining the oxygen of the air with the carbon of the iron, although it seems to have been devised almost simultaneously by Kelly in the United States and Bessemer in England, is usually denominated the “Bessemer process,” and while Kelly obtained certain patents and a half million dollars for his invention, Bessemer also obtained other patents and it is said ten millions of dollars for his.

The process of transforming iron into steel by the Bessemer process is described by Herbert N. Casson in “The Romance of Steel,” as follows:

“A converter is a huge iron pot twice as high as a man. It is swung on an axle, so that it can be tilted up and down. Although it weighs as much as a battalion of five hundred men, it can be handled by a boy. About thirty thousand pounds of molten iron are poured into it; and then, from two hundred little holes in the bottom, a strong blast of air is turned on, rushing like a tornado through the metal. Millions of red and yellow sparks fly a hundred feet into the air.

“The converter roars like a volcano in eruption. It is the fiercest and most strenuous of all the inventions of man. The impurities in the iron--the phosphorus, sulphur, silicon and carbon--are being hurled out of the metal in this paroxysm of fury. The sparks change from red to yellow; then suddenly they become white.

“‘All right!’ shouts the grimy workman in charge.

“The great pot is tilted sideways, gasping and coughing like a monster in pain. A workman feeds it with several hundred pounds of a carbon mixture, to restore a necessary element that has been blown out. Then it is tilted still farther; its lake of white fire is poured into a swinging ladle and slopped from the ladle into a train of huge clay pots, pushed into place by a little 243 locomotive. The converter then swings up and receives another fifteen tons of molten metal, the whole process having taken only a quarter of an hour…. Today there are more than a hundred Bessemer converters in the United States, breathing iron into steel at the rate of eighteen billion pounds a year. It is well worth a visit to Pittsburg to see one of these tamed Etnas in full blast. Nothing else in the world is like it.”

Discussing the importance of the discovery of the method by which common iron is thus cheaply and quickly transformed into steel, J. Russell Smith, in his “The Story of Iron and Steel,” says:

“Archaeologists and ethnologists agree that before the dawn of datable history a milestone of progress was marked when our ancestors had, at enormous cost, won a pound or so of iron per capita and begun the iron age. The keen analyst of the present, seeing our railways, our ships, our cannon, our sky scrapers, has erected another milestone, and this he calls the Age of Steel.

“The close of the Civil War found the iron-making world in full possession of the Bessemer process of converting that metal into steel…. The variety of uses for this metal is absolutely beyond enumeration…. Within the space of a generation we have increased our iron consumption fourfold…. This is the age of power. Man has changed his economic and social conditions in that he has harnessed the forces of nature to make them do his work. Our main dependence, thus far, has been upon fuel, chiefly coal. The power in the form of the steam generated in the boiler is kept imprisoned in iron pipes until released in the steel cylinder, where a steel piston drives forward a steel rod, which communicates the force to a steel fly wheel, turning on a steel shaft, and sending the power away to various places where man wishes to use it.

“Portable engines, entirely made of iron and steel, are drawn about the country, or move themselves and carry loads…. The 244 dynamo rests upon a heavy iron frame and swings its iron arms and iron magnets through space, whence it mysteriously winds out power…. The second of the great iron uses is to be found in the machines driven by the power that man has learned to harness…. Transport is the third member of the mechanical trinity which goes with power and machines to make the present epoch. For a long time the railways consumed half of man’s total iron product. The street railway of the city is also a heavy consumer. The elevated railway is nothing but a bridge spanning the city in all directions, and the subway, its latest rival, is but a steel tunnel burrowing beneath the ground. In the country, the erection of the trolley lines is now giving us a second set of railways, and even the poles are coming to be made of iron. Half a century ago iron ships began to be common, a quarter of a century ago the ship-builder turned to steel, and now there is almost nothing else afloat upon the high seas…. Our structures are becoming more and more dependent upon the products of the blast furnace and the steel mills. Our fathers contented themselves with brick and stone and wood. The limitation of wooden beams and the cheapness of Bessemer steel caused that material to be used in heavy structures in a limited way, and as wood increased in value and knowledge of the use of steel increased, we now see the modern sky scraper in which wood is eliminated and steel the absolute essential….