AMERICAN STEEL INDUSTRY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11644, 4 May 1901, Page 5 (Supplement)

AMERICAN STEEL INDUSTRY.

Steel is simply iron containing a little carbon and other hardening elements in such skilfully adjusted proportions as to give it precisely that quality which the user desires, whether the soft, .lead-like "basic s-teel" used in making wire nails or the hard, invincible temper of the best tool steel; whether the carbon steel of the common rail, of which hundreds of thousands of miles interlace themselves over the continents, or the peculiar manganese steel in the screw propeller driving the liner across the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Indian Oceans; the nickel steel or the ironclad's armour, or the " self-hardening steel" which cuts all these other grades into any desired form with ease and despatch. Gradually iron is disappearing in all ' uses,' and steel is taking its place, and already the iron rail, the iron steam-boiler, the iron gun. and' iron armour are virtually of the past, steel of one or another quality taking the place of all. Nevertheless, all steel is still made from iron. To-day the United States makes nearly one-half of all the iron made on the globe, and over two-thirds of its product is employed in the form of steel. Iron is rapidly ceasing to be an important product, and it is some years since an iron rail was made. That is virtually an extinct meanufacture. Blast-furnaces are turning out pig-iron at the rate of from 500 to 700 tons, each, every 24 hours, and a single " plant" of four stacks can supply 750.000 tons in a year In 1899 was exported 100.000.000 dollars worth and over of manufactured iron and steel products. Printing-presses constituted 1,000,000 dollars of the total amount. The beginning of the twentieth century sees the United States fairly and extensively embarked in trade with the world, a 'result due partly to our patent system, partly to the natural resources of the country, but mainly to the development of a system of iron and steel manufacture, in which, by giving hands reinforcement by brain and by supplying our workers extensively with labour-assisting machinery, we have become able to furnish our products at a lower price than other nations. The world has been advanced perhaps more by the invention of Bessemer, which gives us cheap steel and which has enabled us to make of steel almost every product once made in iron, than by any other device in the history of the industry. About onefourth of all steel made in the United States is the product of the open-hearth process, which was introduced by Siemens in Great j Britain, by -Martin in France, and by Mr. : Hewitt in the United States, about 50 years I ago. Before these two modern steel-making ,' processes were invented, Sheffield was the steel-manufacturing centre for the world. Its raw material, Swedish wrought iron, j cost about 75d015. a ton ; it was converted j into steel by the * crucible process," adding ; carbon and manganese in the right amounts | to the soft iron, and was sold at 250d015. ! i ton or more. The production of Sheffield j ' in the fifties" was something more than ] 50.000 tons a year. To-day the makers of j iteel in the United States alone carry 000,000 tons of pig-iron from the blast- j furnace through Bessemer converters and >pen-hearth furnaces.—Robert H. Thurston, ji the Century.