WHAT JUDGE BATHGATE SAW AT MIDDLESBOROUGH.

Colonist, Volume XXIII, Issue 2688, 3 April 1880, Page 3

WHAT JUDGE BATHGATE SAW AT MIDDLESBOROUGH.

(From the Saturday Adoertiser.) Middlesbobottgh is a great seat of iron manufacture, and has sprung into existence during the last thirty years. There is a hill in the neighborhood surmounted by a monument to Captain Cook, who was born in the village of Martin at the foot of the hill. A number of years ago a puddler of the name of Bolckow, employed at iron works at Walker, near Newcastle, in a holiday ramble visited this hill, and was struck by the appearance of the rock he noticed. IJ c carried a specimen to Walker and had it tested, when it proved to be a valuable ore of iron, since called the Cleveland ironstone. He induced the book-keeper—Vaughan—to take an interest; in the matter, and the two being assisted pecuniarily by friends -who had jonfideuce, started an iron work in a small way, which gradually developed into the large concern of Bolckow and Vaughan, known for the manufacture of rails ail the world over. After a successful career the firm's business was merged into a j->iut stock company under the name of Bolckow and Vaughan, limited. The partners retired with a million sterling each. Both are now dead. Vaughan's son resolved to be the largest iron master ever known, and in a few. years his splendid fortune waa wholly lost. AH that he has now to live on is; £400 a year he settled on his wife. Such reverses have been common in this quarter. We heard of a man who had gone through £75.000, aad promised a dividend of a shilling in the pound. He was accordingly jocularly called " Bob" Taylor. The dividend came down to sixpence, and bis nickname was changed to " Tanner." The new company did very well, but of late the recent stagnation told upon their prosperity. In Middlesborough there were 3000 houseg tenantless. The recent revival in the iron trade has set things in motion again. Steel pails which a year ago brought only £4 a ton now bring £10. The £50 share of the company was £10 below par. It is now quoted £30 premium. Little fortunes have been made by men who had faith to buy when everything was low. We had the pleasure of being shown over the works by the intelligent chief engineer, Mr Samuel' Godfrey. The furnaces are in clusters of towers, 95 feefc high and 24 feet diameter, built of brick cased in half inch iron. Each furnace cost £30,000, and as there are 28 of them, the total coat of jthe furnaces alone is about a million. There were six acres of roofing in the various buildings. Great skill is manifested in the arrangements for economical working. To one set of furnaces is attached a row of sixteen boilers to generate steam for the blast. To heat the boilers 4000 tons of coal were consumed weekly. Now the gas which escapes from the coke used in the furnaces is entrapped and made to do duty in heating the boilers. Instead of an enormous expense for coal the work is done by waste material costing nothing. The magnitude of the works is unprecedented. The cylinder of one engine we saw was 100 feet in diameter. There are 3000 men employed at this place, but the company at their other works and their various collieries employ an army of labor numbering 16,000. We saw the glowing stream of molten iron poured from the furnace into a huge iron jug containing eight tons. Thi6 was carried off by a small locomotive to a platform where the contents were poured into a converter and subjected to a cold blast which produced intense combustion and burned all the carbon and foreign elements out of the iron, leaving the residue pure steel. The flamas generated in this process from lurid red, then to sulphurous yellow, and lastly to brilliant white formed the grandest and most dazzling firework we had ever beheld. The molten steel was then poured into moulds about five feet long and sixteen inches square in the aides. The ingot was next pushed into a furnace for a short time, then placed under a Bucceasion of rollers by which ie was squeezed into a long steel rail of approved pattern. The company turns out 2000 tons of steel rails in a week. We spoke to Mr Godfrey about the proposal of thai New Zealand Government, to take 100,000 tona of steel rails from any capitalist who would start at Para Para, and that they would pay half the cost of bringing out the necessary workmen. He said the terms were not sufficiently tempting. The chief drawback was the element of uncertainty. If tha Government would help some iron master of limited means to try the manufacture in a small way, and it should turn out a success, there would be no want of capital to develop the. ironfield. He also suggested that the black iron sand might be utilised by being mixed in the furnace with the iron ore. In their works a. large quantity of Spanish, hematite from Bilboa was used along with ihe Cleveland ironstone.