[Footnote: Annual address delivered by President J.A. Price before the
meeting of the Scranton Board of Trade, Monday, January 18, 1886.]
By J.A. PRICE.
Iron is the basis of our civilization. Its supremacy and power it is
impossible to overestimate; it enters every avenue of development, and
it may be set down as the prime factor in the world's progress. Its
utility and its universality are hand in hand, whether in the
magnificent iron steamship of the ocean, the network of iron rail upon
land, the electric gossamer of the air, or in the most insignificant
articles of building, of clothing, and of convenience. Without it, we
should have miserably failed to reach our present exalted station, and
the earth would scarcely maintain its present population; it is indeed
the substance of substances. It is the Archimedean lever by which the
great human world has been raised. Should it for a moment forget its
cunning and lose its power, earthquake shocks or the wreck of matter
could not be more disastrous. However axiomatic may be everything that
can be said of this wonderful metal, it is undoubtedly certain that it
must give way to a metal that has still greater proportions and vaster
possibilities. Strange and startling as may seem the assertion, yet I
believe it nevertheless to be true that we are approaching the period,
if not already standing upon the threshold of the day, when this magical
element will be radically supplanted, and when this valuable mineral
will be as completely superseded as the stone of the aborigines. With
all its apparent potency, it has its evident weaknesses; moisture is
everywhere at war with it, gases and temperature destroy its fiber and
its life, continued blows or motion crystallize and rob it of its
strength, and acids will devour it in a night. If it be possible to
eliminate all, or even one or more, of these qualities of weakness in
any metal, still preserving both quantity and quality, that metal will
be the metal of the future.
The coming metal, then, to which our reference is made is aluminum, the
most abundant metal in the earth's crust. Of all substances, oxygen is
the most abundant, constituting about one-half; after oxygen comes
silicon, constituting about one-fourth, with aluminum third in all the
list of substances of the composition. Leaving out of consideration the
constituents of the earth's center, whether they be molten or gaseous,
more or less dense as the case may be, as we approach it, and confining
ourselves to the only practical phase of the subject, the crust, we find
that aluminum is beyond question the most abundant and the most useful
of all metallic substances.
It is the metallic base of mica, feldspar, slate, and clay. Professor
Dana says: "Nearly all the rocks except limestones and many sandstones
are literally ore-beds of the metal aluminum." It appears in the gem,
assuming a blue in the sapphire, green in the emerald, yellow in the
topaz, red in the ruby, brown in the emery, and so on to the white,
gray, blue, and black of the slates and clays. It has been dubbed "clay
metal" and "silver made from clay;" also when mixed with any
considerable quantity of carbon becoming a grayish or bluish black "alum
slate."
This metal in color is white and next in luster to silver. It has never
been found in a pure state, but is known to exist in combination with
nearly two hundred different minerals. Corundum and pure emery are ores
that are very rich in aluminum, containing about fifty-four per cent.
The specific gravity is but two and one-half times that of water; it is
lighter than glass or as light as chalk, being only one-third the weight
of iron and one-fourth the weight of silver; it is as malleable as gold,
tenacious as iron, and harder than steel, being next the diamond. Thus
it is capable of the widest variety of uses, being soft when ductility,
fibrous when tenacity, and crystalline when hardness is required. Its
variety of transformations is something wonderful. Meeting iron, or even
iron at its best in the form of steel, in the same field, it easily
vanquishes it at every point. It melts at 1,300 degrees F., or at least
600 degrees below the melting point of iron, and it neither oxidizes in
the atmosphere nor tarnishes in contact with gases. The enumeration of
the properties of aluminum is as enchanting as the scenes of a fairy
tale.
Before proceeding further with this new wonder of science, which is
already knocking at our doors, a brief sketch of its birth and
development may be fittingly introduced. The celebrated French chemist
Lavoisier, a very magician in the science, groping in the dark of the
last century, evolved the chemical theory of combustion--the existence
of a "highly respirable gas," oxygen, and the presence of metallic bases
in earths and alkalies. With the latter subject we have only to do at
the present moment. The metallic base was predicted, yet not identified.
The French Revolution swept this genius from the earth in 1794, and
darkness closed in upon the scene, until the light of Sir Humphry Davy's
lamp in the early years of the present century again struck upon the
metallic base of certain earths, but the reflection was so feeble that
the great secret was never revealed. Then a little later the Swedish
Berzelius and the Danish Oersted, confident in the prediction of
Lavoisier and of Davy, went in search of the mysterious stranger with
the aggressive electric current, but as yet to no purpose. It was
reserved to the distinguished German Wohler, in 1827, to complete the
work of the past fifty years of struggle and finally produce the minute
white globule of the pure metal from a mixture of the chloride of
aluminum and sodium, and at last the secret is revealed--the first step
was taken. It took twenty years of labor to revolve the mere discovery
into the production of the aluminum bead in 1846, and yet with this
first step, this new wonder remained a foetus undeveloped in the womb of
the laboratory for years to come.
Returning again to France some time during the years between 1854 and
1858, and under the patronage of the Emperor Napoleon III., we behold
Deville at last forcing Nature to yield and give up this precious
quality as a manufactured product. Rose, of Berlin, and Gerhard, in
England, pressing hard upon the heels of the Frenchman, make permanent
the new product in the market at thirty-two dollars per pound. The
despair of three-quarters of a century of toilsome pursuit has been
broken, and the future of the metal has been established.
The art of obtaining the metal since the period under consideration has
progressed steadily by one process after another, constantly increasing
in powers of productivity and reducing the cost. These arts are
intensely interesting to the student, but must be denied more than a
reference at this time. The price of the metal may be said to have come
within the reach of the manufacturing arts already.
A present glance at the uses and possibilities of this wonderful metal,
its application and its varying quality, may not be out of place. Its
alloys are very numerous and always satisfactory; with iron, producing a
comparative rust proof; with copper, the beautiful golden bronze, and so
on, embracing the entire list of articles of usefulness as well as works
of art, jewelry, and scientific instruments.
Its capacity to resist oxidation or rust fits it most eminently for all
household and cooking utensils, while its color transforms the dark
visaged, disagreeable array of pots, pans, and kitchen implements into
things of comparative beauty. As a metal it surpasses copper, brass, and
tin in being tasteless and odorless, besides being stronger than either.
It has, as we have seen, bulk without weight, and consequently may be
available in construction of furniture and house fittings, as well in
the multitudinous requirements of architecture. The building art will
experience a rapid and radical change when this material enters as a
component material, for there will be possibilities such as are now
undreamed of in the erection of homes, public buildings, memorial
structures, etc. etc., for in this metal we have the strength,
durability, and the color to give all the variety that genius may
dictate.
And when we take a still further survey of the vast field that is
opening before us, we find in the strength without size a most desirable
assistant in all the avenues of locomotion. It is the ideal metal for
railway traffic, for carriages and wagons. The steamships of the ocean
of equal size will double their cargo and increase the speed of the
present greyhounds of the sea, making six days from shore to shore seem
indeed an old time calculation and accomplishment. A thinner as well as
a lighter plate; a smaller as well as a stronger engine; a larger as
well as a less hazardous propeller; and a natural condition of
resistance to the action of the elements; will make travel by water a
forcible rival to the speed attained upon land, and bring all the
distant countries in contact with our civilization, to the profit of
all. This metal is destined to annihilate space even beyond the dream of
philosopher or poet.
The tensile strength of this material is something equally wonderful,
when wire drawn reaches as high as 128,000 pounds, and under other
conditions reaches nearly if not quite 100,000 pounds to the square
inch. The requirements of the British and German governments in the best
wrought steel guns reach only a standard of 70,000 pounds to the square
inch. Bridges may be constructed that shall be lighter than wooden ones
and of greater strength than wrought steel and entirely free from
corrosion. The time is not distant when the modern wonder of the
Brooklyn span will seem a toy.
It may also be noted that this metal affords wide development in
plumbing material, in piping, and will render possible the almost
indefinite extension of the coming feature of communication and
exchange--the pneumatic tube.
The resistance to corrosion evidently fits this metal for railway
sleepers to take the place of the decaying wooden ties. In this metal
the sleeper may be made as soft and yielding as lead, while the rail may
be harder and tougher than steel, thus at once forming the necessary
cushion and the avoidance of jar and noise, at the same time
contributing to additional security in virtue of a stronger rail.
In conductivity this metal is only exceeded by copper, having many times
that of iron. Thus in telegraphy there are renewed prospects in the
supplanting of the galvanized iron wire--lightness, strength, and
durability. When applied to the generation of steam, this material will
enable us to carry higher pressure at a reduced cost and increased
safety, as this will be accomplished by the thinner plate, the greater
conductivity of heat, and the better fiber.
It is said that some of its alloys are without a rival as an
anti-friction metal, and having hardness and toughness, fits it
remarkably for bearings and journals. Herein a vast possibility in the
mechanic art lies dormant--the size of the machine may be reduced, the
speed and the power increased, realizing the conception of two things
better done than one before. It is one of man's creative acts.
From other of its alloys, knives, axes, swords, and all cutting
implements may receive and hold an edge not surpassed by the best
tempered steel. Hulot, director in the postage stamp department, Paris,
asserts that 120,000 blows will exhaust the usefulness of the cushion of
the stamp machine, and this number of blows is given in a day; and that
when a cushion of aluminum bronze was substituted, it was unaffected
after months of use.
If we have found a metal that possesses both tensile strength and
resistance to compression; malleability and ductility--the quality of
hardening, softening, and toughening by tempering; adaptability to
casting, rolling, or forging; susceptibility to luster and finish; of
complete homogeneous character and unusually resistant to destructive
agents--mankind will certainly leave the present accomplishments as
belonging to an effete past, and, as it were, start anew in a career of
greater prospects.
This important material is to be found largely in nearly all the rocks,
or as Prof. Dana has said, "Nearly all rocks are ore-beds of the metal."
It is in every clay bank. It is particularly abundant in the coal
measures and is incidental to the shales or slates and clays that
underlie the coal. This under clay of the coal stratum was in all
probability the soil out of which grew the vegetation of the coal
deposits. It is a compound of aluminum and other matter, and, when mixed
with carbon and transformed by the processes of geologic action, it
becomes the shale rock which we know and which we discard as worthless
slate. And it is barely possible that we have been and are still carting
to the refuse pile an article more valuable than the so greatly lauded
coal waste or the merchantable coal itself. We have seen that the best
alumina ore contains only fifty-four per cent. of metal.
The following prepared table has been furnished by the courtesy and
kindness of Mr. Alex. H. Sherred, of Scranton.