The history of the iron and steel industry of the world forms an
excellent example of the recent advance in manufacturing. The
manufacture of iron and steel has made perhaps a more rapid advance
than have many others, and its development is due in such a marked
degree to the use of machinery and the investment of large sums of
capital in the industry that a detailed study of the history and
causes of its development seems justified.
Pig iron is the basis of all iron and steel manufacturing, in whatever
form, and the record of production of this single article gives at
least a suggestion of the growth in the other lines of the industry,
the growth in production of the finished articles ready for 231
consumption. The pig iron production of the world in 1800 is estimated
at 460,000 tons; in 1850, 4,422,000 tons; in 1895, 29,300,000 tons,
and in 1903, 46,381,000 tons. The product of 1850 was thus nearly ten
times as much as in 1800, that of 1895, 63 times as much, and that of
1903, 100 times as much as in 1800, while the figures for the year
1907, give a total of 50 million tons or 109 times as much as in 1800.
Great Britain was the world’s greatest pig iron producer in 1800 and
in 1850. In 1800 she produced 41 per cent of the world’s pig iron, and
in 1850, 50 per cent. By 1895, however, she had begun to take second
place, the United States standing at the head of the list of pig
iron-producing countries at that time, the product of Great Britain
forming 27 per cent of the world’s total and that of the United States
32 per cent. In 1903 the United States showed a still greater lead in
this industry, producing in that year 39 per cent of the world’s total
product; while Germany, which held a low rank as a producer in 1800
and 1850, actually exceeded Great Britain in 1903, producing 22 per
cent of the world’s total, while Great Britain produced but 19 per
cent of the total. Great Britain’s production grew from 190,000 tons
in 1800 to 8,935,000 tons in 1903; Germany, from 40,000 tons to
10,085,000 tons; the United States, from 40,000 tons to 18,009,000
tons; and all other countries, from 190,000 tons to 9,352,000 tons. In
1800 the United States produced but 9 per cent of the world’s pig
iron; in 1903, 38 per cent; and in 1907, 41 per cent.
It will be seen from these figures that the greatest growth in the
world’s pig iron production has occurred in the United States.
Turning from the comparison of growth in pig iron production in the
leading iron-producing countries of the world and comparing the growth
of the iron industry in the United States with that of other
manufacturing industries, we find that the development in this line 232
has been greater than that of other leading industries. The census
figures show that the value of the product of the blast furnaces,
steel works and rolling mills of the United States, combined, grew
from 297 million dollars in 1880 to 906 million in 1905, having thus
more than trebled in value in that period, while the value of the
cotton manufactures grew from 211 million to 250 million, having
little more than doubled; that of the woolen and worsted manufactures,
from 194 million to 308 million; lumber and timber products, from 234
million to 580 million; boots and shoes, from 166 million to 320
million; leather, from 200 million to 253 million; and flour and
gristmill products, from 505 million to 713 million in the same time.
In the various branches of iron and steel manufacturing there was also
a remarkable growth. Foundry and modern ship products grew in value
from 215 million dollars in 1880 to 800 million in 1905; structural
iron work, from 3½ million to 91 million; and wire and wire work,
from 19 million to 71 million.
This increase in value of the various classes of iron and steel
products does not by any means show the actual increase in quantity
produced, because of the fall in prices meantime. Practically all of
the important classes of iron and steel products have fallen greatly
in price as the quantity produced has increased. Pig iron, for
example, averaged $33 per ton in 1870, and $18 per ton in 1908; steel
rails, $107 per ton in 1870 and $28 per ton in 1908; bar iron, rolled,
$79 per ton in 1870 and $38 per ton in 1908; and cut nails, 4.4 cents
per pound in 1870 and 2.2 cents in 1908. The iron ore production in
the United States grew from 3 million tons in 1870 to 52 million in
1907; pig iron, from 1.6 million tons to 26 million; and from 69
thousand tons in 1870 to 23 million tons in 1907.
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….
“It is therefore natural to expect that the blast furnace should
be among the most thoroughly organized and most highly developed
pieces of mechanism yet devised. It is certainly the most fearful
of all man’s creations, and considering the character of the
process which goes on within it and its unapproachable heat, it
is under a wonderful degree of control. At the present time, the
blast furnaces are a hundred feet high, consist of a great iron
stack lined with some nonfusible material, and when in operation
are filled from top to bottom with roaring fire. Into their 245
fiery throats are fed alternately small carloads of coke and iron
and limestone, and from the bottom there flows away at intervals
two molten streams--one the precious iron upon which our
civilization rests; the other the useless slag, to be got rid of
in the cheapest possible way…. The burning of this modern
furnace takes place under a forced draught of air blast from
eight to twenty pounds per square inch. This pressure serves to
drive the air upward through the hundred-foot mass which burns
within the furnace. Otherwise, the fire would smother. The gas
which results from the imperfect combustion within the furnace is
a most valuable by-product and serves a valuable purpose in
promoting the furnace operation, and sometimes leaves a product
to sell. A part of the gas is taken to the boilers, where it
generates power for the blowing engines. Another part of it is
used in the so-called stoves to heat the air blast on its way to
the furnaces.”
The iron obtained by this Bessemer process, by which the carbon and
other impurities are burned out, is, when it leaves the converter and
cools, merely soft, malleable iron, and to transform it into steel
there must be re-inserted a small but fixed and definitely determined
amount of carbon. “Steel,” says J. Russell Smith, “is simply a mixture
of iron with a small amount of carbon, very intimately and evenly
associated in its mass. The carbon content of steel varies from .40
per cent to 1.50 per cent. Steel making is, therefore, a process of
mixing carbon and iron in proper proportions. Inasmuch as it cannot be
made satisfactorily in a puddling furnace, by reducing the carbon to a
proper point and then stopping the furnace, it has been found
necessary to burn the carbon all out, making wrought iron, and then
working it back to steel by recarbonizing under such conditions that
the carbon can be controlled. The iron, after having all of its carbon
and other impurities burned out by the Bessemer process, is raised to
steel by having thrown into it spiegel iron or ferro manganese. Both 246
are rich in manganese and carbon. As the iron content of the Bessemer
converter is known and the content of the spiegel iron is known, the
carbon in the steel is under perfect control. The workman watching the
flames cuts off the blast at the moment when the changing color tells
him the carbon is gone. The carbon of the added material makes steel,
and the manganese gives to the steel a toughness needed to make it
stand the strain of being rolled into desired shapes while red-hot,
without breaking….
“The steel for the greater industries is shaped in a rolling
mill. It comes from the Bessemer or open-hearth converter molded
into a great billet like a piece of a large wooden beam, and this
billet is carried red-hot to a so-called soaking pit, where the
tongues of a flame from a gas-fire keep it heated until it is
ready to start on its journey through the mills. This soaking pit
is the starting point of many roads through the mill. It goes off
in one direction, and successive rollers squeeze it, crush it,
and lengthen it into steel rails, in which form it emerges a
thousand feet away. Other sets of rolls make the billet into flat
beams for bridges or elevated railways. A third set of rolls,
also starting near the soaking pits, send the product out of the
distant door of the steel mill in the form of great flat plates
to make the boiler of a locomotive, or a marine engine, or the
sides of a steamship, and yet other sets of rollers will make
square rods which finally pass under heavy shears and are chopped
into pieces called billets or blooms. These pieces of steel are
the raw material for other mills which may make wire, nails, or
manufacture steel of any other of a thousand forms. Some billets
are as big as cord wood, some no larger than lead pencils--thus
it passes out into the manifold world of manufacture.”