STEEL AND RUBBER
It has been shown already in this volume that the materials from which
man has made his tools, and those tools themselves, are the best means
of determining his advance in civilization. Man passed from the Stone
Age with its few, crude implements into the Bronze Age, and from this
into the Iron Age, with each succeeding step increasing the number and
efficiency of his tools. The race has lately passed into an age which
might well be named the Age of Steel. The discovery or invention of
this metal--for there is in it the nature of both invention and
discovery--is sufficiently important to mark a distinct era in human
progress.
Steel is not found native, but is a compound of iron and carbon and is
produced artificially. The great value of steel lies in the fact that
it can be made so hard that it can cut and shape almost every other
substance known to man, and yet this very quality of hardness can be so
modified as to make the metal capable of cutting and otherwise shaping
itself. Steel can be made nearly as hard as the diamond, or so soft
that it can be cut, bent, or hammered into this shape or that, rolled
into sheets, or drawn out into the finest wire. Nearly the whole of the
compound is iron, the carbon ranging from one-fourth of one per cent to
two and one half per cent. Ordinary steel contains certain other
chemicals, such as silicon, manganese, sulphur, and phosphorus, but
these are mere natural impurities existing in the metal. The essential
ingredients are iron and carbon. Steel is hardened by being heated to a
high temperature and then suddenly cooled by contact with cold water,
or in other like ways. Fixing the degree of hardness in a piece of
steel is called tempering. The degree of hardness is dependent upon the
suddenness of cooling.
The widespread use of steel and its importance in the life of to-day
are due to Sir Henry Bessemer, an English inventor, who was born
January 19, 1813, and died March 15, 1898. The substance was known,
made, and used before the time of Bessemer, but its production was so
costly that it was little used. By his process of production the cost
was greatly reduced and steel consequently came into much wider usage.
By the Bessemer process molten iron is poured into a vessel with holes
in the bottom. Air at a powerful pressure is forced through these
openings, so that the pressure of the air prevents the melted metal
from running out. The air removes the carbon from the molten iron.
Afterward the required amount of carbon is admitted to the iron, and
the result of the union is a piece of steel. The process of Bessemer
was patented in 1856.
Steel is used in the construction of great modern buildings, bridges,
and battleships; and in making cannon, railroad cars and rails, pipe,
wire, bolts and nails, swords, knives, saws, watch-springs, needles,
and innumerable tools and articles of every-day usage. Manifestly a
material that is used in the manufacture of articles ranging from a
needle to a great city sky-scraper or a battleship must be of prime
importance to the human race.
[Illustration: STEEL FRAMEWORK OF THE FLATIRON BUILDING, NEW YORK
CITY]
The United States Steel Corporation is the largest combination of
capital in the world. It was organized in March, 1901, under the laws
of New Jersey, for the manufacture and sale of steel products. This
giant corporation was formed by the union of ten large corporations,
each of which was, in turn, made up of smaller companies. Its total
capitalization is $1,404,000,000, or one half of all the money in the
United States. Its property consists of 149 steel works, with an annual
capacity of 9,000,000 tons; 18,000 coke furnaces; over 100,000 acres of
land; and 125 lake vessels and several small railroads. The Corporation
employs over 150,000 men, to whom it pays in Wages annually over
$120,000,000.
When on a wet morning one puts on rubbers and a rain coat, one scarcely
wonders about the history of the articles that give so much protection
and comfort. The story of rubber is an interesting one. The substance
at first was called "elastic gum." About 1770 it was discovered that
the gum would rub out lead pencil marks. It was imported into Great
Britain and sold for this purpose, and because of this property its
name was changed to rubber. The correct name of the material now is
caoutchouc, though its common name is India-rubber or simply rubber. It
is obtained from the sap of certain tropical trees and shrubs. The best
quality of rubber comes from Brazil, though supplies are procured from
other parts of South America, from Central America, the West Indies,
Africa, and parts of tropical Asia.
The details of collecting the sap and preparing it for market vary
somewhat according to locality and the nature of the trees or shrubs
from which it comes. In the region of the Amazon, when the sap is to be
obtained from a tree, cuts are made each morning in the bark. The milky
sap that exudes is collected in little tin or clay cups fastened to the
trunk. At the end of about ten hours these cups are emptied into larger
ones, and on the morning of the following day new incisions are made in
each tree, about eight inches below the old ones. This process is
continued until incisions have been made in the bark from a height of
about six feet down to the ground; the lower down on the trunk of the
tree, the better is the quality of the sap. For the evaporation of the
sap, a fire is built of material yielding dense volumes of smoke.
Workmen dip wooden paddles into the liquid and hold them in the smoke
until the sap solidifies and acquires a slightly yellow tinge. They
repeat the process of dipping the paddle into the sap and holding it in
the smoke, until the paddle is covered with a layer of the dried gum
about an inch and a half in thickness. This layer is then removed from
the paddle and hung up to dry; and the process of evaporation is
commenced anew. The raw material, which is an elastic, yellowish,
gum-like substance, is sent away to be vulcanized. From the vulcanized
product are made the rubber goods of commerce.
As far back as 1615 A.D. the Spaniards used rubber for waxing canvas
cloaks so as to make them water-proof. But it was not until two
centuries later that caoutchouc began to attract general attention.
Charles Goodyear, an American inventor, found a way for making it
commonly useful, and brought about its practical and widespread
utility.
The story of Goodyear's life is pathetically interesting. He was born
in New Haven, Connecticut, December 29, 1800. His father was Amasa
Goodyear, a pioneer hardware manufacturer, from whom the son inherited
much of his inventive ability. Charles Goodyear was educated in the
schools of New Haven, and spent much of his time on his father's farm
and in the factory, where the father manufactured steel implements and
pearl buttons, the first ever made in America. The son intended to
become a preacher, but obstacles arose and he abandoned his purpose.
Though he was not to minister to man's spiritual needs, yet he was to
bring to the race a material blessing of great value.
Goodyear entered into the hardware business with his father in
Connecticut and at Philadelphia, but their business failed. During the
ten years extending from 1830 to 1840 he was frequently imprisoned for
debt. All this time he was working to perfect unfinished inventions in
order that his creditors might be paid.
While a boy on his father's farm, he one day picked up a scale of
rubber peeled from a bottle, and conceived the notion that this
substance could be turned into a most useful material if it were made
uniformly thin and prepared in such way as to prevent its melting and
sticking together in a solid mass. When he was first imprisoned for
debt, the use of rubber was attracting general attention. He became
strongly interested in finding a way for making the article more
useful. The chief difficulty in treating rubber lay in its
susceptibility to extremes of temperature; it melted in summer and
became stiffened in winter. Strenuous effort had been expended in
attempting to overcome this difficulty, but without success. Goodyear
dedicated his energies to a solution of the problem. His experiments
were conducted in Philadelphia, in New York, and in Massachusetts
towns.
During this period he and his family lived literally from hand to
mouth, and more than once subsisted upon what was virtually the charity
of friends. Sometimes it was necessary to sell the children's books and
articles of household furniture to drive the wolf of hunger from the
door. Much of his experimentation was carried on in prison, with no
encouragement from any source to cheer him on. At times his hopes arose
as victory seemed near; they soon fell, as what he had mistaken for
triumph proved to be defeat. He became the butt of those who did not
share his own constant faith in the ultimate success of his labors. He
was calm in defeat, patient in ridicule, and always bore himself with
magnificent fortitude.
[Illustration: CHARLES GOODYEAR]
In the early months of 1839 Goodyear could shout with the old Syracusan
mathematician, "Eureka!"--"I have found it!" He had discovered that
rubber coated with sulphur and then heated to a high degree of heat is
rendered uniformly elastic in all temperatures. He had solved the
problem, but it was two long years before he could convince any one of
the fact. William Rider, of New York, finally furnished capital for
carrying on the business of manufacturing rubber goods according to the
new process. The firm was successful and Goodyear had soon paid off
thirty-five thousand dollars of indebtedness owed to creditors of his
old business that had failed ten or fifteen years before.
The new process was called vulcanizing. Vulcan was the old Roman god
of fire and metal working, and was patron of handicrafts generally.
The word _volcano_ is derived from _vulcan_, and melted sulphur is
associated with volcanoes. The term _vulcanize_, therefore, is
traceable either directly or indirectly, through the fire or the
sulphur employed in the process, to the name of the Roman god.
According to the relative amount of sulphur used and the temperature
to which the compound is raised, either soft or hard rubber may be
produced. Hard rubber contains a greater quantity of sulphur and is
heated to a higher temperature. The heat used in vulcanization reaches
as much as three hundred degrees Fahrenheit.
Goodyear's first patent was taken out in 1844, the year in which Samuel
F. B. Morse invented the telegraph. About this time he was imprisoned
for debt for the last time in the United States, though he suffered a
jail sentence for debt in France later. His patents were repeatedly
infringed in this country, and he could not secure any patents in Great
Britain or France. The United States Commissioner of Patents said of
Goodyear, "No inventor, probably, has ever been so harassed, so
trampled upon, so plundered by pirates as he, their spoliations upon
him having unquestionably amounted to millions of dollars." Daniel
Webster was the lawyer employed in the trial in which Goodyear's legal
right to the honor and profits of his invention was established. For
his services in this case Webster received a fee of twenty-five
thousand dollars.
Goodyear himself made no very large sum of money from his invention,
though he added to life not merely a new material but a new class of
materials, applicable to many cases. Before his death he had seen
rubber put to more than five hundred different uses, and thousands of
persons engaged in manufacturing the various articles fashioned from
it. Goodyear died in New York City, July 1, 1860.