To speak of the enormous increase in the production of steel by the
introduction of the Bessemer process has become a commonplace on
occasions like the present, and yet I doubt whether its real
dimensions are generally known or remembered. In 1869 the manufacture
of Bessemer steel had already acquired what was then looked upon as a
considerable development in all the principal centers of metallurgical
industry, except the United States, but including our own country,
Germany, France, and Austria, and the world's production in that year
was 400,000 tons. Last year it was over 5,000,000 tons, and it has
doubled in every steel-producing country during the last four years,
except in France, where, during this latter period, the increase has
not been much more than one-fourth. What is almost as remarkable as
the enormous increase in the production of Bessemer steel is the great
diminution in its cost. In the years preceding 1875, the price of
rails manufactured from Bessemer ingots fluctuated between £10 and £18
per ton, and I remember Lord George Hamilton when he was
Under-Secretary for India of Lord Beaconsfield's administration in
1875 or 1876, congratulating himself on his good fortune in having
been able to secure a quantity of steel rails for the Indian
government at £13 per ton. Within the last three years we have seen
them sold under £4 10s. in this country, and £5 10s. in Germany and
Belgium.