The Sun.
London, England, 1867-03-13 00:00:00

The Rise of the Iron Trade.

There have been ironworks in England ever since
the time of the Romans, although in the middle
ages iron brought from the shores of the Bay of
Biscay was preferred to that produced in England.

Our superiority over nations dates from the time
when coal took the place of wood as fuel. Until

then, indeed, no great effort was made to extend
the trade. In 1354 the exportation of iron was pro-

hibited on account of the scarcity of timber, and in
1581 the erection of ironworks was forbidden within
certain distances from London and the Thames,
" for the preservation of the woods." Forty years
later, in 1621, Lord Dudley obtained a patent for
'the mystery and art of melting iron ore, and of

making the same into cast works of bars, with sea
coals or pit coals, in furnaces, with bellows," which
had been introduced by his famous son, Dud Dudley.
Dudley suffered much from the persecution of rival
ironmasters ; but he said, " I went on with my in-
ventions cheerfully, and made annually great store
of iron, good and merchantable, and sold it unto
divers men at £l2 per ton. I also made all sorts of
cast iron wares, as brewing cisterns, pots, mortars,
and the like, better and cheaper than any yet made
in these nations with charcoal." After persevering
efforts Dudley succeeded in producing seven tons of
iron a week, " the greatest quantity of pit-coal
iron," as he said, " ever yet made in Great Britain ;"
and he had an able coadjutor iu his efforts to ad-
vance the iron trade in Andrew Yarranton. In
1677, too, a Doctor Frederick do Blewstane ob-
tained a patent for " a new and effectual way of
melting down, forging, extracting, and reducing of
iron and all metals which pit coal and sea coal, as
well and effectually as ever hath yet been done by
charcoal, and with much less charge." But many
years elapsed before the plan of substituting coal for
timber obtained much favour. In the mean-
while a long and curious battle was being
waged between the home manufactories and the
people of the young American colonies,
who were desirous of increasing the demand for
the iron they had just learned to produce.
In 1719, it was reckoned, iron wrought with char-
coal was third in the rack of English manufactures,
and gave employment to 200,000 persons. These
people, urged the colonists and their flieuds at
home, were burning up all the wealth of England.
" The waste and destruction of the woods in the
counties of Warwick, Stafford, Hereford, Mon-
mouth, Gloucester, and Salop, by these ironworks,"

it was said in the House of Commons, " is not to be
imagined. If some care be not taken to preserve
our timber from these consuming furnaces, there

will not be oak enough left to supply the royal
navy and our mercantile shipping." The ironworks,
en the other hand, protested that if the colonists
wished to enrich themselves and the mother coun-

try at the same time, they should send their timber
to England instead of using it in their own fur-
naces ; and therefore a bill was brought into Par-
liament enjoining that " none in the plantations
should manufacture iron wares of any kind what-

ever out of any sows, pigs, or bars whatever. That
cruel and short-sighted ordinance necessarily did
much harm to the colonists, who, had it been rigidly
complied with, would have been unable to make a
single nail, bolt, or screw for themselves, or to pro-
cure them from any market nearer than England.
With good reason they made a fresh complaint in
1737. At their instigation it was represented in
Parliament that, " by reason of our woods being so

far exhausted, " England could not possibly make
more than the 18,000 tons of pig-iron at that time
being produced each year, as was proved by the
fact that, to meet the seeds of the market, nearly
20,000 tons had to be brought from Sweden and
Russia, at a cost to the country of about £lBO,OOO a
year. Surely it would be better to bring that
supply from our own colonies, and so benefit them
instead of any foreign Power. The argument pre-
vailed in time. In 1750 an act was passed "to
encourage the importation of pig and bar iron from
his Majesty's colonies in America, and to pre-
vent the erection of any mill or other engine for
slitting or rolling of iron, or any plating forge to
work with a tilt-hammer, or any furnace for
making of steel, in the said colonies ; thus forbid-
ding them to any but the roughest work, and re-
serving all the fine manipulations for England, to
which the pig-iron was to be shipped. Even that
jealous law, however, was immediately productive