Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1857-02-26
The Manufacture of Iron in the
United States.

States last yesr.
Who can estimate the importance of this
fact to any Correct conception of American
life, its development,itss strength and beautyf
Twenty thousand families of hundred
thousand souls. were clustered around those
furnaees-literally feeding on iron-and oc-
cupyine itself With merely the first process
OF the iron manufacture. For we must re-
member that melting the ore into pig iron
is but the first act of the d ANA; then fol-
low three or four more. The furnace world
is but one world, sort of ant idiluv ianage,
an age of iron, where everything is rude,
earthly. primitive and just stepping forth
from chaos Then follows the forge world
and then the rolling mill world. That, re-
presents the middle ages, full of blood and
thundsr-THoR worsh iuing, full of hammers
and maces. This, moderr times, fall Of
strong persuasion and nice measurement;
the nineteenth century of finish and the last
attainnents of science and art-the stern
engine, the iron ship, the railroad and the
telegraph The furnaces stand back in the
wooded mountain gorges. The forges are
in villages and small towns chiefly, and the
great rolling mills in cities, or on great
rivers and populous thoroughfares.
To the twenty thousand families Of char
coal burners, quarrymen, teamsters and
furnace hands about the furnaces, we must
add the anthracite and soft coal miners 80
far as they would be exclusively engaged in
providing the furnaces with million of tons
of mineral fuel which they use: and there
would be at least three Thousand families
Then there are many boaimen continually
occupied in bringing ore and coal, Iand TAX
ing away iron.
The foundry world is also populous with
inhabitants OF its own, as numerous as the
furnace population, from which it is SO
separate, and yet on which it so entirely de-
pends. For all through one or more Of the
subsequent processes Of re-melting and
casting, or of refining, pudding, piliDg, and
re-heating; rolling and cutting, swedging,
planning, and using. Two hundred thousand
tons of it were run into the foundry moulds
last year; moulds large and small, moulds
for pots and rail .hairs and Yankee knick-
nacks, as well as moulds for engine bed
plates, thirty feet long, and government ord
nance weighing twenty six thousand pounds
piece. The forges worked up the remain
der-four hundred thousand tons-snd there
by supported another population.
Attached to these, as a later and larger
growth-branches which have outgrowH the
parent stock-the Rolling mills were busy
with a still larger population yet, drawing
out the perfected metal, fresh from the anvil
and the orusher, into threads and rods, plates
and rails of every size and shape, from the
finest wire to an eighty pound to the yard
twenty-six feet rail. Last year, one hun.
dred and fity thousand, of the four hundred
thousand TO a just mentioned, went into
raj lroad bsrs; the test made merchant iron,
bar and boiler plate. Forty thousand tons
OF rod iron was made up into spikes and
nails in Pennsylvania alone. To do all this
required. directly or indirectly, so far as bar
iron was alJne concerned, tweire hundred
hands for each ten thousand tons; Or. fifty
thousand hands or families. The whole
iron making population OF the country then,
MY be set down at one hundred Thousand
families, or half million Of sous. Largo
Is this sum sounds, it by no means adequate
ly reyre> ents the Interest which the whole
Il 4tion has in iron manufacture; for, around
ali the six or seven hundred furnaces and
innumerlble isrgss. foundries aud mills OF
the United S'ales, arms a nebulous, in
determinable, outside, semiparasitic POpuIa-
ton OF family mechanics, shOpkeepers, re-
tired men 0f small indepe Rdent mean, and
agricultural providers. every one of whom
has an interest positive and well understood
and more or less direct in the neighboring
works.
Further than this we cannot follow the
Iron M Iaui .ctdre in its processes, and still
regard I as a district branch of national ac-
tiyity. From this point onward it ceases
To be manu- 'acture and becomes an en-
ergy, permeaIing anG reinforcing all other
manufacturers natural force, energizing
our physical lite, IS the red globules in the
blood Uf the body determine by their number
and movements its health and power. Since
We can neither have needles or anchors
without irOn-can neither sit, pOr eat, nor
print, nor travel by land or sea, noI to anI
purpose, live, Indeed, at all without it-as
IN fact, our Advancement as people is due
to the. handling of iron, and must be con-
tiGued 10 be measured by the amount We
handle-there can be no question Of the
policy OF fostering by every proper means in
our power, the manufacture among US. The
more our furnaces increase in size and num-
ber, the more numerous will become our
fOundries, iorges and olling mills; our nail
factories and tsachine shops; for we use up
all our native iron and go to Europe every
year for mOre. Last year We bought 364,-
675 tons abroad With infinite resources
Of ore aud fuel, water power and steam, and
scores of stacks idle or going to ruin, We
paid last year the population OF foreign
Countries to the number Of thirty-fye thou
sand families Tor making, working and roll
ing irOn for us abroad which We could have
made, and wrought, and rolled in our own
mountains, on our own rivers, enhancing
the value OF our own acres, increasing the
energy and intelligence of our own people
and developing resources still covered up
by cur forests or lying unimProved under
the prairies of the West. But we prefer TO
let our legislators tinker every year at the
foundations OF this immense interest, until
its walls crack open, aud those whose all is
involved in it hy from il in terror, while
others, with capital to spare, who would
gladly Invest in ii, as and parslyzed, not
knowing from year ts year what is 10 hap,
pen next. We prefer 10 support-noI the
honest working iron men abrosd-sut their
aristoc ratio masters and despOsic goverp-
ments, merely to please unscrupulous bro
&ers aud foreign agents, sho assault odr
Congressmen shamelessly. .aith OmaiPotent
lem 9tatiUnS, and debadch the morals OF our
to gain five and ten per
cent, commissions to themselves. We are
,lad to sss Pennsylvania, al all events, alive
% the evil which to her will be fatal u not