New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1870-05-06
U1STEFUL IRON IMPORTATIONS.

By carefully kept account of exports of
iron to the United States, it appears that the
amount sent by England during 1869 was $685.,
554 tuns while in 1868 it was only 413,702 tuns
an increase of almost exactly twenty-five per
cent. 1t is remarkable that we should buy so
much Iron abroad, when such vast amounts of
! Iron Ore incumber our soil at home. In Nlr-
ginia North Carolina, Georgia, and other States
of the South, attention has recently been di-
rected to immense tracts containing the finest
Iron Ores: to ridges of rock wholly made up OF
them, and to hungry and unemployed labor in
equal abundance waiting to be paid for making
Iron or anything else. The West is alive to
new resources of the same sort Coal and Iron
are found together in many places where only
one was, until recently, believed to exist, and
the Iron manufacture has been tOlerably ac-
tive in the better established districts which
possess facilities in Ore and Coal for indefinite
extension.
Why, then, do we need 100000 tuns from En-
gland in one year! What economy can there
be in paying for this great quantity, which
costs us, in the average, fifty dollars per tun,
or thirty millions of dOllars7 Thirty millions
of dollars is a large sum. 1t would fill Virginia
and North Carolina with prosperity to spend
one-ffth of it for iron made i'll those States.
1t would develop Illinois and Missouri beyond
example if one-quarter of this 100000 tuns were
made from the Iron Mountain by the aid of
Illinois coal. If Wisconsin and Minnesota had
a market for their grain at irOn-wOrks on Lake
Superior making 100000 tuns of this iron, they
would find greater relief from their present
distress than any foreign market could afford
This iron is classified in the British returns as
being of Railroad Of all sorts, $4,000 tuns (;
"Pg Iron, 1888 tuns y the remainder being
mainly bar and wrought iron. Railroad iron is,
therefore the most important of our foolish
and wasteful foreign purchases, and pig iron is
next in amount Both are the cheapest and
readiest forms of iron to make anywhere At
the head of Lake Superior, they should be made
for every foot of railroad in Minnesota, and for
every foundery within two hundred miles of
St. Paul. 1t should be the shame of Missouri
to permit single bar of Welsh rails to be
laid down beyond the Mississippi, or to pur-
chase tun of Scotch pig for castings in st.
Louis. At ChicagO-but their folly is so great
there that the lively free-traders of that city
should use nothing but rails made of Welsh
iron cinders and not pot should be cast in
Chicago of other than Scotch pig iron. We
can scarcely guess where all this vast quantity
of English IRON has been consumed but it
has been chiefly used in the West. 1t is prob
able that good deal of wheat has passed to
market over roads built of these rails; the
wheat selling at fifty or sixty cents a bushel,
when it should bring at least dollar. The
hardware stores of the wheat-grOwing North
West are selling foundery work made of this
$4,000 tuns of Scotch pig in flOurishing Chi
cagO. 1t pays the foundery man tOlerably well,
and the Scotch furnace-Owners much better
but does it pay "the farmer" to whom acres
of wheat are of small account in the purchase
of his needed machinery and castingsf Wheat
in 1867 and 1868 would buy an ample stock Of
tools, and leave liberal profit; but the i'm
pOrtatiOn of British iron was small and not
half as much went to Chicago as now goes
there. But gold and exchange went down !;
iron came in more freely, and the wheat could
not pay for it. And this first step toward Free
Trade and liberal commercial relations with
England has already paralyzed the markets of
the West, at the same time that it floods them
with British Iron.
What shall be done in the year 1907 Does
the West desire to see twenty-five per cent.
again added to the 600 900 tuns of British iron
of 1860, making 10000 tuns to be paid for, with
wheat at fifty cents bushelf The agents
who sell this iron will be pleased and profted; ;
and also few iron founders and railroad con-
tractors-at least while they can get their pay.
But, after while, even the railroads will fail
to pay their obligations for rails; and the
meters of Scotch pig will have a surplus of
pig or castings on hand, with not few I'M
collectable debts. 1t is a disgrace that this
country, with its wealth Of ores and coal, its