Lancaster daily intelligencer. [volume] (Lancaster, Pa.) 1864-1928, 1881-06-22
The Bessener Steel imposition.

WEDNESDAY EvEN'0, JUNE "a, 1881.
The Bessener Steel Imposition.
While the iron furnaces and rolling
mills of the country are working on
very near margin of profit, and many OF
them even at q loss, the Bessemer steel
mills are making money very rapidly.
Their stocks are selling at treble their
par value and they all are paying heavy
dividends, while each is accumulating
a large surplus, and moreover is spend
ing money like water in increasing its
facilities of manufacture. The Penn
sylvania steel works, near Harrisburg,
with its stock selling at about $500 per
share and a treasury over6owing with
surplus of over two millions, has
an army of men employed in enlarging
its works. The Edgar Thomson, near
Pittsburgh, which has just finished erect
ing three blast furnaces that turn out the
largest product Of any furnaces in the
country, about three thousand tons
a week, consumes it all in its
steel works, together with the
product of the Lucy furnaces,
at Pittsburgh, owned by the Messrs.
Carnegie, who are chief owners in the
Edgar Thomson. With one pair of Bes-
semer converters, of seven tons capacity
each, nearly thirty-five hundred tons of
steel are produced every week or a seven-
ton charge about every twenty minutes !;
and not content with this yield the COM
pany is about to put in three ten ton con-
verters. All the other steel mills in the
country are in a like condition of activity
and prosperity, and straining every
energy to produce the largest possible
yield.
OF course the foundation for this zeal
is the great demand for steel rails, IN the
active railroad building that is now
going on. But there is also great con-
sumption of iron in the country, which
yet does not stimulate the iron prOduc-
tiOn as that of steel is stimulated. The
reason of this is that the use of Besse-
mer steel lessons the demand for iron,
and leaves the capacity of the iron mills
more than equal to the demand while
the steel mills are not yet equal in Ca
pacity to the present demand, and we are
importing steel rails because of the in
ability of the home manufacturers to
supply the home market.
The great demand enables the steel
mill combination to keep the price of
rails up to the figure at which they can
he imported and yet secure all the
orders they can fill. The duty on
steel, which is twenty-eight dol
lars Il ton, is for the most part
tax levied upon the railroads of the coun-
try, and finally upon the people, for the
profit of the steel manufacturers and
without securing any benefit to the
country by its virtue in keeping the steel
manufactures running for they could
run anyhow, if there was no greater
duty laid on steel than on the raw pig
metal.
Here is the secret of the great stimu-
lation Of the steel industry. 1t is not
only the demand for steel, but it is the
immense profit of the manufacture that
is secured by the twenty-eight dollar
duty nearly all of which is the manu.
facturer's profit. Bessemer steel is really
easier and cheaper to make than wrought
iron rs anyone can easily see who re-
fleets that a seven-tOn Bessemer Osnver-
ter converts seven tons of pig iron into
steel in twenty minutes, or five hundred
tons in day whereas a pudding fur
mace converts only about two tons of
cast iron into wrought iron in a day,
with the skilled labor of four men. OF
course the Bessemer plant uses vastly
more capital and many more men than
the pudding furnace but not by any
means two hundred and fifty times more.
Taking only such a rough and ready
view as this of the comparative cost of
converting cast iron into steel and
wrought iron, quite suffices to convince
anyone, however unskilled in the iron
manufacture, that Bessemer steel is
much the least costly Of the two to pro-
duce and yet it costs the consumer a
fourth more. Steel rails are selling now
at sixty to sixty-two dollars ton and
iron rails at fOrty-five to fifty.
1t is very apparent that if iron rails can
be sold at forty-five dollars a ton, steel
rails can be sold at large profit at the
same figure. They do not i'm fact cost
forty dollars ton to produce; and they
are converted as cheaply in this country
as in England, owing to the greater ra-
pidity of the conversion in our mills.
The English mills have not succeeded in
securing the large product in a given
time that is obtained here. OF course
the English pig iron is cheaper and
therefore the English steel is probably
produced at less total cost than our
own but certainly there is no twenty
eight dollars of a duty needed to protect
the home manufacturer. Nothing is
more clear than that this duty should be
greatly reduced. The reduction is need
ed now especially, to protect us from the
of the extravagant prices de-
for rails. After a while, and no
great while either, when the steel pro-
ducing capacity of the country becomes
greater than the steel consumption, the
duty will be of less consequence for
the competition then between the
steel producers for orders will serve to