Barton County democrat. [volume] (Great Bend, Kan.) 1885-1915, 1890-12-04

we are. however, making great progress
toward a cheap way.
Already in 1855 French chemist dir
covered a method fer ser1rat:ng the
aluminium from the clay and
since then inventors In all parts
of thesworld have been at work on the
problem The difficulty has not been
so much: in making the metal as in
making it cheaply; for men do want
them cheap and struggle to make them
so. Notwithstanding the assertions CT
the protectionist leader. that cheap and
nasty 60 together, and that cheapness IS
un-American- Some years after the
Frenchman's invention the price of the
metal was $40 a pound. and France
made most of the worlds supply Then
an Englishman invented a much better
way of making it. and the price went to
less than IS pound. -
Some four or five years ago American
manufacturers began to make alumni
mum; and Major Mckinley has jast put
a duty of Is cents pound on the metal
for the encouragement OF those manu-
facturers: but before the bill became
a law Chicago chemist announced the
invention of process by which it can
be produced for less than I5 cents
pound
If this announcement proves true, we
are on the eve of a great industrial
revolution For what are the qualities
of this remarkable metal? The two
qualities that give 1t the preference
over other metals are its lightness and
its strength. A pound of it is about
three times the size of a pound of iron;
it is more than four times as bulky as
silver and more than seven times as
bulky as gold. The strength of this
metal is no less remark able than its
lightness- Make an alloy OF 1t with
copper and the product is what is called
aluminium bronco A beam of this alloy
Will support as great a weight as can be
borne by one made of the finest crucibl
steel Make wire cable of it, and no
no other metal will bear an equal
strain. Make it red hot and it melts;
cast it then into a mold and it is soft
and as easily worked as silver. Bat ham
mer it or roll it and it becomes almost
as hard as iron 1t can be drawn out
into a wire as fine as a spiders web, or
it can be beaten into a leaf as thin as
gold leaf. 1t neither rusts nor furnishes
under the influence of water or air
With its great strength and lightness
1t can be readily seen that 1t Will COM
pletely supersede steel in the building
of steam boats. III house construction. in
rails for our railroads. and in thou
sand other things 1t has already been
arranged to construct railroads cars
with it, a steamboat built with it will
have a tonnage only one-third as great
as one built of steel
What will be the effect of this on
existing industries like iron and steel
making? 1t is possible that eventually
most Of them may be closed up And
what of the laborers employed in them?
It will have to find employment in
other ways-a hardship to few labor
ers, of course. but far outweiged by the
general good to all laborers. The
greatest happiness to tNe greatest num-
Der will be attained n the shape of
cheaper comforts, while a few men may
lose their present employment just as
the freer admission of foreign cloth
would be a great blessing to thousands
of people, although a small number
might lose their present work. The
rule of progress is the greatest possible
cheapness for the greatest possible num-
her