The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1901-06-27
GREAT wORKsHoPSoF VULCAN
immensely of the Steel and Iron In
dustry in the City of
Pittsburgh.

Writing of ''The Center of the World
of Steel" Walden Fawcett, in Cen
fury, describes Pittsburgh and its en-
yirons as Vulcan's greatest workshop.
To the superficial tourist it is, per-
haps, only the dirtiest city in America.
To the Pittsburgher, who is gripped
by the fascination of iron-making, and
to all who look through his spectacles,
it is still the dirtiest but also the most
magnificent of cities. To this typical
resident its clouded atmosphere is
symbolic only of rush and dash and
power and the accumulation of wealth
with splendid rapidity. Pittsburgh,
moreover, is secure in her position as
the capital of: thej domain. of iron. and
steel Coal crops out of the hills at
her back; great engineering projects
are making of the river that passes
her gates an improved highway of
commerce; her railroads are multiply
ing; and, finally, her metal manufac-
turers, reaching out for foreign mar
kets, have discovered that they can
utilize the very cars which bring iron
ore back to the lakes the finished prod
uct, and there ship it through the St.
Lawrence river direct to the ports on
the other side of the Atlantic.
The great product of the Pitts
burgh district in this present age is,
strictly speaking, not iron, but steel.
AS a commercial commodity, the one
has largely displaced the other. There
4 10, 81, -,
foundries which handle only the met
al which was once preeminent in the
manufacturing world, but rails for
steam and electric lines, beams for
| ships and sky-scrapers, armor-plate
| for war vessels, and heavy supports
for bridges-in fact, all the commodi-
ties which may be produced profitably
in large quantities-ase formed of
| steel, and thus the product of nearly
all the great plants in this crowded
| district reaches the consuming world
in the form of the tougher and more
elastic metals. Pittsburgh sends from
| her freight yards and docks each year
millions of tons of this valuable mate
| rial; enough, indeed, to fill a line of
! freight cars extending across the At
lantic, if such thing were possible,
and forming Il stock in trade repre-
senting more money than the United
| States government receives in revenue
from all sources within year.
Although many of the immense
iron and steel-making plants which
surround Pittsburgh and constitute
her modern defenses are under one
general management, each institution
is complete in itself. On the map
| the names Braddock, Bessemer, Ran
kin, Duquesne, Homestead and Mum
| hall stand only for suburbs of the
Iron city. Each, however, forms an
| important link in the chain of mon
| ster plants which stretches up the val
| ley of the Monongahela, zigZagging
back and forth across the river. These
great establishments are not dupli-
Gates of one another, by any means,
and yet, to a certain extent, the diff
| ference is only in detail. The rapid
and thrillingly picturesque evolution
of steel from iron ore may be watched
| in almost any one of them. The
strands of burning metal, after having
| been pounded and pressed and rolled,
may be measured off for the market as
rails, sheets, boiler-plates, or any 9TH
er of a score of forms, but the genesis
of all is the same.