Savannah courier. (Savannah, Tenn.) 1885-1979, 1901-07-19
GREAT wORKsHopSoF VULCAN
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-.
virons 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: thel domain. of iron, and
steel. Coal crops out of the hills al
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
are, to be sure, in almost every city
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-are 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 line Of
freight cars extending across the At
lantic, if such thing were possible
and forming a 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 maj
the names Braddock, Bessemer, Ran
kin, Duquesne, Homestead and Nun
hall stand only for suburbs of the
Iron city. Each, however, forms al
important link in the chain of mon
ster plants which stretches up the val
| ley of the Monongahela, zigzaggina
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 a!
rails, sheets, boiler-plates, or any 9th
err of score of forms, but the genesi!
of all is the same.