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In the current issue of the SUPPLEMENT will be found the fourth article of a series on the subject of American engineering competition, recently contributed to The London Times by a special correspondent of that journal, who made an extensive trip through the manufacturing States of this country with a view to furnishing himself, by personal observation, with the necessary data. The present article deals with the steel works of this country and the methods employed by our iron masters as contrasted with those which prevail in Great Britain. The article brings out some facts of special interest tending to show why it. is that steel manufacturers in this country have been able to compete with such remarkable success against the older established industries of Europe. The enormous works of the Carnegie Steel Company are selected as typical of the best American practice, and from the figures given in the article to show the vast extent of the plant, we select the following: There are three principal works, the Edgar Thomson, the Duquesne, and the Homestead Steel Works, which included, when they were visited by The Times correspondent, seventeen blast furnaces, whose aggregate annual capacity was 2,200,000 tons. The Edgar Thomson Works produced 650,000 tons of rails ayear. The Duquesne Steel Works have an annual capacity of 650,000 tons of steel ingots, while that of the Homestead Works is 400,000 tons of Bessemer steel ingots and 1,400,000 tons of open-hearth steel ingots. There is also at the Edgar Thomson Works a foundry which turns out 50.000 tons of iron, steel, and brass castings per year. The Upper Union Steel Mills of this company annually produce structural steel, steel bars, and plates to the extent of 250,000 tons ; while at the Lower Union Steel Mills 150,000 tons of plates, car forgings, bridge work, angle iron, etc., are turned out annually. Another property is the Howard Axle Works, with a capacity of 100,000 tons per year. The company also possesses most extensive coke works, and a natural gas field of 206 square miles. They have built their own line of railway from Lake Erie to Pittsburg, at the Lake Erie end of which is a well-equipped dock and ore handling establishment; and they operate also their own line of steamers. These transportation facilities serve to bring 5,500 000 tons of ironstone from the company's own Lake Superior mines to the great system of forges and mills above mentioned near Pittsburg. As to the capital invested and turned over in these vast operations it is sufficient to say that, in a recent threatened litigation, it transpired that the profits of the company in 1898 were estimated at $21,000,000, and in 1899 at the enormous figure of $40,000,000. It seems that the American blast furnace is not, as a rule, any larger than those used in Great Britain, and, of course, the process of reducing the ore is, broadly speaking, the same. But there is one respect in which the practice of the blast furnace managers is radically different; and this is, that in the United States it is customary to force the production much more than it is elsewhere. The larger output per furnace in America is, of course, due, in some measure, to the superior quality of the ore, but the extremely high yield is to be mainly credited to the American practice of driving the furnaces, as they expressively put it, "for all they are worth." The deciding factor in the economics of blast furnace operation is the wear and tear of the interior lining; of the furnace, which, as soon as it has been burnt away to a definite minimum thickness, has to be renewed. The work of lighting one of these huge furnaces is so costly that they are run continuously, night auti day, 83 from the time they are started until the interior lining is worn out, and the furnace has to be " blown down " to receive a new lining. Since the stopping of a furnace and the building up of the inner lining are extremely costly, it becomes a question whether the best economical results are obtained by driving the furnace at a moderate speed, and thereby prolonging its life, or driving at extremely high pressure, with a view to securing a very large annual output, and making repairs at correspondingly frequent intervals. British practice favors the first method, American the second ; our ironmasters believing that since " a lining is good for so much pig, the sooner it makes it the better." The difference in practice is shown by the fact that whereas the largest Middlesbrough furnaces, with a capacity of 36,000 cubic feet each, produce only 950 tons of pig iron per week per furnace, the Duquesne furnaces,with a capacity of 25,000 cubic feet, have produced 4,200 tons per week. Of course, the life of the American furnaces, working under this terrific pressure, is very much shortened, lasting on an average only four years, as against one case where the lining of a British furnace lasted eighteen years. Another broad distinction between British and American furnaces is sententiously expressed by The Times correspondent, when he says ''nothing seemed to me more notable at the Duquesne Works than their loneliness." He further says : "Had it not been for the subdued hum, characteristic of a furnace in blast, one might have thought that the works were shut down," so completely had mechanical appliances taken the place of hand labor. In the production of steel ingots, rails, plates, etc., from the mine to the mill, the American instinct for labor-saving has been followed even to detail. From the iron mine in Minnesota to the ship-meat of the finished product on the cars at Pittsburg, the American ironmaster does not expect any hand labor to appear in the whole process of manufacture, the single exception being the filling of the buckets which take the ore out of the ship on the lakes, for which spadework is employed. Of course, as has been suggested above, one great advantage enjoyed by American steel manufacturers is the extraordinary richness and accessibility of the iron ore in the Lake Superior region, immense masses of which lie on the slopes of the hills, covered only by a thin layer ol surfaee soil. A railway track, quickly laid over the surfaee of tne ground, brings into operation a steam shovel which, digging up the ore at the rate of five tons to the shovelful, at five strokes will fill a 25-ton ore ear, and will load a train of cars at the rate of 600 tons an hour. The significance of such work as this, in connection with mines so extensive and rich, will be more fully appreciated when we remember that in the Mesaba range alone there are in sight 400,000,000 tons of iron ore.
