Publisher's Synopsis
From the Preface.
THERE are two groups of facts regarding the modern steel business, which especially concern the American manufacturers and users of this material.
1st. Three French men-of-war, built out of Bessemer and Martin steels, were so successfully constructed in 1873 that three more large ships were ordered in 1874, to be built from the same materials. Several Bessemer works in England are running exclusively on a general merchant product having a large range of grades and uses, and taking the place of both crucible steel and wrought iron. The Continental works are turning probably a third of their Bessemer product and nearly all their Martin product into other forms than rails. All the late locomotives-many hundreds-on the London and North Western Railway are built of Bessemer steel, excepting only the wheels and necessary castings. Everywhere, abroad, Bessemer and Martin steels are more and more extensively and satisfactorily employed for ship and boiler plates, beams, channels and angles for ships, bridges and other structures, railway tires and axles, general shafting, agricultural implements and the multitudinous forms of machinery bars, and forgings. In the railway and machine shops, the bridge works and shipyards of Europe and of France especially, the method of treating steel-of heating and shaping it and building it successfully into machinery and engineering structures, has become, what it must everywhere become, before this material can be employed to the best advantage, a distinct and highly developed art.
2d. In the United States, out of a Bessemer product of 350,000 tons per year, probably less than 6000 tons are used for other purposes than rails. Very few Bessemer works have any machinery for producing the various constructive shapes required, or any experience in making steel of high or low grades. Bessemer manufacturers are talking about reducing product, in the fear that rail orders will fall below the capacity of their works. Martin steel is now made in American works, regularly and successfully, of all grades, from springs down to boilerplates, thus furnishing every constructive grade required. Engineers and machinists are generally asking for just such material as steel has proved to be abroad, but are yet hesitating about the use of steel, because our Bessemer manufacturers have not got much into the way of making other grades than rail steel, and Martin manufacturers have not until quite recently begun to adopt those improvements in plant and practice which will make steel cheaply; and also because our artisans have not in most cases made any study of the art of working steel, and are therefore afraid of it. Experts say that the use of wood, not only in ocean vessels, but in river and lake boats and barges, must soon give way to the use of metal, as it has done abroad and is beginning to do here; and there are thousands of wooden bridges on our railways and highways which must soon be replaced by metal; so that for these two large uses, not to speak of general machine construction, there is growing up a vast market for a better material than iron. Excellent pig for the production of cheap steel is obtainable in all parts of the country, and ferro-manganese, upon which important qualities of constructive steels depend, is now cheap enough to warrant its general use.
