Atlantic City Paper - A Decade in American Blast-Furnace Practice (Discussion, p. 973)

The iron industry has been so markedly the cynosure of all eyes, that a sense of weariness has overtaken many on-lookers, and a new wonder is desired. While the commercial phase of the iron industry has necessarily engrossed the public attention and probably is the more worthy of record, still the mechanical and metallurgical phases have recorded conspicuous advances and merit attention. In order to appreciate the present condition of blast-furnace practice, it is necessary before enumerating the advances made during the past decade to give a brief discussion of the tendencies in the methods of administration as well as the conditions governing supremacy, for these factors have modified the aims of the manager. It might also be well to apologize for a record of the advances made during such a short period as a decade, were it not that, for the individual, time is marked as much by the impressions recorded on the brain as by the jumps of the second hand of a watch. Furthermore, this article is written in order to carry out a project of the late Dr. Egleston, to have a record made each decade. I regret that the data collected by him, and forwarded to me, end with 1896, and therefore do not include the interesting results which followed the introduction of Mesabi ores. The perusal of the notes is melancholy reading, somewhat like the feelings we experience in going through a graveyard. It is a record made up of so many plants, which have ceased to be factors in the iron world, if they are not entirely moribund. Historically, they would be interesting, emphasizing as they do the abnormal and somewhat overestimated importance of furnace lines, taken without proper reference to volume of blast and nature of stock used. I regret, however, that the time at my disposal does not permit of this presentation.