New York Paper - The Trend in the Science of Metals

Each generation accepts the developments of the preceding generations without full appreciation of the difficulties that had to be overcome or of the effect of any given development on society. Today, the production of pig iron is the yardstick with which general industrial health and progress are measured. So natural and logical does this seem to us, that it is difficult to picture conditions prior to the fourteenth century when pig iron was unknown. Not only was pig iron unknown but iron or steel could not be melted and poured into castings; all iron and steel articles were forged from sponge iron. All castings, as well as many worked articles, were made of non-ferrous metals or alloys. In many parts of the world, over long periods of time, not only was the annual exchange value of non-ferrous metals greater than that of iron and steel, but their combined tonnage was greater. At present, the value of the pig iron produced in a year is of the same order of magnitude as that of all non-ferrous metals combined; the tonnage of pig iron is, however, about twenty times that of all non-ferrous metals combined. Owing to lack of records, we will probably never know the relative importance of the various metals at all periods in historic times. A certain conclusion is that the iron and steel industry, since the discovery of pig iron and the cheap methods of converting it into steel, has grown at a much more rapid rate than the non-ferrous metal industries. Notwithstanding their fundamental fitness for man's needs, iron and steel owe their importance in no small degree to the low cost of production. The low cost was a result of increased knowledge of the production appliances and of the metallurgical processes. This increased knowledge is the key to our modern industrial civilization. It will remain for future generations to determine whether there is now going on a gradual change toward greater importance of the non-ferrous metals, as compared to iron and steel. The world's pig iron production in 1920 was slightly more than twice what it was in 1890, whereas the non-ferrous metals production in 1920 was about two and one-half times that in 1890. Every non-ferrous metal industry has shown marked growth during the last thirty years. During this period, the production of cop-