Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 12.djvu/347

Rh the South can more than compete with Northern furnaces, and it remains to be seen what the great iron manufacturing interests in Pennsylvania and the North generally will do to counteract the advantages in this industry in the South. It is not only in the manufacture of pig iron that the South has demonstrated her economic advantages, but she is now diversifying her work in iron in every possible way, by putting up other manufacturing establishments, such as rolling mills, pipe works, car and wheel works, foundries and machine shops, and turning out finished products, such as stoves, agricultural implements, car wheels, iron pipe, in fact every variety of articles and machines, even to the construction of locomotives and the smallest kinds of iron goods sold on the market. This new feature saves the cost of transportation on iron to the North, and also the freight on the finished product returned to the South, and affords employment to laborers and mechanics at the shops, giving employment and retaining money at Southern centers.

While this is going on, more and more iron is being shipped northward and sold at the doors of Northern furnaces. Shipments are even going beyond the borders of the United States, and it is conceded now that Southern manufacturers of iron will control the market in prices and facilities. "Those who have visited the districts were impressed with its remarkable advantages for the production of cheap iron. The ore, coke, coal and excellent limestone are in contiguity, and it is figured that the total cost of material at the furnace in the Birmingham district will average about $1.12½ per ton of iron produced, against $4 and $5 in the Lehigh and Schuylkill valleys." (R. W. Raymond, mining engineer.) "But dealing with the industry as it exists to-day, a candid survey of the situation will lead to the admission that if it should come to a struggle between furnaces in eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York, which produce