Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/804

784 average product per man of the furnaces of Great Britain, which for 1870 was estimated at 173 tons, is reported to have been 194 tons in 1880, and 261 tons in 1884.

Third. The substitution of steel for iron has resulted in a notable diminution of the consumption of iron for the attainment of a given result, or, in other words, more work is attainable from a less weight of material. Sir Lowthian Bell, in his testimony before the Royal British Commission, stated that a ship of 1,700 tons requires 17 per cent less in weight of pig-iron, in being built of steel rather than of iron, and is capable of doing 7 per cent more work.

Again, the quantity of pig-iron requisite for keeping a railroad in repair will depend greatly upon the state in which iron enters into construction; rails of steel, for example, having a far greater durability than rails of iron.

A further example of recent economic disturbance consequent upon changes in the manufacture of iron—characterized by the Secretary of the British Iron Trade Association, in his report for 1886, as "one of the most remarkable of modern times"—is to be found in the rapid disuse of the system invented about one hundred years ago by Henry Cort for converting pig-iron into malleable iron by the so-called process of "puddling." Twenty years ago the use of this process was almost universal, to-day it is almost a thing that has past; and the loss of British capital invested in puddling-furnaces which have been abandoned in the ten years from 1875 to 1885, is estimated to have approximated £4,667,000, or $23,333,000, involving in Great Britain alone a displacement, or transfer of workmen to other branches of industry during the same period of about 39,000.

—This metal touched the lowest price on record in 1886, Lake Superior copper in New York falling from 25 cents per pound