Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 38.djvu/337

Rh beat out the long bars. The liners are paid 30s. a ton, the hammer-men 23s. 9d. per ton—that is to say, both together, £2 13s. 9d. The laborers are generally composed partly of negroes (slaves), partly of servants from Germany or Ireland bought for a term of years. . . . For four months in summer, when the heat is the most oppressive, all labor is suspended at the furnaces and forges."

About 1732 Colonel Spotswood erected some air-furnaces at a place called Massaponux, in Virginia, and used them "to melt his sow iron, in order to cast it into sundry utensils, such as backs for chimneys, andirons, fenders, plates for hearths, pots, mortars, rollers for gardeners, skillets, boxes for cart-wheels, and many other things. And, being cast from the sow iron, are much better than those which come from England, which are cast immediately from the ore for the most part. . . . Here are two of these air-furnaces in one room, that so in case one want repair the other may work, they being exactly of the same structure." It is said that in 1760 about six hundred tons of iron were smelted in Spotswood's furnaces, most of which was sent to England.

About 1750 Baron Henry William Stiegel came to Pennsylvania from Germany, "with good recommendations and a great deal of money." Soon after he purchased a tract of land in Lancaster County and laid out the town of Manheim; here he built a furnace, and named it after his wife, Elizabeth; some time afterward he built another furnace at Schaeff erstown, Lebanon County, and it was here that he cast stoves (made of six plates of iron), which were among the first made in the country. The baron fully appreciated the value of advertising, and on each of the stoves he cast the following couplet:

 Baron Stiegel ist der Mann, Der die Ofen machen kann"—

which signifies, "Baron Stiegel is the man who knows how to make stoves"; but, notwithstanding his skill and enterprise, he failed in his business. This result was due in a great degree to the difficulty of making prompt collections, and to the general stagnation of business due to the political complications with the mother-country. Elizabeth Furnace finally came into the possession of Robert Coleman, who cast shot, shells, and cannon for the Continental army. Some of the credits in his account with the Government are decidedly interesting. On November 16, 1782, appears the following entry: "By cash, being the value of 42 German prisoners of war, at £30 each, £1,200," and on June 14, 1783: "By cash, being the value of 28 German prisoners of war, at £30 each, £840."

During the Revolutionary War the manufacture of iron made little technological progress. Such establishments as possessed