Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/755

Rh successes, or to draw intelligent inferences from their much more common failures. One somewhat prominent firm was so persistent in their ignorant faith that a certain iron was the best in America that, when they discovered that good steel could not be made therefrom, they abandoned an enterprise in which many thousands of dollars had been expended, because they firmly believed that they had demonstrated that it was impossible to make cast steel from American iron.

Swank tells us that in 1850 there were thirteen steel works in Pennsylvania which produced in that year 6,078 tons, of which but 44 tons were "cast steel." According to the same authority, the "Adirondack Iron and Steel Company, whose works were at Jersey City, N. J.," succeeded in February, 1849, in making "cast steel" in black-lead crucibles by melting "blister steel," made from iron that had been puddled with wood as the fuel. "Of the excellent quality of the "cast steel" manufactured at this time at these works there is abundant evidence in the testimony of Government experts and of many consumers. . . . It was used for chisels, turning and engravers' tools, drills, hammers, shears, razors, carpenters' tools, etc. Its manufacture was continued with encouraging results until 1853, when the business was abandoned by the company. It had not proved to be profitable, partly because of the prejudice existing against American 'cast steel,' and in some degree to the irregularity of the temper of the steel produced." The firm of Hussey, Wells & Co., of Pittsburg, began the erection of works in 1859, and in the following year they entered upon a successful business in the making of crucible cast steel of the best quality from American iron. In 1862 the firm of Park Brothers & Co., also of Pittsburg, achieved success with the same material. These were the first firms in America who were commercially as well as mechanically successful in the manufacture of "cast steel." Their works are still in operation and their products are well and favorably known.

There are various methods of making "crucible cast steel" besides that already mentioned as the discovery of Huntsman; one of these, which is in very common use, consists of melting in a plumbago crucible a certain weight of wrought iron cut into small pieces together with a sufficient amount of charcoal powder to properly carburize it during the process of fusion. Another method is to melt together proper proportions of "pig" and "wrought" iron. In all of the modern processes of making "cast steel" manganese enters in some form, its chief use being to effect the removal of any oxygen that may be present in the metal used.

We shall not attempt a description of the multitudes of "mixtures," "fluxes," and "physics," each intended to work wondrous