Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/752

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H. C. Leonard. The stack was modelled after the Barnum stack at Lime Hock, Connecticut, and was put up by G. D. Wilbur of that state. Its foun dations were laid on the bed-rock at a depth of 16 feet, and it was constructed of solid, dry stone- work, covering a space of thirty-six square feet. The stack itself was built of hewn stone, obtained on the ground; was thirty-four foet square at the base, thirty-two feet high, and twenty-six feet square at the top. On top of the stack was a chimney, built of brick, forty feet high, and containing the oven for heating the air for the blast. The diameter of the top of the lower pyramid in which the smelting takes place was ten feet. The blow-house was built on the ground near the stack. The machinery for driving the air was propelled by water. The blast was furnished by two blowing cylinders of wood, five feet in diameter and six feet stroke. Char coal was used for fuel. The capacity of the works was designed to be ten tons in twenty-four hours. The ore to be tested was the variety known as brown hematite, and it was found to yield from forty-six to seventy per cent of pure iron. The timber for making charcoal was in the immediate vicinity, and every circumstance seemed to promise success. The works reached com pletion in June 1867, having cost $126,000. The first run was made on the 24th of August, six tons of good metal being produced, which, on being sent to the S. F. founderies, was pronounced a superior article. By the first of October the Oregon Iron Co. had. made 225 tons of pig-iron, costing to make twenty-nine dollars per ton, exclusive of interest on capital and taxes. The experiment, for experiment it was, proving that iron could be produced more cheaply in Oregon than in other parts of the U. S., though not so cheaply by half as in England, was satisfactory to those who had no capital in the enterprise, if not to those who had. The cost was distributed as follows:

166 bushels of charcoal, costing at the furnace 8 cents $13 28

88 pounds lime, costing at furnace 4 cents 3 52

4,970 pounds of ore, costing at the furnace $2.50 a ton 5 50

Labor reducing ore, per ton 6 67 \n $28 97

Broivne s Resources, 219-22; Or. City Enterprise, June 8, 1867; Clackamas County Resources, 1. J. Ross Browne, in his very readable work, the Resources of the Pacific States and Territories, 220-1, published at S. F. in 1869, gives the relative cost of producing iron in England and the United States. An establishment, he says, capable of making 10,000 tons annually in this coun try would cost altogether, with the capital to carry it on, $2,000,000, while in England the same establishment, with the means to carry it on, would cost $800,000. At the same time the interest on the American capital would exceed that on the English capital by $120,000. In the U. S. a fair average cost of producing pig-iron was not less than $35 per ton, while in England and Wales it was $14, to which should be added the difference caused by the greater rate of interest in the U. S. See also Langley^s Trade Pac., i. 9-10; Portland Orerjonian, July 28, 1866.

Owing to an error in building the stack, which limited the production of metal to eight tons per diem, the works were closed in 1869, after turning out 2,400 tons. Some of the iron manufactured was made up into stoves in Port land, and some of it in the construction of Ladd & Tilton s bank. It sold readily in S. F. at the highest market price, where, owing to being rather soft, it was mixed with Scotch pig. In 1874 the works were reopened, and ran for two years, producing 5,000 tons. In 1877 they were sold to the Oswego Iron Company, under whose management it was thought the production could be made to reach 500 tons a month. The sales for 1881 exceeded $150,000.

One serious disadvantage in smelting iron in Oregon was the lack of lime rock in the vicinity of the iron beds, and the cost of lime obtained formerly from San Juan Island or from Santa Cruz in California, and recently from New Tacoma. Limestone has often been reported discovered in various parts of the state, but no lime-quarries of any extent have yet been opened with kilns \n