Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

46 BRITAIN AT WORK. even home markets, iron manufacture is still a considerable industry in the kingdom. There are blast furnaces in Cleveland, Durham, Scotland, West Cumberland, Lan- cashire, Yorkshire, Derbyshire, and other counties. Indeed, at night the glare from the furnaces is seen on many a countryside. The tall brick structures, with their iron- plated parapets and turrets, once lighted, are seldom allowed to cool. They are the red-hot centres of unremitting toil; and the fillers are ever busy on the circular ways at their summits. The waggons, laden with Photo by permission of the Wigan Coal and Iron Company, TEEMING STEEL FROM LADLE. calcined iron ore and coke, are lifted eighty or one hundred feet high, and toppled into the yawning fiery cavity, in which the iron is liquefied, ultimately running from the base of the furnace into the sand moulds, in the shape of “pig” iron, so called be- cause the sand gutters into which the metal flows bear some “ resemblance to a sow with her pigs sucking.” The metal, in its crystallised state, is like the stubborn Englishman. You can break it, perhaps ; but you cannot bend it. Consequently it is placed in the puddling furnace, and the pudcller, with his long iron rabble, or bar, moves it hither and thither in its melted condition till impurity has been worked out of it, and it is malleable—wrought practically into subjection. The conversion of iron into steel by the Bessemer process is not only beautiful in display, but characterised by simplicity. The converter, which made the inventor famous, is a large oval vessel with a big spout. It is lined with firebrick, road drift, or ganister, and moves on an axis. The pig iron, melted in a cupola, is run into the converter, and then a strong blast of air technically called a “ blow,” is sent through the fluid mass. The effect is wonclrously pic- turesque. The combustion is so fierce that the metal is swiftly brought into intense heat, and freed from impurity. Out of the mouth of the converter rush a myriad sparks and brilliant tongues of flame ; and in the depths of the vessel there is the toss and bubble of the lambent iron, which throws off the most beauteous tints of crimson, blue, and gold. Close by, in the almost blinding glare, stand the steel workers, statuesque, gauging the effect of the “ blow.” The slightest hesitation on their part may spoil the material ; but they act in the nick of time. The converter is dipped, turned downward, and the necessary quantity of spiegel- eisen added to the molten metal, with which it chemically combines, pro- ducing steel. The converter is lowered again by hydraulic power, and its contents, white as driven snow, flow , into ladle and into mould, assuming the form of the ingots applied to the manufacture of rails, bridge work, cranks, wheels, boilers, marine engine shafts, and many articles of trade and house- hold use. For instance, the Bessemer pro- cess has revolutionised the railway tracks of the world, from the old iron roads to the long, sinuous ways of gleaming steel. One English railway alone, making its own rails, turns out thirty thousand tons yearly. The ingots are taken out of the furnace to the mouths of the revolving rollers in the rail mill, and mangled first into thick bars of steel ; and then compressed, elongated, and shaped, till they are passed on from the last pair of rollers to the circular saws, which cut and turn them to thirty feet lengths, perfect rails, ready for the track. Though Bessemer steel is so widely used, not only in this kingdom but abroad, the making of crucible steel is not obsolete. Huntsman’s discovery of melting in the pot, with a chemical flux as his secret, led to the production of steel of the finest