Upon some occasion a blast
furnace had attempted to smelt the flue cinder, and from its greater
purity the furnace did not work well with a mixture intended for an
impurer article; hence for years it was thrown over the banks of the
river at Pittsburgh by our competitors as worthless. In some cases we
were even able to exchange a poor article for a good one and obtain a
bonus.
But it is still more unbelievable that a prejudice, equally unfounded,
existed against putting into the blast furnaces the roll-scale from
the mills which was pure oxide of iron. This reminds me of my dear
friend and fellow-Dunfermline townsman, Mr. Chisholm, of Cleveland. We
had many pranks together. One day, when I was visiting his works at
Cleveland, I saw men wheeling this valuable roll-scale into the yard.
I asked Mr. Chisholm where they were going with it, and he said:
"To throw it over the bank. Our managers have always complained that
they had bad luck when they attempted to remelt it in the blast
furnace."
I said nothing, but upon my return to Pittsburgh I set about having a
joke at his expense. We had then a young man in our service named Du
Puy, whose father was known as the inventor of a direct process in
iron-making with which he was then experimenting in Pittsburgh.
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