I
recommended our people to send Du Puy to Cleveland to contract for all
the roll-scale of my friend's establishment. He did so, buying it for
fifty cents per ton and having it shipped to him direct. This
continued for some time. I expected always to hear of the joke being
discovered. The premature death of Mr. Chisholm occurred before I
could apprise him of it. His successors soon, however, followed our
example.
I had not failed to notice the growth of the Bessemer process. If this
proved successful I knew that iron was destined to give place to
steel; that the Iron Age would pass away and the Steel Age take its
place. My friend, John A. Wright, president of the Freedom Iron Works
at Lewiston, Pennsylvania, had visited England purposely to
investigate the new process. He was one of our best and most
experienced manufacturers, and his decision was so strongly in its
favor that he induced his company to erect Bessemer works. He was
quite right, but just a little in advance of his time. The capital
required was greater than he estimated. More than this, it was not to
be expected that a process which was even then in somewhat of an
experimental stage in Britain could be transplanted to the new country
and operated successfully from the start. The experiment was certain
to be long and costly, and for this my friend had not made sufficient
allowance.
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