meeting of the Scranton Board of Trade, Monday, January 18, 1886.]

By J.A. PRICE.


Iron is the basis of our civilization. Its supremacy and power it is
impossible to overestimate; it enters every avenue of development, and
it may be set down as the prime factor in the world's progress. Its
utility and its universality are hand in hand, whether in the
magnificent iron steamship of the ocean, the network of iron rail upon
land, the electric gossamer of the air, or in the most insignificant
articles of building, of clothing, and of convenience. Without it, we
should have miserably failed to reach our present exalted station, and
the earth would scarcely maintain its present population; it is indeed
the substance of substances. It is the Archimedean lever by which the
great human world has been raised. Should it for a moment forget its
cunning and lose its power, earthquake shocks or the wreck of matter
could not be more disastrous. However axiomatic may be everything that
can be said of this wonderful metal, it is undoubtedly certain that it
must give way to a metal that has still greater proportions and vaster
possibilities. Strange and startling as may seem the assertion, yet I
believe it nevertheless to be true that we are approaching the period,
if not already standing upon the threshold of the day, when this magical
element will be radically supplanted, and when this valuable mineral
will be as completely superseded as the stone of the aborigines. With
all its apparent potency, it has its evident weaknesses; moisture is
everywhere at war with it, gases and temperature destroy its fiber and
its life, continued blows or motion crystallize and rob it of its
strength, and acids will devour it in a night. If it be possible to
eliminate all, or even one or more, of these qualities of weakness in