which I can find any account, did not exceed 10 cwt. At the present
day, we have furnaces of a capacity of from 15 to 25 tons, and by
combining several furnaces, single ingots weighing from 120 to 125
tons have been produced at Le Creuzot. The world's production of
open-hearth steel ingots for ship and boiler plates, propeller shafts,
ordnance, wheels and axles, wire billets, armor plates, castings of
various kinds, and a multiplicity of other articles, cannot have been
less than from 800,000 to 850,000 tons in 1882.

The process itself has followed two somewhat dissimilar lines. In this
country, iron ores of a pure quality are dissolved in a bath of pig
iron, with the addition of only small quantities of scrap steel and
iron. At Le Creuzot large quantities of wrought iron are melted in
the bath. This iron is puddled in modified rotating Danks furnaces
containing a charge of a ton each. The furnaces have a mid-rib
dividing the product into two balls of 10 cwt., which are shingled
under a 10-ton hammer. The iron is of exceptional purity, containing
less than 0.01 per cent. of phosphorus and sulphur. I should add that
the two rotating furnaces produce 50 tons of billets in twenty-four
hours.


PRESENT PRODUCTION OF WROUGHT IRON.

Meanwhile, the world's production of wrought iron has not been
stationary. I cannot give very accurate figures, as the statistics of
some countries are incomplete, while in others the output of puddled
bar only, and not that of finished iron, has been ascertained. The
nearest estimate which I can arrive at is a production increased from
about 5,000,000 tons in 1869 to somewhat over 8,000,000 tons of