of Saugus, a few miles from Boston. The company had a monopoly of
manufacture under grant for ten years. [Footnote: Some quaint records
exist of the incidents of manufacturing in those times.

In 1728, Samuel Higley and Joseph Dewey, of Connecticut, represented to
the Legislature that Higley had, "with great pains and cost, found out
and obtained a curious art by which to convert, change, or transmute,
common iron into good steel sufficient for any use, and was the first
that ever performed such an operation in America." A certificate, signed
by Timothy Phelps and John Drake, blacksmiths, states that, in June,
1725, Mr. Higley obtained from the subscribers several pieces of iron,
so shaped that they could be known again, and that a few days later "he
brought the same pieces which we let him have, and we proved them and
found them good steel, which was the first steel that ever was made in
this country, that we ever saw or heard of." But this remarkable
transmuting process was not heard of again unless it be the process of
"case-hardening," re-invented some years ago, and known now to mechanics
as a recipe.

The smallness of things may be inferred from the fact that, in 1740, the
Connecticut Legislature granted to Messrs. Fitch, Walker & Wyllys "the
sole privilege of making steel for the term of fifteen years, upon this
condition that they should, in the space of two years, make half a ton
of steel." Even this condition was not complied with and the term was
extended.] They began in 1643, twenty-three years after the landing,
which is one of the evidences of the anxiety of those troublesome people
to be independent, and of how well men knew, even in those early times,
how much the production of iron at home has to do with that
independence. This new industry was, at all times, controlled and
regulated by law.