imposing spectacles of the Columbian Exhibition of 1893, whose roar was
like that of Niagara, was fed by invisible fuel that came silently in
pipes from a state outside of that where the great fair was held. We are
left to the conclusion that the making of the coal into gas at the mine,
and the shipping of it to the place of consumption through pipes, is
more certain of realization than were a hundred of the early problems of
American progress that have now been successful for so long that the
date of their beginning is almost forgotten.

THE STEEL OF THE PRESENT.--The story of steel has now almost been told,
in that general outline which is all that is possible without an
extensive detail not interesting to the general reader. In it is
included, of necessity, a resume of the progress, from the earliest
times in this country, of the great industry which is more indicative
than any other of the material growth of a nation. I now come to that
time when steel began to take the place that iron had always held in
structural work of every class. The differences between this structural
steel and that which men have known by the name exclusively from remote
ages, I have so far indicated only by reference to the well-known
qualities of the latter. It now remains to describe the first.

In 1846 an American named William Kelley was the owner of an iron-works
at Eddyville, Ky. It was an early era in American manufactures of all
kinds, and the district was isolated, the town not having five hundred
inhabitants, and the best mechanical appliances were remote.

In 1847, Kelley began, without suggestion or knowledge of any
experiments going on elsewhere, to experiment in the processes now known
as the "Bessemer," for the converting of iron into steel. To him
occurred, as it now appears first, the idea that in the refining process