Pittsburg’s great advantage as an iron and steel center has been due to its proximity to an extensive seam of bituminous coal and ore in adjacent counties, and to its location so near the Great Lakes, which provided cheap water transportation for the Lake Superior ores. The first iron works there was that of Turnbull & Company, which was established in 1790. Though Reameur, a Frenchman, is the accredited discoverer of the process of malleableizing cast iron, Seth Boyden, in a little shop in Newark, New Jersey, made malleable iron castings a commercial success. [Illustration: TWO MODERN BLAST FURNACES, SHOWING SKIP-HOISTS, CAST HOUSES, STOVES, AND ORE PILE ] The utilization of the great beds of high grade coking coal of eastern Pennsylvania, well known as the Connellsville district, and the discovery and development of the Lake Superior ore deposits have made the United States the leading producer of iron and steel of the world. The development of the Birmingham, Alabama, district, also has been a chapter of great importance but lack of space forbids description at this time. We can have only a very slight appreciation of the debt which civilization owes to iron, for practically everything we see or with which we daily come in contact contains or has resulted from application of iron in some way or other. Our cooking utensils and implements (even the enameled and tinned ones), the kitchen range, the water and drain pipes, and the furnace and heating plants of our houses, are they not largely of iron? Our main building materials—the steel frames of skyscrapers and bridges, and are not even wood, brick, stone, and cement either shaped, molded, or of necessity made by aid of iron machinery? The conveyances by which we travel—wagons, automobiles, street cars, steam railways and steamships—how would they be possible without iron or steel? Consider the power plants of our factories, of gas and electric lighting plants, the pumping machinery and distribution systems of water works, mines, etc. Would the electric current which supplies so much of our power and light be known to-day or even be possible but for the magnetic properties of iron? And how many of the materials and articles which we wear, use, and have about us constantly would be in any way possible without the wealth of steel machinery and tools which are available and absolutely necessary for their production? The iron industry is often spoken of as the barometer of a people’s civilization. If all iron and iron products and their influence upon the world should be obliterated, it seems impossible that we could be even started on the road to civilization.