While no one can desire to cast the slightest disparagement on the product of that period, much of which was excellent, astonishingly so considering the period, a moment’s consideration will convince one that modern products not only do not suffer in comparison but in reality are immensely superior. The ancients had little or no knowledge of the reason for the proper qualities of their tools and they made the metal from variable materials in a crude way in such small quantities that little uniformity was possible. While some of the product was undoubtedly excellent, much must have been less desirable. Modern discoveries and inventions, with the great mechanical progress of the last three centuries and the scarcely half-century-old application of chemical control, have given during recent years products of great uniformity and marvelous quality. What can compare with thirty thousand pound lots of steel turned out from one Bessemer converter each seventeen minutes during the 24 hours in the day, that is, a total of 1300 tons or 2,600,000 pounds, in which not only the main controlling element, carbon, but also four lesser ones, silicon, manganese, sulphur, and phosphorus, are held within extremely narrow limits; or the modern blast furnace which produces a million pounds each 24 hours, run with the same certainty of control? Modern high-speed steels which are every day being made have such high quality that tools formed from them will stand up for hours working red-hot under a lathe speed of two or three hundred linear feet per minute taking a deep cut and “plowing out” chips faster than a laborer can carry them away. [Illustration: THE GERMAN STUCKOFEN ] Modern war armament which has recently been so well advertised is sufficient answer as to whether modern metallurgy is in advance of that of centuries ago. The only necessity for such comparisons is that it seems to be a failing of many to think that our forefathers were more wise and better in other ways than we. It was but a few years ago that the fallacious announcement was made that during archeological excavations in Egypt there had been found a fully equipped telephone system. The inference intended to be conveyed, of course, was that Bell’s invention of the telephone had been antedated many hundreds of years. [Illustration: A GERMAN BLAST FURNACE OF FIFTY YEARS AGO ]