Here the question arises, how far are these figures to be relied on as accurate? This can only be decided by comparison with returns known to be approximately accurate, and of these we have none later than the year 1856, in which year the make of pig iron was ascertained, by the Iron-Makers’ Association, to be 812,917 tuns. Either the Census returns of 1860 are too low, as they were in 1850, or else the increase in this branch of our industry has been very slight since 1849, when the make of iron was ascertained by the Pennsylvania Iron-Masters to be 800,000 tuns. On the other hand, assuming the Census returns of 1860 to be correct, there is no ground for making the statement, as is done by Mr. Kennedy, that there has been an increase of 44·4 per cent. in the value of the iron produced in 1860 over that of 1850; it is evident that the increase has been very slight, since 1846 or 1847 even, in which years the make of this metal, on reliable authority, reached nearly 800,000 tuns. But what shall we say of Mr. Kennedy’s method of arriving at the production of iron, as related to the amount of population in the United States, or the number of pounds produced per head? To obtain this, he adds together the amount of pig iron and the amount of bar and other wrought iron produced, and thus obtains a result of 92 pounds of iron produced for each inhabitant of the United States; which, as he says, “speaks volumes for the progress of the nation in all its industrial and material interests.” It speaks a volume or two for his own ignorance of the elements of metallurgy; since, as everybody, except the Superintendent of the United States Census, knows, the bar and rolled iron is nearly all converted from the pig, and only a small proportion made direct from the ore; so that his method of computation is as near correct as it would be, for instance, to estimate the amount of beef consumed per head in San Francisco, by adding the weight of all the cattle slaughtered in the city to that of the beef produced by said slaughtering. As, in 1856, only 28,433 tuns of bar iron were made directly from the ore, to 812,917 of pig produced; so, allowing that 28,000 tuns were made direct in 1860, the amount, per head, of all the iron made in that year would be 65 pounds, instead of 92, as Mr. Kennedy calculates.[1] Taking the population of the United States at 23,000,000, in 1850, and the make of iron at 800,000 tuns, as given by the returns of the Commission of the Iron-Masters of Pennsylvania, the amount produced, per head, in that year, would be 78 pounds; so that all Mr. Kennedy’s glorification goes for naught, unless we admit that his returns for 1860 are wrong.