Pittsburgh men have been trying to worm their way out of their difficulties for about a century and a half now, for it was 1758 that saw a permanent settlement started there at the junction of the three great rivers. Before that had been the memorable fight and defeat of Braddock--not far from where more recently Mr. Frick and Mr. Carnegie have been engaged in a rivalry as to which could erect the higher skyscraper and most effectually block out the _façade_ of the very beautiful Court House that the genius of H. H. Richardson designed--more than a score of years ago. At Braddock's defeat George Washington fought and it was no less a prophetic mind than that of the Father of His Country which foresaw and prophesied that Pittsburgh, with proper transportation facilities, would become one of the master cities of the country. Today, when Pittsburgh men grow nervous in one of their chronic fits of agitation--generally started by some talkative city, such as Chicago and Duluth, proclaiming herself as the future center of the steel industry--she gains comfort from the sayings of two Presidents--General Washington, as just quoted, and the gentleman who sits at the head of the board of the United States Steel Corporation, who goes out there from time to time and tells them to be of good cheer, that the center of the steel business is irrevocably fixed within their town. Pittsburgh worries much more about the steel business than about the Richardson Court House, which has just been left high and dry upon a local Gibraltar because of the desire of the local aldermen to lower Fifth avenue some eight or ten feet. But who shall say that she should not be restive about a business that reaches an output in a single twelvemonth of something over 150,000,000 tons? That is a jewel that is well worth the keeping. * * * * * Philadelphia stands at the east end of Pennsylvania; Pittsburgh is the west gate of that Keystone commonwealth. Yet two peas in a pod were never half so different. Philadelphia stands for conservatism, Pittsburgh for progress. While Philadelphia was climbing to the zenith of her power and influence through the first three-quarters of the last century and reaching her apotheosis in her great Centennial, Pittsburgh was quiet beneath her smoke umbrellas experimenting with that strange new metal, which man called steel. In the day dreams that Philadelphia enjoyed in 1876 Pittsburgh was forgotten.