EARLY IRON FURNACE--OPERATIONS OF LORD DUDLEY, ABRAHAM DARBY AND HENRY CORT--NEILSON’S HOT BLAST--GREAT BLAST FURNACES OF MODERN TIMES--THE PUDDLING FURNACE--BESSEMER STEEL AND THE CONVERTER--OPEN HEARTH STEEL--SIEMENS’ REGENERATIVE FURNACE--SIEMENS-MARTIN PROCESS --ARMOR PLATE--MAKING HORSE SHOES--SCREWS AND SPECIAL MACHINES-- ELECTRIC WELDING, ANNEALING AND TEMPERING--COATING WITH METAL--METAL FOUNDING--BARBED WIRE MACHINES--MAKING NAILS, PINS, ETC.--MAKING SHOT--ALLOYS--MAKING ALUMINUM, AND METALLURGY OF RARER METALS--THE CYANIDE PROCESS--ELECTRIC CONCENTRATOR. Take away iron and steel from the resources of modern life, and the whole fabric of civilization disintegrates. The railroad, steam engine and steamship, the dynamo and electric motor, the telegraph and telephone, agricultural implements of all sorts, grinding mills, spinning machines and looms, battleships and firearms, stoves and furnaces, the printing press, and tools of all sorts--each and every one would be robbed of its essential basic material, without which it cannot exist. Steam and electricity may be the heart and soul of the world’s life, but iron is its great body. King among metals, it gives its name to the present cycle, as the “Iron Age,” and the Nineteenth Century has crowned it with such refinements of shape, and endowed it with such attributes of utility, and such grandeur of estate, that its powers in organized machinery have, for effective service, risen to all the functions and dignity of human capacity--except that of thought. A crude gift of nature, in the mountain side, it remained, however, a sodden mass until extracted, refined, and wrought into shape by the genius of man. Yielding to the magical touch of invention, it has been cast in moulds into cannon, mills, plowshares, and ten thousand articles; it has been drawn into wire of any fineness and length to form cables for great suspension bridges; it has been rolled into rails that grill the continents; into sheets that cover our roofs; and into nails that hold our houses together. It has been wrought into a softness that lends its susceptible nature to the influence of magnetism, and has been hardened into steel to form the sword and cutting tool. From the delicate hair spring of a watch to the massive armor plate of a battleship, it finds endless applications, and is nature’s most enduring gift to man--abundant, cheap, and lasting.