Sufficient quantities of steel have been made in electric furnaces to permit of the determination of the quality of the product as well as the economy of the process. It has been found in Germany that rail steel made in the induction furnace has a much higher bending and breaking limit than ordinary Bessemer or Thomas rail steel, and in Germany in 1908 rails so made commanded a considerably higher price per ton than those of ordinary rail steel. After trial orders had proved satisfactory, in 1908 5,000 tons of rails were ordered for the Italian and Swiss governments at a German works, where furnaces of eight tons capacity had been installed. In the United States only a few electric steel furnaces are in operation, and these, for the most part, for purposes of demonstration and experiment. But in Europe the industry is well established, and while at present small, is constantly growing and possesses an assured future. In addition to the manufacture of steel, the application of the electric furnace for producing what are known as ferro-alloys, or alloys of iron, silicon, chromium, manganese, tungsten and vanadium, is now a large and important industry. Special steels have their uses in different mechanical applications and the advantage of alloying them with the rarer metals has been demonstrated for several important purposes, as for example, the use of chrome steel for armor plate, and steel containing vanadium for parts of motor cars. These industries for the most part contain electric arc furnaces and have, as their object, the manufacture of ferro-alloys, which are introduced into the steel, it having been found advantageous to use the rare metals in this form rather than in their crude state.