Soon the ore, coke, and limestone become one liquid mass of fire and the oven, after a sufficient time, is “tapped” by breaking open a small mud-sealed cavity at the bottom and letting the molten contents run out through gutters into receiving ladles. The iron, being heavy, runs out first. The rest, following, is diverted into other gutters and cooled, when it is used for making cement, ballasting railroad tracks, and other purposes. This material is known as slag. Meanwhile, the iron is carried in the ladles to the mixers, huge cradles holding 250 tons or more each of molten metal, and rocking slowly but continuously to and fro. Into these mixers different heats of iron are poured, and the constant motion of the mixer gradually brings them to a homogeneous mixture, insuring uniformity in the metal. William R. Jones, or Captain Bill as he was generally and affectionately known in the steel trade, was for many years in charge of the Braddock plant of the old Carnegie company and was one of the most picturesque figures that ever flitted across the pages of the history of the industry. Big, with a temper as hot as the metal with which he worked, but with a heart of gold, he was an ideal leader for a steel mill army. Gifted with unquenchable energy and enthusiasm, he acquired a habit of breaking world’s steel-making records, and in the earlier days of his management of the Braddock works he time and time again set the steel world agog by his feats in the matter of production. He continued to do so until the steel makers of Europe and America became so used to “Jones breaking another record” that his feats went unheeded. And the mixer, which still bears his name, was one of his many inventions. In a letter to the writer, Andrew Carnegie said of Jones: “Jones volunteered in the Civil War as a private and returned at its close a Captain. You can’t keep a good man down. I wished to make Jones a partner along with many of our pioneers, and informed him of this one morning. His reply was: ‘I don’t want to be troubled with business matters. You just give me a ---- of a salary.’ “‘All right Captain,’ I said, ‘hereafter the salary of the President of the United States is yours.’ And so it was.” From the mixer the iron is taken to the converter to be turned into steel. And now we come to the most spectacular, the most impressive sight that is to be witnessed in the steel industry, the theme for the poet who may one day be born to sing the Song of Steel.