Perhaps there is no other great industry that has been so subject to fierce and unrestrained competition as steel making once was. To understand why this is so it is necessary to get an idea of the conditions influencing it. The discovery of the Bessemer process--about the middle of the nineteenth century--by which steel could be made cheap enough to permit of its general use found a world more than ready for it, and the demand for the metal grew by leaps and bounds. The Age of Steel did not dawn; like the tropic day, it broke with fierce glare. The sudden demand naturally opened up vistas of previously undreamed-of wealth for those who could supply it, and, in the desire to secure this wealth, production sprang forward so quickly as even to outstrip demand, strong and increasing as it was. Then ensued the inevitable battle for what business there was, a battle that lasted until consumption took another spurt, which, in turn, resulted in quickening output and a resumption of the battle. At that time the country was just opening up. Railways were stretching their lines into the golden regions of the West; manufacturers of farm implements were calling for steel to be fashioned into tools to reap the rich crops of the wide prairie lands; inventors were each day evolving some new use for the metal. Was it any wonder then that steel became a world necessity and that the blast furnace became a philosopher’s stone that transmuted dull ore into precious gold? More and larger fortunes, it has been truly said, were made out of steel in the second half of last century than ever came out of the mines of the West or the diamond deposits of South Africa. And in the insane struggle for this so-freely-poured-out wealth men lost all sense of proportion. It is inevitable that there should be a dark side to the picture. The boom times of the steel trade were succeeded with disheartening regularity by periods of dearth. One year steel manufacturers were building themselves palaces and purchasing steam yachts, the next they were mortgaging all they had to pay wages. One year the steel worker was a man favored above all others of his class, the next he was getting his meals on charity from the “soup houses.” To this day steel veterans speak of the dull times of the trade as “soup-house days.” At these times competition, always fierce, became more ruthless than ever. The old adage regarding love and war was stretched to include the steel industry, and everything was considered fair that might help to keep the mills running full. Prices were cut--and wages with them; steel was “dumped” on foreign markets at less than manufacturing cost, and steel makers resorted to every means that offered to divert orders from competitors to themselves. It was case of dog eat dog, and failures, with their unavoidable accompaniment of unemployed labor, were all too frequent.