could be worked up to a white heat without
losing their cutting power. The new tools of this type invented by
"Efficiency" Taylor at the Bethlehem Steel Works in the nineties have
revolutionized shop practice the world over. A tool of the old sort
could not cut at a rate faster than thirty feet a minute without
overheating, but the new tungsten tools will plow through steel ten
times as fast and can cut away a ton of the material in an hour. By
means of these high-speed tools the United States was able to turn out
five times the munitions that it could otherwise have done in the same
time. On the other hand, if Germany alone had possessed the secret of
the modern steels no power could have withstood her. A slight
superiority in metallurgy has been the deciding factor in many a battle.
Those of my readers who have had the advantages of Sunday school
training will recall the case described in I Samuel 13:19-22.

By means of these new metals armor plate has been made
invulnerable--except to projectiles pointed with similar material.
Flying has been made possible through engines weighing no more than two
pounds per horse power. The cylinders of combustion engines and the
casing of cannon have been made to withstand the unprecedented pressure
and corrosive action of the fiery gases evolved within. Castings are
made so hard that they cannot be cut--save with tools of the same sort.
In the high-speed tools now used 20 or 30 per cent, of the iron is
displaced by other ingredients; for example, tungsten from 14 to 25 per
cent., chromium from 2 to 7 per cent., vanadium from 1/2 to 1-1/2 per
cent., carbon from 6 to 8 per cent., with perhaps cobalt up to 4 per
cent. Molybdenum or uranium may replace part of the tungsten.

Some of the newer alloys for high-speed tools contain no iron at all.
That which bears the poetic name of star-stone, stellite, is composed of
chromium, cobalt and tungsten in varying proportions. Stellite keeps a
hard cutting edge and gets tougher as it gets hotter. It is very hard
and as good for jewelry as platinum except that it is not so expensive.
Cooperite, its rival, is an alloy of nickel and zirconium, stronger,
lighter and cheaper than stellite.

Before the war nearly half of the world's supply of tungsten ore
(wolframite) came from Burma. But although Burma had belonged to the
British for a hundred years they had not developed its mineral resources
and the tungsten trade was monopolized by the German