s, and shaping the pure metal into useful articles.
Sometimes they made it into steel, by a process learned in the Old
World.

The American iron industry, which now is one of the greatest in the
world, centres in Pittsburg, near which great deposits of iron and coal
lie close together. The making of coke from coal has replaced the
burning of charcoal for fuel. When the forests were cut away by
lumbermen, the supply of charcoal threatened to give out, and
experiments were made in charring coal, which resulted in the successful
making of coke, a fuel made from coal by a process similar to the making
of charcoal from wood. The story of the making of coke out of hard and
soft coal is a long one, for it began as far back as the beginning of
the nineteenth century.

In 1812 the first boat-load of anthracite coal was sent to Philadelphia
from a little settlement along the Lehigh River. A mine had been opened,
the owner of which believed that the black, shiny "rocks" would burn.
His neighbours laughed at him, for they had tried building fires with
them, and concluded that it could not be done. In Philadelphia, the
owners of some coke furnaces gave the new fuel a trial, in spite of the
disgust of the stokers, who thought they were putting out their fires
with a pile of stones. After a little, however, the new fuel began to
burn with the peculiar pale flame and intense heat that we know so
well, and the stokers were convinced that here was a new fuel, with
possibilities in it.

But it was hard for people to be patient with the slow starting of this
hard coal. Not until 1840 did it come into general favour, following the
discovery that if hot air was supplied at the draught, instead of cold,
anthracite coal became a perfect fuel.

At Connellsville, Pennsylvania, a vein of coal was discovered which made
coke of the very finest quality. Around this remarkable centre, coke
ovens were built, and iron ore was shipped in, even from the rich beds
of the Lake Superior country. But it was plain to see that Connellsville
coal would become exhausted; and so experiments in coke-making from
other coals were still made. When soft coal burns, a waxy tar oozes out
of it, which tends to smother the fire. Early experiments with coal in
melting iron ore indicated that soft coal was useless as a substitute
for charcoal and coke; but later experiments proved that coke of fine
quality can be made out of this bituminous soft coal, by drawing off the