ingle largest
railroad power in America today.

CHAPTER III. THE EPIC OF STEEL

It was the boast of a Roman Emperor that he had found the Eternal City
brick and left it marble. Similarly the present generation of Americans
inherited a country which was wood and have transformed it into steel.
That which chiefly distinguishes the physical America of today from that
of forty years ago is the extensive use of this metal. Our fathers used
steel very little in railway transportation; rails and locomotives were
usually made of iron, and wood was the prevailing material for railroad
bridges. Steel cars, both for passengers and for freight, are now
everywhere taking the place of the more flimsy substance. We travel
today in steel subways, transact our business in steel buildings, and
live in apartments and private houses which are made largely of steel.
The steel automobile has long since supplanted the wooden carriage; the
steel ship has displaced the iron and wooden vessel. The American farmer
now encloses his lands with steel wire, the Southern planter binds
his cotton with steel ties, and modern America could never gather her
abundant harvests without her mighty agricultural implements, all
of which are made of steel. Thus it is steel that shelters us, that
transports us, that feeds us, and that even clothes us.

This substance is such a commonplace element in our lives that we
take it for granted, like air and water and the soil itself; yet the
generation that fought the Civil War knew practically nothing of steel.
They were familiar with this metal only as a curiosity or as a material
used for the finer kinds of cutlery. How many Americans realize that
steel was used even less in 1865 than aluminum is used today? Nearly all
the men who have made the American Steel Age--such as Carnegie, Phipps,
Frick, and Schwab--are still living and some of them are even now
extremely active. Thirty-five years ago steel manufacture was regarded,
even in this country, as an almost exclusively British industry. In
1870 the American steel maker was the parvenu of the trade. American
railroads purchased their first steel rails in England, and the early
American steel makers went to Sheffield for their expert workmen. Yet,
in little more than ten years, American mills were selling agricultural
machinery in that same English town, American rails were displacing the
English product in all parts of the world, American locomotives were
dra