nd obtained control of the Dodds patents and recommended
President Thomson to appropriate twenty thousand dollars for
experiments at Pittsburgh, which he did. We built a furnace on our
grounds at the upper mill and treated several hundred tons of rails
for the Pennsylvania Railroad Company and with remarkably good results
as compared with iron rails. These were the first hard-headed rails
used in America. We placed them on some of the sharpest curves and
their superior service far more than compensated for the advance made
by Mr. Thomson. Had the Bessemer process not been successfully
developed, I verily believe that we should ultimately have been able
to improve the Dodds process sufficiently to make its adoption
general. But there was nothing to be compared with the solid steel
article which the Bessemer process produced.

Our friends of the Cambria Iron Company at Johnstown, near
Pittsburgh--the principal manufacturers of rails in America--decided
to erect a Bessemer plant. In England I had seen it demonstrated, at
least to my satisfaction, that the process could be made a grand
success without undue expenditure of capital or great risk. Mr.
William Coleman, who was ever alive to new methods, arrived at the
same conclusion. It was agreed we should enter upon the manufacture of
steel rails at Pittsburgh. He became a partner and also my dear friend
Mr. David McCandless, who had so kindly offered aid to my mother at my
father's death. The latter was not forgotten. Mr. John Scott and Mr.
David A. Stewart, and others joined me; Mr. Edgar Thomson and Mr.
Thomas A. Scott, president and vice-president of the Pennsylvania
Railroad, also became stockholders, anxious to encourage the
development of steel. The steel-rail company was organized January 1,
1873.

The question of location was the first to engage our serious
attention. I could not reconcile myself to any location that was
proposed, and finally went to Pittsburgh to consult with my partners
about it. The subject was constantly in my mind and in bed Sunday
morning the site suddenly appeared to me. I rose and called to my
brother:

"Tom, you and Mr. Coleman are right about the location; right at
Braddock's, between the Pennsylvania, the Baltimore and Ohio, and the
river, is the best situation in America; and let's call the works
after our dear friend Edgar Thomson. Let us go over to Mr. Coleman's
and drive out to Braddock's."

We did so that day, and the next morn