Steel forgings also are superseding, and must to an
increasing extent, supersede iron; while it is probable that the
former will in their turn be replaced for many purposes by the
beautiful solid steel castings which are now being produced by the
Terre-Noire Company in France, the Steel Company of Scotland, and
other manufacturers, by the Siemens-Martin process. On this subject I
believe Mr. Parker can give us valuable information; and on a cognate
branch, namely, the production of steel castings from the Bessemer
converter, an interesting paper will be submitted to us by Mr. Allen
at our present meeting.
I may here mention incidentally, that I have of late had occasion to
make trials on a considerable scale of edge tools made from Bessemer
steel, which show that, except perhaps in the case of the finest
cutlery, there is no longer any occasion to resort to the crucible for
the production of this quality of steel.
RAILWAY DEMAND FOR IRON AND STEEL.
But it is in the further development of the world's railways that we
must mainly look in the future, as in the past, for the support of our
trade. In India the railway between Calcutta and Bombay was only
completed in 1870, and at the present time, with a population of
250,000,000, it has less than 10,000 miles of railway, while the
United States, with only 50,000,000, possesses more than 100,000
miles. In other words, the United States have fifty times as many
miles of railway in relation to the population as India.
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