In 1864, Mr. Henry B. Seidel purchased a rolling-mill
which had already been in operation with varied success for eighty
years, and established the manufacture of large plates for iron
ships and boilers. In a few years, associating with himself his
superintendent, Mr. Hastings, he greatly enlarged his operations, and
the firm found their edifice too small. An ample new one, one hundred
and twenty-five feet long, was put up in 1870, upon the Church street
side of their property, and with the introduction of all the new
machines became capable of the quickest and completest operations.
Seidel & Hastings now run both mills, and turn out, when working night
and day, at the rate of between five and six thousand tons of plate
iron per annum. They prepare their own "blooms" of charcoal iron at a
great forge erected on their premises: this forge has five fires, and
is provided with the engines and blowing-cylinders for the manufacture
of boiler iron, and the monster steam-hammers necessary in its
preparation. Nature's products are here taught manners with a witness:
whatever shape they enter in, they leave in the form of pie-crust. The
tough old genius of iron, which has been trying since the creation to
build itself into mountains or dissipate itself in bogs, is taught by
the powerful persuasions of these gentlemen to pack and toughen itself
into cards, and is only recognized by the foreman when he takes count
of stock as "plate inch and a half" or "plate one-eighth.
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