Excerpt from The Manufacture and Properties of Iron and Steel I have compared at some length the condition of the industry in each separate country. These descriptions of the various dis tricts or provinces are not intended as complete investigations. It would be impossible for instance to describe the American districts so fully that every engineer and metallurgist of our country would find all the information he might wish, or even find a record of all that he already knows. It would also be impossible to tell an Eng lish engineer much about those parts of his own country with which he is acquainted. It may be possible, however, to give some facts for the benefit of travelers; to clear the way for a foreigner visit ing America, or an American visiting other lands. It 'is for this purpose only that these articles have been written and their end will be accomplished if they furnish certain fundamental facts on which to base such a journey. Some readers might prefer that less space should be devoted to theoretical matter and more to descriptions and drawings of fur naces and apparatus, but in my opinion the place for such informa tion is in the trade periodicals. It takes so long to print a book like this that the drawings are antiquated when the issue appears, and every year that it stands upon the shelf it becomes more and more a catalogue of discarded devices, while on the other hand the fundamental principles of metallurgy remain the same from year to year, and their value knows no depreciation. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.