ot be iron at all; it
might better be clay. For a good brick wall is stronger than a wall of
brittle iron. Yet nature will not give us pure iron. She always gives
it to us mixed with the stuff that weakens it--this dross and brimstone.
Nature hands out no bonanzas, no lead-pipe cinches to mankind. Man must
claw for everything he gets, and when he gets it, it is mixed with dirt.
And if he wants it clean, he'll have to clean it with the labor of
his hands. "Why can't we have a different system than this?" I heard a
theorist complain. "I'll bite," I said. "Why can't we?" And I went on
boiling out the impurities in my puddle.

Man's nature is like iron, never born in a pure state but always mixed
with elements that weaken it. Envy, greed and malice are mixed with
every man's nature when he comes into the world. They are the brimstone
that makes him brittle. He is pig-iron until he boils them out of his
system. Savages and criminals are men who have not tried to boil this
dross out of their nature. Lincoln was one who boiled it out in the
fires of adversity. He puddled his own soul till the metal was pure, and
that's how he got the Iron Will that was strong enough to save a nation.

My purpose in slackening my heat as soon as the pig-iron was melted
was to oxidize the phosphorus and sulphur ahead of the carbon. Just as
alcohol vaporizes at a lower heat than water, so sulphur and phosphorus
oxidize at a lower heat than carbon. When this reaction begins I see
light flames breaking through the lake of molten slag in my furnace.
Probably from such a sight as this the old-time artists got their
pictures of Hell. The flames are caused by the burning of carbon
monoxide from the oxidation of carbon. The slag is basic and takes the
sulphur and phosphorus into combination, thus ending its combination
with the iron. The purpose now is to oxidize the carbon, too, without
reducing the phosphorus and sulphur and causing them to return to the
iron. We want the pure iron to begin crystallizing out of the bath like
butter from the churning buttermilk.

More and more of the carbon gas comes out of the puddle, and as it
bubbles out the charge is agitated by its escape and the "boil" is in
progress. It is not real boiling like the boiling of a teakettle. When
a teakettle boils the water turns to bubbles of vapor and goes up in the
air to turn to water again when it gets cold. But in the boiling iron
puddle a chemical change is taking place. T