ich
eventually had to be taken up, regardless of the strength of the vested
interests involved. The provocation came from his claims that the
product of the first stage of the conversion was the equivalent of
charcoal iron, the processes following the smelting being conducted
without contact with, or the use of, any mineral fuel; and that further
blowing could be used to produce any quality of metal, that is, a steel
with any desired percentage of carbon. Yet, the principal irritant to
the complacency of the ironmaster must have been Bessemer's attack on
an industry which had gone on increasing the size of its smelting
furnaces, thus improving the uniformity of its pig-iron, without
modifying the puddling process, which at best could handle no more than
400 to 500 pounds of iron at a time, divided into the "homeopathic
doses" of 70 or 80 pounds capable of being handled by human labor.[20]
Bessemer's claim to "do" 800 pounds of metal in 30 minutes against the
puddling furnace's output of 500 pounds in two hours was calculated to
arouse the opposition of those who feared the loss of capital invested
in puddling furnaces and of those who suspected that their jobs might
be in jeopardy. The ensuing criticism of Bessemer has to be
interpreted, therefore, with this in mind; not by any means was it
entirely based on objective consideration of the method or the
product.[21]

[18] Bessemer's paper was reported in _The Times_, London, August
14, 1856. By the time the Transactions of the British Association
were prepared for publication, the controversy aroused by
Bessemer's claim to manufacture "malleable iron and steel without
fuel" had broken out and it was decided not to report the paper.
Dredge (_op. cit._, footnote 15, p. 915) describes this decision
as "sagacious."

[19] Bessemer, _op. cit._ (footnote 7), p. 164.

[20] _The Times_, London, August 14, 1856.

[21] David Mushet recognized that Bessemer's great feature was
this effort to "raise the after processes ... to a level
commensurate with the preceding case" (_Mining Journal_, 1856, p.
599).

Within a month of his address, Bessemer had sold licenses to several
ironmasters (outside Sheffield) and so provided himself with capital
with which to continue his development work; but he refused to sell his
patents outright to the Ebbw Vale Iron Works and by this action, as
will be seen, he creat