as
compared with our first experiment. The mines which had no reputation
and the products of which many firms would not permit to be used in
their blast furnaces found a purchaser in us. Those mines which were
able to obtain an enormous price for their products, owing to a
reputation for quality, we quietly ignored. A curious illustration of
this was the celebrated Pilot Knob mine in Missouri. Its product was,
so to speak, under a cloud. A small portion of it only could be used,
it was said, without obstructing the furnace. Chemistry told us that
it was low in phosphorus, but very high in silicon. There was no
better ore and scarcely any as rich, if it were properly fluxed. We
therefore bought heavily of this and received the thanks of the
proprietors for rendering their property valuable.

It is hardly believable that for several years we were able to dispose
of the highly phosphoric cinder from the puddling furnaces at a higher
price than we had to pay for the pure cinder from the heating furnaces
of our competitors--a cinder which was richer in iron than the puddled
cinder and much freer from phosphorus. Upon some occasion a blast
furnace had attempted to smelt the flue cinder, and from its greater
purity the furnace did not work well with a mixture intended for an
impurer article; hence for years it was thrown over the banks of the
river at Pittsburgh by our competitors as worthless. In some cases we
were even able to exchange a poor article for a good one and obtain a
bonus.

But it is still more unbelievable that a prejudice, equally unfounded,
existed against putting into the blast furnaces the roll-scale from
the mills which was pure oxide of iron. This reminds me of my dear
friend and fellow-Dunfermline townsman, Mr. Chisholm, of Cleveland. We
had many pranks together. One day, when I was visiting his works at
Cleveland, I saw men wheeling this valuable roll-scale into the yard.
I asked Mr. Chisholm where they were going with it, and he said:

"To throw it over the bank. Our managers have always complained that
they had bad luck when they attempted to remelt it in the blast
furnace."

I said nothing, but upon my return to Pittsburgh I set about having a
joke at his expense. We had then a young man in our service named Du
Puy, whose father was known as the inventor of a direct process in
iron-making with which he was then experimenting in Pittsburgh. I
recommended our people to send Du Puy to Cleveland to