ated, for at that time Mr.
Huntsman had very pressing and favourable offers from some spirited
manufacturers in Birmingham to remove his furnaces to that place; and
it is extremely probable that had the business of cast-steel making
become established there, one of the most important and lucrative
branches of its trade would have been lost to the town of Sheffield.

The Sheffield makers were therefore under the necessity of using the
cast-steel, if they would retain their trade in cutlery against France;
and Huntsman's home trade rapidly increased. And then began the
efforts of the Sheffield men to wrest his secret from him. For
Huntsman had not taken out any patent for his invention, his only
protection being in preserving his process as much a mystery as
possible. All the workmen employed by him were pledged to inviolable
secrecy; strangers were carefully excluded from the works; and the
whole of the steel made was melted during the night. There were many
speculations abroad as to Huntsman's process. It was generally
believed that his secret consisted in the flux which he employed to
make the metal melt more readily; and it leaked out amongst the workmen
that he used broken bottles for the purpose. Some of the
manufacturers, who by prying and bribing got an inkling of the process,
followed Huntsman implicitly in this respect; and they would not allow
their own workmen to flux the pots lest they also should obtain
possession of the secret. But it turned out eventually that no such
flux was necessary, and the practice has long since been discontinued.
A Frenchman named Jars, frequently quoted by Le Play in his account of
the manufacture of steel in Yorkshire,[6] paid a visit to Sheffield
towards the end of last century, and described the process so far as he
was permitted to examine it. According to his statement all kinds of
fragments of broken steel were used; but this is corrected by Le Play,
who states that only the best bar steel manufactured of Dannemora iron
was employed. Jars adds that "the steel is put into the crucible with
A FLUX, the composition of which is kept secret;" and he states that
the time then occupied in the conversion was five hours.

It is said that the person who first succeeded in copying Huntsman's
process was an ironfounder named Walker, who carried on his business at
Greenside near Sheffield, and it was certainly there that the making of
cast-steel was next begun. Walker adopted