IRON WALLS AND IRON ROADS.

Colonist, Volume IV, Issue 372, 17 May 1861, Page 3

IRON WALLS AND IRON ROADS.

The wooden walls of old England, with all their glorious associations, are threatened. The time is, probably, not far distant, when j the Teutonic Vulcan will extend hisdominions i over the sea, and embrace the ocean in his iron chain. The Road was at one time our boast, and the mail coach, with its beautiful horses, our pride. These have passed away. An iron net-work is over our island; its meshes are yearly spreading; and, like the lion in the fable, we groan in our net, but with little prospect of being liberated therefrom. The Warrior swims proudly upon our waters, and the Black Prince will shortly assert her strength upon the sea. As yet—to revive the simile of Canning—these iron-cased ships slumber upon their shadows; their thunders are dormant; their power and their resistance are problems to be solved. Let us hope that our iron walls will maintain that supremacy which our wooden walls have secured. The victories which the navies and the armies of England have won were the results of indomitable hearts. We belive these will not fail us, though we screen them with shields of iron. The restlessness of man belongs to the law of progress, and in obedience to its impulses we march onward from conquering to conquer. Our triumphs over space and time", as evidenced in our railway" flights, have been great, and we are assured that the powers of heat, in the production of steam, are soon to receive a new development, and, consequently, the railway-train to achieve a yet higher speed. We invent engines of war, which have a resistless force, and strain our powers to produce shields which shall prove to be irresistible barriers. Man in his pride of place often desires to become omnipotent ; but that very restlessness which advances, serves to retard his progress. With vast brainpower, and much patient toil, the railroad was created by.Stephenson, the electric telegraph by Wheatstone, and the finest piece of ordnance which the world ever saw by Armstrong. These great works are acknowledged and adopted; but in the extension of these applications of science a restless haste is exhibited, and a check is the result. These retardations are generally due to se- j veral causes, acting either separately or together. Presumptous ignorance—imperfect knowledge—unreasoning economy— greediness of gain, and wilful falsification, stand in the way. To these we may trace the failure of many a great work, and the sacrifice of life and of money. We care not to particularize recent examples, but they will occur, without our -record, to all our readers; our purpoie is to call .attention to the state of our iton roads, and from them to draw our inference© as to our iron walls; or, in other words, to examine into the condition of our iron. manufactures v upon which so much depends. Day after day the papers have been telling us of accidents on the railways; tires of wheels have broken, axles have f tactured, and rails have given way, and a will-o'-ti ewi*p, vulgarly known as Jack Frost, ha* borne the blame of it all. Families have been desolated, a life's happiness destroyed ; men have been maimed, and doomed to an Bge of helplessness, all thiough as we heard a railway official coolly say, " the action of the frost on the metals," It is curious that we have rarely heard anything of the character of the " metals " on which the frost has acted, and surely this is a very important inquiry. The lives of millions are dependent on the answer given- by the railways ; and the safety of our bravest hearts on the sound which our shot brings out from the iron-plated Warrior or the Black Prince. Those who travel much must have noticed many imperfections in our rails which ought not to be visible upon them. Chipped edges, fragments -eepaiated from the surface, and curious laminations tell a forcible tale. We are told of the tensile strength of iron plates; yet, V-'hen our iron ships strike upon a rock, they break short off as a biscuit. We are assured that iron boats are everlasting; but they are sent to the Tiopics, and they leak like a sieve. Su'ely this should riot be, possessing, as we do, the best natural material in the world, and the most peifect knowledge of iron manufacture. Let us examine into some of the facts known to us. Our iron manufac-

tures have increased to their present rate of production with a remarkable rapidity.

In 1740 we made 17,850 tons of charcoal pig iron.. ,1796 ~ 125,079 tons of charcoal and coke do. „ 1830 ,; 678,417 „ „ „ ISI-7 „ 1,999.608 „ ,j ~1857 ~. 3,659,447 „ ~ Since which period there has not been any considerable extension, the make of 1859 being 3,712t904 tons, and that of 1860 will probably be about the same quantity. Our sources of iron ore have been stated, like our coals, to be inexhaustible; and both statements have been most rashly made, to serve the passing purposes of the day. Let us begin with our great iron-making district of the North, and examine, hastily though it be, the condition of our natural resources.

The Scotch iron is produced mainly from the Black Band Ironstone. The workable seams are becoming rapidly exhausted, the lower seams being at too great a depth to admit of their being worked, unless there is a great advance in the price of pig-iron; and the Scotch ironmasters are looking to other fields for the raw material.

Cleveland, in "North Yorkshire, has been a remarkable discovery. Its. beds of iron ore, stretching from hill to hill, although worked by the ancients, remained until within a few years uuknown to us. Now, the Cleveland iron furnaces make 220,000 tons of pig-iron, annually; and the Cleveland hills yield more than 1,500,000 tons of ore each year. This ore, in addition to its own furnaces, supplies those of Durham and Northumberland, and trucks laden with it may be seen in South Staffordshire and in South Wales. •

The West Riding of Yorkshire holds its steady course of pioduction, and the Low Moor and Bowling iron still maintain their high position, ~- Cumberland and Lancashire possess the most extraordinary deposits of iron in the world; and the hematite iron of Cleator Moor and Workington, with that produced at Barrow, and the charcoal iron of Newland and Backbarrow, near Ulyerston, are unrivalled in quality. When, however, we find the Whitehaven district yielding annually upwards of 400,000 tons, and the Ulverston mines nearly 450,000 tons of hematite iron ore, we can understand something of the rate of exhaustion. Derbyshire is rapidly draining her own stores, and her ironmasters are now drawing iron ore from Lincolnshire, where a curious deposit has lately been discovered, stretching from near the Humber to Stamford.

The Black country, or South Staffordshire, is expending her golden egg's, and the goose producing them is killed. The " thick coal" has .been wastefully worked —a few years, comparatively, will seethe end of all that is available; and for iron ore, the South Staffordshire ironmasters*are, at present, sweeping the land for a supply. Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire f Warwickshire, and Oxfordshire are grubbed- to supply food to the insatiable furnaces, and they still groan for more. Gloucestershire, Devonshire, Somersetshire, and Cornwall are now looked to for a supply. South Wales, again, with her vast coal field, is finding out that her argillaceous iron bands do not last for ever; and by railroad and by sea iron ore is poured in for the consumption of her works. These are the great iron-producing districts; we have omitted several smaller ones. To supply them all in 1859 we raised from our own rocks 7,876,581 tons of iron ore; and England imported, in addition to this, some 30,000 tons. Doe§ not this little importation come with an emphatic whisper? It is evident that, to supply the demand for iron, we have been taxing our resources to the utmost. Our railroads and those of other countries, the uses of iron in ship-building and for architectural purposes, have produced such a, demand as could not have been contemplated a few years since, To meet the preßßing demands there ha» been much injudicious haste, furnaces have been urged to produce quantity, and quality hae been too frequently forgotten. The good ore of one district has fallen short, the bad ore of another has been used, regardless, in many cases, of the result. Ironmasters have been, by contractors, tempted to produce iron at prices which ensured its rottenness, <&nd others, aiming only at realizing wealth rapidly, have used every method of sophistication. Our space will not admit ot our describing the manufacture in detail, but in the process of making malleable iron,, which is called ♦•puddling," there is a large quantity of refuse, known as ** tap-cinder.' This waste is sent back into the blast-furnace, &c have '* cinder-iron." This cheap material is united to «, better kind, and bars pre made.; these imperfect bars are! stratified with less imperfect ones, and the whole welded into a rail, or rolled into a plate. Such are the "metals" on which the frosts of this winter have told the sad tale. Such are the plates which have splintered on the rocks, and which have in a few months corroded into holes. If the plates of the Warrior and the Black Prince are, as is to be feared, of this description, can they withstand the shock of a flat-headed shoi propelled from a Whitworth's gun? Let it not be forgetten that the ordnance of Whitworth is manufactured from the best selected Swedish and Russian iron. Hence its cost, and also its safety and power. There surely is a remedy for this. We have heard of men being taught by suffering. The iron trade is now in a state of great depression; the feverish excitement of the past few years has resulted naturally in a loss of energy. In the present repose, tvhich, however, is ill-endured, let us endeavor to profit by our calamities, and strive to awaken a healthful trade by taking an honest course. England can make better iron than any other country in the world;" why, therefore, should she be condemned to sell the worst?— London JZeview.