The construction of larger furnaces and the employment of higher temperatures led to the production of a highly carbonized, fusible metal, without any special design on the part of the manufacturers in producing it.  This pig iron, however, could be used only for a few purposes for which metallic iron was needed; but it was produced cheaply and with little loss of metal, and the attempt to decarbonize this product and bring it into a state in which it could be hammered and welded was soon successfully made.  This process of decarbonization, or some modification of it, has successfully held the field against all so-called, direct processes up to the present time.  Why?  Because the old fashioned bloomeries and Catalan forges could produce blooms only at a high cost, and because the new processes introduced failed to turn out good blooms.  Those produced were invariably “red short,” that is, they contained unreduced oxide of iron, which prevented the contact of the metallic particles, and rendered the welding together of these particles to form a solid bloom impossible.

The process of puddling cast iron, and transforming it by decarbonization into wrought iron, has, as everybody knows, been in successful practical operation for many years, and the direct process referred to so closely resembles this, that a short description of the theory of puddling is not out of place here.

The material operated on in puddling is iron containing from 21/2 to 4 per cent. of carbon.  During the first stage of the process this iron is melted down to a fluid bath in the bottom of a reverberatory furnace.  Then the oxidation of the carbon contained in the iron commences, and at the same time a fluid, basic cinder, or slag, is produced, which covers a portion of the surface of the metal bath, and prevents too hasty oxidation.  This slag results from the union of oxides of iron with the sand adhering to the pigs, and the silica resulting from the oxidation of the silicon contained in the iron.

This cinder now plays a very important part in the process.  It takes up the oxides of iron formed by the contact of the oxidizing flame with the exposed portion of the metal bath, and at the same time the carbon of the iron, coming in contact with the under surface of the cinder covering, where it is protected from oxidizing influences, reduces these oxides from the cinder and restores them to the bath in metallic form.  This alternate oxidation of exposed metal, and its reduction by the carbon of the cast iron, continues till the carbon is nearly exhausted, when the iron assumes a pasty condition, or “comes to nature,” as the puddlers call this change.  The charge is then worked up into balls, and removed for treatment in the squeezer, and then hammered or rolled.  In the Wilson process the conditions which we have noted in the puddling operation are very closely approximated.  Iron ore reduced to a coarse sand is mixed with the proper proportion of charcoal or