The blast-furnace department was no sooner added than another step was seen to be essential to our independence and success.  The supply of superior coke was a fixed quantity—­the Connellsville field being defined.  We found that we could not get on without a supply of the fuel essential to the smelting of pig iron; and a very thorough investigation of the question led us to the conclusion that the Frick Coke Company had not only the best coal and coke property, but that it had in Mr. Frick himself a man with a positive genius for its management.  He had proved his ability by starting as a poor railway clerk and succeeding.  In 1882 we purchased one half of the stock of this company, and by subsequent purchases from other holders we became owners of the great bulk of the shares.

There now remained to be acquired only the supply of iron stone.  If we could obtain this we should be in the position occupied by only two or three of the European concerns.  We thought at one time we had succeeded in discovering in Pennsylvania this last remaining link in the chain.  We were misled, however, in our investment in the Tyrone region, and lost considerable sums as the result of our attempts to mine and use the ores of that section.  They promised well at the edges of the mines, where the action of the weather for ages had washed away impurities and enriched the ore, but when we penetrated a small distance they proved too “lean” to work.

Our chemist, Mr. Prousser, was then sent to a Pennsylvania furnace among the hills which we had leased, with instructions to analyze all the materials brought to him from the district, and to encourage people to bring him specimens of minerals.  A striking example of the awe inspired by the chemist in those days was that only with great difficulty could he obtain a man or a boy to assist him in the laboratory.  He was suspected of illicit intercourse with the Powers of Evil when he undertook to tell by his suspicious-looking apparatus what a stone contained.  I believe that at last we had to send him a man from our office at Pittsburgh.

One day he sent us a report of analyses of ore remarkable for the absence of phosphorus.  It was really an ore suitable for making Bessemer steel.  Such a discovery attracted our attention at once.  The owner of the property was Moses Thompson, a rich farmer, proprietor of seven thousand acres of the most beautiful agricultural land in Center County, Pennsylvania.  An appointment was made to meet him upon the ground from which the ore had been obtained.  We found the mine had been worked for a charcoal blast furnace fifty or sixty years before, but it had not borne a good reputation then, the reason no doubt being that its product was so much purer than other ores that the same amount of flux used caused trouble in smelting.  It was so good it was good for nothing in those days of old.