From the time of
Tubal Cain man has ceaselessly labored to divorce these elements and,
having once separated them, to keep them apart so that the iron may be
retained in his service. But here, as usual, man is fighting against
nature and his gains, as always, are only temporary. Sooner or later his
vigilance is circumvented and the metal that he has extricated by the
fiery furnace returns to its natural affinity. The flint arrowheads, the
bronze spearpoints, the gold ornaments, the wooden idols of prehistoric
man are still to be seen in our museums, but his earliest steel swords
have long since crumbled into dust.
Every year the blast furnaces of the world release 72,000,000 tons of
iron from its oxides and every year a large part, said to be a quarter
of that amount, reverts to its primeval forms. If so, then man after
five thousand years of metallurgical industry has barely got three years
ahead of nature, and should he cease his efforts for a generation there
would be little left to show that man had ever learned to extract iron
from its ores.
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