The old question, "What becomes of all the pins?" may be
as well asked of rails, pipes and threshing machines. The end of all
iron is the same. However many may be its metamorphoses while in the
service of man it relapses at last into its original state of oxidation.
To save a pound of iron from corrosion is then as much a benefit to the
world as to produce another pound from the ore. In fact it is of much
greater benefit, for it takes four pounds of coal to produce one pound
of steel, so whenever a piece of iron is allowed to oxidize it means
that four times as much coal must be oxidized in order to replace it.
And the beds of coal will be exhausted before the beds of iron ore.
If we are ever to get ahead, if we are to gain any respite from this
enormous waste of labor and natural resources, we must find ways of
preventing the iron which we have obtained and fashioned into useful
tools from being lost through oxidation. Now there is only one way of
keeping iron and oxygen from uniting and that is to keep them apart.
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