The Case of Lancaster County

By Darwin H. Stapleton CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY THE DIFFUSION OF ANTHRACITE IRON TECHNOLOGY: THE CASE OF LANCASTER COUNTY IN RECENT years the diffusion of technical innovations has been a focus of attention not only for developmental economists, but historians as well. This is a case study of the diffusion of anthracite iron technology to Lancaster County, a case illuminated by un- usually detailed documentation of the form and operation of an early anthracite iron furnace.' In 1840 Lancaster County had a charcoal iron industry based upon local iron ore and limestone, and charcoal made from the regular harvesting of wooded areas. Large stone furnaces with water- powered bellows combined these ingredients to make pig iron, and a large portion of the pigs was made into wrought iron at charcoal fueled forges.2 The United States manufacturing census of 1840 reported that eleven furnaces in Lancaster County made 8,532 tons of pig iron per annum, and fourteen forges produced 2,235 tons of bar iron.' With that output, Lancaster County was 1. For example: Carroll W. Pursell, Jr., Early Stationary Steam Engines in America: A Study in the Migration of a Technology (Washington, 1969); Robert E. Carlson, "British Railroads and Engineers and the Beginnings of American Railroad Develop- ment," Business History Review, 34 (Summer 1960): 137-149; Carlo M. Cippola, "The Diffusion of Innovations in Early Modern Europe," Comparative Studies in Society and Histoy, 14 (January 1972): 46-52; Nathan Rosenberg, "Factors Affecting the Diffusion of Technology," Explorations in Economic Histoy, 10 (Fall 1972): 3-33; Rondo Cameron, "The Diffusion of Technology as a Problem in Economic History," Economic Geography, 51 (1975): 217-230; and the entire March 1974 issue of the Journal of Economic Histoy. 2. On the nature of the charcoal iron industry, see: Arthur Cecil Bining, Penn- sylvania Iron Manufacture in the Eighteenth Century (Harrisburg, 1938). 3. Manufacturing census of 1840, part II, volume 9 (manuscript), National Archives, Washington, D.C. For difficulties regarding the accuracy of the early manufacturing census, see: Meyer H. Fishbein, "The Census of Manufactures, 1810-1890," National Archives Accessions, 57 (June 1963): 1-20. 147 148 DARWIN H. STAPLETON one of the major iron manufacturing regions of Pennsylvania; and the Commonwealth was the greatest center of the iron industry in the United States. Virtually all American iron was made with charcoal, yielding a high-priced metal, but with qualities desirable for the manufacture of agricultural implements and household articles.4 The growing demand for railroad iron and building materials was not as well satisfied. However, a major change in the American iron industry was imminent, a change from organic (charcoal) to mineral (coal) fuel.5 Early in the eighteenth century British iron furnaces began to use coked bituminous coal instead of charcoal, and a century later it was their standard fuel. Coked coal made iron with different qualities than charcoal iron, but through experience it was adapted to almost all of the same purposes. It was consistently cheaper than charcoal iron. Americans knew of this development, but not until canals penetrated the anthracite coal regions of northeastern Pennsylvania were there sufficient supplies of coal at low cost to tempt the ironmasters to try mineral fuel. Uniformly, prior to 1840, such attempts were failures. Anthracite coal was so dense that it was not susceptible to the standard bituminous coking procedure whereby controlled burning drove off impurities and left porous, nearly-pure carbon. Because anthracite had a much higher natural carbon content than bituminous coal, many suspected it was a "natural coke," but no American could get it to burn productively in an iron furnace.' The solution to the problem came from across the Atlantic in south Wales. There, in a district containing good iron ore, was also a seam of coal with strong anthracite characteristics. The owner of the Yniscedwyn Iron Works, George Crane, imported fuel from other areas because the local coal did not make suitable 4. Peter Temin, Iron and Steel in Nineteenth Centuy America (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), pp. 35-44. 5. Much of the following material relating to the history and development of the anthracite iron process is derived from: Darwin H. Stapleton, "The Transfer of Technology to the United States in the Nineteenth Century," (Ph. D. diss., University of Delaware, 1975), chapter 4, "David Thomas and the Anthracite Iron Revolution in the United States." An excellent review of the importance of anthracite in the nineteenth century can be found in Alfred Chandler, Jr., "Anthra- cite Coal and the Beginnings of the 'Industrial Revolution' in the United States," Business Histoy Review, 46 (Summer 1972): 141-181. 6. W. Ross Yates, "Discovery of the Process for Making Anthracite Iron," Pennsyl- vania Magazine of Histoy and Biography, 98 (April 1974): 208, 210-212, 219, 220. ANTHRACITE IRON TECHNOLOGY 149 coke. But with his manager, David Thomas, he erected an experi- mental furnace for anthracite coal in 1826. They had no success until they used James Neilson's patented hot blast oven, a device for heating the air blown into the furnace, and early in 1837 Crane and Thomas made good anthracite iron. The heated air promoted the combustion of the dense anthracite, so that it was sufficiently consumed in the furnace, leaving few impurities in the iron. A Philadelphia railroad engineer then in Wales notified the managers of the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company (operators of the Lehigh Canal in northeastern Pennsylvania) of the success of the experiment. One of the managers, Erskine Hazard, went to Wales and persuaded David Thomas to come to the United States to establish the new process here. Several of the Lehigh managers formed a new company, named the Lehigh Crane Iron Company in honor of George Crane, to finance Thomas' efforts. With a minimum of difficulty Thomas put the first furnace into production in the summer of 1840 along the Lehigh Canal at Catasauqua, Penn- sylvania. With Thomas as manager, the Lehigh Crane Iron Com- pany (LCIC) built four more successful furnaces in the next decade, and remained a center of innovation in anthracite iron technology. Putting an anthracite iron furnace into blast was no easy matter for the inexperienced, since both the design of the furnace and its operation were substantially different from charcoal furnaces.' But some help was available for those who wanted to try. The managers of the Lehigh Crane Iron Company opened their opera- tions to inspection, probably because they also had a financial interest in promoting the consumption of anthracite, the Lehigh Canal's primary article of transport. Thomas, one of his sons, and at least two other unrelated Welshmen were also available for technical advice in the early days. Possibly other iron workers gained experience in the early anthracite furnaces and took their skills to new locations as well. Even with a good start there still could be alterations because of later problems or desire for the installation of successful innovations. David Thomas, in particular, made a number of im- provements which others were anxious to emulate. In 1846 Thomas installed a steam engine to blow the blast for the third LCIC furnace at a time when few American furnaces of any sort used steam power. He further innovated by heating the boiler with the exhaust from 7. W. David Lewis, "The Early History of the Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company," Pennsylvania Magazine of Histoy and Biography, 96 (October 1972): 443. 150 DARWIN H. STAPLETON the furnace's stack. This was known as the use of "waste heat." Such developments resulted in a lively interest in anthracite iron furnaces, and there were frequent press notices of their innovations.' The operation of anthracite iron furnaces on the Lehigh Canal had not gone unnoticed in Lancaster County, and by the latter 1840s the anthracite iron revolution was underway there, as well as in other parts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York. The fundamental determinant of the location of the furnaces, other than access to ore and limestone, was good transportation linking them to the anthracite coal regions. Lancaster County had an excellent connection via the Eastern Division of the Pennsylvania Canal, and later via various railroads. The water route continued to be the most important, however, as it always brought coal at the lowest cost. Anthracite came to the Eastern Division canal from the Scranton-Wilkes-Barre area, descending the North Branch and Susquehanna divisions of the Pennsylvania Canal, and from the Pine Grove area of Schuylkill County via the Union Canal. According to the annual reports of the Pennsylvania Canal Commissioners, anthracite coal shipments in- creased tremendously during the first decade of anthracite iron manufacture in Lancaster County. The Shawnee Furnace in Columbia made the first anthracite iron in Lancaster County in 1844 or 1845, and in the following decade ten more anthracite furnaces were erected. All were along the Eastern Division canal and in the Columbia-Marietta vicinity, except the Safe Harbor Furnace which was part of a rolling mill complex.9 These furnaces so altered the pig iron market, presumably by lowering the price of pig iron, that the county's charcoal iron furnaces, which had colonial origins,1 " reported a production of only 4,665 tons for the 1850 census (55% of 1840 production),1 1 8. See, for example, the American RailroadJournal of the 1840s. 9. H. L. Haldeman, "The Chikies Furnace," Lancaster Couny Historical Society Papers and Addresses, 1 (1896-1897): 14-15; J. P. Lesley, The Iron Manufacturer's Guide (New York, 1859), pp. 13-15, 238. There are some maps and views of the furnace in Gerald Smeltzer's Canals Along the Lower Susquehanna (York, Pa., 1963), pp.

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