been "the largest and best in America." Whitehead Humphreys, who in 1770 was the owner of a steel-furnace on Seventh Street, Philadelphia, and made steel for the Continental army, was granted in 1786, by the Legislature of Pennsylvania, a loan of £300 for five years, to aid him in making steel from bar iron "as good as in England."
In 1777 Rhode Island "gave £60 per gross ton for good German steel made within the State."[1]
The Legislature of Massachusetts granted in 1778, to the Rev. Daniel Little, "£450, to aid in erecting at Wells [in the District of Maine] a building 35 X 25 feet, to be used in manufacturing steel."[2]
In 1787 the manufacture of steel was commenced in the town of Easton, Massachusetts, by Eliphalet Leonard, and we are told by Bishop that "the article was made in considerable amount, and cheaper than imported steel." About 1797 steel was made at Canton, in the same State, "from crude iron, by the German process." Peter Townsend, the proprietor of the Sterling Iron Works, in New York, made in 1776 the first steel produced in that province, and his son, Peter Townsend, Jr., is said to have made, at the same works, in 1810, steel "of as good quality for the manufacture of edged tools as that made from Dannemora iron."
Alexander Hamilton, in a report dated December 5, 1791, says, "Steel is a branch which has already made considerable progress, and it is ascertained that some new enterprises on a more extensive scale have been lately set on foot." In the same year Tench Coxe, in replying to Lord Sheffield's Observations on the Commerce of the United States stated that "about one half of the steel consumed in the United States is home-made, and new furnaces are building at this moment."
Swank states that "in 1805 there were two steel-furnaces in Pennsylvania which produced annually one hundred and fifty tons of steel. One of these was in Philadelphia County. In 1810 there was produced in the whole country nine hundred and seventeen tons of steel, of which Pennsylvania produced five hundred and thirty-one tons in five furnaces. . . . The remainder was produced in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Virginia, and South Carolina; each State having one furnace. In 1813 there was a steel-furnace at Pittsburgh, owned by Tuper & McKowan, which was the first in that city."
All the steel manufactured in 1 America prior to the year 1810 was produced either by what was called the "German method," which was conducted in a "hearth" similar to that used for a "blomary fire," or by the "cementation process." The "Ger-
