CHAPTER 26
WORLD WORKERS IN IRON IN ALL AGES
THERE IS no way of telling much about the beginning of the age of iron. Kitchen middens and heaps of flint chips tell the story of the service of bones and stones all over the world where primitive man has left his wild kindergarten marks. Copper implements were used at a very early time, and there were copper shops at many places about Lake Superior where the native metal was beaten into knives, spoons, pans, pots and other utensils. One of the largest single discoveries of prehistoric copper implements was made at Sault Ste. Marie, at a place once an island in St. Mary’s River, but now an esker-like ridge of stream-washed gravel and boulders that marks the topography of the town from west to east. I have my modest home on this old ridge. Such finds as this one of well-made articles that seemed to be harder than the native metal have given rise to the common but erroneous belief that the ancients knew how to temper copper, an art lost to this age. The outer surface of the beaten copper is somewhat harder from pounding and water and air hardening.
Bu almost never is anything of iron found with the stones or the bones or the copper. This is not because iron was not wrought, but because it is more perishable when exposed to oxygen, either in the air or water, even than wood under some conditions. There is reason to believe that iron-making was the first work in metals done by mankind, because the art is advanced beyond any other among the wholly uncivilized tribes of Africa and in other parts of the world where primitive man exists today.
From Somaliland to Zululand in Africa I found iron hoes and iron assegai points common among the wild natives. The making of these gave employment to considerable numbers of persons. There was a distinct class of iron workers in every tribe of any size, except among such lowly ones as the pigmy Dokos or others of their undeveloped kind. The art was handed down from father to son, and while methods were similar, there was variety in them and also a difference in skill. They smelted ores, and do so yet, except where scraps of iron can be procured. Some workers used stones for hammers and bark-tied, hardened wood for tongs; others had iron hammers and tongs quite well fashioned. Stone anvils are used, and the smith usually sits at his work. Sometimes hollowed sticks of wood were used to hold the cold end of the piece of iron that was being wrought. Bellows are most often made of the hide of an ox or some other animal, often of goat skins. In one corner of the bag thus formed is a wooden pipe about a yard long and bound in air tight with rawhide thongs. The other end of the skin bag is fastened to pieces of flattened wood forming a mouth that shuts quite tight when the bellows is being operated. This was done by hand, the smith’s assistant holding on to rawhide handles above and below on the wooden jaws. A stone weight on the wooden pipe holds the bellows down quite firmly. Two bellows are used. By working them alternately a steady blast of air of considerable force is secured. A clay tunnel connects the wooden pipe outlet of the bellows with a charcoal fire built in a rude forge in the ground.
For smelting iron ore a larger number of bellows were employed. Very often I found abandoned ant houses utilized for a furnace and the natives even drive out the ants and use their formidable formicaries not only for furnaces, but also for grain bins and even for human dwellings.
Their native hoes contained good enough iron so that a gun maker at Birmingham made an Enfield rifle out of some that Livingstone sent to England.
Abbe Rochon, of France, member of the Academies of Sciences of Paris and Petersburgh, Astronomer of the Marine, Keeper of the King’s Philosophical Cabinet, Inspector of Machines, Money, etc., was in Madagascar in 1768. Referring to iron ore he says: “Iron mines of an excellent quality are dispersed in great profusion all over the island, and very near to the surface of the earth. The Malegaches break and pound the ore and place it between four stones lined with potter’s clay; they then employ a double wooden pump, instead of a pair of bellows, to give the fire more strength (blast); and in the space of an hour the mineral is in a state of fusion. The iron produced by this operation is soft and malleable: no better is known in the world.”
Abbe Rochon was a wide traveler as an official and scientific observer. In his opinion the ancient Malagasy iron furnace was peculiar to that people. Incidentally he also tells an interesting story about an adventurer in Madagascar who buncoed Benjamin Franklin. Poor Richard gave Benjowski letters of recommendation which he used in America to organize an ill-fated expedition for the seizure of Madagascar. Benjowski was killed by French marines. I was interested in seeing the spot where he came to grief.
All African travelers report seeing iron ore and iron workers, so it is certain that it is distributed all over that continent. I found big outcroppings of iron ore near to both coal and limestone. Blue hematite specimens that I brought out and had analyzed turned out to be of fine Bessemer quality. There is no iron manufacturing in Africa except the rude native operations, but it is entirely possible and even probable that Africa will supply the world with steel, as it surely can do. Even now there is a considerable shipment to America and Europe of chrome iron ore from the mines near Selukwe in Southern Rhodesia. The only other large production of chrome iron ore is from the French mines in New Caledonia.
In every one of the eighteen provinces of China as well as in Manchuria there are deposits of iron ore. I have visited many of these. Some of them have been worked for centuries in a small and clumsy manner, not much better than the Africans did. Lack of pumping facilities kept them on the surface, but even if pumps had been available they would not have been used on account of feng shui: their fear of offending the earth demons. Both men and women work as miners. The men are paid an equivalent of four to five cents in our money and the women two to six cents for a day of eight hours. In addition some rice and a vegetable called miso are served.
A little while before he died Li Hung Chang established a steel plant near Hankow, the first one in China. It was a kind of junk affair at first, but has been improved.
Iron working in China is an ancient art and at some periods reached a high state of perfection. In Chinese collections I saw fine coats of mail for man and horse made of delicate woven wire, so as to be light, elastic and effective; also lances, shields, chains, traps and other things made before guns came into use.
There are great iron ore deposits and coal measures in Shansi, Chi-li, Shantung and Yunnan. In fact, there is more or less iron ore in all of the Chinese provinces. The iron district in Shansi and extending beyond is one of the largest in the world and will some day be a source of world’s supply. At the present time very little is being done. I visited a number of surface workings in Shansi, where the methods are crude indeed, although they do produce an engraving steel of unexampled hardness. A great many persons were employed in iron ore mining and in iron making. Their condition of life is very miserable and their pay is less than two cents a day in our values. Ignorance and superstition seemed to be instruments of conservation in China, just as avarice is the cause of feverish destruction in our country. Some day the world will turn to China for iron and coal and the vast untouched quantities there of these twin necessities will be appreciated. During 1916, 1917 and 1918 Japan has made large loans to the Northern Chinese government, taking as security vast mineral concessions comprehending all of China’s known iron ore fields. It is even charged that Japan took advantage of the world’s engrossment in war to exploit China. If the Northern forces are victorious in the civil war in China, a final title may be obtained by Japan. But if the Southern armies win, Japan will get nothing; nor is she likely to profit by a compromise that seems probable between Canton and Pekin. Japan’s attempt is a gamble in iron ore.
I spent several months following the tracks of Abbe Huc in China, and the trails of Marco Polo not only in China, but in other countries of Asia. Polo began his travels in 1260. In that age his tours were a source of world wonder. He brought back to Europe information of incalculable value about the work of mankind in the Orient where in every channel of activity there was higher development. Men in the Orient were thinking better and working with their hands better than the people of the West. Europe was just beginning to see the dawn of a new day after centuries of decadence and obliteration. A great many pronounced Polo an impostor and discredited his reports. Others believed in him and through these Europe was to have the benefit of Polo’s travels and learning. It is astonishing how many of the modern arts in their development in the western world can be traced to a period coeval with the post-Polo era. Before that the use of coal was scarcely known, if at all, in Europe. Iron making was nearly as primitive as it is in the wilds of Africa to-day. In China, Persia, Arabia, Turkey and India, Polo learned by hearsay or actual contact and observation of vast deposits of iron ore and of most wonderful handicraft in steel of the finest texture. Concerning these things in the kingdom of Kerman, then recently conquered by the Tartars, Polo reported “plenty of veins of steel and ondanique; the people are skillful in making steel harness of war, swords, bows, quivers, arms of every kind, bridle bits, spurs, needles, etc.” The “steel” mines referred to are probably the Parpa iron mines on the road from Kerman to Shiraz, called even to-day M’aden-i-fúlád (steel mine); they are idle now. I saw old Kerman weapons, daggers, knives, stirrups and other things made from steel, of exquisite workmanship and more than justifying all of Polo’s praise.
It is not quite certain what is meant by Polo’s “ondanique.” Ramusio, of Venice, often asked Persian merchants who visited him about it. They agreed in stating that it was a kind of steel of such surpassing excellence and value that in the ancient days a man who possessed a mirror or a sword of andanic or ondanique regarded it as he would a precious jewel.
The sword blades of India had a great fame all over the East and I heard them referred to as having been made by workmen now extinct, with whose passing also was lost an irrecoverable art. At Teheran I learned that Indian blades and considerable fine Indian steel had been imported until quite recent times.
Ctesias mentions two wonderful Indian swords that he got from the King of Persia and his mother. It is not unlikely that this fine Indian steel is the ferrum candidum of which the Malli and Oxydracæ sent one hundred talents weight as a present to Alexander the Great. Indian iron and steel are mentioned in the Periplus as imports into the Abyssinian ports and to this day may be seen fine steel spear heads and implements at Dire Doua and Addis Abeba, perhaps relics of those ancient imports.
Ferrum Indicum appears among the Oriental products subject to duty in the Roman tariffs of Marcus Aurelius and Commodus. Salmasius notes that among the rare Greek chemical writings there is a metallurgical paper “On the Tempering of Indian Steel.”
Edrisi mentions that excellent iron was produced in the “cold mountains” northwest of Jiruft. In the Jihan Numa, or Great Turkish Geography, is the statement that the “steel” mines of Miriz, on the borders of Kerman, were famous. Teixeira substantiates this. Says Edrisi: “The Hindus excel in the manufacture of iron and in the preparation of those ingredients along with which it is fused to obtain that kind of soft iron which is usually styled Indian steel. They also have workshops wherein are forged the most famous sabers in the world. It is impossible to find anything to surpass the edge you get from Indian steel.”
Arabic literature contains many references to the fame of the sword blades of India. Even the ancient poets sang of them as may be read about in Freytag’s translation of Hamasa’s collection of old Arab verse. Timur used Indian blades, and had for his own use a Hindu sword of matchless fineness. In the accounts of the Mohammedan conquest of India and on down through the reigns of Akbar, Shah Jahan and other Mughals, the Hindu disbelievers’ execution is referred to as being sent to Jihannam with the well-watered blade of the Hindu sword. The sword is consequently personified as a “Hindu of Good Family,” according to the idea that a dead Hindu recalcitrant was the only good Hindu, the origin no doubt of the American phrase as applied to the American aborigine, “A good Indian is a dead Indian.”
Throughout the Malay Archipelago I found primitive iron furnaces such as were used thousands of years ago in Arabia and India, suggesting that they were perhaps inducted by Arab traders. In Madagascar I saw a different type of furnace that seemed to have been originated by the Malagasy. Indeed work in iron has been a dignified art and distinctive industry all over the world for multiplied centuries.
Chardin says of the steel of Persia: “They combine it with Indian steel which is more tractable and held in greater estimation.” Dupre, a hundred years ago, writes that he had thought that the famous Persian sabers were made from ore from certain mines in Khorasan, but that he had discovered himself in error in that there are “no mines of steel” in that province, and that he had learned of the use of steel disks imported from Lahore.
Kenrick suggests that the “bright iron” mentioned by Ezekiel in chapter 27 as among the wares of Tyre, must have been Indian steel, because mentioned in connection with calamus and cassia and other exports from India.
Pottinger enumerates steel among the imports from India into Kerman. Elphinstone the Accurate, in his Caubul, tells how much Indian steel is prized in Afghanistan, but that the best swords are made in Persia and in Syria. In his “History of India” he calls attention to the fact that the ancients sought steel in India and that the oldest known Persian poem contains praise of it; that it continues to be the material used in the scintillating scimitars of Damascus and Khorasan.
An old Indian officer in the British service found no common knowledge of steel-making among the people. He tried to tell a native, who claimed that steel ore and iron ore were separate and distinct materials, how steel was manufactured. The Indian was disgusted and displayed his feelings plainly by exclaiming: “You would have me believe that if I put an ass in the furnace it will come forth a horse.”
Paulus Jovius in the sixteenth century speaks of the high repute of Kerman scimitars and lance points. The blades were eagerly sought by the Turks. Such was their unusual reputation for quality that it was a common boast that with one blow a Kerman sword would cleave a European metal helmet without turning the edge.
Undoubtedly the art of fabricating fine steel and of generally utilizing iron ore was known at the very dawn of history and is even prehistoric. The world has shifted its skill to the Occident. Volumes are required to tell the story of iron ore and its manufacture in Europe, where the Germans, Swedes and English have rivaled each other in methods and production. Now the great industry has crossed the Atlantic to find its highest development in both quality and volume. The United States leads the world in iron ore production and in its manufacture. It is an enviable position, with many interclashing responsibilities. The largest business organization in the world is devoted to the iron industry. As one stands illumined by the furnace incandescence in some vast modern forge of Vulcan, with its wearing human machinery and its ponderous but delicately adjusted cranes, dippers, cars and rolls, all moving as perfectly as watch wheels at the magic touch of subtle electric currents, he cannot escape the wish that man’s relation to man might be as perfectly and happily arranged.
