Munsey's Magazine, April 1906

# Munsey's Magazine, April 1906

"The Romance of Steel and Iron in America" by Herbert N. Casson leads this issue. The article chronicles the iron and steel industry's forty-year expansion, emphasizing that more iron and steel was produced in thirty years than throughout all prior history. Casson details the industry's emergence from pre-Civil War poverty—when steel cost twenty-five cents per pound—through the war's prosperity under government contracts. The narrative focuses on William Kelly's 1846 purchase of Kentucky's Suwanee Iron Works and his epoch-making discovery of the Bessemer process. Facing fuel shortages, Kelly realized oxygen could refine iron without charcoal, replacing centuries-old metallurgical tradition. The article features biographical sketches of industrial pioneers including Daniel J. Morrell, Sir Henry Bessemer, Alexander Lyman Holley, and Captain Eber B. Ward. Includes contemporary photographs and an advertisement for Pears' Otto of Rose soap.