“With itself,” said Thane. “Ore’s various, ain’t it? Pig iron as comes from ore is various, ain’t it? That’s why you puddle it so as to make it all the same, like wrought iron’s got to be. Here you take a run of stuff from this furnace ’n one from that furnace ’n it ain’t the same because it ain’t been puddled, but you run it into that converter thing ’n think it’s got to come out all one kind of steel. It won’t.”
“How can you mix six or eight tons of molten iron?” John asked.
“There’s got to be some way,” Thane answered.
Tillinghast was deaf. It didn’t make sense to John. Yet Thane kept saying, “Mix it,” until they were sick of hearing him, and the steel persisted in being variable until they were desperate.
“Well, mix it then,” said John. “If you know how, mix it.”
Thereupon Thane built the first mixer,—an enormous, awkward tank or vat resting on rollers that rocked and jigged the fluid, blazing iron. Now they started the blast furnaces again and molten iron in equal quantities from all three was run into this mixer and sloshed around. From there it went to the converter. After two or three trials they began to get and continued to get steel that was both good and invariable.
And that was Eureka!
They tried the steel in every possible way and it was all that steel should be and is. They fed it to those fastidious German wire drawing machines and they loved it. Never again would it be necessary to import German or English steel to make wire, or German wire to make nails. They had it.
John formed a new company. Slaymaker came in. The men from whom John had taken the plant got stock for their interest. A large block was allotted to Thane for his mixer. John had the controlling interest. It was named the American Steel Company. But John and Thane between them spoke of it as the Agnes Plant.
“Let’s call it that for luck,” said John.