Iron ore, coal, and limestone, the three chief materials used in the
making of steel, are all found in the hills in the immediate vicinity of
Birmingham. I am told that there is no other place in the world where
the three exist so close together. That is an impressive fact, but one
grows so accustomed to impressive facts, while passing through this
plant, that one ceases to be impressed, becoming merely dazed.
If I were asked to mention one especially striking item out of all that
welter, I should think of many things--things having to do with
vastness, with gigantic movements and mutations, with Niagara-like
noises, with great bursts of flame suggesting fallen fragments from the
sun itself--but above all I think that I should speak of the apparent
absence of men.
There were some four thousand men in the plant, I believe, at the time
we were there, but excepting when a shift changed, and a great army
passed out through the gates, we never saw a crowd; indeed I hardly
think we saw a group of any size. Here and there two or three men would
be doing something--something which, probably, we did not understand; in
the window of a locomotive cab, or that of a traveling crane, we would
see a man; we kept passing men as we went along; and sometimes as we
looked from a high perch over the interior of one of the great sheds, we
would be vaguely conscious of men scattered about the place.
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