ABSTRACT
This chapter provides information about ironmaking in different countries. The principal factor in enabling this progress to be achieved was the discovery and development of the iron ores of the Lake Superior ranges and of the coking coal of the Connellsville region in Western Pennsylvania. It is impossible to do more than give a perfunctory and imperfect summary of vast ironmaking resources and magnificent development of the United States. While the manufactures of both iron and steel had been carried on in Germany during Middle Ages, from the end of the Crusades to the beginning of the Thirty Years War, yet the industry on an important scale is very modern so much so, indeed, that the output of iron ores has increased nearly five-fold within the last thirty years. Unlike Germany, Great Britain, and the United States, France has been more concerned with retaining her own home markets against all comers than in reaching forward to capture foreign markets.
