ABSTRACT
In an industry whose circumstances are liable to such serious and constant fluctuations as that of the manufacture of iron and steel, labour conditions must necessarily vary greatly between one period and another. Great changes have undoubtedly taken place in the pig-iron branch of the industry, but on the whole the cost of producing pig iron has not, in Great Britain at least, greatly altered during the last fifty years. The methods whereby iron ore and coal are mined, coke is manufactured, and pig iron is produced, are in all essential details the same as those that prevailed half a century ago. The improvements affecting labour that have been introduced into the steel industry may be estimated by one or two figures borrowed from the carefully kept records of the German iron trade. German labour has probably increased of late years, as measured by nominal wages, a good deal more than the labour employed in Great Britain.
