PREFACE 
Tue history of our metallurgical industry, though 
smelting has been carried on through ages, dates no farther 
back than three and a half centuries ago. Men with no 
scientific knowledge to guide them, less informed, indeed, 
in many respects, than the labourer of to-day, then groped 
in darkness for the beginnings of what have since become 
our great basic industries. They depended almost wholly 
on the charcoal of our forests, and on manual labour. 
Machinery, except of the rudest description, was unknown. 
In course of time their processes improved, gradually 
extending over areas of easily-worked coal, until early in 
the nineteenth century our great industries; as we now 
know them, were founded. Collieries, Iron and Steel 
Furnaces, Foundries, Forges, Engineering Plants, Ship- 
yards sprang up in our midst, and better and more econo- 
mical methods in their working were diligently sought for 
and obtained, and these continue to be the subject of 
incessant research at the present day. 
It is to the great-grandfathers of the present generation, 
men of enterprise and courage, that Great Britain owes the 
position she has achieved in manufacture and finance. 
These men created British national supremacy on land, as 
the merchant adventurers of former times had previously 
done on the seas, and showed the path of progress to men 
all over the world, some of whom have since become, in 
their turn, instructors and rivals to our trade. There are 
names in our industries as worthy of preservation as any in 
the more romantic days of Frobisher and Drake and the