The  growth  was  slow  at  first.  In  that  year  there  were
rolled  2550  tons;  in  1868—7225;  1869—9650;  1870—34,000;
1871—38,250;  1872—94,070  tons.  It  was  not  until  1873
that  we  reached  a  production  of  over  100,000  tons,  rolling
in  that  year  128,000  tons,  but  by  1880  the  annual  produc-
tion reached  almost  1,000,000  tons.  In  this  short  sketch


Fig.  87

of  the  steel  rail  industry,  we  have  not  space  to  speak  of
the  many  heartbreaking  experiences  and  failures  met  with
by  the  men  who  were  prominent  in  the  work  of  developing
the  Bessemer  process  in  this  country.  R.  W.  Hunt  in  his
history  of  the  Bessemer  manufacture  sums  them  all  up  in
one  sentence :  "But  I  do  know  from  the  Wyandotte,  to  say
nothing  of  later  experiences,  that  it  required  faith  made
perfect  to  carry  one  through  the  sea  which  seemed  to  be
bounded  by  no  shore."

On  the  preceding  pages  we  have  endeavored  to  show  the
gradual  development  of  the  rail  from  the  beginning  to  the
advent  of  Bessemer  steel  in  1867.  The  American  develop-

37


RAILWAY  RAIL


ment  of  the  rail  section  really  dates  from  that  time.  Before
that  only  a  few  efforts  had  been  made  in  that  direction,
some  by  A.  L.  Holley,  almost  alone  among  the  steel  men,
and  by  Ashbel  Welch,  who  was  among  the  first  to  take  a
belated  interest  in  this  matter.  In  1865  he  designed  a  rail
very  much  like  that  in  Fig.  36,  and  a  few  years  later,  the
rail  shown  in  Fig.  37,  the  first  of  the  thin  flanged  type.
