American Tin Plate

Some time ago samples of American tin pinte were sent to certain Engliíh jounials, asking thein to notice this new American industry in their columns. It was thought it would bo a matter of interest to them and their readers to know that we were already inaking tin plate, although the new duty would not go into effect fur inonths to come. A ivcent mail brings the London Financial Times, with a "notice"' in the shape of a column of labored sarcasm and feigned doubt as to whether the sample sent was really American tin plate. It is a significant fact that the London Financial Times raises the same question that our New York Times and other journals which echo British sentiment have raised. Wo have already fully answered our home papers, but for the benefit of our English contemporaries we will repeat. The piece of tin sent to the Financial Times was made at Demler, Pa., by the United States Iron and Tin Plate company, and this Í3 what Mr. W. C. Cronemeyer, the president of that company, says of it: "The material used for thoseplates has been produced trom American iron ore; was first turned into pig metal in American blast f urnaces; American steel works converted the pig metal into steel billets; the steel billete were rolled into thin sheets of steel; the latter were pickled, or cleaned of scale with American acid, and all the work was done by American workmen (that is, workmen either born in this country or who have by their own free will chosen America as their home). "The only ingrediënt contained in those platea which is of foreign origin is the tin used for coating (from 2 to 5 pounds of foreign tin toevery lOOpounds of American steel plates). "During the last ten years the explanation that the so called tin plates are not made from tin ore, but from iron ore, and only washed with a light coating of tin, has been so often made by the American press generally that any person who yet talks about the impossibility of making tin plate for want of the tin ore reveáis gross ignorance. The bulk of tin used by English manufacturers is imported by them from the Dutch East Indies or from Australia, and we can import it from there as well. "Yes, the tin plates are as genuinely American as the tin plates imported from Wales are Welsh." This sliowing is good enough in itself , but we can go still f urther. In the city of Chattanooga a few weeks ago they were celebrating the successful manufacture in the south of basic steel from their ores and from their coal, and on the banquet table for one of the courses every guest had a tin plate made out of their basic steel and coated with the tin ores that came from the Black hills, made in American shops in St. Louis, by American workmen, and it was as good as can be made anywhere in the world. Neither the London Financial Times, the New York Times, nor any other journal at home or abroad, which devotes columns in trying to belittle American industries, can question any longer that we are making tin plate, all of which is American material and labor. We do not claim to be supplying the market. It is over two months yet before the new duty on tin plates will go into effect, and twenty months before our bar tin will be protected. We do claim, however, that we will soon be making so much American tin plato that the $20,000,000 which we have been annually sending to Great Britain will remain at home, and our workmen will be correspondingly benefited. We advise our Free-trade contemporaries to drop the tin plate question and try to propound some harder problem.