Then, lo! the new process proved to be a failure. The steel made by it was good for nothing. The newspapers denounced "the whole scheme as the dream of a wild enthusiast, such as no sensible man could for a moment have entertained." One paper spoke of Bessemer's invention as "a brilliant meteor that had flitted across the . . . sky for a short space, only to die out in a train of sparks, and then vanish in total darkness." These criticisms stunned Bessemer. He went out to the different furnaces and saw for himself the utter failure of his process.

Something was wrong, but he had no idea what it was. Should he give up and admit his failure, or should he go ahead? Bessemer was no "quitter." To protect his family, he gave his wife fifty thousand dollars; this left him sixty thousand, and he resolved to spend the last penny of it, if need be, to prove the worth of his invention.

One expensive experiment followed another, only to end in heartbreaking failure. A whole year, then another half year glided by, with nothing accomplished except that thousands of dollars were spent, and Bessemer was much worn from hard work and anxiety. Those who had something to lose, if his invention was a success, sneered at his efforts. His friends tried to get him to give up a project which experience had shown was worthless. Those dearest to him grieved over his obstinate perseverance. But what could he do? His reputation had been injured; he had spent the greater part of three years and a goodly fortune on the invention, and he believed in it. To give up was to surrender his reputation, his time, the money he had invested, and the fame and wealth which he knew would be his if he succeeded. Happily the end was near.

The pig iron produced at this time in England contained considerable phosphorus, and phosphorus was found to be the enemy of the new process. Work as he would, Bessemer could not make good steel out of pig iron with phosphorus in it. He had made good steel, and this led him to wonder what kind of pig iron he had used. He learned that this pig iron came from Sweden, and that it contained no phosphorus. Pig iron from Sweden was immediately ordered. On its arrival, no time was lost in melting it and putting it into the converter. You can well imagine Bessemer's anxiety about the outcome. When the molten mass was turned out of the converter, it was steel of an excellent quality. Not long after this the discovery was also made that with a little care quantities of pig iron could be produced in England, free from phosphorus. It was now Bessemer's turn to laugh.

Bessemer seemed for a time no nearer to success than before. When he talked to steel makers about buying licenses, they said: "Oh, this is the thing which made such a blaze two years ago and which was a failure." Not a single steel maker in all England would buy.

Bessemer saw that if his process was ever to be adopted, he must build a steel plant of his own. A plant was started at Sheffield, and Bessemer produced as good steel for fifty dollars a ton as was being sold at that time for five times this sum. "The only reason," he says, "why the plant was not burned down, was that nobody thought it would come to anything."

When the new steel was made, nobody would buy it. If Bessemer talked to a toolmaker about using some of his metal, he was met with the reply, "Well, perhaps it is good enough for rails; anything is good enough for rails." On asking a railroad engineer to recommend the use of steel rails, the engineer exclaimed, "Mr. Bessemer, do you wish to see me tried for manslaughter?"

Bessemer's steel was, however, too good, and the price at which it was offered was too attractive to be resisted long by the greedy world. Here and there a toolmaker began to use a little. It was satisfactory, and he bought more. The steel makers, seeing there was demand for new metal and that they were being undersold in the market, rushed to Bessemer to obtain licenses to use the new process. Thus began one of the greatest industrial revolutions in modern times. Bessemer's steel gradually found its way into tools, engines, steamboats, cannon, warships, bridges, skyscrapers, and a million other useful things. His royalties from the invention, which even his best friends had at one time considered worthless, amounted to no less than five million dollars.

So many uses were found for steel, when once it could be made at small cost, that the present is called the "Age of Steel," and its manufacture is one of the great industries of the world. Great waste regions, like the Mesabi Range of Minnesota, because of the iron ore they contain, have become more valuable than gold mines. To transport the enormous quantities of iron ore needed, railroads have been built and steamboat lines constructed, which carry nothing else. Large cities like Pittsburgh have grown up about steel, and cities like Gary, Indiana, have been located and built for the sole purpose of making it. Billions of dollars are invested in this great industry, and millions of people are employed in it.

Without steel that is both good and cheap, we would not have many of our finest and more delicate tools and instruments; we would not have our giant engines, and locomotives, and steamboats; we would not have great bridges, like the Brooklyn Bridge, or our mammoth and without these and other useful things made of steel, our lives would be very different from what they are, and the whole industrial world about us would be changed.

No wonder Bessemer has been called the "Captain of Modern Civilization," that his discovery is ranked with the printing press and steam engine as one of the three greatest inventions in the history of the race, and that his fame is as wide as the world.