Evidently this one iron field, to say nothing of others already worked, gives a permanence to our steel industry.
Not only did America have the material resources; what is even more important, she had also the men.

American industrial history presents few groups more brilliant, more resourceful, and more picturesque than that which, in the early seventies, started to turn these Minnesota ore fields into steel--and into gold.

These men had all the dash, all the venturesomeness, all the speculative and even the gambling instinct, needed for one of the greatest industrial adventures in our annals.

All had sprung from the simplest and humblest origins.

They had served their business apprenticeships as grocery clerks, errand boys, telegraph messengers, and newspaper gamins.