Little labor was put on any product, and so the product was cheap, like the landlord's milk.

In the iron industry, for instance, the coal mines and iron ore lay near the mills, as the landlord's pasture was near his hotel.

To bring the coal and ore to the blast furnaces took little labor, just as my driving in the cows cost the landlord but four cents a day.

Next to the blast furnaces stood the mixer, the Bessemer open hearth furnaces, the ingot stripper building, the soaking pits and then the loading yards with their freight cars where the finished product in the form of wire, rails or sky-scraper steel is shipped away.
Because the landlord had his cows milked at the back door of his hotel the milk was still warm when it was carried into his kitchen.

And so the steel mills are grouped so closely that a single heat sometimes carries the steel from the Bessemer hearth through all the near-by machines until it emerges as a finished product and is loaded on the railroad cars while it is still warm.