BRIDGE-BUILDING During the Civil War the price of iron went up to something like $130 per ton.

Even at that figure it was not so much a question of money as of delivery.

The railway lines of America were fast becoming dangerous for want of new rails, and this state of affairs led me to organize in 1864 a rail-making concern at Pittsburgh.

There was no difficulty in obtaining partners and capital, and the Superior Rail Mill and Blast Furnaces were built.
In like manner the demand for locomotives was very great, and with Mr.
Thomas N.Miller[24] I organized in 1866 the Pittsburgh Locomotive Works, which has been a prosperous and creditable concern--locomotives made there having obtained an enviable reputation throughout the United States.

It sounds like a fairy tale to-day to record that in 1906 the one-hundred-dollar shares of this company sold for three thousand dollars--that is, thirty dollars for one.