Iron had determined the world’s economic and military powers for centuries. In biblical times the Philistines forbade the Israelites from making or working iron, and other countries followed in trying to limit nations from producing or obtaining this strategic metal. In the 18th century, iron had increased in importance, as it was the metal of cannon makers and toolmakers. American iron works dated back to 1621 in Virginia and grew steadily from smelting pig iron to processing pig iron into iron and steel implements.
Pig iron was made by smelting iron ore in a charcoal furnace. Pig iron is cast iron, and although strong, it is brittle. By reheating and hammering pig iron in a forge it can be made into wrought iron bar and steel that could be used in tools, guns, tinplate utensils, and agricultural implements. By 1750, the American colonies were exporting iron products; in particular, iron bar went to the West Indies and Africa as part of the triangular trade. In 1750, America was the third biggest exporter of bar iron after Russia. The production of iron bar was the beginning of American industry in general.
John Winthrop had come to Massachusetts to establish iron making in the colonies. In 1651, he teamed up with English and colonial investors to build Saugus Iron Works, which had a furnace, rolling mills, forges, and slitting mills. It was a state-of-the-art operation comparable to world-class iron operations. Winthrop’s success led to his building two more iron operations in Connecticut in 1670. Short on labor, Winthrop obtained Scottish prisoners from Cromwell’s England to man the operations.
In 1732, in response to the tobacco depression, Governor Alexander Spotswood of Virginia moved to build an iron works as well. Spotswood’s furnace and forge was manned by 70 Germans and 100 slaves. Another successful operation, Cornwall Furnace in eastern Pennsylvania, was producing 50 tons a week in 1750. In central Pennsylvania and Maryland, iron plantations emerged that employed 200 workers plus slaves to process iron. By 1750, Iron had become central to America; the colonies had many charcoal furnaces in operation and many foreign investors. Even Virginia plantation owners, who were self-sufficient in most needs, purchased processed American iron bar for blacksmiths to make such things as horseshoes.
Initially, Britain did not oppose American iron making for fear of her colonies arming for war but because it feared the loss of pig iron processing back in Britain. Exported processed iron and steel tools were a big business for the forges and iron mills of Great Britain. The Iron Act of 1750 was aimed at forcing the American colonies to ship all pig iron processing to Britain so that it could be shipped back to the colonies as tools and implements. Great Britain was also short on pig iron at home because iron processing required huge amounts of wood to make charcoal for the smelting process, and Britain had been deforested by its own iron production.
In addition, Great Britain’s main source of imported pig iron, Sweden, had joined an alliance against Britain. Without pig iron imports from the colonies, British manufacturers would no longer be able to forge tools in Britain. Britain also wanted to stop the colonies from moving into more manufacturing trades like gunsmithing. The act hit the iron-working colonies of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia particularly hard. All the colonies suffered, however, as the price of critical iron and steel increased dramatically.
The Iron Act of 1750 prohibited any new nail mills, slitting mills, and forges from being built in the colonies. Existing furnaces were to ship their pig iron product to Great Britain. Governors were to list and report all colonial operations in detail. One problem, of course, was that many of the governors had invested in the iron industry, seeing it as fundamental to the colonial economy. Other prominent people in the iron business included George Washington’s father and brother and many of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.
The Iron Act loomed as a potential crisis to shut down colonial industrial growth, though initially the downturn created by the act was short-lived as colonists found ways to avoid enforcement. Iron bar had become a key part of barter trade with non-British colonies. Just as important was the economic boom the iron industry was creating. Tool making—hatchets, axes, guns, and plows—was aiding western expansion and reducing plantation costs in the southern states. Connecticut iron, for example, was famous in the making of American rifles, and gunsmiths and all the colonies depended on its continued production.
The threat to colonial growth from the enforcement of the Iron Act encouraged many governors to ignore the act and to give under counts of colonial furnaces and forges to the king. Owners and investors moved their pig iron operations further into the interior to avoid government agents. At the ports, bar iron was smuggled to non-British destinations. Ultimately, the conflict over the Iron Act of 1750 was overwhelmed by international events.
The British force of 1753 raised to attack the French colonies in America took priority by mid-decade, when the colonies were required to financially back the war. It proved difficult for the British to enforce the Iron Act, which could have done great harm to the colonial economy at the very time they sought colonial funds to support the war against the French. The British government made some minor amendments to the act in 1757, and the act actually stayed on the books until 1867.
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