For
years he had toiled hard to pay the rent of his forge and home and his
monthly bills. His wife was saving and helpful in a thousand ways, but
life was a hard struggle from sun to sun.
One summer's day when work was slack, there came to his shop a tall
Englishman to get a small job done. So well was the work performed by
Harris that the Englishman, whose name was James Ingram, said to Harris,
"I believe you are the mechanic I have long been looking for. In early
life I was apprenticed in England to a famous iron-master, and when the
Bessemer patents for converting iron into steel were issued, it was my
good fortune to be a foreman where the first experiments were made by
Henry Bessemer himself, and so I came to have a practical knowledge of
Bessemer's valuable invention; but my health failed, and for six months
I have been in your country in search of it, and now being well again,
I plan to start if possible a Bessemer steel plant in America. Can you
help me?"
Reuben Harris was quick to see that great profits might be realized from
Bessemer's patents and Ingram's ideas, and promptly said, "Yes, but I
must first know more about these patents and their workings." Before a
week had passed, he had learned much from Ingram concerning the practical
working of the Bessemer process of converting iron into steel.
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