The iron comes from the blast furnaces in a great ladle. which is nothing more nor less than a moving. car. several tons are dumped into a steel converter in an openhearth furnace. and is poured fron that furnace into a niold five feet high. and a great crane -that can lift tilat mold as lightly as if it were a feather. handling it with absolute accuracy. drops it upon the rolls and then half a dozen men. as the Senator from Alabalma has said. operate those rolls from their lofty perches near the roof of the building. and direct those migitly cranes and start them in motion. and tile bloom is transformed into a plate of whatever shape it is desired and is cut ready for use. The labor cost in producing a ton of pig iron is 71 cents. according to the authentic figures given by the Tariff Commission. The labor cost in producing a ton of structural shapes is two dollars and a few cents. and the great majority of the laborers who work on that are foreign born and were brought here a few years ago. There is no basis here for the argument you must pay American labor more than you pay the labor of France or England or Germany. Threefourths of the men who handle the material up to this time. whether they are digging. coal or the ore or operating the blast furnaces. with the exception of a few skilled men. are in the main foreign] born.
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foreign born