Reading an old book on smithing and the charcoal numbers got me

I was looking through a book from the 1920s I found at a yard sale in Portland. It was a manual for farm blacksmiths. One part said that to make one ton of wrought iron back then, you needed about four tons of charcoal. That's a lot of wood. It made me think about all the trees that must have been cut just to keep a small shop running for a year. We just flip a switch on the propane forge now. I know it's cleaner and easier, but it makes you appreciate the sheer scale of the old work, and the forests that supplied it. Has anyone else run into a fact from the old ways that just stopped you for a minute?

2 comments

2 Comments

lunaw7225d ago

Wait, are we supposed to feel bad about that? Think about how many people had steady work cutting that wood and making that charcoal. Whole towns lived off that. Now it's one guy with a gas tank. We traded a big, messy system that fed families for a clean, empty shed. And the forests grew back, didn't they? We have more trees now than a hundred years ago. Maybe the old way was wasteful, but it wasn't lonely.

jordanm1925d ago

Yeah but those towns were probably rough. All that back-breaking work for not much pay, you know? Progress is messy but I'll take the gas tank.