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Photographer: William Fischer, Jr.
Taken: November 29, 2008
Caption: The Worker's Pyramid
Additional Description: Interpretive marker in front of the reconstructed furnace:
It took hundreds of workers to produce iron although only a few actually worked at the furnace. Fillers dumped carts of ore, charcoal and limestone into the seething tunnel head. The founder, assisted by a keeper, ordered ingredients, determined the amount of air to be blasted into the furnace and decided when to draw off the iron, usually every 12 hours. Guttermen directed molten iron into channels hoed into the sandy, cast house floor. Some furnaces employed moulders to make castings for iron stoves and utensils.

Away from the furnace, woodchoppers harvested wood necessary for the colliers to make charcoal. Miners dug iron ore and quarried limestone. Teamsters hauled wagons of wood, charcoal, iron ore, and pig iron. A bookkeeper kept company accounts, and a host of laborers and their families completed the unskilled jobs that kept both furnace and nearby village operating.
Submitted: December 3, 2008, by William Fischer, Jr. of Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Database Locator Identification Number: p45614
File Size: 0.092 Megabytes

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