Still, with his penetration of the future,
he realized that the old, careful processes were doomed. He had
difficulty in assembling enough adequate workmen to fill the increasing
contracts for bar iron and rails now; and the demand, with the extension
of steam railways, would grow resistlessly. More wholesale methods of
production were being utilized daily; he was one of the foremost
adherents of "improvement"; but suddenly he felt a poignant regret at
the inevitable passing of the old order of great Ironmasters, the
principalities of furnaces and forges. He was still, he felt, such a
master of his men and miles of forests and clearings, lime pits and ore
banks, coal holes, mills, coke ovens, hearths and manufactories. He
might still drive to Virginia through a continuous line of his
interests; his domination over his labourers, in all their personal and
industrial implications, was patriarchal; he commanded, through their
allegiance and his entire grasp on every iota of their living, their
day's journey; but, he told himself, he was practically the last of his
kind.
New and different industrial combinations were locking together in great
agglomerations of widely-separated activities; the human was superseded
by the industrial machine, where men were efficient, subservient cogs in
a cold and successful automaton of business.
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