`Saugus Ironworks`

Productivity baseline — hand-forged, 3,000+ hours per ton.

[Tom holds up a yellow-paper sketch.] The advantage of anything I write on yellow paper is it's easier to find. In the old days, back in the days of Saugus Iron Works, it took 3,000 or 4,000 hours per ton — this is hours per ton on a log scale. That's a person-year per ton, at sixty hours a week. Saugus Iron Works, 1600s. Everything was hand-forged.

New England answer to the British wood shortage — they came to the colonies and built it in the 1620s because we had lots of trees.

I told you about how Saugus Ironworks came into being. In 1558 a law was passed — this is before Saugus Ironworks, before the 1600s — forbidding the felling of trees to make coals for the burning of iron, but the Weald of Kent and Sussex was exempted. What's the Weald of Kent and Sussex? That's where the big forests were, with the big trees. So the politicians haven't changed over four or five hundred years — they pass a law and then they exempt what they're really trying to protect. And still the price would continue to climb. In 1559 a writer complained that the price had risen from a penny to two shillings, by reason of the iron mills. The shortage of wood was so serious that a further act was passed forbidding the felling of trees within 22 miles of the Thames River, within four miles of the great forest of the Weald, and within three miles of the coastline anywhere. Because those big trees — they didn't have big tractor-trailers and big interstate highways to bring them down the roads. They had to carry those by horse and mule and oxen.

Recommended Saugus, Massachusetts national park visit. Saugus Ironworks brought over from England as part of the cast-iron industry relocation driven by the English wood shortage.

So they brought over Saugus Ironworks. If you've got some time this summer — actually they will give you a day off later — go up to Saugus, Massachusetts and go through the national park, which is the Saugus Ironworks, and learn about how to make iron.