A Brief History
In October 1934, state prisoners at the Cummins State Farm in Lincoln County, Arkansas recorded a folk song, “The Rock Island Line.” The song is about a train engineer that sneaks a load of pig iron on his train past the toll collectors by claiming his train is carrying only produce, a cargo not levied. Since this is the only song I know of about pig iron, it will be the inspiration for today’s subject!
Digging Deeper
Many notable artists, Black and White, have recorded the song originally written and recorded by African Americans. Some of those artists include Leadbelly, Odetta, Johnny Cash, Bobby Darin, Johnny Horton, The Weavers, and Woody Guthrie & Sonny Terry.
Now for the title of the article: Pig iron is so called because when iron ore is smelted with charcoal (or coke) and limestone in a blast furnace, resulting in a highly impure form of high carbon iron. It gets its name from the typical way the liquid iron is cooled, by pouring it into sand molds creating several ingots on each side of a center sprue, giving the appearance (use your imagination) of piglets suckling at a sow. Pig iron is not useful as a metal for construction or tools as it is brittle and contains too many impurities, but once in ingot form it is easily transportable to a steel mill for conversion into steel.
Pig iron did not appear in Europe until the Middle Ages (12th or 13th Century AD), although the Chinese had produced pig iron centuries before that. In Europe and the Middle East iron had been produced as wrought iron, using various methods of reducing the iron into useable form in ovens called finery forges and puddling furnaces. Pig iron can also be used to make ductile iron and of course, it is the main ingredient in steel making. Modern steel mills sometimes make pig iron ingots into smaller “stick pigs” or “stick piglets” or just pour liquid pig iron directly into the steel making mix without first cooling and hardening the pig iron.
Back to the song, the original versions were more along the Gospel line, while later versions were more of a Blues and Folk music tone and lyrics.
Here are some lines from the Johnny Cash version:
This is what the train man says to the toll takers,
I got livestock
I got livestock
I got cows
I got pigs
I got sheep
I got mules
I got all live stock
After passing the toll gate, the trainman taunts the toll taker,
Well I fooled you
I fooled you
I got pigiron
I got pigiron
I got old pigiron
You have to think the toll taker will not be fooled the next time the tricky trainman comes through!
Question for students (and subscribers): Have you ever worked in the iron industry? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
McGrain, John W. From pig iron to cotton duck: A history of manufacturing villages in Baltimore County (A Baltimore County heritage publication). Baltimore County Public Library, 1985.
The featured image in this article, a photograph of an Iroquois smelter casting pig iron in Chicago, is in the public domain in the United States. This applies to U.S. works where the copyright has expired, often because its first publication occurred prior to January 1, 1924, and if not then due to lack of notice or renewal. See this page for further explanation.
