Front Matter [Volume: 8, Issue: 1, 1888, pp. 1-3]

2

UNITED STATES ASSOCIATION OF

[VOL. 8,

lurgy. The JOURNAL will continue to represent the United
States Association of Charcoal Iron Workers and for the present
no change of name rvill be made, for it is deemed expedient to
retain the influence which the JOURNAL already has, and have
the publication win its way to more popular favor by its contents.
The plan is to issue the JOURNAL bi-monthly and those who
have contributed to its capital are willing to sink their investment if it be necessary, but it is confidently believed that there
is sufficient demand for such a periodical to at least make it selfsustaining. An earnest and honest effort will be made to so conduct the JOURNAL as to fill the place which is believed to exist
for a magazine treating of iron ores, and iron and steel production, and manufacture.
The JOURNAL does not enter the list as a rival of any American publication but will in part be modelled after some of the
European periodicals which have earned enviable reputations as
authorities. It will not be a competitor for current news, nor
strive for the first publication of papers read before technical societies, on the contrary it is expected that much of its contents
will be condensed fiom the columns of the admirable list of trade
and technical newspapers, both home and foreign, and it is our
desire to offer our contemporaries matter worthy of reproduction
in publications devoted to kindred topics. We also expect to
furnish valuable information by resumes taken from the transactions of engineering and other societies.
Trhe details to be treated will be developed according to the
favor with which the JOURNAL is received, but several features
have been decided upon which may be enumerated.
Iron ores and mining will be a specialty of the JOURNAL, arrangements having been made for detailed descriptions, with illustrations, of some of our most important iron mines. The
methods of mining, machinery employed, analyses of ores, etc.
will command attention.
The various methods of treating and concentrating iron ores,
viz: washing, roasting, jigging and magnetic separation, will be
discussed, and the appliances for crushing, roasting, washing or
separting illustrated.
A series of replies to queries pertinent to the management of