With the help of David Thomas, a Welsh immigrant, the Scrantons learned to forge pig iron using a hot blast furnace method that ironworkers had perfected in Wales.

Thousands of workers, for instance, trapped in conditions nearly as dismal as those documented a century ago in the Putumayo, make the charcoal used to forge pig iron, which is then purchased by international corporations to produce the steel used in everyday products, including popular makes of cars.