How a Bar of Steel Can be Made Very Valuable

A bar of steel worth $5.00 when made into ordinary horseshoes, is then worth $10.00. If this same $5.00 bar is manufactured into needles, the value rises to $350.00. And yet if it’s made into delicate springs for expensive watches, it is worth more than $250,000.00. The same bar of steel is made more valuable by being cut to its proper size, passed through one blast furnace after another, again and again, hammered and manipulated, beaten and pounded, finished and polished until it’s ready for those delicate tasks. (M.R. DeHaan, Broken Things).