As the merchant pig iron business began to decline, Crane Iron sold off much of its railroad interests in 1896. In an effort to revive Eastern iron mining in the face of competition from Minnesota, Crane took part in Thomas Edison's attempts to develop a magnetic ore beneficiation process. However, Edison's experiments proved uneconomical and the Edison Ore-Milling Company was a failure. In 1899, Crane Iron was sold to the Empire Steel and Iron Company, a conglomerate of Eastern and Southern iron furnaces. The Crane Works, as the company's plant was now known, last made iron in 1930, and the plant was torn down in 1932.