THE RAW MATERIALS
A story has it that a minister once visited a friend who was a
zoölogist. Upon realizing for the first time how highly organized a
creature was the humble earth-worm with its three-layer skin covering,
alimentary canal, nephridia or excretory system, reproductory organs,
rude nervous system, and setæ for purposes of locomotion, he exclaimed:
“Wonderful! I had always supposed that worms were only skin and squash.”
With millions of tons of heavy reddish-brown earth from northern
Michigan and Minnesota going by our doors continuously during the
shipping season, the position of most of us is very similar to that of
the minister relative to the earth-worm. We know that something is going
on but we are not aware of its importance or the immensity of it.
Iron Ore
Almost every one knows that there are extensive copper deposits along
the Lake Superior shore of what is now northern Michigan. In the 17th
century word of these was several times taken to Europe where in old
publications was mentioned a huge ingot of copper from which the Indians
chopped pieces with their hatchets. At that early date maps of the
region were drawn which are wonderfully accurate, and, from time to time
over a period of a century and a half, adventurers attempted to gain
wealth in this favored region.
[Illustration:
MAP SHOWING DISTRIBUTION OF IRON ORES OF AMERICA
]
However, despite the definite knowledge of considerable mineral wealth
there and rumored claims of much more, Michigan at the time of her
admission to the Union in 1836 bitterly opposed having what is now the
northern peninsula included within her territory in lieu of a ten mile
wide strip of northern Indiana and Ohio, and it has been said that she
nearly went to war to resist it. Even after the discovery of the iron
ore deposits, no one realized the full importance of the minerals of
this region.
[Illustration:
SHOWING TYPICAL MESABA ORE BED WHICH, AFTER EARTH COVERING IS REMOVED,
BECOMES AN OPEN PIT MINE
]
During the many years of campaigning for Federal help in the building of
a canal at Sault Sainte Marie, the fisheries, valued at $1,000,000 a
year, were given as the leading reason why a canal should be built, and
it was no less a personage than Henry Clay, who, in opposing
appropriation for this purpose, referred to the project and the district
as “beyond the remotest settlement, if not in the moon.”
Now, within eighty years of that time, the annual tonnage of shipping
passing through the Sault Sainte Marie canal is as great as the combined
tonnage from the ports of New York, London, Liverpool, Antwerp, and
Hamburg, and, as against the $1,000,000 value of the fisheries, the
value at the mines of the ore alone shipped from this region amounts to
about $100,000,000 yearly.
[Illustration:
SHENANGO OPEN PIT MINE, CHISHOLM, MINN.
]
[Illustration:
INTERIOR OF A HARD OR LUMP ORE MINE
]
As the copper deposits are mostly along the shore of the lake and the
great iron ore beds occur seven or more miles inland, the latter were
not discovered until Sept. 19, 1844, when William A. Burt, a Deputy
United States Surveyor, noticed that the needle of a solar compass of
which he was the inventor became unreliable. In looking about to
discover the magnetic source which must be the cause of the variation,
members of his party discovered ore just beneath the sod near what is
now Negaunee, Michigan. Inventor-like, Burt’s only concern was to devise
some preventive for future interference by stray magnetic currents. He
simply noted in his book that there was here a deposit of iron ore and
neither he nor any of his party profited or apparently attempted to
profit from the discovery.
[Illustration:
SHOWING ORE BODY AND SHAFT METHOD OF MINING
]
The Indians seem to have had no previous knowledge of these ore
deposits.
The first shipments of ore naturally were samples taken from what
afterward came to be known as the Jackson mine and trials of them in
blacksmiths’ forges were made at Jackson, Michigan (from which town went
the first seriously-minded pioneer, Philo M. Everett), and at Cucush
Prairie. They were soon afterward tried in a blast furnace at Sharon,
Pa.
The first plan was to build forges and manufacture iron near the mines.
So there was established on Carp River a forge to which the ore was
hauled in winter when the ground was frozen. It turned out, however,
that while very good bar iron was manufactured here, it could not be
delivered in Pittsburg at a cost less than $200 a ton. As the market
rate for iron then was but $80 a ton the plan was not financially
successful.
[Illustration:
LIGHTING THE FUSES IN A SHAFT MINE
]
Attention was turned to the shipping of ore to furnaces better located
as regards coke supply and market. It was possible to make this a
profitable undertaking only through cheap ore handling and
transportation. So, to-day, the ore which is better adapted than the
other raw materials for handling by labor-saving devices and
transporting without deterioration, is taken to the coke and limestone,
and to the market for the product. While the weight of coke used is but
half that of the ore smelted, its greater bulk, loss by breakage when
handled in quantities, and deterioration upon exposure preclude its
manipulation in the way which would be necessary to get it to the ore.
[Illustration:
VIEW OF HULL-RUST MINE, NEAR HIBBING, MINN.
]
The marvelous development of this territory into the greatest ore
producer of the world, including the hauling of the first small shipment
on mule back, the building of the plank and then the “strap” railroad
with grades so steep that the small trucks often ran over and killed the
mules, the building of the steam railroad, the successive building and
enlarging of canal locks at Sault Sainte Marie connecting for use of
ever larger and larger ore boats the waters of Lake Superior and Lake
Michigan, and the growth of ore boat fleets to such size that during the
shipping season scarcely ever is one boat out of sight of another over
the entire 800 mile journey from Duluth to the furnaces along Lake
Michigan and Lake Erie, is within the memory of men still living.
Marquette was the shipping point during the earlier days and the history
of this and adjacent regions during the latter half of last century vies
in pioneering flavor with the tales of our early western frontiers, and
with the more recent Yukon mining camps.
[Illustration:
THE ROUTES BY WHICH LAKE SUPERIOR ORES GO TO THE FURNACES
]
The first two mines, the Jackson and the Marquette, have come to be
particularly well known historically. The development of these and other
ranges in northern Michigan and Minnesota, particularly the Menominee,
Gogebic, Vermillion, etc., and, since 1890, the Mesaba and Cuyuna, have
brought about revolutions in ore digging, handling and transportation,
which followed each other with extreme rapidity. The ore carrying boats,
for instance, may almost be said to have jumped from a length of three
hundred to six hundred feet, and the Sault Sainte Marie canal locks were
several times almost immediately outgrown, though rebuilt again and
again, each time so much larger than before that they were deemed
impossible to be outgrown.
[Illustration:
LOADING ORE AT AN OPEN PIT MINE
]
[Illustration:
SHOWING OTHER TYPICAL ORE BODIES, SHAFT MINED
]
Practically all of the ore beds, with the exception of the Mesaba, yield
hard or lump ores and most of them are shaft mines in which mining has
to be done underground and the ore blasted down. Blast furnaces had
never used any but lump ores when along came discovery of the immense
soft ore deposits lying just beneath the surface of the ground over a
region one-hundred miles long in what is known as the Mesaba district of
Minnesota. These soft ores were so accessible and so rich that they drew
the attention of the iron makers of the whole country. But, alas! While
perfectly good in every other respect, they were merely dry powder and
not adapted to blast furnace methods. There were great discussion,
excitement, and ridicule among or at those who invested in these soft
ore mines. Eventually, of course, blast furnace men worked out feasible
methods of converting soft or what are termed “Mesaba Range” ores into
iron in the blast furnace. Those brave spirits, who in the face of
ridicule dared to invest in and develop Mesaba properties, have long
been reaping their financial reward which still shows no sign of
diminishing, as “Mesaba Range” mines are “the” mines of to-day.
[Illustration:
A CLOSE VIEW OF THE HOOVER & MASON UNLOADERS
]
While it may be done, it has not been found desirable to make up the
entire “burden” or furnace charge of soft ores alone as long as lump or
hard ores are obtainable to mix with them, but often more than half is
soft ore.
[Illustration:
STARTING AN OPEN PIT MINE. THE EARTH COVERING IS BEING REMOVED
]
While ores from the shaft mines, called “Old Range” ores, are won by
going down into the earth sometimes as far as 3,000 feet, drilling holes
in the rock, blasting down the ore, and loading it into buggies which
are hoisted to the surface, “Mesaba Range” ores are made available by
simply “stripping” off the thin earth covering, then caving or loading
with steam shovels the soft ore into railway cars. Some of the
illustrations presented show the ore trains and shovels, and the manner
in which the open pits are worked in terraces.
One naturally wonders how it is possible to mine and carry these ores to
the shipping ports of Duluth, Superior, Two Harbors, Marquette, Ashland,
Escanaba, etc., put them aboard ore carrying boats, transport them by
steam power to Milwaukee, Chicago, Gary, Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburg,
Buffalo, and the many other iron centers and convert them into iron and
steel at a profit. This, of course, is only possible because of the
inventive genius of man. For every operation ingenious machinery has
been constructed which has brought the cost of such operations to its
lowest terms.
[Illustration:
UNLOADING CARS OF COAL OR ORE IS A SIMPLE MATTER WITH THE MODERN CAR
DUMPER
]
[Illustration:
ORE CARS ARE UNLOADED BY GRAVITY AT DOCKS. THE CHUTES THEN CONVEY THE
ORE FROM THE ORE POCKETS INTO THE BOAT’S HOLD
]
By modern methods the cars carrying the ore from the mines are run up
trestle-work into positions above the ore bins high over the docks. The
mammoth ore carrying boats are merely steel shells with quarters for
crew and machinery at bow and stern, and hatches built with exact twelve
foot centers between. They are tied alongside the dock, long steel
chutes, also spaced twelve feet apart, are lowered along most of the
length of the boat and the ore slides into the vessel’s hold evenly all
along as it has to do, else the buoyancy of lighter parts of the boat
might break the frail shell. The entire load of 10,000 tons of ore is
ordinarily taken aboard in less than one hour. Pulling out immediately
the vessel traverses Lake Superior, the Sault Sainte Marie canal, Lake
Michigan or Lakes Huron and Erie as the case may be, and ties up at the
dock at destination. Years ago it would have been unloaded by men with
buckets or wheel-barrows, requiring some days at best. Now, however, the
hatches are uncovered and several ore unloaders with huge clam shell
buckets taking as high as fifteen tons of ore at a “bite” descend like
vultures upon it. Within four or five hours the boat is again empty with
no manual labor having been done upon the ore from the mine to the
furnace pile with the exception of a little heaping up of the ore in the
corners of the boat’s hold, which the ore unloaders could not reach.
[Illustration:
HOOVER & MASON UNLOADERS AT THE ILLINOIS STEEL CO., SOUTH CHICAGO,
ILL.
]
A young man named Alexander E. Brown could not bear, in the old days, to
see the ore so awkwardly unloaded, and in 1880 started the procession of
ore unloading devices. There are now several successful ore unloaders of
which the Brown hoist, the Hoover & Mason, and the Hulett are probably
the best known. With the Hulett unloader the operator has to be an
aviator, as his position is directly above the grab bucket. He descends
into the hold with the bucket, comes up with it and is with it in its
entire journey from the boat’s hold to the dump and back again. It must
be dizzy business.
[Illustration:
THE HULETT UNLOADER. NOTE THE OPERATOR’S HEAD IN WHITE SPOT JUST ABOVE
THE GRAB
]
Time is too precious to hold the boat at the dock long enough that each
bucketful, large as it is, can go directly to its final bin. It is
dropped just back of the unloading machine from which it is again picked
up by other buckets which carry it back toward the furnaces and deposit
it in cement ore troughs awaiting further journey to the ore house, from
which it goes to the furnaces. The empty ore boat immediately coals with
whole car loads of the fuel dumped into chutes leading to her bunkers by
the car dumper and proceeds on her way back to the mines for another
cargo of ore. The round trip, including loading and unloading, requires
but seven days.
[Illustration:
A GOOD VIEW OF THE HATCH SYSTEM OF MODERN ORE BOATS AND FOUR HULETT
UNLOADERS AT WORK
]
As in many other lines of commercial endeavor of to-day, speed and large
tonnage have been the aim and it would seem that in ore handling and
conveying devices the limit has about been reached. The big steam
shovels, gravity docks, ore tanks or boats, and unloading and coaling
devices, with the low cost of water transportation have made our modern
iron and steel preëminence possible. To show the importance to us of
this water transportation, we might mention that the rate for carrying
ore from Lake Superior ore ports to the Lake Erie furnaces has been as
low as $.0007 per ton per mile while the transportation cost by way of a
well operated railway at that particular time was more than $.005 per
ton per mile—more than seven times as much.
[Illustration:
THE REHANDLING BRIDGE WITH STOCK ORE PILE AND BLAST FURNACE AT REAR
]
Though for some years past more than three-quarters of all of the iron
ore used in the United States has come from seven or eight mines in the
northern peninsula of Michigan and the adjacent part of Minnesota, it
must not be understood that the Lake Superior mines are the only ore
deposits in this country. Figures show that such an inference is far
from the truth. It is true, however, that they have made the United
States what it is, the leading iron producer of the world. There are
still immense quantities to be mined on the Lake Superior ranges. Their
heavy production of cheaply handled high grade ore has, of course, held
back development of other districts, which also have great natural
resources. The Birmingham, Ala., region for instance, is a great ore and
iron producer, right now producing the third largest tonnage of any
district in the country. Some time in the not far off future, Alabama
with her great deposits of iron ore, coal, and other natural resources
is going to announce herself in no small voice. New York, Pennsylvania,
Tennessee, and Virginia rank next after Minnesota, Michigan, and Alabama
as ore producers, and several other states of the Union are not paupers
in resources of iron ore.
[Illustration:
HULETT GRAB BUCKETS IN THE HOLD OF AN ORE BOAT
]
We should not get so enthusiastic over our ore supply and iron
production as to think that other countries are devoid of such material.
Almost every civilized country has ore enough that it does pretty well.
With many the trouble is that the ore has objectionable constituents or
that supply of cheap fuel is not available. Germany has large deposits
of iron ore, but until the invention of the basic Bessemer process about
1870 she was handicapped because of the high phosphorus content of her
ore. The basic processes, both Bessemer and open-hearth, allow of the
removal of this phosphorus during the conversion into steel, and they
therefore brought Germany to the front as an iron producer.
The excellence of Sweden’s iron and steel has long been known the world
over. Sweden produces approximately one per cent of the world’s total
production of iron and steel, but her ore has been of such high grade
that iron made from it has maintained its position as a standard for use
in the manufacture of highest grade crucible steels. The very finest
steels for cutlery and tools, and even the softer grades of steel of
northwestern Europe, have been made from Swedish iron as a base.
Iron ore, of course, is classified by geologists and chemists into
varieties with such names as hematite, magnetite, siderite, etc., which
here little concern us.
To be worked at a profit, the iron content of the ore must be high with
the smallest possible amounts of undesirable impurities, particularly
phosphorus, sulphur, and silica. There are, however, certain impurities
which are not undesirable, for instance, lime, which will act as a flux
and neutralize the effect of some of the undesirable impurities. For
these reasons the prices for iron ore are based on the iron content and
modified by the relative amounts of undesirable and desirable
impurities. Phosphorus is almost a domineering factor and at present
approximately fifty cents a ton more is paid for Bessemer ore (that
containing less than .050 per cent phosphorus) than for non-Bessemer
ore. As might be expected the best ores have been the first used and the
grade is constantly falling. Instead of the 66 per cent iron ores of
some years ago those coming nowadays contain not much more than 59 per
cent of iron and the Bessemer ores described above are getting scarcer,
so that for some years practically all of the furnaces have been mixing
with them as much higher phosphorus ore as could be used without pushing
the phosphorus content of the mixture over the allowable limit.
We often hear people surmising what is to become of us when all of the
iron ore of this planet has been used. There is no harm in taking stock
of resources and in this case it does us much good. It happens that each
time the count is taken of iron ore available and that which under
future and better methods of working can be utilized, we find ourselves
immensely better off than the previous report had made out and we have
less cause to worry about the future. The last inventory was taken by
the extremely ambitious International Geological Congress held at
Stockholm, Sweden, in 1910. It shows that the world yet has enough rich
ore to make 10,192,000,000 tons of iron, and, a further supply of ore
for 53,136,000,000 tons of iron, which could be used if necessary.
So we will get along for a while yet.